Good things wanna be crazy men in space, but sparkle

To better understand National Geographics Good things series, which debuted on Disney + on October 9, I took three hours and 12 minutes of my day to watch the 1983 film of the same name, the Oscar-winning film with Ed harris like John Glenn, Scott glenn as Alan Shepard, Sam shepard like Chuck Yeager, and Dennis quaid like Gordon Cooper. I probably shouldn’t have. The film bowled me over with its portrayal of the harsh realities behind the romance of spaceflight, which leads the writer and director Philip kaufman towards a cinematic grappling with the costs and limits of the ambition of these men, a struggle that takes place on the cosmic and domestic fronts. It helps that the elements that make up the film, the score, the cinematography, the editing create a tapestry that combines the majesty of the space program with the raw terror and physical comedy of the business. The movie is awesome, and it brings out the weaknesses of the TV show even more clearly.

The series is also based on Tom Wolfes’ 1979 book on the origins of high speed flight and NASA’s early space missions, but it doesn’t attempt anything similar to the movie. Chuck Yeager, the man who broke the sound barrier, does not appear at all. (Kaufman insisted on including Yeagers in the film’s script, and the famous pilot was a consultant on the film, so the exclusion is a notable departure.) The series skips much of the drama of life or life. death of the first test pilots to jump in 1959, when NASA selected astronauts for the Mercury program. Patrick J. Adams (perhaps better known as Meghan markles old boyfriend from tv on Suit) plays Glenn, the bald charmer with a natural personality on camera. Jake mcdorman plays Shepard through Don Drapera, a petticoat dog who wants nothing more than to be the best astronaut on the program. Glenn and Shepard quickly distinguished themselves as crew chiefs, and the latter in particular seems to see this as a challenge.

Elsewhere, there are other interpersonal conflicts. Gordo Cooper (Colin ODonoghue) has an unresolved quarrel with Gus Grissom (Michael trotter, in a committed performance that remarkably resembles the Grissom films, Fred ward) which dates back to their days of war. And Gordos’ wife, Trudy (Eloise mumford), a pilot herself, finds herself sucked into the domestic performance of an astronaut wife to satisfy NASA’s idea of ​​how space pilots should live.

In all five episodes of the eight-episode season released to critics, the Mercury 7 gets a Life magazine contract and turn underpaid pilots into national celebrities. The pressure changes them and alters the dynamics of their families, even as they progress toward the ultimate goal of sitting on top of rockets and launching into the lower to middle stratosphere.

Ho-hum.

Space flight is fascinating and Good things gives us some pictures of rockets and physical tests that offer a perspective on what these men are going through. But the series takes five hours to cover what the film does in about 70 minutes and somehow leaves the viewer with even less insight into this world. The show is desperately lacking in courage; everything is washed with the prestige-TV chandelier and ramps forward with anticlimactic inevitability. Even if you are not a space fanatic, you know that astronauts eventually get to space; in ten years, their successors will arrive on the moon. In an effort to build a series out of this narrow episode in space history, the series invests heavily in tiny character dynamics that rarely feel significant or even entirely real. Gordo and Trudys’ state of marriage is what gives the show the most suspense, and while it’s interesting, it’s weird that Good things leaves much of the most obvious space flight drama on the table.

It doesn’t just help cinematically, the show has little to offer. Each musical cue is remarkably mundane, it’s like someone has looked at a list of the most used song cues to evoke a certain period and then dubbed them, repeating the Mack the Knife a few times just to really drive the period. specificity of the house. the Mad Men vibe extends to more than the Shepards characterization. Several actors of this show appear in Good stuff, including Aaron Staton, who plays astronaut Mercury Wally Schirra. And because so much of the story is interpersonal engagement on the pitch, Good things mostly takes place in the suburbs, the suburbs around Edwards Air Force Base, but other than the palm trees, they really could be anywhere.

The show makes a concerted effort to magnify the stories of wives (with mixed results, but okay) and in the fifth episode, features aviator Jerrie Cobb (Granny Gummer), one of the Mercury 13s, a body of female astronauts who went through the same training as the men but never made it to space. As Good things demonstrates, the space program astronauts were chosen as much for what they looked like, and what they represented, as much as for their physical and technical abilities, so it’s commendable of the show for attempting to include the stories of those close to them. action that has never been part of it. But I couldn’t help but notice that Katherine Johnsonthe black mathematician whose calculations were so legendary that John Glenn wouldn’t board Friendship 7 in 1962 until she checked the numbers weren’t there. in the series. (It’s possible she’ll appear in all three episodes I’ve yet to see, but while there has been a casting announcement for Gummer playing Cobb, there’s nothing for a potential Johnson.) The series’ inclusion efforts are a bit hampered, so maybe they were better off. ? Still, it’s bizarre 2020, in a post Hidden figures worldthat the show misses even a fleeting nod to it.

Indeed, despite all its obvious efforts and its alleged awakening, this new version of Good things appears much less daring than the film when it comes to imagining these men, their wives, the space program and the lived reality of the time. The debates are whitewashed with a sort of bland patriotism. Its investment is mainly in the elements of the history of astronauts which can be converted into a somewhat high soap opera. The vision of the show is to tackle a different space program each season: Gemini, Apollo, etc. It might be worth seeing these stories. But I hope they find a way to make them soar.

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