Every Little Thing

## Chronology

"**Every Little Thing**" is the premiere episode of the second season of *For All Mankind*. It was released on Apple TV+ on February 19, 2021.

## Synopsis

Nearly a decade later, technology and lunar exploration have taken huge strides - but a solar storm threatens the astronauts on Jamestown.

## Plot

On May 21, 1983, at what is now known as the Jamestown base, Ellen Wilson talks to her husband Larry on Earth and asks for no more parties, but he tells her it was not his idea. She accepts and tells him that she does not want a birthday party, but would be fine with a welcome home party since she did not want to be reminded she was 40 now. She told him that she was handing the base off to the new commander, who was outside with the rest of the crew, so she had the base to herself for probably the last time, which she wanted to enjoy. After they said goodbye, Ellen moved through the base and looked around.

Meanwhile, astronauts walked outside with flashlights. Wubbo Ockels tells Molly Cobb that he was positioning the rover so that they could see the sunrise. They all turned off their flashlights and were soon illuminated by the Sun. Molly told Wubbo to stop staring at his screen and look at the Sun, which he did. The astronauts started singing the song *"Three Little BirdsW"*, joined by Ellen at the base.

Margo Madison wakes up at her office, which has a sofa bed and puts her glasses on. She takes a shower and gets ready for work. She calls Emma Jorgens and asks her for messages. Her assistant tells her that she had sent flowers and food to her aunt, who was expected to make a full recovery from her surgery. She gave her more messages and handed her an envelope and they leave, while Emma still gives her updates. She is told that there was possibly lithiumW near Jamestown, and she asks if the Soviets had been informed, which Emma confirms.

Margo enters a room, where she tells General Bradford that she can get him a new printer. She asks how the tests had gone and he responds that thirty pages of data told them they missed. She mentions that is bad luck, but hands him an envelope, which excites him since it contained Army-Air Force tickets at the 50-yard line. He thanks her and asks what they would cost him. She tells him they are a gift, but that he might consider allowing the *Kon-Tiki* to land at Edwards and also freeing up space for a couple of polar launches form Vandenberg. He tells her the former is possible, but the PentagonW would not like the latter, especially after Berlin. He wants to give the tickets back, but she tells him to keep them. As she left, he told her that he now owed her a favor.

Margo asks Emma to keep going and is told that a general wanted to keep pressuring her into the *Pathfinder* idea, which makes her sigh. She greets Gary Piscotty and Helena Webster, who discuss whether or not Margo hates him. Helena tells him that if administration hated him, he would not be in the program, but he mentions that he knows when people were out to get him. Helena told him that this would change on that day since he would achieve his goal and would not take no for an answer. She tells him that he needed to go into the admiral's office, which he does nervously.

Piscotty greets Edward Baldwin, who is playing golf in his office. Ed asks Piscotty what he can do for him and Gary says he wanted to talk about his career, which he realized was a big deal. Ed knew he wanted a prime crew slot on *Pathfinder*, which made Ed laugh since it was ambitious wanting to be prime crew on the vehicle which would take them to Mars and beyond. Ed tells Gary that he likes ambition and would be one hell of an astronaut, but would let him know when he was ready. Gary tells Ed that he had been there for three years and had many achievements, but no space time. Ed tells him that he does not like redheads and tells him to trust him. He tells Gary to take his foot off the golf ball, and asks for the door to be closed when he leaves. Ed laughs after the encounter.

Gordo Stevens is giving a presentation as a guest speaker for the Rotary ClubW in Little Rock, Arkansas, and says that new technologies were approaching. He was drinking while answering questions such as how to go to the bathroom in space. He is asked how he saved Danielle Poole when she broke her arm on the Moon. Gordo smiles and tells them that sometimes equipment and people fail and it all falls apart.

Ed is visited by Administrator Thomas Paine, who tells him that the President had some concerns about *Pathfinder*, and Ed tells him that he does not need his approval since he only works with crew members. Thomas tells him that the White House wanted it to be a unanimous decision, but Ed realizes that all they wanted was for the press not to say that they had decided to do a little saber-rattling over the objections people at JSC had. Thomas asks him to work with him since they needed to send a message to the Soviets since they were already testing their own shuttle. He also tells him that Margo was protecting her turf when Ed mentioned they had tested second generation shuttles and was worried that they would put weapons on the shuttle and it would become a military asset. Ed tells him that Margo is not wrong, since he had needed to go to the Pentagon more than he would have liked to and knew that they would love to add *Pathfinder* to their fleet. Thomas asks if he turned Margo over to his side if Ed would join and Ed tells him that if he is able to do so, he would not stand in his way.

Ed makes it to Outpost and goes directly to his wife's office, who tells him that thanks to her work, she would be able to pay off the second mortgage on the house the following month a full year ahead of schedule. He congratulates her and they are brought spaghetti by their adopted daughter Kelly, who mentions that she had not been able to look at the college catalogue her mother had given her. Karen mentions that one of the colleges had a great theater program, but Ed tells her that engineering, physics, computer science or any of those careers, which were "the future." However, Karen reminds him that they would not push her into studying something she did not want, and Ed agreed.

Karen worked the bar at Outpost, while Ed mentioned that that Tracy Stevens would be on television. On the program, Tracy greets the host and tells him that she had returned from being in Rio and Aruba, also stopping at Vegas before returning. The host asks her if she has a new ring and she tells him that it is a ring Sam Cleveland had given her when they got married in Vegas.

At home, Gordo asks himself why she had gotten married without even a phone call, but Jimmy tells his father that she had left a message on the machine the day before, but had not mentioned she was getting married since she sounded "loopy," which was typical of Tracy. As Jimmy left, Gordo asks him how he felt about his mother getting married again, but he mentions he does not know. The phone rings, and Ed asks Gordo if he was watching, which he mentions he was. Gordo asks his friend if he knew about it, but Ed mentions he did not and asks if Gordo is okay and if he needed some company, but Gordo says he would be fine.

At Skylab, Irish ESA astronaut Doreen Campbell communicated with Houston. She mentioned she was at the ATM panelW starting a run. She observed that the emissions were rising and a big solar flare had begun. At Mission Control, flight director Irene Hendricks mentions that they would have interference across the broadcast spectrum. At that moment, flight controller Adam mentions that JPL had lost contact with the Mariner 14W probe which was just inside the orbit of Mercury at that moment, having gotten fried by proton radiation. However, they mentioned that it could not be related to the flare since the plasma clouds never moved that quickly, but Bill Strausser says that maybe they had never seen it move that fast.

On the Moon, the astronauts still sang while watching the sunrise.

Margo, Ed and Thomas got to Mission Control, where Margo told them that life on Earth was safe, but everything outside of the Earth's atmosphere was in danger, so they told all crewed vehicles in orbit that everybody should move to the best shielded parts of the craft, also ordering the Jamestown astronauts to get back to the base immediately.

Ellen told all the astronauts to head back to the base, so they headed to the rovers. However, Molly and Wubbo were too far out to make it back to the base, so Molly told Ellen that they would find shelter in place. Molly told Wubbo that there was a lava tube next to base camp where they would meet inside. Wubbo agreed and they started moving.

Margo is called by General Bradford. He tells her that nobody knew how the satellites would react to the solar flare and asked if they could shield them. Margo, however, told him that for now the best plan was to wait, but that they would lose sight of the Russians. Margo mentions that the Russians would also lose use of their own satellites, but this only increases Bradford's concern, as Russians that were unable to monitor potential American nuclear launches would be just as jumpy as the Americans are on account of being unable to monitor potential Russian launches. Bradford calls his people and recommends DEFCON 3W. Margo exposits that DEFCON 3 was only two steps from nuclear war, and reminds Bradford that this is just a solar storm.

Ellen instructed everybody to lock everything down and headed to an underground bunker, where they would stay for at least three hours. Meanwhile, Molly reached the lava tube, but did not hear back from Wubbo when she talked to him. She looked through a powerful camera lens and found that Wubbo's rover had flipped and the astronaut was not moving.

Earth was hit by the solar flare, and they lost all forms of communication. Margo asked Ed what the last headcount was, and he mentioned that ten minutes ago 14 were in the shelter and three were within visual sight of the base. He told her that Molly was a survivor and that they would be okay. Thomas told them that the White House would be explaining the storm and revealed that President Reagan was on Air Force OneW since they were worried that the Soviets would make a move during the satellite blackout.

Thomas asked Margo how much radiation a human could take, and she mentioned that it varied and people could even develop cancer over time. She also said that each astronaut had a dosimeter badge which measured their radiation while on the Moon.

As the storm reached the Moon, Molly went inside the lava tube and was told by Ellen to stay inside at all times. She looked out as the regolithW on the Moon's surface started moving and took off her dosimeter bracelet. After that, she headed outside in order to reach Wubbo and ran across the storm. When she reached Wubbo, she found he was injured and unconscious, and carried him back to the lava tube, which was not an easy task for her. She looked at Wubbo's dosimeter and found it was red. When she held hers, it was still green.

## Cast

show/hide list

Main Cast

* Joel Kinnaman as Edward Baldwin
* Michael Dorman as Gordo Stevens
* Sarah Jones as Tracy Stevens
* Shantel VanSanten as Karen Baldwin
* Jodi Balfour as Ellen Wilson
* Sonya Walger as Molly Cobb
* Krys Marshall as Danielle Poole (credits only)
* Cynthy Wu as Kelly Baldwin
* Wrenn Schmidt as Margo Madison

Guest Starring

* Nate Corddry as Larry Wilson
* Dan Donohue as Thomas Paine
* John Marshall Jones as Nelson Bradford
* Noah Harpster as Bill Strausser
* Michael Benz as Gary Piscotty
* Michaela Conlin as Helena Webster
* Leonora Pitts as Irene Hendricks
* Teya Patt as Emma Jorgens
* Bjørn Alexander  as Wubbo Ockels
* Brad Beyer  as Carl Cartwright
* Tim Jo as Steve Pomeranz
* Charlie Schlatter as Paul Michaels
* Linda Park as Amy Chang
* Spencer Garrett as Roger Scott
* Megan Dodds as Andrea Walters

Co-Starring

* David Chandler as Jimmy Stevens
* Penny O'Brien  as Doreen Campbell
* Steve Olson  as Astronaut #1
* Marianne Lu  as Astronaut #2
* Jay Liu  as Adam
* Don Brunner II  as Rotary Member 1
* Robbie Troy  as Rotary Member 2
* Fred Cross  as CAPCOM
* Anand Mahalingam  as ASCAN #1

Other

* Jeff Bergman  as Ronald Reagan / Johnny CarsonW (voice)
* Maetrix Fitten  as Astronaut (uncredited)
* Gregory Garcia  as NASA Scientist (uncredited)
* Gerren Hall  as Charlie (uncredited)
* Yakov Kolontarov  as Russian Guard (uncredited)
* John Lennon  as SelfW (archive footage) (uncredited)
* Marisa Mendelson  as Bar Local (uncredited)
* Pope John Paul II  as SelfW (archive footage) (uncredited)
* Ronald Reagan  as Self - POTUS (archive footage) (uncredited)
* Kalina Vanska  as MOCR Console Tech (uncredited)

## Appearances

### Vehicles & vessels

 ***Kon-Tiki***
Space Shuttle **Moon rover**
### Locations & stations

 **Jamestown base** **Shackleton crater** **Skylab** **Earth's orbit**

## Trivia

There is an apparent mistake made by the show on the amount of time the astronauts would have had to take cover from the solar storm. The figure provided by Mission Control is that the storm would reach the astronauts in 27 minutes, as the protons emitted from the flare are measured to travel at 30% the speed of light. While it is correct that the protons would take 27 minutes to reach Earth (and the Moon) at that speed, the show forgets to account that, under general relativity, information may only travel up to the speed of light. Therefore, the absolute earliest the flare could have been observed on Earth would have been 8 minutes after it erupted on the Sun, which is the amount of time required for light to travel from the Sun to Earth. Therefore, the astronauts would have had 19 minutes at most to find cover.

## Notes

1. ↑ The song *"Three Little BirdsW"* from Bob Marley features the repeated phrase *"Every Little Thing Is Gonna Be Alright"*, where this episode is titled after.

## External links

### Soundtrack

  Soundtrack of episode 2x01, "Every Little Thing" on Tunefind
### Transcript

  Transcript of episode 2x01, "Every Little Thing" on TV Show Transcripts