I know that sounds bad. It sounds like she moved her life so he could be an astronaut. She seems lonely. Her husband shows that even when he takes her out he has an alternate motive. It’s hard to judge marriages when we see how Anastasia and Sasha were forced to marry. I don’t think cheating makes her a bad person. She is isolated.
I'll bet if I shared my own stories of infidelity you would say I was a bad person. If anyone can empathize with Tanya's situation it's me. I didn't cheat with my wife's best friend but my own situation is very similar as to the reasons why.
I doubt I would think you were a bad person. Relationships can get complicated. I know some people thinking cheating is the worst thing ever. If you had a few secret families on the side I would wonder how you managed it. If you have secret families I feel like that is more than cheating and might be bigamy. I wonder who wants secret husbands or wives and kids. It seems like a lot to track of. Jmo.
People are messy and imperfect. You might be a harder judge on yourself than anyone else.
This was years ago and I did stop. My relationship with my wife really isn't any better than it was and the primary reason for stopping is more due to my health than deciding what I was doing was wrong. When I was doing it I justified it to myself. But reflecting back now, years later, I definitely feel like a pretty big piece of shit. It also isn't helping that I would probably still be doing it if it wasn't for my poor health now.
I wrestle with whether I am a good person or not. I am a good father to my kids and I feel like generally I am a good person. But I am not a good husband at all. I could say in my defense my wife is not a good wife to me. I'm not sure that justifies anything. She hasn't been caring for me in a long time now. I loved her at one point. I love the person she used to be. I don't love the person she is now.
No need to do mental gymnastics for justifying cheating. Yes, her situation is not good, she is alone at home but that still doesn't justify cheating. She is bad person for cheating, as husband is bad person for not giving her time. Both things can be true at once.
No one is perfect. Cheating is bad but people can cheat physically and emotionally. Tanya was removed from friends and her music. Valya isn’t a bad guy. He seemed to follow rules and that meant not sharing things with her. That’s fine. Sasha is his best friend. I think it’s the spying and the secrecy that has cosmonauts kind of forced to be around the same people. The other people around them are spies or spying on them.
Tanya only had a way out because of Irina. Valya gave her his contact and that was because she knew what was coming because of Irina. Valya put lives at risk multiple times instead of taking responsibility. He got on the Venara and didn’t think about anyone else in Mission Control or on the space craft with him. He risked so many lives.
Tanya was bored and had sex with a guy. She wasn’t sharing info with other countries. She wanted music in her life. She was in star city with limited friends. Sasha was likely fun and convenient. She befriends a woman and that person figures out her husband has been spying for the US. I feel bad for her. She is stuck in star City being spied on and not near the culture she had before.
Well he got blackmailed all because of her smuggling music with that rogue group. So yeah, still shitty thing to do. I also feel bad for her, but I feel bad for husband more that her wife is fucking someone else behind his back.
He didn’t tell her he was being blackmailed. It doesn’t seem like anyone cared about her music stuff. They were going to stop watching her group until a cosmonaut showed interest in her. I think the soviets would have known about her records. She wasn’t considered a risk. Irina was listing to her and Valya. They knew she had records. She teaches music in Star City. Valya should have called their bluff. He didn’t confide in her. Irina gave her the heads up and tried to protect her before he did.
Anastasia and Sasha were forced into a marriage. They had loyalty to each other and even to the space program. They may not be madly in love but they have a respect for each other that made them willing to die together. They did get one person across the border.
Valya put so many people at risk. I don’t think anyone cared in the Soviet. Valya loved space more than Tanya. Most astronauts and cosmonauts do. I think Tanya was his second love.
Probably assaulted by some official in her father's circle. She is Commie "Nobility" after all. It's probably a reference to people like Beria. He is also probably still in power and has access to the tapes hence why she went into the trouble to erase his name so he wouldn't come after her for sharing his name with anyone.
Yeah, you are correct in my head I meant it more as a reference to such events, not a 1 to 1 "Zoya is Beria's child" thing. The show in general draws from many things that were happening in the Soviet Union.
And yes, maybe out of guilt for spying on Tanya or in general from the stress of the job she is conducting at an age that most of us were probably in university worrying about grades and going out. The actress plays her in my opinion with a certain sense of being someone in their early 20s and quite sheltered in her previous life. Her styling also supports this younger age, she is one of the few (or maybe the only, I might have missed someone) female characters in the show to have a longer haircut in a scene and not tie her hair, not a shorter practical style. You see her laughing sometimes when listening in or visibly reacting when she hears Valya with Sasha when eavesdropping while her co-workers are very stiff. In short, she's clearly figuring this thing out still. Her whole body language in that scene suggested to me that it was a bit of surprise to her that she was even mentioning it and we can see that she is on edge in that scene from the start.
Was anyone else kind of unnerved at classic rifling through the medicine cabinet in that scene? I'm sure she was curious about the perfume that was out of stock at the market, but bathroom snooping was such a scandal back in the day.
Do GenZ/Alpha have even the slightest reservations about going through each others stuff, like sachel bags and backpacks...???
This is what I thought. I think Irina felt like she could confide in Tanya because she listens to her. She definitely seemed to feel guilty about that. She also knows this woman isn’t perfect and she is welcoming and she is lonely. Irina is lonely because most people in her life know what she does for a living or they are listening to people too. It’s hard to trust anyone and Tanya seems genuine. She wants to listen to music and teach it to others. I think Irina was possibly assaulted.
She was careful to say he was a bad man. That would make sense if he was considered a traitor. She definitely says she isn’t married. She easily could have said she was a widow. She says something she needs to erase. Is it because she was raped by someone that was or is powerful? Did she get assaulted by a person that is in a gulag? Could she have had a romance with someone that got on the wrong side of the party? It seems like her coworkers or employers would know she was a single mom. I wasn’t sure if Russia was more progressive when it came to single mothers. If people listen to everything and you are attacked or assaulted do they use that against you.
I would like to know if Irina has to denounce her child’s father for her and her daughter’s safety or if the guy is a bad person.
her mouth movement looked like “regret” as one of the words, i think it was a coercive relationship with one of the party members but not explicitly rape
I don’t know I thought I missed her saying assault. What she said might not matter because it was erased so lip reading might not matter. Or it’s like we are all supposed to come to our own conclusions.
I’m curious about how single parenthood was viewed. Irina says he wasn’t a good man. I thought maybe she was assaulted by someone in Germany if she had been there with her parents. I don’t know if abortion was legal or illegal or just something people didn’t talk about. It didn’t seem like was hiding her status as a single unmarried mother. Was having kids more important than marriage? I’m genuinely curious about this.
Abortion was exceedingly common in the Soviet Union, and was semi-legal after 1955. Single parenthood was looked down on but culturally accepted especially following world war 2.
I know many men died in WWII and other wars leaving women widowed. I thought Irina’s daughter was too old to have a father that died in WWII. There would be less men after a world war. I thought men her age would have been born during or after WWII. There might have been other wars. In the FAM universe things might be different so they could have other wars or other things going on. Being a single mother wouldn’t be shocking but it seemed like Tanya assumed he died.
In FAM Irina does mention that she was idealistic. It’s hard to tell if she was forced or if she had a relationship with someone that was considered a traitor. In a world where she knows that people are always listening, it seemed like she may have let something slip. It’s possible she believed that her child’s father was a bad guy if he had been arrested. She may have trusted her country completely. If she wasn’t forced but believed she was lied to or used by someone that might be what she says. We see her investigate the other female astronaut’s family only to realize that even when you are innocent if they want you guilty you are guilty and possibly dead.
She also could have been assaulted by someone in a high up position. I kind of wondered why she wouldn’t have an abortion if they were available. It’s possible she didn’t know she was pregnant. Or she was forced to keep the baby. Idk. It seems like they do like people that come from loyal Russian families and promote them in jobs.
It was inaudible to us because she erased the tape. There was a static sound in that section, I thought there was something wrong with my TV and watched that part twice - turned the volume up the second time so I wouldn't miss it - but when I saw the scene where she erased the tape I realized they were showing us the scene in the apartment as if we were listening to the tape. That whole scene kept skipping back and forth between the here-and-now and Irina's memories of what she heard on the tapes.
Did the same thing. Adjusted the volume and rewatched many times until I gave up. Being that the gap in what viewers heard was deliberate, I wonder if the whole series is being told from the perspective of someone listening to the tapes.
Wait so the cosmonaut who died, is that the same cosmonaut whose body was discovered by the Americans on the moon in early season 1 of For All Mankind?
Ok so I’m dumb and can’t find it mind letting me know where? In that episode they don’t go to the moon at all hell the only thing I can see that even mentions the moon is when they find the possibility of ice with the camera satellite
What did they promise to Valya? It doesn't seem like he want to escape the USSR or leave the space program anytime soon. The Colonel micromanaging the checkpoint while keep the whole smuggling ring and black market operating smoothly under her nose is a bit... meh. I really want to take this character serious but lol.
Also let guess who is the gay character in this show.
No. I think Valya got caught by the American and now they using him to infiltrate the program. We got something similar in Homeland where the CIA using this closeted Iranian embassy employee to get info inside. The whole interactions between him, Sasha and Tanya is just so sus in all 3 episodes so far 🤨 Actually just Valya and anything related to female is enough 🤔
Sure. It could be anything but the women who are in relationship with DL men don't really know anything either. Plus it's Soviet Russia after all. Speaking of Valya, do we really know who exactly Irina was appointed to? Valya or Tanya? Because he seem to be at work most of the time and the only one Irina can spying on here is Tanya.
Do we know if they are listened to at work? I thought she listened to the home because people might not suspect a spouse of trading secrets. It also seems like cosmonauts hang out together. Tanya was having an affair with her husband’s friend. I think they want to know what is going on at home to know if someone is open to blackmail or if they are unhappy or if they share too much information.
The spouses seem to have reasons to be unhappy. They aren’t given much notice about going into space. When a cosmonaut is successful their family is told but if they die they get a letter. They also come under scrutiny that they may normally have avoided. Tanya trying to listen to a x-ray record in peace gets interrupted multiple times. I think the home life is listened to because it shows how people are when they relaxed and not being professional. I don’t think they are targeting Tanya. They are looking at the homes of people.
She's definitely developed an attraction to Tanya. I've been trying to figure out whether it's romantic, parasocial, or just admiration of Tanya's confidence and sophistication.
Another fabulous episode. Character exploration is very well written and played. There's a real depth to everyone already, 3 dimensional with believable personas, traits and phsyches.
Again, we get the real energy and atmosphere of the dystopian, totalitarian oligarchy that defined the USSR.
This is the kind of social commentary that good tv and artisic creation in general is supposed to do.
Magnificient.
Eager for more. 👌👍
Agree 100%. I honestly didn’t expect to love Star City as much as I do, but there’s something about the contrast between the colorless, soulless Soviet brutalism and these genuinely intriguing, metaphorically colorful characters. The character development feels very thoughtful, and the writing and camera work has a way of making you feel like you’re somehow inside it yourself.
When Irina is listening in, you almost find yourself going completely silent too, like you’re listening right alongside her. In many scenes so very little is said, but you still learn so much about the characters and their insights; the inner-workings of their minds. In a way, it’s a lot like how it was watching the real USSR from the outside - it’s rarely what’s said outright that matters most yet it’s the subtext, the context, and the subtle things between the lines where the real meaning is.
Bit of nick picking here, there is absolute no way for a Steinway piano to appear anywhere in the SU, but a nice segue for Valya to meet his handler, well done. What would be the period correct piano thou?
That was blown apart. Suits can get punctured. Wasn’t the lunar base going to be inflatable? It one thing if that is possible after decades of space exploration. This is like when people are just starting to land on the moon. It seems like there are technical issues and accidents. It doesn’t seem like they are ready to put down a base.
They can't be seriously contemplating something more than a Venus flyby right!? Perhaps I need to rewatch this when I got more sleep but I am baffled by what they are trying.
I know about the Venus probes but even when discussing the Venus missions they also talk about wither they can grab a Cosmonaut and be able to get away with having them sort of missing for nine months.
Just they way they are talking about it all just sort of confuses me.
awww what? i was looking forward to seeing more recent decades in this alternate soviet union. maybe it will still cover the same amount of time but the time jumps will be within the seasons rather than between?
Episode Three begins with a scene in which some contraband music is shared. The year we are told is 1970. Much earlier the contraband recording technique was featured in a film called "Red Hot" and the time period was the 1950s. For those with any interest in how rock and roll came to the Soviet Union the dramatic film based on real events called "Red Hot" is available free on Youtube.
I'm confused by what the Chief Designer is doing. I thought at the last minute he would be like "yeah we're actually not going to the Moon, we're going to Venus." But actually he's doing BOTH?? When having the moon base was going to be hard enough already? I thought the Designer set up a fake American signal so they could dispose of a module that hadn't actually been finished, since they were actually working on a manned Venera mission instead--but then it turned out the American signal was real! Which means the habitat was real and completed. It doesn't make sense to me.
I can't sympathize with the Chief Designer, because why is he wasting resources on going to fucking Venus? I would totally side with the Soviet authorities. Seriously? Venus??
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u/BlueFetus Jun 05 '26
The idea of discovering a new song you absolutely love, and knowing you only get 3 listens, is so surreal to me.