I continue to have notes. First, I just noticed that this show is actually called Astronaut Wives Club, “astronaut” singular. I totally thought it was plural this whole time, which reminds me of something I read on Twitter when the show premiered, which is that the title FEELS like it ought to have an apostrophe…somewhere. (It is grammatically correct, but I really want it to be Astronauts’ Wives Club, I think, because there are multiple astronauts. I get that they’re playing off the term “Astronaut Wife,” but that’s…not really, like, a phrase? Anyway, I am SURE this was a conversation that was had and possibly argued about many many times before the book even came out but this is the first time I’ve thought about it.)
Second, the passage of time on this show continues to be incredibly confusing. I have no idea how much time ever passes between one scene and the next — a week? A month? In some cases, I was able to look it up (thanks, Real Life History) and it proved to be MONTHS when it felt like a week. It’s not a great idea to maroon your views in some timeless netherworld on a show so much about history.
Finally, I must confess that although I have a ton of notes, I do find this show to be a fascinating failure, because I totally understand WHY it’s such a mess and why it was apparently retooled a bunch of times. The story covers a huge span of time and so people that it’s nearly impossible to tell it well in just a few episodes without axing several of the players (which is, I think, what they should have done). I have to wonder if they are simply cleaving too close to the book — which I haven’t yet read — when it would have worked better on TV if the creators had decided JUST to focus on one Space Event. Say, the moon landing. I get that, as a producer, you might feel attached to, say, Betty Grissom, and not want to lose her entirely by focusing on later events, but they could have even started at the moon landing and done a bunch of this in quick flashback if they really wanted to. Don’t ask me why I’m trying to fix this show. Let’s get to the smokey cocktail weenies.
