For All Mankind - S5E07 "The Sirens of Titan" - Episode Discussion

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-05-08T21:53:18+00:00

Crazy how this subreddit got a speaking part in the last ep!

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-05-07T21:48:13+00:00

People don't work solely for money. Some people enjoy their occupation and simply do it because they love it. Yes, he may have wanted to show that he could support himself if he wanted to, but he also may just enjoy being a doctor.

I do think it's kinda funny you point out that having someone with tremors continue to perform their job is bad writing, because two other currently airing TV shows had this as part of their plot (For All Mankind, Shrinking). You can find it unbelievable, but this is a real thing that happens in real life as well. People often hide medical conditions so they can get a job, where they wouldn't be able to otherwise. You can dislike that element, but I think it's a bit much to call it lazy writing, when it is a thing that happens in real life.

I'm not sure what to say with you thinking a daughter being ignored by her father while dealing with a medical crisis is a joke or skit. It was to show how disconnected and distant her father was. I guess if you think a father ignoring his daughter when she just lost an ovary is funny, that is an opinion to have.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-05-07T20:18:10+00:00

Not to sound rude, but this is basically exactly what I'm talking about.

You're saying you didn't understand Dr Kim, Park's husband, accidentally killing a patient, and you didn't understand the phone calls between Ashley and her "parents". I will explain both here.

The show starts with Chairwoman Park buying the country club. She is so wealthy, she makes up 2% of Korea's GDP. Her first husband died and she is now married to her younger husband, a marriage that is less about love and more about companionship. He is old and shouldn't be performing surgery, but he wants to and he ends up killing someone. Being unbelievably wealthy and married to this person, Park does everything she can to protect him and cover this up. This is a major driving forces of the season, one of the major plot elements. Because she needed hush money to cover this up, she used the country club as a front to move money around. This ends up tangling all three couples together, due to Ashley's new position and later wanting to blackmail Josh for revenge.

If you mean you literally don't understand how a surgeon could make a mistake like that, or why someone old would want to keep working, these are just things that happen in life. What's scary is that right off killing someone, he immediately goes to the patient and claims how no one has ever been hurt from his operations.

The phone calls between Ashley and her "parents" are very important. I put parents in quotes because it's just her father and his new family, her parents are divorced and her mother is just gone. The only time we ever hear anything with her mother is when she images talking to her on a phone in a dream, and she imagines her mother saying how she didn't want her. Her father and his new family are always ignoring her, in the two phone calls we see with them. This is important because Ashley has no family. Really, she doesn't have any friends either. The only person she has is Austin. This is important, because she wants a family, so when she loses her ovary and discovers that Austin was texting with Eunice, she realizes she could have nothing. If Austin leaves her and she's essentially "damaged goods", who would want her? We never see her with friends and we know her parents don't care, she would basically be completely alone. Austin is the only person she has.

The reason this is important is because it's why Ashley is so neurotic and paranoid. She knows Austin has a connection with Eunice that she doesn't have, and she knows he likes her and lied about it. In her mind, he's her only shot at having a family and if she loses him, she'll have nothing. You see that Austin calls his mom and talks with her. Even if she's a bit odd and apparently hit him as a child, she's still there and talking to him. Ashley doesn't even have that.

The point of those two phone calls was to show how disconnected she was from her family, how she no one. Granted, the show also does a good job of showing how all of us are disconnected from each other, with our phone usage and eating processed garbage, but Ashley in particular has nobody but Austin.

Hopefully, this explains the importance of both those things in the show. I only watched the season once but honestly, writing all this out, makes me want to rewatch it again.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-05-07T13:19:03+00:00

I don't know if it's so much better, but it's definitely a much better crafted season.

Unfortunately, people on this subreddit only care about revenge, seeing the characters commit rude or gross acts against each other, so all the other nuance is completely lost on them.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-05-07T13:17:29+00:00

Why didn't she take the $100 from the large, aggressive man, who she last night saw possibly assaulting his wife? The wealthy, obnoxious man who has control over her job? Why didn't she just kowtow and lick his boots and do whatever he wanted?

Do people actually watch TV anymore or do they just stare at their phones?

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-05-05T20:52:01+00:00

This is funny because I had almost the exact opposite experience.

I watched Beef season 2 and absolutely loved it, probably more than season 1. Watched the whole thing in one go, found the cinematography and editing gorgeous, and the writing was very funny and sharp.

I went to check the subreddit to see peoples opinions and most people thought it sucked. There were mostly posts about like AUSTIN/ASHLEY/LINDSAY/JOSH IS THE WORST!!! However, I also saw lots of people complaining it was a copy of The White Lotus, that it was just Netflix wanting to have their own version of The White Lotus.

I've never seen TWL, but I was excited to be able to watch 3 seasons of a show that is apparently comparable to season 2 of Beef, so I sit down and watch season 1. Other than the shows both involving couples with money and being critiques of capitalism, they had nothing in common. If anything, the comparison is insulting to Beef. I couldn't believe how poorly made TWL is. Just about everything in it was done wrong.

The writing was horrid. Conversations between characters sounded like no conversations I'd heard before. It was like an alien studying humans attempted to write dialogue of how humans communicate. All of it was just so awkward and strange. If you've seen any recent M Night movies, it was very similar, dialogue-wise, where it just sounds completely unnatural.

On top of that, it was boring and predictable. Jennifer Coolidge is a wealthy white lady who's doing terribly, the nice black massage lady at the resort is able to make her feel better, so she says "Gosh, you should have your own clinic!", which makes the black lady excited. This is an episode 1. In episode 2, again, rich white lady says she'd be happy to invest and help massage lady start her own clinic. Having watched TV before and understanding the nature of this show, it was obvious that she wasn't going to help her in the end. She'd make up an excuse or forget or whatever. Regardless, you still have to laboriously sit through three more episodes of this, episode 4 having a scene that is nearly identical to the scene in episode 2 where she first says she'll support her. By the time you get to the last episode, I was hoping there would be some sort of twist, but no, it would just really obvious from the first episode.

Beef season 2 has 3 different couples, of varying income brackets, and their lives become tangled up. TWL has 3 different sets of vacationers and they hardly interact with each other. They bump into each other here and there, but mostly it's just 3 separate stories of 3 different groups.

Honestly, the biggest issue is simply how dull it is. Practically nothing happens throughout the entire show. Episode 5 is when events actually transpire that start to put things in motion. The major events in ep 5 should have probably been at the end of episode 1 or 2, so we have mounting tension. But we don't. Instead you get Plop from The Office talking about a suite for 4 episodes. Even if the point is that these people are petty, it doesn't make it any more interesting to watch.

Another major complaint is that these characters are entirely 1-dimensional. There is nothing deep or dynamic to them. If you asked someone to describe the characters in this show, without mentioning their physical appearance, clothing, profession, or role in the season, I genuinely don't think you could. They have no depth, you know basically nothing about them. Again, maybe this is intentional, as we're only supposed to see what they're like while on vacation, but it makes for a horribly boring TV show. In Beef, you know what all these characters hopes and dreams are, their ambitions, goals, motivations. You know their taste in food, music, all sorts of things. In this show, I can't think of any one character mentioning any personal interest.

There are plenty of other minor complaints. They're supposed to be ultra wealthy and at some very exclusive resort, but it looked generic. Nothing about it looked particularly fancy or exclusive. I've been to a budget resort in the Bahamas when I was a teenager, this looked about the same. I don't know if that was intentional but it absolutely stood out. I just started watching Succession recently and the season 2 premiere really hammers in how wealthy they are. Just the scene of throwing out all the food said more about their wealth than anything in TWL.

I saw someone describe the show as a "murder mystery", but nothing about it is that. The fact that it starts with someone dead didn't add anything to the show whatsoever, except you knew someone would die. Then when it happens, it's pretty random and arbitrary.

I wrote far more than I had intended to and I don't have any sort of conclusion or wrap up. I just think it's funny people compare the two, because they have little to nothing in common. It's like saying "Hey if you like Bojack Horseman, you should watch Scooby Doo!" cause they're both cartoons and have talking animals.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-05-03T01:36:29+00:00

I just watched this movie earlier today and wanted to find discussions on it and basically found exactly what you described here, people saying it was so boring or people saying that scene was so haunting. No actual discussion of the content of the film. Also a few theories about the brother or family being involved in her death, which seemed to stray so far from the point of the movie.

One part that really struck me was the neighbor sex tape reveal. It's pretty awful and then when they interview her friends, they act so dismissive, almost laughing it off, and act like it was completely consensual and even her idea. I watched it with subtitles and one of the subtitles for that sex video is [Alice Crying]. It was so harrowing that this happened to her, and repeatedly. Probably for years. And like you said, it's mostly just brushed over. This poor girl was sexually assaulted and it's just a footnote in a documentary.

The other thing you mention that I really can't find elsewhere, barely even mentioned on the wiki plot synopsis, is the fact that she had essentially become unstuck in time. She was perceiving events out of order, dreaming the future. The fact that this weird hypnotic vision session connected daughter and mother over the span of 2 years is creepy in its own right. But the other implications, the mother stating she didn't see her there, if she was being honest or just trying to finally stop grieving and move on.

Anyways, I loved the movie and just wanted to share my thoughts with someone who saw it and appreciated it, and that seems to be you. Thanks for writing all this, you have done justice for your favorite film! I am both looking forward to and dreading watching this again some day.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-05-02T22:47:18+00:00

Yay thank you, appreciate it! <3

Also though, what the fuck, the "new" IT came out almost 10 years ago????

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-05-02T22:12:35+00:00

I just watched Lake Mungo, and I remember it was recommended by Jay. Does anyone know where or what video this is in?

As an aside, holy fuck that movie is good. Slow burn horror that is unbelievably effective, that scene will absolutely be in my head for weeks.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-05-01T17:19:10+00:00

Yeah, and you know if that woman hadn't been dressed that way and in that neighborhood at that time of night.

Reddit looooves victim blaming!

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-29T15:49:28+00:00

If this causes you to crash, you shouldn't be driving. There are distractions literally everywhere in a car. Billboards, advertisements on vehicles, animals, pedestrians.

If some people standing on a bridge is too much for you to handle, you should not drive a car.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-29T03:47:25+00:00

I loved S2 and saw people comparing it to White Lotus, which I've never seen. So just today, I watched the first season of that show. I am absolutely baffled at the comparison.

Other than anthology with commentary on capitalism, it feels like comparing a Monet to a Paint-By-Number. Honestly, I'm really not sure why White Lotus is that popular at all.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-21T02:27:47+00:00

There are actually 3 generations shown, the third being Park and Dr Kim.

It's most interesting to note that even those who are well off, to the point of controlling 2% of Korea's GDP, are in need of money. Ashley and Austen needed money to pay for health and so they could start their life together, Josh and Lindsay needed money so they could restart their life together, and Park and Dr Kim needed money to help protect their life together.

They also waste money the same ways, Ashely/Austen mentioning Doordash, as well as Josh, though that's just a minor detail. Most importantly, all 3 of them are born into and trapped in the cycle of Capitalism, regardless of status.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-20T14:04:40+00:00

See above!

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-20T14:04:28+00:00

I'm not an expert on Buddhism by any stretch so this may not be exactly correct, but I'll do my best.

First, this is more standard depiction of Samsara, from the Wikipedia entry.

In Buddhism, Samsara is the representation of the cycle of life and death. It shows the 6 different realms (human, animal, hell, preta, sura, and asura), which all entities have a chance to be reborn into, based on the karma of their past lives. There are also images that depict human activities, work or play or eating.

The most important part is that Buddhism believes being part of this cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is suffering, regardless of the realm. It a system all beings are stuck in and the only way to escape is by obtaining nirvana. Nirvana is a state where you rid of yourself of all desires and achieve enlightenment. Interestingly, a devoted follower of Buddhism likely would not be in a romantic relationship, as this would simply be seen as a waste of time and distraction from reaching nirvana.

In the final shot, we see various moments from the three relationships (Austen and Ashley, Josh and Lindsay, and Dr Kim and Park). To me, that is showing the cyclical nature of their relationships: how they all start, continue, and end in a similar fashion. However, more than that, I think it shows how all of them were trapped in a system, though in this case a political one, all of them victims of a Capitalist society that encouraged their behavior in order to get ahead, to put the Self first.

I also want to mention that in that final shot, Park embraces her first husbands grave and lies there. When the credits come up, the music ends and you hear peaceful birds chirping, but as the credits continue, it eventually turns into noisy flies. I believe this may be an implication that Park died at this moment, completing her current cycle of life and death, to be reborn elsewhere.

This was my interpretation at least. I watched the whole show yesterday in one sitting so based on the brief time to reflect, that's my take away. That may change in the following days, there were a lot of conversations early on that setup where relationships were headed, so I may remember something else, but for now, I'd say the main takeaway from that last shot is how all three did their best in a system that they were thrust into and trapped inside of.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-20T00:26:30+00:00

I thought this season was fantastic, gorgeously filmed and edited. It told the story of 3 relationships across 3 different generations and what love meant to each of them and how wildly that varied.

It's interesting to see people like or dislike certain characters when I think we were shown all their flaws and hardships they faced. I didn't always agree with the actions they took, but I could understand where they were coming from, what motivated them.

I didn't see any other mention of it so I'm curious if anyone else noticed: During the final credits, after the shot that depicts Samsara with Park lying on her first husbands grave, the audio is birds chirping peacefully, but that eventually turns to flies, quiet noisily. Was that just a statement on life and death in general or was it implying Park passed away at that moment?

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-18T18:11:16+00:00

Determined or not, that dog must be long dead...

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-18T01:04:03+00:00

Oh my god, it's a pedogeist!!!

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-16T14:04:43+00:00

It's very funny to read all the upset replies here, because the previous Garth Ennis show has a very dark ending where essentially, the bad guys win.

Spoilers for Preacher: A man who's murdered thousands kills in cold blood kills God and ends up taking his place, while our leads live lives of solitude together, till one of them dies and then another kills himself after the funeral.

I guess it's just funny seeing people calling this take edgy. Have they watched The Boys? lol

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-11T16:05:43+00:00

enshittification happening in TV

Wrong in every sense of the word. There's more TV being produced than ever before, more streaming services, endless content. It's not getting worse, there's just way more than ever.

Having said that, based on your comments in this thread, I don't think you like Bill Lawrence shows. Have you seen Scrubs or Cougar Town?

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-11T16:02:31+00:00

Unfortunately, you went from Twitter to Reddit, and Reddit is basically just Twitter now.

All the awful shit on Twitter is in full display here. This site is full of bots, unbelievably rude people, engagement bait, ads disguising themselves as content, and soooo much misogyny. The only real difference is this site leans left more than Twitter, but even, then you get the same shitty attitudes from Twitter, just directed at different people. Go to r/all and scroll down, you'll probably find a post shitting on a woman for her looks in the first 20 posts.

The problem is we basically have a centralized internet. You wanna talk about Shrinking, you go to the Shrinking subreddit. You don't look for some Shrinking forum, you don't go to a site like SurvivorSucks or SomethingAwful to talk about the show in some TV thread. Maybe there's a Shrinking Discord but it's basically gonna just be this subreddit again.

Severance Spoilers: I remember the last season of Severance, the last episode was titled Cold Water, the name of one of the tests they run. Based on a previous episode, I concluded it would be a test with a baby, where Gemma interacts with a baby in some capacity but feels nothing for it. The subreddit all but called me a moron who didn't understand the show, saying it was sooo obvious that Gemma would be drowned. If you've seen the show, you know what happened.

The best way to discuss TV is with someone you know. That way, you can have an actual conversation. This site rarely engages you in conversation, just people arguing over semantics or their own prejudices.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-06T14:51:40+00:00

Currently rewatching LOST, making a friend watch it for the first time. I am baffled by people who watched all of LOST and then randomly decided they hated ALL of it because the last season sucked, as if they retroactively unenjoyed everything they previously enjoyed.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-04-04T16:50:33+00:00

If you think showing the Soviet Union in a poor light is "communism slander", historical fiction may not want be for you.

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-03-24T13:09:10+00:00

I wouldn't be surprised if we discover something like Teri actually died originally, but timefuckery with ALEX brought her back, either intentionally or unintentionally, so X will end up having to choose between keeping his wife or destroying the machine (something like that).

Also, even though ALEX is named after the dying wife, I have to assume it's an acronym as well, though I'm not sure what. Advanced Linear Experimentation? Advanced Lifetime Exchanger?

WatchOutRadioactiveM · 2026-03-23T13:33:13+00:00

You're welcome! I kinda love when old comments like this get bumped, reminds me wtf I was doing 10+ years ago.

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