"Bear Hug" delves into a gripping narrative of a military-backed coup, marking the second most dramatic turn in the episode. While I hesitate to label it as 'fun,' the episode, replete with multiple murders and the unpredictable fate of heavily armed coups, offers a fascinating exploration of dissent and discontent simmering beneath the surface before erupting into chaos. Both coups serve as compelling examples of unrest that culminate in violence and turmoil—a mere coincidence that they occur within the same week or so.
On Mars, we witness a closer, more incremental peek into the simmering discontent in Happy Valley. It's a subtle reminder that despite faster communication and transportation between Earth and Mars than last season, each planet will always react to events on the other at a pace they'd prefer to be faster.
In Moscow, the coup attempting to oust Mikhail Gorbachev from power is portrayed as a series of baffling, rhetorical conversations rather than a pitched battle for control of one of the world's most influential countries and economies. Through Margo's experiences of being detained and interrogated, we hear more of the violence than we see—being jostled in a transport van, shackled to a table in an interrogation room, and suspended from a ceiling pipe for hours. This might be an after-effect of watching "The Americans" three times in its entirety, with visual echoes of Wrenn Schmidt's character Kate's experiences in her last episode on that show. However, the further assaults on her person that I expected and dreaded never materialized. Instead, all but one of the coup's worst horrors are suggested rather than shown: gunshots, heavy footsteps, shouting, loud vehicles, and helicopters are all audible throughout the episode.
In contrast, the corporate coup orchestrated by Dev, Kelly, and Aleida at Helios features no literal bloodshed but is as ruthless and sweeping as if Keyser Söze had applied his take-no-prisoners style to a career in HR rather than organized crime. The three musketeers have thrown their lots together on a whim fueled by spite as much as ambition. Had the Helios board agreed to fund Kelly and Aleida's research ($200 million, which is pocket change to a corporation worth more than the GDP of Texas), none of this would have happened. However, this also means we wouldn't have seen Aleida's prickly, bittersweet reunion with Bill Strausser. Their conversation is the first time she's been able to be honest and vulnerable about her PTSD experiences and why she's taking on a project that Bill knows is beneath her abilities. Maybe it's because it's an experience she shares with him, not her husband Victor, not Kelly, not Hobson. Maybe it's because—despite her long absence from his life—Bill is her best friend. Either way, by the end of their conversation, Bill signs the shareholder proxy paperwork with a light heart, saying he trusts her implicitly and firmly declining her offer to come work for her and Kelly. We'll see! My wishes are not at all "FAM's command," but I would love to see Bill in future episodes.
Returning to the Helios takeover, in my recap for the season three finale "Stranger in a Strange Land," I contemplated the company's uncertain future: "Will Dev Ayesa reclaim his position as CEO, having absorbed the lessons he initially refused to acknowledge before being ousted by his board in favor of Karen? Can a brilliant yet arrogant young leader mature enough to realize his dream of a sprawling (and perhaps radiant) city on Mars?" Indeed, Dev is returning as CEO, and he professes to have learned his lesson. However, watching him methodically and financially crush his successors with such relish, I'm far from convinced that he's any less arrogant than before his ouster seven years ago. Karen Baldwin couldn't coach him towards long-term prudence, and there's no reason to think that Kelly and Aleida will be more successful in that regard. Dev remains brilliant and arrogant, but at least this time, he's going to channel his abilities and Helios's financial resources towards helping his new partners advance their search for life on Mars. I'm so eager to see Kelly and Aleida collaborate (and perhaps even realize their dreams!) that I'm stubbornly, if foolishly, optimistic about this endeavor.
Meanwhile on Mars, Miles embarks on a new venture by infiltrating Ilya's black market operation. With Helios chipping away at his paycheck, he's unable to send more money home to Mandy and their daughters than he was working in Baton Rouge. He's terrified that Mandy will move them all to Boise to be closer to her sister and the promise of a well-paying job. His skill at reading people and getting them to trust him with their illicit orders isn't enough to impress Ilya, who is content with his robust yet cautious side business. However, when Massey informs him that Miles has a coveted green badge granting access to every room on the base, Ilya's tune changes.
Miles's initial success leads him to reach beyond what he can reasonably grasp, resulting in the need to put that green badge to work in service of a mini-heist in the North Korean module. He's mostly successful, but Lee Jung-gil, who has spoken perhaps ten words this season so far, catches him in the act and asks to be read into Ilya's scheme. This may or may not open a new market for Ilya - a mini-monopoly, no less! - in the long run, but Lee's request is quite unusual. He doesn't want cigarettes, pornography, or laser discs. He wants to be reunited with his wife. That's going to be quite a creative challenge.
A far smaller illicit goods situation is underway in Ed's greenhouse, where he's cultivating very healthy strawberries, some leafy greens, and weed. This scene provides the second reference of the season to how quickly and healthily plants grow on Mars. In both cases, it's been almost a throwaway detail, but two mentions in consecutive episodes suggest that it's less of a detail and more of A Thing. I remain skeptical about the need for Ed Baldwin to still be a major part of the show, but this scene between him and cosmonaut/mentee/potential special lady friend Sveta is quite lovely. A sincerely tender and restrained love scene (yes, a hushed conversation and chaste clasping of hands qualifies as a love scene to this Regency romance aficionado) is not an easy thing to pull off anywhere, and this one is particularly well done.
The greenhouse and the weed are significant for a multitude of reasons. Setting aside its illegality and the hot water it would bring to him from Palmer, it signifies a significant change in Ed's views on herbal refreshment. Remember how in the second season, he and Molly rolled their eyes at Karen and Wayne's routine joint-splitting? He actually says out loud that gardening makes him feel close to Karen. It's a relief to see that he's not emotionally stagnant.
For her part, Sveta is metaphorically touched by being brought into Ed's confidence about his horticultural work, his deeply worrying tremor, and the emotional resonance gardening has for him. In turn, she shares that the greenhouse brings back happy memories of time spent with her father, who tended the gardens at Brezhnev's dacha on the Black Sea. The lack of communication from him while the coup at home continues to unfold has been agonizing for her. Dani's order to prioritize bandwidth for all official and personal communications from the Soviet Union is kind, but even she can't conjure vidmail that isn't being sent.
Sveta's specific anxiety about her father should resolve pretty quickly once the coup ends in victory for either Gorbachev's more Western-influenced approach to economic and social policy or for Korzhenko's promised return to "traditional Marxist/Leninist principles." Unfortunately for Margo, her only hint at which way the political wind may be blowing is the changing of the guard among her interrogators. She's a valuable pawn in the inter-agency squabbling that the coup-in-progress has stirred up, with the police and the army each hoping to secure a tactical advantage over the other by bringing the shiniest intelligence bauble to Korzhenko or Gorbachev.
Margo's first interrogator, police Lieutenant Gura, is shot dead right in front of her by the second interrogator, Colonel Kolikov. It seems excessive to me, but then again, I have no first-hand experience with coups d'état. Both men have been desperate to learn everything they can about the provenance of the card with the phone number on it that the bird-feeding woman at the park left for Margo. Shouldn't a country with as sophisticated and paranoid a domestic surveillance apparatus as the USSR have more answers than questions about a phone number on a business card? That minute-long interaction in the park is the source of all of Margo's worst torments today.
Unfortunately for her, there's no way to provide information she doesn't possess. The bird woman didn't give an alias, let alone her real name, and all Margo can recall is that she wore a nice babushka and looked to be perhaps in her sixties. Kolikov reveals that he already knows far more than Margo does about the card – callers are meant to think that it reaches the KGB's 3rd Directorate (which supports Gorbachev), but it's actually a trap line for the 2nd Directorate, the KGB division that monitors the rest of the KGB, and more importantly, is a wing of the agency supporting Korzhenko in his coup attempt.
All of these details are rendered moot when Kolikov is removed from the interrogation room and then from existence on Earth entirely by a nameless higher-up. Margo's certainty that she's about to face summary execution fades when the transport van she's bundled into deposits her at Roscosmos HQ in Star City. Who should greet her, with a smile and her glasses, but the bird lady from the park! Now that the Army and Gorbachev have come to terms, the coup is over and Karshenko is president. The bird lady apologizes for how much time was needed to locate and extract Margo from police detention and introduces herself as Irina Morozova, the new director of Roscosmos. How would Margo like to come work for her?
