You know what’s difficult? Clear communication. Unless we consistently question ourselves or engage in **metacognition**, we often don’t fully grasp our own motives and priorities, which can heighten the challenge of articulating them to others. Even when we think we’re communicating clearly, others aren’t privy to all our subtle mental and emotional nuances. And this is assuming everyone is communicating in good faith! Those who are deliberately manipulative or deceptive fall into a different category entirely. Negotiators, too – everyone in that situation holds something (or many things) back for strategic reasons. “House Divided” delves into the (un)knowability of others' minds through the lenses of tricky conversations, encompassing global and interplanetary politics, workplace safety, and workers' rights, and conversations literally being held in two different languages.
The action commences with an argument that nearly devolves into a fistfight between two individuals wearing space suits – Svetlana and a newcomer named Vasily. They're bickering over the successful Soviet coup by newly installed president Karzhenko; he’s elated, while she’s not. As their disagreement escalates from testy to shoving, Vasily won’t let go of the subject and calls Svetlana a traitor and a whore. In the ensuing melee, Vasily falls down and tears a hole in his suit, resulting in a terrifying experience that he's lucky to survive. As we should all know by now, physical altercations in space are a very bad idea. Svetlana and Vasily don’t seem to recall what happened when their forebears fired space guns and incinerated a cosmonaut in his suit.
The ripple effects from this incident threaten to delay the new asteroid capture program, destabilize the entire M7 Alliance, and ignite the tinderbox of dissatisfaction among underpaid Helios workers. Poor Dani has her hands full enough without Ed sticking his single-minded, biased beak in and attempting to undermine her decision-making authority. Once again, why is Ed here? Last week’s sweet scene in the greenhouse between him and Svetlana is not nearly enough to outweigh how annoying he is in every scene this episode. Dani could easily be having similarly tense (but possibly a tiny bit fruitful) conversations with some other significant character at Happy Valley. This is yet another reason to lament the loss of Kuznetsov; Dani is absolutely right in saying he would not have stood for any of what's going on, but I think she underestimates Irina Morozova’s skillful political maneuvering at Roscosmos. There was no way that Dani’s choice of consequences for Svetlana – removal from flight status and a 60-sol suspension without pay – was going to be acceptable to the new regime, who are exercising their option to recall Svetlana to Moscow to face trial for “crimes against a patriot.” So, a shoving match is treason now? What a cool situation!
Back on Earth, Eli is mired in an even more optimistic delusion, eagerly anticipating a fruitful conversation with Irina on the premise that “if I can hash out a good deal with the UAW, I guarantee I can with her!” This sweet summer child seems not to have absorbed some key facts he just learned about Irina, such as her 35-year tenure in Roscosmos's intelligence apparatus and her steady purging of “disloyal” staff since becoming its chief administrator. Unsurprisingly, their conversation is a two-minute exercise in Irina twisting Eli’s talking points to serve her own purposes as she cites chapter and verse of the M7 treaty and the distinction between enforcing policy vs. the rule of law. If NASA's position is that some aspects of the M7 treaty are no longer valid because it was negotiated under Gorbachev's premiership, the USSR will consider withdrawing from the agreement altogether and recalling all their personnel home.
Eli fell victim to one of the classic blunders, believing that he’d be speaking with Irina administrator-to-administrator in a brisk beginning of an eventually solid working relationship. Not only does Irina outmaneuver him with her high-ranking political and espionage functionary-ese, but she also has different priorities. Eli wants to arrive at a mutually acceptable deal that will enable Happy Valley to recommence their asteroid capture-and-mining program as soon as possible, while Irina is content to delay science and commerce if she can capitalize on the opportunity to settle a political score and send a message to all of Karzhenko’s would-be critics on Mars and Earth. Eli needs to learn that his breezily stated belief that “history is not made by talking only with the people who agree with you” is true – and is something that can only be said by people who think they have the upper hand when they talk with people who don’t agree with them.
The immediate repercussions of this conversation on Mars are tangible. The base-wide computer operating system, which NASA staff rely on, has been reverted to its original Cyrillic by Roscosmos, making it unnavigable. This move, coupled with Dani learning from a cosmonaut that Roscosmos no longer recognizes her as Happy Valley’s commander, serves as a double indignity. As a result, the plan to send Svetlana back to Earth on the next shuttle is put on hold, and Dani agrees with Ed's suggestion to post a security officer outside her quarters to prevent "the Soviets from trying to grab her."
At Roscosmos, Margo experiences a new wave of culture shock. She's invited to sit in on staff meetings, but literally has no room at the table. No one speaks to her except Irina, who uses her presence to punish someone who dares suggest allowing Svetlana to stay on Mars for the benefit of the asteroid program. Margo is given a copy of the Kronos incident report, which she devotes hours to reviewing and double-checking all calculations. The music playing during this scene is a classic jazzy Margo piece featuring a trio of piano, upright bass, and drums, reminiscent of earlier seasons where she worked late into the night.
In the canteen, Margo has what must be her first normal conversation with a coworker in years when a young engineer named Tatyana shows her how to use a washer from the dining chairs as a coin at the coffee machine. Margo returns the kindness by offering Tatyana some helpful advice on the model she's working on for the new asteroid capture protocols. Despite being told to maintain a certain distance from Margo, Tatyana and Margo have an easy chemistry.
I hope Margo doesn't think that Irina will be her work bestie. While Irina rescued Margo from likely execution, that was a self-serving act. She makes no bones about cutting through dissent and anything that could embarrass the Motherland. Margo witnesses a prime example of Irina's methods when she discovers that a flawed measurement unit conversion by Roscosmos engineers resulted in inadequate asteroid anchor bolts, leading directly to the Kronos disaster. The head engineer, Semenov, takes responsibility for the flaw and is swiftly shown the door. Irina bestows a framed photo of the 1969 team at Roscosmos (including Sergei!) upon Margo, along with a recitation of an excerpt from a love poem by Alexander Pushkin and an assurance that she will respect and appreciate all the work Margo is capable of. The contrast between Margo's relief and pride in this scene and her shaken horror when she learns that the KGB arrested Semenov in front of his entire department is chilling. It's already too late for this advice, but don't let this manipulative bureaucrat seduce you into an imaginary friendship with compliments and baubles, Margo!
On Mars, Massey and Dani should be so lucky as to get to know each other well enough to be in any danger of being chummy. They'd work really well together if they learned how not to talk past one another. Dani made a point of inviting dissenting opinions in her first big department heads meeting, but she doesn't receive Massey's concerns in her usual sympathetic, big-picture way. Dani perceives the power imbalance between Svetlana and Vasily differently than the Helios workers on the lower levels do. To her, Vasily (who has yet to regain consciousness) is a beneficiary of the new regime thanks to his family's place in it, while Svetlana is in danger of being swallowed up by some gulag. It seems not to have occurred to Dani that the lower-level workers see Svetlana as getting away with near-murder because of her elite status as a cosmonaut, while Vasily's injuries will have terrible lasting repercussions. Massey stops short of telling Dani that she believes command thinks of the Helios workers as disposable, but I wish she hadn't because Dani's wholly unsatisfactory response dismissing Massey's inferior understanding of the situation's complexity misses the point. They're both right, and they both need to recalibrate their understanding of events and the mood throughout Happy Valley.
Massey doesn't have much time to lick her wounds, however, as it seems Miles may have gotten himself into a spot of trouble during his little excursion to collect more of the Mars rocks like those he sent home to Lily. These rocks aren't just cool to look at; they're a rare obsidian that Earthside jewelers can't get enough of. Ilya shut the door firmly on Miles's attempts to expand their business into gemology, so he took a DIY approach and landed at the bottom of a small crevasse. He's nearly out of oxygen when Massey finds and rescues him, but at least he won't need to convalesce in a bariatric chamber. A win is a win, no matter how you slice it.
Eli and Irina arrive at a win-win arrangement to get Svetlana back to Earth: M7 member India will take custody of her and will carry out an investigation and trial there instead. The U.S. can feel okay about the chances of Svetlana getting a fair trial, while the USSR can still be seen as prosecuting a patriot-assaulter. Both sides save face, and the asteroid capture program can resume. Naturally, Ed hates this plan and really lays into Dani, accusing her of being a too-eager careerist bent on pleasing her higher-ups. Dani came out of retirement for this gig, though, and furthermore, Ed is once again trying to make an exception for a colleague he loves, a decades-long pattern that's repeatedly yielded tragic results. Ed should never have sent Gordo back to the moon after his mental health crisis at Jamestown (notwithstanding his and Tracy's later heroic self-sacrifice, it was a bad idea); he also should never have hired the alcohol-dependent Danny Stevens for the original Mars mission. It's clear from Dani's voice trailing off and Ed's cruel taunting that Danny isn't just gone; he's capital-G Gone, but neither goes into further detail about it just yet.
