With the final selection of the top 3 from the Mercury program imminent, a potentially disastrous incident may put the whole thing in jeopardy.

It’s an interesting instalment of The Right Stuff, this one. We get to see the building of bridges, the comprehensive burning of them, and all sorts of compelling stuff in-between. Not bad, considering that the entire episode basically revolves around one evening and the objectively banal task of picking who the top three in the program actually are.

Much like the first episode (and the link is appropriate) we get a tense opening scene with no real idea of exactly what might happen and then a reverse back over the previous seventy-two hours to see how we got there. The guys are all set to do another round of pressing the flesh at a Convair event to try to bolster flagging spirits and help keep the program alive. And they’re all fed up of it. When one of them gets some bad news, the gang as a whole decide to take themselves off for a bit to clear their heads.

This leads to an interesting set of scenes, in which we see John Glenn be the leader he very much aspires to be, Shepard reveal himself to be a little more vulnerable than he might like to admit and generally watch the whole group bond a bit closer. Apologies are offered, stories are shared. It feels like a real, genuine turning point for the whole team.

Of course, it has to all come crashing down not long after. When one of the team gets themselves into a spot of potential press controversy, they approach Glenn for help and he goes to bat. Knowing that his ‘star has fallen’ a little after the incident at the New Year Ball, you can’t escape the notion that even the clean cut boy scout is doing this as much for himself as for the team, no matter how much he protests. And how he goes about it will cause issues for him that he couldn’t have foreseen, even if we’ve already been told.

As a nice side plot under all this, Trudy and Gordo’s newly rekindled romance hits a minor speed bump after Trudy is approached with an offer that seems amazing for her but which could potentially put strain on them. I have to say that whereas early on I felt that this couple had been played better elsewhere, Colin O’Donoghue and Eloise Mumford really are knocking it out of the park, making the Coopers one of the most interesting couples in the show.

Verdict: Gets a lot of very watchable drama out of a very small space of time and relatively trivial events. Compelling. 8/10

Greg D. Smith

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