Can Astronaut Wives Be Astronaut Career Women?

Among the challenges inherent in making a show that takes place in an historical time period, one of the biggest has to be the need to portray the mores and values of the era that are now, by definition, outdated. You can't have all your characters espousing contemporary, progressive views without risking charges of anachronism. But at the same time, you have to establish the world your characters live in so that those whose ideas are more or less in line with the majority views of the era don't look like bigots. We've gotten some hints in past episodes as to which characters on The Astronaut Wives Club are going to have the proudest descendants and which will have to make excuses for their famous relatives' backward attitudes, but with "Flashpoint" revolving around a couple of the wives' efforts to pursue work outside the home, it's kind of impossible not to foreground who's a male chauvinist pig. Sucks to be you, John Glenn!

How does all this career business affect the wives' standings this week? We've ranked them from first to worst.

1. Trudy

   Trudy cements her status as coolest wife this week (not that it's ever really been much in doubt) by supporting her old pilot friend Dot Bingham in her efforts to open the door for female astronauts -- something we've known since the series premiere Trudy herself would like to be. (From what I can tell, Dot Bingham is fictional, but what we see of her is evocative of America's actual first female astronaut, Jerrie Cobb.) Dot's been training at the Lovelace clinic, but she can only get so far in her progress because NASA has mandated that astronaut be test pilots, and women aren't permitted on military bases to undergo that training. Dot's excited for Mercury 7 astronauts -- who end up being John and Scott -- to testify with her at a Congressional hearing about opening the door for female astronauts, and Trudy just as excited to attend in person and watch, which is why it's such a drag that Scott and John both affirm NASA and insist that astronauts must be test pilots. Not knowing the history but having seen the intellectual friendship between Trudy and Scott start to form a couple of episodes ago, I was not expecting Scott to sell her/women out the way he does, and while his apology to her afterward seems sincere, I hope it stings when she snaps, "Apologize to your daughters." YEAH, SCOTT. No surprise that Gordo, the man who married Trudy, has no compunction about avenging her by buzzing a meeting full of NASA muckety-mucks with his plane (even if it put his own imminent mission at risk) and gives her credit when he safely returns from orbit for having taught him well and promoted his own ambitions.

   If we could just return to Dot for a second...

   

   ...this wig. We get it: this woman who's working in what's traditionally a man's field in 1962 might not like boys That Way. Did they have to give poor Mercedes Mason one of Howard Cosell's old toupees for us to get the picture? Also: we haven't really gotten a lot of specifics on the life that Trudy says she built for herself when she separated from Gordo.

   

   I feel like we're supposed to read her interactions with Dot as being indicative of a romantic history between them, but is it the fact that she has real contemporary relatives who are probably watching that it's conveyed in such a Hays Code-y manner? Gordo's chivalrous building-buzz has her kissing him again mid-episode, so maybe I'm wrong. But maybe I'm not!

2. Rene

   I kind of get this editor's point about Rene's interest in a writing career: professionally, she's written one first-person opinion column, which is not much of a CV for her to bust out to prove how serious she is about it.

   

   But then he's so icky about it that you kind of have to get on her side -- and it seems like at least one of the twenty pieces he makes her write on spec is an actual reported story about a civil rights protest, so I'm hopeful that Rene has some potential as a journalist and not just an op-ed solipsist.

3. Marge

   My girl Marge is settling in to her job running the Gemini wives like a boss, right down to policing their condiment preparedness for an impromptu...um...Kennedy assassination cookout.

   

   And she's right to caution Max about moving to San Francisco, that dump.

4. Betty & Jo

   The heat in Texas is NO JOKE. You hear your neighbour's got air conditioning? You do what it takes to mooch your way in, even if you can tell she REALLY does not want to let you strangers in.

   

   That said: maybe go to a movie? It's also got A/C and you wouldn't have to fire up your oven to make bribe cupcakes.

5. Annie

   Another episode, another opportunity for someone to mistake Annie's speech impairment with an intellectual delay.

   

   I realize this is another front on which strangers' understanding and acceptance would be anachronistic, but it's still rough to watch, and I'm scared for Annie's future as a political candidate's wife.

6. Louise

   At this point, there may not be anything that could win me over to Louise's side, but this episode definitely continues the trend of Louise being the show's biggest drip, too boring to sleep with Max even when he has one foot out the Life door to go work on some pinko rag in San Francisco.

   

   And all this whole flirtation has done is make Louise re-commit to her dumb marriage even when her husband's chronic infidelity is so widely known that it's the subject of a bit on a national comedy show? I get the sense that her big scene bringing Alan to heel is supposed to be her feminist moment on par with the activities of Trudy and Rene in the episode, but I've had five episodes of watching her be a martyr; she doesn't get to decide at this late stage that she's suddenly the office Tina Turner. Shut up, Louise.