The Astronaut Wives Club Throws Its Last Launch Party

As absurd as it would be if this series were to have kept going past the point where it's ended, I'm surprised by how much I miss it already -- and trust me, you will not meet a person who cares less about space than I do. But really, what's not to like about a female-focused show in which everyone is mostly nice to each other and doing their best, and their beautiful outfits are a feast for the eyes? It's like a Mad Men where the dude stuff almost all happens offscreen and no one's suicidal. Imagine!

I admit that from a story perspective, it was a bit of a stretch to get all the Mercury wives back together when some of them have been drifting away since around the halfway point of the season, but I don't care: even if none of their own husbands got to the moon, it's natural that the culmination of the program would reunite them, no matter what complicated feelings it brought up, and none of us cares about any of those Gemini or Apollo wives anyway. Sorry, Marilyn Lovell, but it's true. If you have to, go cry in your wig.

The ladies got one last chance to impress me: some did, and some were Louise. Here are the wife rankings for the season finale!

1. Rene

   Rene has been one of the two biggest renegades among the wives for daring to have a [whispering] career, which is cool, but since she's been a writer, most of that has happened offscreen. In the finale, we get to watch her try to further the start she got as a broadcaster in the last episode, taking on a segment on women's issues in a news magazine show. When she's told her segment is actually going to revolve around her making a cake -- hey, cooking is a women's issue, says a producer I hope lost his job within the decade for being unable to understand social change -- she rolls with it...until she decides to make like Trudy.

   

   Rene goes rogue, telling her viewers to buy their cakes, and to let her tell them about something that's actually important: birth control!

   

   While her dumb producer eats his clipboard (and Marge looks on, loving every minute), Rene demonstrates how diaphragms work, and even puts her cooking materials to work by letting egg yolk stand in for semen in her demo. Rene rules.

   

   It is a pity that the show would cast two people as gorgeous as Yvonne Strahovski and Wilson Bethel to play a couple that wasn't going to be together forever, but at least we got to look at their golden perfection for ten weeks.

   

   And whether or not the real Scott was as supportive of Rene's work and passion as TV Scott has been, I appreciate that he was written the way he has been. Rene's path would have been incredibly hard; I want to believe not only that he wished her the best but that he was impressed and proud of her accomplishments.

2. Trudy

   Oh my god, you guys, what Trudy goes through in this episode! The thrill of being approached by a consortium of female investors who want to help her expand her courier business! The disappointment of hearing from Gordo that she can't pursue her own work because he's definitely just about to be put on the Apollo 13 crew! The horror when she declines the investors' offer in favour of continuing to serve his ambitions, only to find out he didn't make it onto the crew at all! The rage when she finds out he was "passed over" because he's been fucking around with his hobbies instead of impressing anyone at NASA with his talent and dedication! The self-recrimination when she realizes how many years she's wasted on someone who didn't even kind of deserve her!

   But it's not all bad: I like to think Trudy's life goes back on an upswing starting from the moment she gets to tell Louise Shepard that Louise built her entire life on serving a man. Delicious. (I know they make up later, but I prefer to think of Trudy as the winner of that conversation and that Louise just has to take it.)

   

   Trudy and her bomber jacket are resplendent as she gets ready to fly into her new post-Gordo life, and I love that this is where and when we last see all the Mercury wives together: seeing off and cheering on the one who, a generation later, would have been the astronaut in her family.

3. Betty

   How am I going to get through a week without knowing it's going to contain JoAnna Garcia Swisher's Betty Grissom looking heartbroken but brave? She's really perfected this expression, as we see in this moment as Deke gives her back Gus's pin after it's returned from the moon...

   

   ...and as she listens to a spacecraft disaster averted in time to save three other astronauts luckier than Gus.

   

   Betty decides to pursue a negligence lawsuit against the contractors who built the capsule Gus died in, even though all her dearest friends are at most one degree of separation from NASA and it's potentially risky for her politically, and there's no question looking at Swisher's face that whatever decision she makes about it has to be the right thing to do for Gus's memory and justice. Someone else, please find a great new vehicle for her soon. (Privileged sequel? PLEASE?!) I miss her already.

4. Marge

   Marge may have never had a job (like Rene and Trudy) or a righteous crusade (like Betty), but she has never stopped modeling how to be a female head of household who never allows her economically dependent position force her into servility. Marge is not just HBIC of the other wives ("Mother Marge" is the polite way of phrasing that, I guess) but it's been many an episode since she's taken any shit off Deke; they have a great partnership of equals, and I love her private pride, in her coda scene, watching Deke prepare, at last, for the space flight he lost out on in the '60s.

   

   Also: THIS TURBAN.

   

   GET IT, MAMA.

5. Jo

   Jo doesn't really do much of note in this episode except look worried while Wally co-anchors TV coverage of Apollo 13. But I can't rank her lower than Annie, even though holding court about how much she loves New York reminds me of her Junior League striver days.

   

   That said, whoever's casting a Shelley Long biopic need look no further than Zoe Boyle.

6. Louise

   I was kind of dreading the reunion between Louise and Max as soon as I heard his disembodied voice interviewing the wives for their film segments in the cold open. I guess the reveal that it's him was supposed to be a big shock, but trust me: if you see Take This Waltz and you like boys, that voice gets seared into your brain forever. What WAS a shock was seeing how much the costumer went for it with Max's groovy San Francisco style.

   

   If you ever wanted to know whether Luke Kirby could rock an open collar and a neckerchief...

   

   ...well, the answer is no, because no one can. But they sure give him lots of chances! I appreciate that the show didn't try to turn them into the lost loves of each other's lives, and kept it on the wistful tip. But she's still a drip and it's only Annie's absolute dog of a storyline that's kept her from being in the bottom slot like she has been this whole season, for good reason. Well, Annie's crappy story and an extremely smart look when Louise and Max say what I presume was their final goodbye.

   

   Louise's coda tells us she and Alan were married for fifty-three years, so I guess his philandering and her doormatitude were a perfect match. Snore.

7. Annie

   I was so prepared to put Annie in the upper echelon because my adoration of Joe Biden makes me kindly disposed to anyone who works on and overcomes a stutter.

   

   But I can't sit here and act like I don't 100% side with Xavier in his protest against the expense and subsequent pageantry surrounding the moon landing. A white lady pulling a black college student out of a police melee and telling him, "The moon landing was for everyone. So many people, all kinds of people, came together to make that happen" is a moment so loaded with all her unconscious privilege that it's actually kind of hard to watch -- and to the show's credit, it lets Xavier have the last word. I guess we're supposed to think that this exchange made her think about what issues John should be giving primacy as a political candidate, but we don't really see the evidence of it, so [shrug]. Next I would like ABC to take episodes and tell me Xavier's story.