The Astronaut Wives Club

Apparently I’m adding television shows to the things I review on here from time to time? What the heck, it’s still summer break, I’ve got time for it.
Anyhow, I just finished up the first season of The Astronaut Wives Club.1 The style kinda reminded me of Manhattan, with the following of a major historic event from a more personal standpoint, but Astronaut Wives captured my interest much better than Manhattan ever did. I really couldn’t say why, although it might have something to do with my slight obsession with the Cold War, rather than World War II.2
It’s a little bit hard to keep track of all the characters, at first – it starts off with the seven Mercury wives (and, to a lesser degree, their husbands) – and then adds the Gemini wives at some point. By the time Apollo rolls around, they aren’t really bothering to introduce the new set of astronauts and wives, they’re just accepting that it’s too many people.
That aside, though, the show is quite enjoyable. It’s historically accurate to a degree that I feel comfortable filing in moments of history that I learned from the show with the rest of my knowledge about the world, though I wouldn’t recommend it as a way to study for a test.3
The show is definitely predictable if you’re a history buff, but that is something that I am distinctly not, and the few specifics about the space program that I actually did remember, I managed to block out long enough that everything could be a surprise. That made a couple moments – one of which was one hell of a sucker-punch at the end of an episode – incredibly effective storytelling, and very emotionally charged at that.
Tl;dr: I enjoyed the show, and it’s worth taking the time to watch it once it pops up on Netflix.

And I just now looked it up and saw that it was cancelled after one season, so apparently that should say ‘only season.’ Oh well. ↩

What can I say, I’ve got a favorite historical period. ↩

More because you won’t be getting tested on things like “who was cheating on who, and which wife was known for her baking prowess?” ↩