Yeah, I wouldn’t have minded the stories existing as they were but wayyy toned down, especially Lex’s, like, to see Emma trying to be a supportive wife and parent from space and dealing with these conditions, sure, that’s interesting and novel, but it should have been much more in Emma’s perspective than actually following Lex meet and spend time with this boy. There was just nothing novel or new about it, even Matt’s added a lot more, there are way fewer stories about disabled people out there, compared to a pretty ordinary teen romance.
It seems to be a really common complaint from what I’m seeing, so hopefully they take a cue from this for s2 (if we get one) and focus more on the astronauts.
And another anon:
I think your points about Away are spot on. I even started to skip the teenage stuff. There would have been so much more interesting topics/storylines to go deeper: science!!!, religion/atheism, cultural differences,… I was also disappointed that in the end it was Emma’s husband who solved the water problem, it made her look even more incapable of doing her job. (Which should have been Lu’s anyway imo)
Oh, lol, same. And seriously!! These astronauts and their backgrounds and the intersections and contradictions are so interesting. Just language ALONE, I loved that unlike, for example, Sense8, another very international show where they mostly all spoke accented English, here they actually speak the language they naturally would and people actually have to ask for translations and banter about it organically, like Misha and Lu teasing Emma for not knowing Russian. That’s fair! Or the way they’re each slightly snobby about their area of expertise.
The only thing I didn’t love was just how far apart they started the mission, kind of petty and immature in how they were arguing, but still, at least they put their differences aside. There’s just so much scope in that, it feels a bit of a waste to focus on the interpersonal drama that could have existed in any old show and then, as you said, the lead-biased writing, where in this case Matt has to be the one to fix things to justify being a lead.
I guess it’s working, Away’s been at the top in the US Netflix rankings since it dropped, but I hope they take more time with the other astronauts next season too.