‘The Astronaut Wives Club’ season 1, episode 1 review: Desmond Harrington, Yvonne Strahovski take us to space
With “Mistresses” being a summertime success when it comes to soapy romantic journeys it only made sense for ABC to match it up with another one, but if you are expecting this to be a mirror image of “Mistresses” then you are going to be disappointed. That being said, “The Astronaut Wives Club” has a lot to offer a TV viewer looking for some steamy, scandalous summer fun!
For a premiere episode of a first season, there was certainly a lot going on. We met a group of 7 American men that will all be racing to get be the first astronaut to go to space during a time period when there were a few countries all racing to be the first to send a man into space period. The real focus of this show though is their wives and not only how they handle their husbands becoming big named celebrities, but also how they handle it themselves after they get an offer from Life Magazine to be on the cover to help show their men as family men and heroes.
Although many of the wives look to have the perfect marriages on the outside, there is a lot happening behind closed door as we saw a lot of cheating as well as one of the wives is hiding the fact that she filed for divorce right before her husband was announced as one of the astronauts. Even though some of the men are less then perfect in their home lives, their women are standing by them to help make them look like good, upstanding, family men.
When the 7 men are narrowed down to only three men (John Glenn, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom) it’s only a matter of time before Alan is chosen to be the man that will be going into space, but their victory is short lived when Alan learns that the Russians got a man into space first. He is still going on the mission as the first American to go to space. Louise isn’t dealing that well with Alan going into space after many of the test rockets have exploded, but the lift off is a success and everything is okay with the mission. After Alan returns from his mission, he tells Louise that he’s advised the president that they can put a man on the moon and the next race is to put a man on the moon. With this bit of news Louise and the other 6 wives all start to bond together.
This is definitely an all-star TV cast as we have names like Wilson Bethel (Hart of Dixie), Desmond Harrington (Dexter), Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck), Evan Handler (Sex and the City), and JoAnna Garcia Swisher (Once Upon A Time) attached to this show. While we do have hopes that this show will find it’s footing, there is such a huge cast, and so much happening that it was hard to form any connections with the characters. We hope that things will slow down and let us focus on a few individual characters going forward. Episode grade: C+
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