In Review: The Right Stuff (S1 – EP 3) Single Combat Warrior

Synopsis: This week on The Right Stuff. After mysterious bouts of vertigo, Shepard turns to Dee O’Hara to help him. Meanwhile, Cocoa Beach has transformed from a ghost town to a perpetual party.

The Story

Picking the story up from last week. The Mercury Astronauts are settling into the training routines and testing that they need to undergo. Al Shepard, who is determined to be the first man in space has some difficulty with his reaction times during High G Training. In order to try and speed up his reactions, he enlists the help of Dee O’Hara.

Meanwhile, Florida’s Cocoa Beach has gone from ghost town to a party town as the optimism and high profile publicity of the Mercury program brings in more tourists. Gordo finds himself tempted by another woman, but is saved thanks to an intervention by Gus. Additionally, John Glenn is also briefly tempted while attending a Church meeting.

Bob Gilruth, who is heading up the Mercury Control Center runs a series of team-building exercises in order to get the ground control team into shape in time for the MA-1 unmanned test launch.

The Acting

Jake McDorman gets a little more time to shine in this week’s episode as Al Shepard has to prove to himself that he has the right stuff. The scenes he has with Dee O’Hara (Kaley Ronayne) are well executed. The banter between the two was fun without it becoming flirtatious. Shepard is pretty clear in his intention and Dee is happy to help him get on top of his issues with the High G Training.

Overall

This series is continuing to take flight as we learn a little more about the Mercury Seven Astronauts and the pressures they faced.

While quite a lot of the episode focused on Alan Shepard’s struggles with High G Training. I quite enjoyed some of the struggles we were shown with the people running The Mercury Control Center, which we will hopefully see more of as the series progresses to the actual missions. The importance of the job that the ground control people did is often never given enough air time. I hope that this will change with this show.

Overall. A really enjoyable episode.