Away Season 1, Episode 6 recap: A Little Faith

Away Season 1, Episode 6 recap: A water-system glitch causes panic.

In Away Season 1, Episode 6, the water system aboard the Atlas causes the entire crew to work together and find a fix quickly before the threat grows dire. Misha is the best choice as an engineer who knows the ins and outs of the shuttle better than anyone else on the team. But with his waning eyesight, there is some fear of putting him in charge of things.

Since he has been spending more time in his pod, his eyesight as begun improving steadily, but Emma mandates he get another eye test before they let him start messing with the prime system. The plan is to replace its heart with parts from the backup system to get things up and running smoothly again.

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Misha pays his eye exam with flying colors,  which immediately seemed suspicious to me, and for a good reason.  Half-way through his work on the system, Misha realizes the damage is more severe than anticipated.

The “arteries” are also damaged; they must repair them. The problem is,  Emma and Kwesi notice something is off with Misha’s eyes when a single screw bypasses him, and he doesn’t see it.

The problem with these machines is they are very delicate and full of thousands of tiny bolts and screws. They cannot risk losing a single one. When Emma presses Misha to explain, he admits that he memorized the eye exam chart by heart. It’s a serious betrayal of the team’s trust, but Misha argues that he only did it because he knows how to fix it by heart. He claims he could do it with his eyes closed.

Emma is not willing to risk that; she puts Ram, who is a surgeon, in charge of stripping the prime to beef up the backup machine instead. Tempers flare between the team as they grow frustrated. Kwesi is the one who eventually snaps and gives everyone some perspective. If they want to fix it, they need to have faith in each other.

Through their combined efforts, they manage to get the backup machine running, but the problem is, there is no 100% guarantee it can get them the rest of the way to Mars. The backup is not producing as much as it should be — which was already significantly less than the prime.

They will have to start going on emergency rations to make it work. Kwesi has to make the most significant sacrifice. They cannot use any extra water to sustain the garden.

Each member finds themselves in the gardening room by the episode’s end. Understandably, they find peace surrounded by the smell of growing plants. It’s a lingering comfort reminiscent of Earth. According to Kwesi, the plants will likely die within a week without water, so they try to enjoy their time with them while they can.

Away Season 1, Episode 6 recap: Kwesi’s backstory is revealed.

Kwesi’s parents died in Ghana. Orphaned as a child, he was adopted by a loving couple and brought to Europe. It was his adopted father that got him interested in gardening, teaching him everything it takes to nurture a bud to blood. It was also his adopted parents who taught him about faith and religion, although they were never pushy or overbearing about it.

As a kid, Kwesi had doubts about God, wondering why his parents died if God existed. Over time, he began to appreciate the Jewish faith and how it sculpted his perceptions and gave him hope during difficult times.

Sadly, his father passed away when he was still relatively young. Gardening helps keep that connection alive, especially as he had a difficult time adapting to England, and he tells Emma that gardening with his dad felt them both feel at ease.

Away Season 1, Episode 6 recap: Matt finally meets Isaac.

On Earth, Matt is determined to go back to work. Unfortunately, Darlene and George don’t think it’s a good idea for him to return to his previous job as chief engineer for the Atlas. He’s deemed too emotionally involved in the case.

Plus, god forbid something happens to him again, it could be damaging to Emma, who almost gave up the mission when he had his stroke. Nothing will deter Matt from trying to help the team solve the water system crisis, however.

His dedication to studying the schematics causes him to drives his car into a ditch while it’s raining. Lex and Isaac, who just finished dirt biking (Lex is a natural), take a detour to pick up Matt, so he doesn’t have to wait for the tow truck.

It’s a little awkward for him to meet Isaac like this, especially since Lex has never told her dad about him,  but it goes okay. When they get home, Matt launches into an interrogation to learn more about the 17-year-old boy spending time with his daughter. He finds out that Isaac’s father, who was an army medic, died when his humvee hit an IED.

After Matt goes inside, Lex apologizes for not telling her dad but worried he’d forbid her from seeing Isaac due to his age. It would be easier to talk to her mom. Isaac asks if she misses her, and Lex says yes, but that it must be more challenging for Isaac, whose father is unreachable.

“I still tell him things in my head, I’ve told him all about you,” he tells Lex.

They share a kiss, and I’m guessing their first. Inside the Green house, Lex talks to her dad about Isaac for the first time. He thinks he’s a friendly kid and tells Lex he wants her to feel comfortable talking to him about this kind of stuff, about anything. All he asks is that she doesn’t rush into anything and that she promises not to ride one of the dirt bikes in Isaac’s pickup. Oops, too late for that.

Learn more about the real events that inspired Away in an interview with creator Andrew Hinderaker.

All ten episodes of Away Season 1 are now streaming on Netflix.