It's worth noting that the astronauts in question have little to no control over the schedule, so "perfectly capable of coming back early" isn't a fair assessme

It's worth noting that the astronauts in question have little to no control over the schedule, so "perfectly capable of coming back early" isn't a fair assessment in this context. Coming back "early" would also occur at a cost of either tens of millions of dollars for an extra launch, or at a cost of valuable experiments not getting run because the space station was empty of personnel. NASA policy would prohibit the remaining astronauts from... well, remaining, because they have to have a lifeboat, which the two "rescuees" would have just used to go home. Thus, all of them would have to go home. IOW, painting this as "normal operations" in any sense is disingenuous. The danger levels may not be overly exacerbated, but it was a very costly failure, and it may well be a drastic inconvenience to the astronauts. We likely won't know the truth of the latter until they write their memoirs. It's easy to manage spin when the opinions being spun are in orbit on a restricted communication system.