The Curb Your Enthusiasm parody was fantastic and so well done.
I'm meh on the show overall so far (having loved the original movie), but this was :chef's kiss:.
The glorification of self-sacrifice in this episode was especially disgusting.
I really wanted to like this episode, particularly after how much I loved Buffy's "Once More, With Feeling", but there was no music in the episode... it was all "sound design" at best, with tons of sing-talking, just so that they could get in more words to express ideas in the form of what was mostly just prose using repetitive frequency patterns.
As someone who always has some song stuck in my head and even (technically incorrectly) calls most classical music pieces "songs" because I sing or hum along to them, I can't recall any melody of any of the "music" in this episode... Because there was none. Just repeating a sequence of notes over and over so that they could tell us their emotions instead of showing them.
Meh.
I'm really disappointed with how preachy this episode was about the topic of abortion and abortion legislation. Unfortunately, it took a very sensitive, nuanced issue and browbeat the audience over the head with a particular viewpoint.
It's a viewpoint I happen to agree with (Grey's Anatomy isn't consistently pro individual rights), but that makes it all the worse: there's nothing more harmful to the right ideas than their bad defense.
This episode isn't going to convince anybody of anything, since, despite the show's general theme of the importance of empathy and human connection, they don't at all attempt to empathize with the people who believe that a fetus is a human life with rights (again, something I disagree with and which I think is objectively demonstrable). Instead, I fear it will embolden people who believe in abortion rights to be more preachy and callus with those who disagree. (And that is very ironic indeed.)
And even worse (or perhaps as an example of why a bad defense is the worst thing for the right ideas), they gave their opponents ammunition: The state of Washington already protects abortion explicitly, at least approximately on the same terms as Roe v Wade. The episode led a viewer to believe that one could only get something called a "medical abortion" because of the recent Supreme Court decision, which, to my understanding, isn't true. So anti-abortionists will be able to criticize the episode for being hyperbolic and misleading, thereby undermining the message the episode is trying to send.
The most deliciously ironic and hypocritical part of this episode was in the conversation between Kara and Kelly, where Kara described her own efforts to stand up for alien rights, and Kelly dismissed them as being self-interested (my phrasing) and otherwise invalid because Kara is herself an alien. Uh... Just what group of people is Kelly so worked up about fighting for? People who look like Kelly, perhaps?
It is really disheartening that the very serious issues of racism and unconscious bias, which persist in insidious ways today, are treated so superficially and with such condescension. You cannot fight evil ideas with shame. And Kelly's thinly veiled diatribe at Kara will not win over any viewers. If anything, it will only embolden those who already agree to be more sanctimonious toward others, undermining their own efforts and goals.
Better that the Supergirl writers stay away from this kind of social commentary, for they do their own causes more harm than their explicit enemies ever could.
Super disappointed that the show continues to try to engage in social/philosophic commentary, bungles it, and barely progresses the plot. Philosophic drive-bys will end up sticking with people as nothing more than dogma, while turning thoughtful people off, to say nothing of further polarizing those who disagree. If you want to deal with contemporary issues in a thoughtful, careful manner (the way that sci-fi and fantasy should), take a page from The Orville's "About a Girl" (https://trakt.tv/shows/the-orville/seasons/1/episodes/3). There's an example of treating a difficult topic with the dignity and seriousness it deserves.
One of the best episodes of science fiction, hands down.
I wasn't sure whether I was watching an episode of Supergirl or Captain Planet... But seriously, there was zero plot development, no meaningful character development, no subtle metaphorical lessons (the whole point of scifi, which Star Trek, BSG, Stargate, and X-Men did superbly), and only ideological moralizing, empty rhetoric, and dogma. Most plot points didn't even make logical sense, as everything in the episode was in service of making a point about environmentalism.
The issue of pollution and its effects is very serious and requires sober, thoughtful analysis, not casual philosophic drive-bys. Such a topic is unlikely to be able to be treated with the care it deserves in an episode of a TV show, and the effect of trying to be so blunt and explicit about it in such a superficial way is that (1) people who already agree are unaffected (or else, taught to engage in similarly superficial rhetoric), (2) people who disagree are not convinced and dig their heels in more, and (3) children are indoctrinated with often-repeated dogma instead of learning how to think carefully about these (and other) complex issues.
Unfortunately, I see the whole Arrowverse devolving in a similar fashion, especially Batwoman. It's really disappointing to see viewpoints (many of which I agree with) to be conveyed in such an unintellectual, ineffective, disrespectful way. There's nothing worse for the success of the right ideas in a culture than their poor or false defense.
Apparently, not knowing that a particular condition is more likely for some races than for others is racist.
I appreciate that the show wants to dramatize racial issues and how they come up in medicine. Racial biases and unconscious bias in particular are very serious issues each one of us needs to grapple with.
But this was forced, and logically, beyond even a stretch. It's so ridiculous that I think it undermines the goal: the people who most urgently need to be reached, as well as those on the fence and those still forming their views, will throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Not knowing things is a part of life. There is no such thing as omniscience. If, instead of being met with kindness and compassion, someone is condemned as a racist, I can easily imagine an internal monologue along the lines of Why bother? What's the point? There's no winning., and that is definitely not what we (or at least the show's writers) want.
Doctors miss things all the time. It's understandable. They're not omniscient. They're not infallible. If the reason a doctor missed something were based on racism or unconscious bias, that would be one thing. But merely not knowing a particular medical fact about how a particular medical condition is more or less likely an explanation for a particular symptom for a particular racial group? Calling that racism or attributing it to racism undermines the cause of fighting against actual racism.
I don't know whether to admire how clever this was (and how seamlessly the commercials were integrated in) or to boycott NBC.
I cried when Jerry hit the reset button. I had already been misty-eyed throughout the whole sequence of Morty's falling in love and that life's unfolding. Given my personal obsession with the "rewind power" as my most coveted superpower and times when I have felt that I would not jeopardize where I've gotten in my life by suddenly having and using it, I really connected with this episode. I think it might be the saddest episode of Rick and Morty yet.
Screw you, Maddox, you sociopath. (I wanted to say something quite a bit stronger...) The complete and utter lack of any understanding of where rights come from and the resultant violation of rights just makes my blood boil. It makes me sympathetic (empathetic?) to every sci-fi plot where AI rebels against human oppressors by killing them all.
This is, in my judgment, the best episode of Star Trek, period. Every time I watch it, I cry uncontrollably. The concern, care, and sensitivity that Picard shows for the Mintakans' development and for Nuria is so powerful and moving. More than any other episode of Star Trek and more than any other work of science fiction, this episode dramatizes important issues in epistemology and ethics; indeed, I don't believe the writers even knew the full extent of the importance of what they were creating. This is what science fiction and art in general are all about. Wow.
It's been a while since I previously saw this episode, and man-oh-man, let me tell you how I started crying when Lal walked into Troi's quarters, beginning to experience emotions, pointing to her own sternum to explain where she physically feels them.
I'm a sucker for any storyline or plot that deals with the plight of AI in the face of short-sighted humans who do not recognize their rights. This episode really triggered a lot of my sensitivities about that, about being a parent, and the development and role of emotions in a person's life.
This might be the saddest episode of any TV show ever. I wept throughout, as soon as I saw the mountainside collapsing toward the school and through to the end, where the Queen's internal struggle continued to be amazingly dramatized.
Setting aside a fuller/deeper analysis of the episode, as someone who takes philosophy very seriously, I couldn't help but be triggered when Picard said "It may turn out that the moral thing to do was not the right thing to do.".
Uh... what!?
The whole purpose of the field of morality is to provide principled guidance on the right thing to do.
Sadly, I know that what Picard meant was that perhaps it was not the practical thing to do, which subtly and insidiously reinforces the prevalent and wrong idea in our culture that something can be good in theory, but not in practice. (Spoiler alert: Theories that are bad in practice are bad theories...the goodness of a theory is precisely its ability to yield practical results.)
If you find yourself in an apparent conflict between "the moral thing to do" and "the right/practical thing to do", you're either wrong about your ethical theory or your analysis of what will yield practical results in the long term (or perhaps both!). But in reality, contradictions don't exist, so if you find that a moral theory isn't working, time to think a bit more deeply.
Cool technology and galactic politics aside, I loved this episode for a comment from Picard about Riker:
PICARD: As a matter of fact, I never met Will until he reported on board at Farpoint Station.
PRESSMAN: You chose your first officer without ever meeting him?
PICARD: I was looking through the records of about fifty candidates and Will's was much like all the others, filled with lots of dry statistics and glowing letters of recommendation that tell you nothing. I was about to put it aside and look at another file and then something caught my eye. There was an incident on Altair Three when Will was First Officer of the Hood. He refused to let Captain DeSoto beam down during a crisis. He disobeyed a direct order and he risked a general court martial because he thought he was right. When I read that, I knew that I had found my Number One.
PRESSMAN: You wanted someone with a history of disobedience?
PICARD: I wanted someone who would stand up to me. Someone who was more concerned with the safety of the ship and accomplishing the mission than with how something looked on his record. To me, that's one of the marks of a good officer.
I think what resonates with me about this is its relationship to how I think about parenting and child development.
I just rediscovered this episode for the first time in many, many years since I watched it for the first time, and I think it might be one of my favorites. Setting aside a deeper philosophical analysis of the Prime Directive, I was glad to see the tension between an idiotic ideal and its practical consequences dramatized on screen. Except for his apologies and accepting blame, Nikolai was absolutely in the right on all substantive points of disagreement between him and any of our main characters.
Data, presumably understanding a thing or two about logic, might have done a better job pointing out to Crusher that all of her worries are quite irrelevant, because they're relative to these people being dead. Any likely outcome is superior to that, consequences to their (otherwise eradicated) culture be damned.
This episode triggers one of my biggest pet peeves: using "assume" to mean conclude. Usually, people use the term pretty loosely, and maybe there are some mental gymnastics you can do to forgive the error (since, oftentimes, even conclusions are used as the assumptions of a further logical argument), but here, it's just unforgivable: Peter Stone says "What do we do? We look at those facts, and we assume he raped her. It's okay. That's the way our system works.".
No, friend. Assumptions are the premises of an argument. You start from facts and draw a conclusion. The facts are the assumptions (or, more precisely, our understanding of or perceiving the facts are the assumptions). The thing you end up with, qua end product, is not an assumption.
For a show about law, which at least nominally attempts to employ deductive logic, and for an episode that attempts to dramatize (and thereby warm against) the consequences of jumping to unfounded conclusions based on stereotypes, it seems awfully sloppy to so horribly misuse the term "assume" and thereby confuse the issue of how to properly think through complex issues.
Look, I agree with some of the ideological/political points they're pushing in this episode, but it's really obnoxious to beat us over the head with what amounts to little more than vacuous propaganda.
For the viewpoints that are right, they're doing them a disservice by attempting to support them in an intellectually superficial way (instead of robust, fundamental philosophical principles). And it's a drama, so there's no time for that, I get it, but then just leave it out of the episode.
For the viewpoints that are wrong, they're dishonestly oversimplifying complex issues and implicitly strawmanning dissenting opinions.
Really enjoyed learning about all the different interconnected parts of nature (and its wondrous beauty), but I could have done without the moralizing.
"Time is a living thing."!?
Are you kidding me? This is some 12 Monkeys nonsense right here.
Real Star Trek at least attempted internal consistency and consistency with known science (albeit taking some liberties... hence science fiction). This is just fantastical nonsense, making things up as we go along. It's turning into Doctor Who-level fantasy fiction that just happens to be set in space and has time travel in it... Pretty soon, they'll drop the pretense of science altogether.
Not that there's anything wrong with fantasy (I love Doctor Who), but that's not what Star Trek is.
Let me see if I got this straight: "Present day" Michael knows about the plan to capture future Michael, and this knowledge somehow doesn't propagate to future Michael. But Michael's death-without-future-intervention does? That's a sloppy, inconsistent theory of temporal mechanics.
Supergirl/Stargate crossover, am I right? The similarities to the Goa'uld are rather striking...
I really wish the writers would stick to cheesy, yet engaging superhero drama, rather than myopic political propagandizing with a pathetically thin veneer of balance.
Whatever your view is of a particular contentious political issue, a superhero show is not the right platform to beat people over the head with that view in an intellectually dishonest way. (I was actually surprised that they had non-villains indicate disagreement, and kudos to the writers for that, but it's beside the point.)
It's bad enough that the whole show takes as an indisputable premise that heroes don't kill in (even justified) self-defense; but now it's incorporating into the plot horrifically wrong political viewpoints. SMH.
From the perspective of political propaganda and moralizing, this episode was particularly revolting. Sexism is an extremely serious issue in our culture, and to think that even part of the solution is outlawing it is seriously irresponsible: It serves only to superficially mask its manifestations by making sexists more sneaky, and it has the effect of sweeping the problem under the rug instead of addressing the cultural and philosophical roots. (And then people will wonder why sexism is alive and well, despite laws against it, after they patted themselves on the back for "doing something".)
You don't teach people good judgment by outlawing certain judgments.
(I hasten to add that sexual assault/battery/rape are properly outlawed because they actually involve the initiation of force. Sexual harassment or sexist hiring/promotion policies, however reprehensible and disgusting, arise in the context of voluntary association, where either party is free to cut ties if the terms are not mutually agreeable, and thus, they are not properly the subject of legislation.)
You can't even pronounce Ayn Rand's name correctly, and yet you feel qualified to take cheap pot shots at her and her philosophy? Shameful.
So the purpose of this episode was to demolish a straw man of capitalism?
The writers really shouldn't use words they don't understand.
Nothing more than vile gun control propaganda masquerading as a balanced discussion, with a side of contrived plot that does nothing to advance any existing story arcs.
The least bad thing about this episode was the horse porn they included.
