LeftHandedGuitarist

A backup, a hug, a fight and a kiss
El is the cutest BADASS character ever

This episode was amazing and beautiful, if there's more than 10 stars I would give it more

First let's talk about Steve, he's amazing, he's brave and kind.. Did you see how he was genuinely care about these kids and puts himself in danger just to protect them.. I gotta say he became one of my favorite characters in the show

Also lets talk about the kid who plays Will, gosh!! That kid is sooo talented, I was genuinely feeling his pain, he's so amazing and I'm sure he has a bright future ahead of him

The 3 ways attack bit was also amazing, seeing all the characters attack at the same time from different places was gold writing from the show runners.. I liked how the kids took Steve with them while he was unconscious LMAO, and he was like f*** it lets go burn that sh*t.. I still thing that Nancy doesn't deserve Steve, he's too good for her

Anyway, I didn't like that bit with Dustin and his pet, it felt stupid, I mean they're monsters after all so I don't see how that monster can form such feelings for human, anyway he died at the end we saw him next to the chocolate bar

About El, her scene closing that gate was simply EPIC, I loved how she towards the end used both her hands to push the monster back, and by doing that she actually became more powerful, so now we know El with 2 raised hands are unstoppable

Last thing is the Snow Ball party, it was sad and hilarious seeing Dustin get rejected one by one LMAO, but then Nancy saved his a**, then we saw Mike sitting alone and I had a feeling that El gonna show up, and she did!! She was beautiful and cute.. I'm glad that she's finally with Mike and she feels happy

It was a great season but now we have to wait a long time from season 3 :(((

[7.2/10] Another enjoyable but not necessarily overwhelming episode. My favorite part was the shtick involving Janet and Derek. Derek is such a fun creation, and between his half-formed mind, their off-kilter lovers’ quarrels, and the bizarreness of making Derek “as dead as he can be” made for some fun, irreverent comedy.

I also like Michael struggling with what it is to be kind to a person and balance out all the moral rules and necessities for your intentions in a situation. The way the show finds the humor in playing out ethical principles continues to be a strength.

But I was less on board with the bit about Eleanor watching her infamous “Cannonball Run 2” tape. I’m intrigued about Eleanor having her pride wounded that Chidi doesn’t feel that way about her, and her wondering about it’d be like to be able to get to that point with someone, but the whole “should I keep it a secret” thing is pretty misaimed as a fulcrum for that.

And the Tahani-Jason business is pretty perfunctory. It seems implausible that Tahani would agree to marry Jason, no matter how much fun she’s having, and however kind Jason is to her, it still seems like an odd, semi-implausible pairing. Though again, bouncing them off of Janet pays dividends.

Overall, it’s still a good episode, but also one that’s a bit uneven.

[8.3/10] The Good Place is definitely playing to those in its audience with philosophy backgrounds. The titular trolley problem isn’t exactly a deep cut in moral philosophy, but seeing it not only dramatized literally, but remixed and rematched with our thought problem twists and series callbacks was wonderful. That alone would make this outing an enjoyable one -- seeing the normally abstract, removed sort of moral quandaries philosophers use to illustrate points made real in Road Runner-style splendor.

But as the show does when it’s firing on all cylinders, it doesn’t just use this idea for the humor and mayhem -- it uses it to make a point about the characters’ relationships and the broader narrative of the series. “The Trolley Problem” is more concerned about the connection between Michael and Chidi, and the wedges between them that may make it hard for them to find common ground.

I absolutely love the reveal that Michael was falling back into old habits and torturing Chidi. The question at play here is a compelling one -- can this moral instruction really change Michael, or is he stuck in his view of humanity and the actions that reflect that view. The episode muddles the conflict between Chidi and Michael a bit, but also takes it seriously, having Chidi reject Michael’s (hilarious) bribes and demand a sincere expression of contrition in order to repair their relationship and be able to move forward. It’s a deft balancing act between the creativity allowed by the world’s expansive sandbox, the silliness that defines the show’s humor, and the sincere character work that anchors it all.

The B-story, with Tahani and Jason getting psychotherapy from Janet, is nice enough, but not quite on the same level. It attempts to wring some emotional heft from Tahani being embarrassed to be seen cavorting romantically with Jason, but it falls into some clichés and Jason’s idiocy-as-profundity routine easily. On the other hand, the development that Janet is exceeding her programming and weird things are happening is an intriguing and amusing one, and her chipper roboticism has stealthily made her a dark horse for my favorite character on the show.

Overall, a great episode that has humor, inventiveness, and good character material in the A-story, and a couple of interesting Janet-related developments in the B-story.

[7.3/10] The A-story of this one was pretty good. I like that the show took the time to have our heroes question why Michael would team up with them, and how they could ever trust him. It leads to some good gags, some leverage, and a lot of good back-and-forths between the characters. On top of that, I like the fact that Chidi wants to do it because it’s true to his ethos of moral self-improvement, and that makes Eleanor willing to do it because she admires, however, begrudgingly, Chidi’s eternal willingness to selflessly help with it. The episode’s heavy-handed on that score, admittedly, but it’s a good setup.

The B-story was less good. I’ve liked Tahani, but the show got really over-the-top in depicting her resentment for her sister. The flashbacks are all fairly cartoony and broad, and don’t fit very naturally into the rest of the proceedings. At the same time, Jason was too dumb even for his usual dimwitted self here, and the show needs to find other places to take the character (like his unexpectedly endearing romance with Janet).

Overall, this felt like a table-setter, or even a little like a bottle episode, but largely delivered something enjoyable.

[8.2/10] Such a funny episode. The progression from Fry’s initial misadventures with Roberto and the courtroom, to his nightmarish time in the Robot Insane Asylum, to his misguided attempts to be a robot is absolutely great. The show finds the humor in each part, and each segment is a little bit funnier than the last.

The episode really creates a sense of place at the insane asylum, and not just through references to 2001 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The riffs on old nuthouse tropes are uniformly funny, and Fry’s distress is palpable but still comic. Plus Bender leaning into the whole thing and being his usual callous self throughout is a hoot.

Then Fry’s pretending to be a robot who’s still trying to figure out his primary function is even funnier. I die laughing every time he says “I’ll show ye” and his failed attempts to do anything robot-related are great. It’s also a clever ending. There’s a certain symmetry to needing to have crazy in order to defeat crazy, which makes him scaring off Roberto (with the well set-up robot oil in his jacket) perfect.

Overall, this one has plenty of laughs, a great premise, and a clever ending. Swell episode.

[8.7/10] I’m not sure I’ve seen a show re-pilot so successfully before. The way this episode told and retold all the events of Version 2 of The (Faux) Good Place from so many different perspectives was masterful, and helped give us continuing insight into how each of the characters work.

I was particularly impressed at the branching narrative of the episode, which took care to use the same basic events to springboard from one character’s story to another, and reveal their inner “themness” even when pointed in a different direction.

It’s particularly neat how Michael calculated to make each new situation even more miserable than they were in the last simulation. Eleanor has to give speeches and face the guilt of being crowned (well, sashed) as “best person.” Indecisive Chidi has to deal with the incredible difficulty of choosing his soulmate, and then has to deal with the fomo and regret of likely ending up with the wrong person. Tahani has to deal with difficulties that are frivolous, but nevertheless bother her, making her upset about things she shouldn’t be upset about like the size of her house or the height of her soulmate or the having to wear cargo shorts, and torturing her even further because she can’t reasonably complain about them. And Jason, who enjoys being able to be his real self in his “bud hole” has to live with a complimentary baby sitter there to ensure he lives the quiet life.

It reveals Michael’s, and the show’s, great understanding of these characters, knowing exactly how to twist the screws on them in creative ways that really seize on the things that will truly bother them.

It’s also really interesting getting to see behind the curtain of the demigods/demons/whatever in charge of the torturing. The fact that Michael is on his last chance here, and risks “retirement” if he fails, creates stakes for him as a character too, and the fact that he tries to slip the fact that he failed under the rug in front of his boss produces a ticking time bomb that will no doubt go off halfway through the season.

It’s also fun seeing the “actors” struggle with their parts. Real Eleanor (whose real name, I think, is Vicky) being perturbed at how she’s been demoted in the narrative, going so far as to create a limp and a backstory is amusing. Details like the bearded guy being so interested in biting, or Eleanor’s “soulmate” constantly going to the gym, or other folks just not understanding why they can’t resort to regular torture gives Michael the beleaguered middle manager vibe trying to wrangle all his unruly employees, which is an amusing look. The overall comedy for the show even seems to have improved.

Plus, the episode is propelled by Eleanor’s discovery of her note and attempt to piece the mystery together. I have to say I’m impressed that the show didn’t use the note and the investigation to fuel the second season as a whole. But turning it into a quick turnaround case-solve for Eleanor just creates more possibilities going forward. Joss Whedon is known to have said “play your cards early, it makes you come up with more cards,” and with this sort of virtuoso episode, I’m excited to see what new cards The Good Place comes up with in its second season.

[5.3/10] Weak Kazon writing, questionable casting decision (Eisenberg), wishy-washy "Indian" schtick that isn't.

Did the Kazon fix the shuttle's aft shields while Chakotay was being held prisoner? The computer's damage report after the first attack indicated that aft shields (as well as long range communications) were offline. But when Chakotay takes off in the shuttle again, aft shields are apparently partially functional?

Still trying to figure out how the transporter worked over a distance exceeding one million kilometers when the rated maximum range of a Federation transporter system is a mere forty thousand kilometers… Sometimes plot convenience trumps consistency. (Actually, often.)

Kar, what "technology", exactly, would you take back to your people if you killed Chakotay? He's wearing a combadge, and he has a tricorder. That's all. Wow, big catch. Very effective threat. /s

Like @LeftHandedGuitarist and @splenda, I found it very difficult not to hear Nog whenever Kar spoke. Given Deep Space Nine's relatively frequent use of Aron Eisenberg in that role, it's very strange that the Voyager casting department chose him for this episode. It's possible that someone in the chain of command wanted an excuse to give Eisenberg more work on the franchise; that's my best guess.

I really wish Chakotay had been given a more believable heritage. So often it seems like the writers kind of just made shit up when they wanted to emphasize his "Native American side" for an episode. For one thing, I can't find any real-life reference to the ritual phrase associated with Chakotay's vision quests (variously transliterated, depending on what source you read, as "a cuchi moya", "ah-koo-chee-moya", "hakuchi moya", among others). Keeping the character in touch with his "Indian roots" is one thing, but they don't seem to have based Chakotay's roots on a real tribe. (Later in the series, several tribal identities come and go based on apparent story needs before his heritage is once again left open to interpretation, as if the producers gave up.) At least Robert Beltran really is part Native American, instead of a straight-up white guy playing a Native role.

[9.4/10] There it is, the moment that Discovery truly became a Star Trek show. I’m mostly being facetious with that comment, but “Magic to Make The Sanest Man Go Mad” is at least the point where Discovery feels the most like a Star Trek show. It encompasses so many hallmarks of the series: the wacky sci-fi obstacle, the colorful interloper, the creative problem-solving, and the attendant character development from whatever the weekly incident is. It’s as creative an hour of Trek storytelling as we’ve had in a long, long time, and that’s something to celebrate.

And then let’s repeat that celebration some 58 times or so. The premise of the episode is surprisingly straightforward given how topsy turvy things quickly get. Harry Mudd is trying to commandeer the Discovery and sell it to the Klingons using a time travel device that allows him to go all Groundhog Day on the ship. Stamets, thanks to his injection with tardigrade DNA and adventures with the spore drive, is the only one who remembers anything from jump-to-jump, and he has to convince Burnham to help him thwart Mudd.

From there, the episode goes wild but never loses the plot. As much as the episode is a story about the latest bit timey-wimey insanity to effect a Federation vessel (we see you, TNG and “Cause and Effect”), it’s also a story about Burnham learning to break out of her own routines and repetitive reflexes. The way the episode ties the repeating nature of the time loop with Burnham’s own personal growth is signposted pretty hard at the beginning and end of the episode, but for the most part, the two are blended together nigh-perfectly, without skimping on one element or the other.

To the point, I’m not sure we’ve had any scene quite like Stamets teaching Burnham how to dance in Discovery before. It’s the sort of human story in a fantastical setting that Star Trek does well, and in an episode that reminded me a lot of a gussied up take on The Next Generation (which isn’t a knock), that scene in particular, and the episode as a whole, reminded me of a big reason why TNG was such a cultural touchstone for so many of us: the characters and their meaningful interactions with one another, both on and off the clock.

It’s nice to see Burnham and Tilly paling around at a party together (where, apparently, people are still listening to remixed versions of “Stayin’ Alive” in the 23rd century). It’s nice to see the romantic sparks between Burnham and Ash play out naturally (albeit kind of insanely given the circumstances). And it’s nice to see Burnham and Stamets have those few minutes they won’t get back to stop and teach and muse a bit about what it is to be with someone. It’s those sorts of human moments that ground the show, and make it as much about the people floating around in that tin can as it is about the crazy premise of the week.

But what a premise! As I referenced above, it’s not the first time Star Trek has pulled this trick, but it’s done with alacrity here. The episode does a nice job at establishing the basic setup and stakes of the situation before diving back in and resetting things each time, and finding new directions to take the story. The iterative progress that Stamets and Burnham make is nigh-perfect, and while the show cheats a little bit (Burnham seems to remember things, or at least the show glosses over some necessary but repetitive infodumps), everything absolutely works in the moment.

That includes the sense of fun and whimsy at play here, and that starts with Rainn Wilson as Mudd. Holy cow is he a boon to this one, bringing that same scruffy, outsized energy as his predecessor and making himself a colorful character to liven up the staid confines of Starfleet. It’s a time-honored tradition in Star Trek (as his calling Lorca “mon capitan” alludes), and having Mudd ham it up ‘round the ship and unleash his scheme with alternating glee and exhaustion with the whole thing is an utter treat.

At the same time, the episode has fun with its rewind-based premise. The montage of different ways that Mudd kills Lorca is darkly comic. The different twists on small talk at the party are plenty amusing. And even Stamets hippie-dippie euphoria and then resigned perturbation at trying to fix all of this turns out pretty darn fun.

The ultimate solution is clever as well. It involves some of that classic Trek lateral thinking, with Burnham realize she’d be the only thing more valuable for Mudd to turn over to the Klingons than the ship, and some crew-wide bluffing to make the whole thing work. There’s an Oceans 11 quality to the whole thing. Sure, the episode doesn’t really sell that the crew of the Discovery may be giving up and giving in to Mudd, but it holds the question of what precisely they’re up to close to the vest, and the reveal is both a nice resolution and an amusing beat for Mudd that ties into the theme of the episode.

That theme is, again, heavily-underlined, with a strong focus on telling people how you really feel. As aesop’s go, it’s not bad, if oversimplified, but it leads to some strong character interactions between Burnham and Stamets and ultimately between Burnham and Ash.

There were a myriad of things that made Star Trek such an indelible part of pop culture over the years. Some of it was the wild scenarios our heroes would get into on a weekly basis. Some of it was the distinctive personalities they’d run into just as often. And much of it was the audience investing in the characters, caring about their personal trials and tribulations as much as the latest technobabble device or universe-wide threat. “Magic” manages to take all those elements and roll them together into one, entertaining hour that sets the high water mark for Discovery so far.

I hear what a lot of fans are saying, but this isn't supposed to be modern day star trek, this is a time when the federation was just formed and people are still trying to unify their morals with the ideals of the species as a whole. This is a time of desperation, and desperation has always led to starfleet officers to having battles of morality. I think it's a great launching point to the modern idealistic universe that the federation turns into, and find it super interesting that it came through not so moralistic means. At the end of this arc with the klingons we know that they sign the Khitomer accords, and the federation and Empire usher in a new era of peace. I find it awesome how they're going about it, each plot is dynamic and I cannot call what will happen from episode to episode, and the fact that the federations launching point is based in moral ambiguity leaves very deep interpretations that you can consider, such as Cpt. Picard's moral virtousness being grounded on the actions of less moral men, because the federation made it to the point where it was established and unified. I dunno, i'm enjoying the series and am looking forward to each new episode!

Best episode of the second season in my opinion. And one of the best Q-episodes because it shows a different side of the Q rather than repeating the theme of the practical jokester.

edited on Mar 07, 2021: I decided to add a more detailed look at this episode:

This is, by far, the best episode of the show this far. One of the best of its entire run. And, as far as I'm concerned, one of the best of the franchise. Not right at the top but among my favorites.

This works on so many levels. You can see all of this as a metaphor to our own society and if you have a right to end your live on your own terms. There are so many great quotes in this script. But it also works stand-alone if you purely look at it as a story about the Q. We learn a lot about how they live and what they do. They are bored and understandably so. But they are afraid to speak out. If you think it through, is immortality really desireable? We even come to understand why deLancie-Q did what he did in the past. And him being the one coming to the conclusion that Graham-Q was right about everthing and granting him his wish presents a new look at him. There are a lot of layers here.

Of course we also get what Q is known for, namely being a thorn in everyones side. The hide and seek game was really fun. It's a little bit tongue in cheek by the writer the make Q responsible for Newton's epiphany about gravity, Woodstock and even Riker's birth. But I take it.

I really enjoyed watching this episode again.

[8.1/10] There is a line of demarcation between the difficulties a person experiences, their shames and fears, and what about those insecurities and regrets they share with the world, particularly for people in positions of authority. That’s particularly true for Capt. Lorca and Sarek, who find themselves confronted with those close to them -- a lover in the case of the former and a daughter in the case of the latter -- and yet cannot bring themselves to reveal what they’re going through, the personal pain they’re experiencing, until forced to by the very people they seek most to keep it from.

“Lethe” dramatizes these personal blocks and reveals in different ways. For Lorca and Admiral Cornwall, it’s a personal encounter that devolves from professional concern into romantic rekindling. For Michael Burnham, it’s something much more Trek-y, involving taking a shuttlecraft into a radiation-filled nebula and using a nigh-magical mind meld enhancement beam to find her surrogate father. Burnham is still infused with Sarek’s katra after he used it to revive her as a child, and now she’s out to return the favor when she received a psychic blast indicating he’s in danger.

That quest forces her to confront her own insecurities over her relationship with her father. Her efforts to mind meld with Sarek from afar lead her to one moment from their shared past -- the moment when they learned that Burnham would not be accepted into the Vulcan Expeditionary Force. Burnham reads the situation as her adoptive father spending his last moments on his greatest regret -- her. She interprets this scene as him fixating on the ways she failed him, the ways she was not good enough to achieve all that he wanted for her, something that’s lingered with her ever since she first felt the sting of that failure.

But buoyed by the support of Tilly and the recently-made-security-chief and former Klingon POW Ash, Burnham gathers the strength to confront Sarek about what he’s hiding from her, why he’s so set on rebuffing her from his mind. It’s there that she learns the truth. She didn’t fail, or at least not exactly. The Vulcan leadership gave Sarek a choice for whom it would accept into its leadership and good grace: Burnham or Spock, and we know whom ended up picking.

The shame, the thing he cannot escape, is not Burnham’s failure; it’s his own. He failed Burnham, and put in a Sophie’s Choice type situation, managed to lose on both fronts, with Burnham missing out on the dream he instilled in her to join the Vulcan Expeditionary Force, and Spock going against his wishes and joining Starfleet rather than the Vulcan Science Academy. The reasons for Burnham’s rejection are a lie he carried with him from that moment, pushing the failure, and the ensuing sense of loss and worthlessness, from himself onto her.

Lorca is likewise keeping up a facade in order to avoid owning up to his own failures and limitations. When Admiral Cornwall comes to check on him personally, to question his decisions of bringing Starfleet’s first ever mutineer on as a member of his crew and making a 7-month Klingon POW his chief of security, he puts up the image of cool collectedness. He claims to have his reasons, to be fighting this war the best way he knows how, and maintains that his decision-making, his risk-taking, is sound even if it seems unorthodox to the stuffed shirts in Starfleet Command.

But then they sleep together, and after a tender moment, a gentle touch of specific-contoured scars on his back by Cornwall, Lorca has an episode. He wraps his hand around his companion’s neck and brandishes a phaser in her face before he’s able to calm down. It’s then that Cornwall has confirmation that Lorca is not well. He admits that he lied on his psyche evals, that he’s had trouble since the battle that affected his eyes and cost him his crew, that he’s struggle and needs help.

But that’s the hard thing for people keeping important parts of themselves and parts of what they’re going through hidden from the people who care about them -- you never know if they’re telling the truth, if they’re letting you in, or if you’re just one more layer into them denying the real depths of the problem

But it’s understandable, even if the consequences are harsh, when what’s being hidden are personal failings, ways in which people feel like they don’t measure up to the standards they’ve set for themselves. Lorca wants to be a wartime chief, someone who can avenge his crew and create a safe place in the galaxy for his countrymen. That means hanging on to the Discovery, his best hope and best chance to do so, even if it means ignoring all the signs that he’s not well.

For Sarek, it comes in the form of all his efforts to overcome the prejudice of his species. The episode opens with a “logic extremist” who calmly self-immolates to protest Sarek’s involvement with humans or Klingons (you know, by trying to kill him). The crux of Burnham’s story in the episode comes when it’s revealed that the Vulcan leadership would only allow humanity to be a part of the Vulcan community “by titration,” gradually, and that they saw Sarek’s work of integrating Vulcans with their human allies as a parlor trick, a wild experiment, that should be cordoned off from Vulcan purity. It speaks to the recurring themes of this series thus far, one involving the mixing of cultures and the friction points therein.

But while it’s Lorca and Sarek who have these truths revealed, neither grows or changes from it. Lorca is saved by the plot-teasing Klingon trap that Cornwall, who’s filling in for an ailing Sarek, gets caught up in. (As a side note, if you ever find yourself in a T.V. show or movie, never tell someone that you’re going to deal with something big “as soon as you get back,” because it guarantees you aint comin’ back.) And Sarek, despite being rescued and revealed by his now-accomplished ward, remains taciturn and reserved, and more like the version of the character from The Original Series and its descendents.

But Burnham does. It’s signposted a little too hard, but she overcomes the blocks carelessly put in front of her by Sarek, and realizes that she can find her own worth, her own value, apart from his approval, even if it leads her to value the approval of the similarly-flawed Lorca, who offers her an official post on the Discovery. And she realizes, that as she tells Tilly, there is more than one path to success, more than one way to get what you want, and the fact that she had a setback on hers, a couple of major ones in fact, does not mean that she is doomed or fated to fail.

It’s easy to hide our damage, the things that bother us or make us feel like failures or less than. We want to project an image: to our coworkers, to our bosses, and even to our family members. But when we confront those parts of ourselves, share them and work through them, we can not only come out the other end realizing that the help we need is there, but also that the failures that keep us up at night are not really our own, and there’s still a galaxy of possibilities ahead of us.

[7.8/10] Kicking off any episode with a network censor being butchered in cartoonish fashion is a great and memorable way to get Halloween started.

The first story is an I Am Legend parody that sees Homer as the only survivor of a nuclear blast. It’s a funny segment, with plenty of great post-apocalyptic humor in Homer’s oblivious and then carefree state. The twists with the surviving mutants and eventually the surviving Simpsons keep the story moving along nicely.

The middle is a riff on The Fly, and it’s mostly a gag fest, but still tells a tidy little story of its own. All the humor involving the matter transference device is inspired, and it’s continually funny how quickly The Simpsons take to the new fly version of their son. The fight with fly Bart is well done to boot.

And the last story is superb as well. It’s a canny move to switch from a story about the salem witch trails to an apocryphal but enjoyable story about the first Halloween, and getting to see Marge play evil for once is a treat.

Overall, a Halloween classic, and another sign that Season 9 still had some of that Simpsons golden years shine on it!

[8.4/10] Captain Kirk was a bad leader. There I said it. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great leader for T.V. land, one who swashbuckles and puts himself in danger and inevitably saves the day. But he’s often a jerk (as a malfunctioning ship once put it), pig-headed, and impulsive, and depends on confidence and a good left hook to see him through. But Star Trek was always fascinated with leadership, what it took and what it meant, from Kirk to Picard to Sisko to Janeway and to Archer. And at its finest, it would have other characters, or other forces, that challenged what it meant to be one of those foolhardy leaders out on the galactic frontier.

So Discovery continues in that proud tradition, seeing fit to filter those perpetual questions -- who do you listen to, who do you sacrifice, what choices do you make -- through three souls on Discovery each trying to figure out how to lead.

The first of those is Lorca who, as Kirk so often did, finds himself captured by the enemy and uses his guile and some fisticuffs to make his way out of captivity. It’s the most direct and revealing a character story we’ve gotten for Captain Lorca so far, and it’s interesting to see him separated from his ship and his crew in a way that exposes his philosophy and his losses in this war.

It also exposes him to a pair of survivors, one of whom is another Starfleet officer, who’s survived in a Klingon prison for the seven months since the Battle at the Binary Star after one of his would-be torturers “took a liking” to him, and the other is none other than Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Mudd verges just a hair into fanservice territory, but I loved the casting of Rainn Wilson as Roger C. Carmel’s successor when I heard the news, and the promise of that choice blossoms on the screen. Wilson knows how to be just outsized enough to capture Mudd’s more theatrical qualities, but grounds it in enough humanity to make the character work in the more down to earth (so to speak) confines of Discovery.

Mudd also offers an interesting perspective on the major theme of the series thus far -- the impact of war on all corners. Star Trek is so rarely concerned with civilians in anything more than an academic or abstract sense, and so using Mudd, an odious trader living outside the law, as the voice of the little guy, finds the gray area and consequences of this conflict. Mudd, for all his characteristically traitorous qualities, makes a decent point, that war or at least pushback is an inevitable consequence of all this boundary-pushing exploration, and the difficulties of that filter down to the regular folks still just trying to make a buck.

That understandably, doesn’t play too well with Lorca, whom Mudd knows by reputation. Mudd reveals that Lorca blew up his own ship, making himself the only survivor, when the Klingons had him outgunned and outmatched. Lorca declares that it was to spare his crew the indignity and hardship of being tortured and put on display in Qo’NoS. It’s also how he received his eye condition, something he uses to remind himself of what he lost that fateful day.

Saru is having a fateful day of his own, as Lorca’s absence means that he’s not only the acting Captain of the Discovery, but responsible for finding and saving Lorca’s life. That causes him to second-guess his own leadership abilities, and try his best to emulate the list of Starfleet’s most decorated commanders (a list on which Captain Archer and Captain Pike get shoutouts). For Saru, someone cautious and untested, leadership doesn’t necessarily come easily, and it’s interesting to see him struggling with the responsibility he’s clearly anxious about.

That causes him to take an ‘at all costs” approach to finding his captain. Despite Michael Burnham’s warnings about the deteriorating condition of the tardigrade (and Burnham mostly takes a backseat in this episode), despite cautions from the ship’s doctor about the same, and worries from Lt. Stamets to the same effect, Saru is resolute. He demands that they not wait, that they pursue Lorca, and that if they have to “crack [the tardigrade] open” then so be it. There is a certain determination, a certain amount of that impulsive pigheaded quality that Kirk had that Saru lacks that he’s trying to make up for.

In his own way, Lt. Stamets is making decisions that are just as hard. He too hears Burnham’s warnings, her psychically-perceived distress from the tardigrade and wants to find a way to roll with the spore drive that doesn’t hurt a potentially living thing. So he does what all mad scientists do when ethics and need intersect -- he tests it on himself.

It’s the best we’ve really gotten to know Stamets so far this season, and it’s a treat. For as prickly as he can be, the self-sacrificing way in which he puts himself into the tardigrade chamber to make the spore drive run reveals an empathy and humaneness in him. His euphoric, punchy laugh when he’s awoken and told his gutsy move worked (with Saru’s shifty, unsure eyes) is a treat. And it’s heartwarming and endearing when the ship’s doctor whom he’s been jousting with throughout the episode like they’re an old married couple turns out to be because they are an old married couple.

I try not to dwell on these things because I’d rather we try to normalize them than treat them as something unusual, but it’s nice to see a franchise that’s always been so devoted to advancing the causes of diversity, tolerance and understanding put its first openly gay couple front and center. The scene with the pair brushing their teeth feels real and humane, and it’s nice to see that sort of vibe delivered through two men who love one another.

But there is a downside to love, whether it’s romantic, filial, or courtly -- it becomes a something that adds risk and, per the episode’s title, the possibility of pain, to everything you do, because the choices you make could take you away from what you love or what you love away from you. The title “Choose Your Pain” doesn’t just refer to the demented trust exercise the Klingons make their prisoners play to prevent bonding, it speaks to the choices and the pain that all the major characters are dealing with in this episode.

For Lorca, the choice was a hard one -- let your crew be captured, tortured, and paraded around the enemy capitol, or take them out yourself in one fell swoop. And his ocular condition, something that apparently he could fix if he wanted according to his admiral friend, is something he hangs onto, with the pain there to remind him who suffered under his command.

For Stamets, it was a different sort of choice, one where he chose to take on the pain himself rather than inflict it on another. Burnham campaigns, pushes protocols, in the name of treating the tardigrade humanely, and Stamets faces those risks, that hurt, himself, rather than letting it suffer on their behalf any longer.

And then there’s Saru, who had no choice, but is revealed to be grappling with his own sort of pain. He copes with the loss of Captain Georgiou, but laments that Burnham had what he never had -- the chance to learn under her, to become better under her, to turn into a leader under her. Burnham understands his pain (having made no less harrowing a choice herself to kick off the series) and tries to ease Saru’s by passing the posthumous gift she received from Georgiou onto him.

Burnham’s pain, the pain that emerged from her own bold choice to take command the way Kirk might have, is arguably the most profound. But it’s made her more aware of the same in others’, more keen to give Saru the telescope that will give him back a piece of what he lost, more apt to try to free a tortured creature to avoid its further suffering. And maybe, in that, she’s learning and poised to become a leader greater than Georgiou, or Lorca, or even James Tiberius Kirk himself.

[7.3/10] Part one of the series-opening two parter is easily the better half. It’s basically one big action set piece (or at least a few action set pieces strung together) but they’re well done and purposeful and it makes the beginning of Season 4 feel a little bit like empty calories, but good ones.

We start in medias res with Sabine and some Clan Wren commandos, aided by Ezra, Kanan, and to a lesser extent Chopper, on a mission to rescue her dad from the Empire. That consists of essentially two assaults. The first one is a pretty standard attack on an Imperial base. There’s not much to tell, but the episode gets some mileage out of Sabine darting and dashing through weapons fire to reach her target, Kanan leaping and slicing his way through the enemies, and Ezra not quite having the hang of his jetpack but improvising and making it work like the former street-rat he is.

Still all that improvising isn’t enough to win the day, so our heroes get some reinforcements from a familiar face, Bo Katan, the sister of former Mandalorian ruler Duchess Satine (both of The Clone Wars fame), voiced by Katee Sackhoff (of Battlestar Galactica fame). We get a little detail on what happened to her during the post-Clone Wars period, where she was apparently made regent but toppled when she wouldn’t go along with the Empire, and sees herself as not having been good enough to lead her people, and thus not worthy to carry the darksaber.

But she is worthy enough to help Sabine & Co. attack a convoy where Sabine’s dad is being held prisoner, so we get action set piece #2! This one is a little harder to follow, with swirling combatants and quick cuts between them as the dust rises around everyone. But it still features some damn cool sequences, including Kanan kicking some enemy butt, Sabine commandeering a speederbike and doing some damage, and Ezra leaping from falling transport to falling transport until Sabine can save his butt. Again, there’s not much to it, but they have a clear mission -- rescuing Sabine’s dad -- which gives purpose to all the mayhem.

Naturally, they’re successful, and we meet Papa Wren who, it turns out, is where Sabine got her artistic side. I like the stereotype reversal hear, where Sabine’s mom is the hardened warrior and her dad is the artsy one, even if it’s a little too simplistic in terms of offering the “ingredients” that make Sabine.

The only thing that doesn’t really work in this one is the end where an anti-Mandalorian weapon of Sabine’s own design is used against her countrymen and kills her mother and brother. We don’t know Sabine’s family that well, so the tragedy of the moment doesn’t really land, and it feels like an unearned emotional extreme after a pretty weightless half hour.

Otherwise, this was a fun way to kick off the season, with nicely put together action with a clear purpose and plenty of cool little sequences.

[7.2/10] For better or for worse, this is the episode of Star Trek Discovery that’s felt the most like a regular episode of its predecessor series so far. If the first two episodes were an origin story, and the third episode was a pilot, then this episode was the closest thing we’ve gotten to “business as usual” so far.

That’s not a bad thing! 90% of the Star Trek franchise is business as usual, outside of a few two-parters and DS9’s experiments in serialization. What made each show and the franchise great is what they did within that structure. But “The Butcher’s Knife” feels like the modern day twist on that sort of rubric, with a problem of the week for the ship, a personal challenge to overcome for Burnham, and even a short arc for the (sympathetic) villain of the series.

That ship-wde problem of the week is a Federation colony under attack by the Klingons. No Starfleet ships are close enough to defend them, and the colony produces 40% of the Federation’s dilithium (think magical engine juice) so it’s of great importance that they be saved and the Discovery, with its magic spore drive, is the only ship that has a chance to do it.

It creates a nice opportunity for Captain Lorca to seem like a “by any means necessary” wartime chief as he demands more, sometimes in harsh terms, like his crew, and for Lt. Stamets to do his sarcastic, perpetually annoyed, “I can’t deliver what you want” routine in return. It’s overwritten at times (like a lot in this episode) but the conflict between Lorca as a warmonger and Stamets as a scientist, and the way they stand for the larger conflict within the peaceful Federation that finds themselves at war is well-positioned.

That theme extends to Burnham’s personal challenge, which is to figure out how weaponize the macro-tardigrade that Lorca extracted from the Discovery’s sister ship last week. Again, the theme is not subtle. Burnham is sent to figure out how to turn a living thing into a weapon, and instead she not only starts to understand it, but figures out that they can have a symbiotic relationship rather than an antagonistic one with the creature.

(As an aside, I’d admit I was pretty surprised when the tough-as-nails security chief died at the hands of the tardigrade. Sure, opening the creature’s container was Prometheus levels of stupid, but I’d just figured out she was Tory from Battlestar Galactica so I assumed they had more for her than that.)

So the episode gives the other characters some one-on-one time with Burnham. Saru is still a skeptic, but she uses his danger ganglia to prove that the tardigrade isn’t hostile, and Tilly shows her own kind of awkward bravery by helping Burnham feed the creature with spores, which gives Burnham the connection she needs.

Naturally, the two stories on the Discovery converge, and the tardigrade is the missing piece that allows Stamets to make use of the equipment he got from the U.S.S. Glenn and allows Discovery to get to the colony in time. It’s admittedly a little easy, but it also feels like a hallmark of Star Trek writing, where two pieces come together and suddenly the crew can solve the whole puzzle, so there’s something warm and familiar about it.

What isn’t familiar is the show, but impressive cinematography. Bits like the microscopic zoom out from the replicator making Burnham’s uniform, or the upside down perspective as Voq walks the husk of the Shenzhou, or the zoom in from space to the Discovery bridge show a visual flair that doesn’t do a whole lot in terms of symbolism (though the flipped perspective adds something to the peculiarity of Voq walking the halls of the ship he helped destroy) but it’s pretty to look at.

Speaking of Voq, he has the Klingon equivalent of a meetcute, where T’Kuvma’s second in command and he find their mutual respect metamorphosizing into something more. Of course, it’s coupled with Voq’s ship (formerly T’Kuvma’s shop) running out of food and power, and a pledge of fealty from a rival house turning into one of those Klingon coups you’ve heard so much about.

Once more, there’s some pretty heavy-handed theme work, with L’Rell giving a grand (at least in the subtitles) speech about bridging both sides of something. That’s the overall theme of this episode. L’Rell is of two houses; Voq has to resolve T’Kuvma’s purity with their need to survive, and the Discovery and its crew need to balance the need to win the war with their principles to advance the cause of peace and scientific advancement. It’s underlined strongly, but it’s nice enough and there’s something oddly compelling about the slightly hokey Klingon romance.

Last but not least, we get Burnham opening the video will of Capt. Georgiou, who left her the telescope they looked through in the pilot. It’s a nice touch, even if, say it with me, the writing is a bit too blunt, that works well as a symbol of how Geourgiou’s memory is both a source of solace and a source of guilt for Burnham.

Overall, this was a meat and potatoes episode of Star Trek, but a reliably good, albeit not great one.

Hmm… Honestly? About the only enjoyable part of this was seeing Brian George. I really liked his work on The Expanse, though he didn't get much to work with here.

I can definitely see the Star Trek influence, which goes well beyond the superficial similarities in uniforms. The dramatic structure of the whole episode feels like an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation or something, albeit rushed. If anything, The Orville's debut proves why it was a good idea for typical Trek pilots to be double-length: There's so much work that has to be done establishing the world of a new show that it just won't fit in a normal-length episode that also tries to include a typical plot. (That said, in my opinion there was also considerable screen time wasted on unfunny jokes, like the "Permission to Pee" scene.)

The biggest issue with the overall plot, for me, was the fact that the Orville never really appears to be in danger. There's something in (good) Star Trek episodes of all eras that makes it seem like our protagonists might fail, even though we know they won't. That's absent here.

In case it's not obvious: No, I'm not a fan of Seth MacFarlane's humor. I would be hard pressed to find even one joke that I found funny in this show. I'll not drop it yet, in hopes that it will improve—the underwhelming pilot is another Star Trek staple, so this all might be intentional. The show deserves more than a single chance. But this won't be something I watch ASAP after the newest episode airs unless it gets drastically better.

[7.3/10] Far be it from me to turn my nose up at the imaginative, scifi-fueled tete-a-tete between Rick Sanchez and a president voiced by the inimitable Keith David. But I have to admit, this was a bit of a disappointment as a finale. Too often, “Rickchurian Mortydate” gets lost in admittedly inventive and amusing dick-wagging contests between Rick and the president, and doesn’t spend enough time grounding it in Rick or the Smiths’ personal issues or character flaws like the show does at its best.

The Beth story certainly does though. There would be an existential horror to wondering if you’re a clone, and there would be so few ways in Beth’s situation to reliably determine whether or not you are. But her story finds the beneficial side of that magnificent ambiguity in the prior episode. It doesn’t really matter to Beth whether she’s the “real” Beth or not. Being this Beth, being someone who loves her husband and her family, makes her happy, and in a nice counterpoint to last season’s finale, she’s willing to put up with not having her father around if she can preserve that.

What that means for Rick is that he’s not the center of the universe, or at least the Smiths anymore. Morty, the grandson who tags along through all of his adventures, is willing to tell his grandfather to leave him alone so that he can have a happy family once more. And contrary to the ultimatum from the Season 2 finale, Beth is willing to pick Jerry over her dad.

That leaves Rick unable to enjoy his victory over the President of the United States and the onslaught of toys and weapons and other technological doo-dads the Prez has assembled to be able to combat him. It makes Rck’s victory hollow, to where he’s willing to sacrifice his victory, the respect that comes from having bested the leader of the free world, in order to be a part of the Smith family once again.

He sees the rest of the Smiths’ happiness and tries to spit on it, to tell them that it doesn’t matter, but it does to them, and though he has trouble admitting it, it matters to him. They’re happy and whether that’s flawed or fake or just one petal on the swirling sunflower of infinite multiverses, it’s their pleasant and fulfilling subjective experience and they couldn’t care less if it’s unimpressive from a cosmic standpoint. While Rick, who’s achieved the most of what could be achieved from a cosmic standpoint, debases himself to have a piece of that, to be proximate to it, when he has all the talent and ability to just jump to some other universe if he wants to.

Maybe I liked the episode better than I thought. Part of it are too indulgent. Rick and Morty being blasé about their adventures evokes a sense of ennui in the writer’s room (or at least from credited writer Dan Harmon who’s not been shy about expressing when his passion for a project is waning.) That colors the hijinks between Rick and the President trying to one-up each other. None of it’s bad, but it’s Rick and Morty going through the motions. A crazy techno-fight here, a hilarious vulgar aside there, a well-placed pop culture riff some place else. (The South Park reference is particularly exemplary this week.) None of it’s bad, it just doesn’t hit the transcendent highs the show is capable of when it’s at the top of the game.

But the Beth story comes closer. Jerry reminiscing about the first time he kissed Beth is the most endearing, relatable, and understandable Jerry’s seemed in the whole series, and it’s enough to make you want to root for this pathetic man to get back together with his wife, and to understand why they made some modicum of sense in the first place. And Beth realizing that whether she’s real or not, she wants to like that night, to be happy with where she is, is a subtle but powerful statement from the show.

I don’t hesitate to say that Season 3 has been the best season of Rick and Morty yet. It’s been as consistently creative and inventive as any prior set of their adventures, and the level of emotional depth and self-examination the show’s engaged in on a weekly basis is nothing short of remarkable. From the surprise season premiere, to the infamous “Pickle Rick”, to toxic versions of our heroes, to Wire-inspired adventures, the show has continually topped itself with the places it’s willing to go and how well it goes there.

But “Rickchurian Mortydate” isn’t quite the perfect capper to so much greatness. It fits well enough as the culmination of a lot of things the show has been wrestling with this season: Morty wondering whether he needs his grandfather in his life, Jerry figuring out his place in the world in relation to his father-in-law, and Beth taking some time alone and figuring out who she is, whether or not it’s really who she is. It all comes together in the family deciding to reject Rick, and Rick sacrificing, in his own sideways way, to not be cast aside. That’s strong stuff, but at times, the finale of the show’s best season so far is more interested in laser-coated mayhem than that deeper, emotionally complex material that marks it as more than just a collection of wacky escapades.

Ah well. Still damn good. I’ll see you all in however long it takes for Mr. Poopy Butthole to grow a big Santa Claus beard. Don’t just screw around in the mean time!

[8.4/10] Origin stories can be tedious. Even when done well, there’s a great deal of heavy lifting that must be done to establish your world and your premise that can get in the way of good old fashioned storytelling. It’s a big reason why a myriad of second installments like The Empire Strikes Back or The Dark Knight are widely considered improvements on their well-liked originals. Once the audience already knows what all the toys in your sandbox are, you can just get in there and play.

Maybe that’s why “Context Is For Kings” feels like such a marked improvement on the already solid two-part premiere of Star Trek Discovery. The one-two punch of “The Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” is essentially Michael Burnham origin stories. They provide a ninety-minute window into who Michael Burnham was before the war, before her fall from grace, before her mentor died in front of her eyes, and before her life was completely changed.

The balance of the season, then, seems likely to be about what it’s like to have experienced that fall, how it will be for Michael to climb out of that hole and assuage her guilt. And once Discovery jumps six months in the future and shows us a Michael Burnham with that guilt and disgrace weighing heavily on her mind, it’s off to the races.

“Context Is for Kings” is less of an origin story and more of a pilot. What’s the difference? Well for me at least, a pilot is about telling you the story of how a protagonist became the person they are. Think Iron Man learning the impact his weapons sales have had on the world in first MCU film, or hell, think of Chris Pine as Captain Kirk in 2009’s Star Trek going from being a no-good punk to the captain of the Enterprise. Pilot’s are as much, if not more, about building what your show is going to be on a weekly basis. That means hinting at the larger issues that will linger through the show, introducing the essential conflict your series will grapple with, and perhaps most importantly, introducing the full cast.

Discovery’s third episode embraces that last element with vigor. We meet Cadet Tilly, the motor-mouthed, chipper, awkward but adorable new roommate for Michael on her new ship. We meet Commander Landry, the chief of security, who cuts the figure of a tough-as-nail product of the more militaristic side of Starfleet. We meet Lieutenant Stamets, the lead researcher on a secret project whose annoyance and superiority is a bit overwritten, but still enjoyable. And last but not least, we meet Captain Lorca, the charismatic if unorthodox head of the ship, whose goals seem admirable, but whose philosophy seems antithetical to the Federation's ideal, and who, like nearly all characters played by Jason Isaacs, seems to have a lurking dark side.

But it’s also a reintroduction for Michael Burnham. While the headstrong go-getter version of the character in the series premiere could grate a little bit, the haunted, humbled version of the character is far more complex and compelling. Perhaps it’s the mere presence of Jason Isaacs, but there’s something Harry Potter-esque about Burnham here, as someone who has not only fame, but infamy, that they don’t really want. Burnham is too shiny for her fellow convicts, and too sullied for the Starfleet officers she’ll now work with, to where her non-reaction to the prospect of her prison transport shuttle running out of oxygen says all you need to know about how she feels about her new life.

The most promising thing about the first episode of what feels like the series proper is how it explores that infamy. The world, or at least the Federation portion of it, views Burnham as having started the war, in addition to the ignominy and spectacle of being Starfleet’s first mutineer.

It gives Burnham a chip on her shoulder, a shame she cannot escape no matter where she goes. But it’s especially pronounced on the Discovery, where she’s subject to stares and whispers. Burnham is the poster child for the way the peaceful, exploratory mission of the Federation turned into an endless battle, and that makes her the target for the ire of everyone who’s lost someone or whose life has been changed by it, even if no one feels the weight of those losses and that change more than Burnham herself.

It also positions Burnham to have the proverbial angel and the devil on her shoulder. The angel is Saru, who’s now a first officer on the Discovery and who shares a few awkward moments with his formerly superior officer. Saru patronizes Burnham, and fears what she’s capable of, but in his own way seems to care about her, and certainly thinks highly of her abilities. The devil is Captain Lorca, who seems to care less about Burnham personally than about what she can do for his war effort, who isn’t afraid of her decision-making like Saru is, but sees it as an asset.

That raises the most interesting aspect of the episode, and the one that gives it its name. The way you can tell Lorca is ultimately going to be a villain, or at least a morally compromised figure (aside from the casting) is how he embraces a philosophy that runs counter to the high tenets of the Federation.

Being in Starfleet means not firing first, seeking a peaceful alternative at all costs. Lorca believes that calculus changes when you’re in a war, that more utilitarian concerns come into play. He offers Burnham what we can surmise is the only bit of praise she’s received for the actions that weigh on her, and also the chance to atone for them, to make her former captain’s death mean something. That’s a lifeline for someone who’d seemingly resigned herself to paying for her sins in quiet ignominy.

Of course, “Context Is for Kings” throws in the series’ first away mission -- an Aliens-inspired affair with haunted house imagery and a daring escape. It throws out a classic Trek mystery -- just what is happening on The Discovery? -- and includes a nice swerve that it’s an experimental means of travel rather than a biological weapon. And it even gives us a name-check of Spock’s mother, Amanda, with some nice understated implications that the memories of her adoptive mother are one of the few nice things Michael still holds onto in her demoralized state.

But apart from the nuts and bolts elements that make the third episode in the series a step up -- improved acting, less exposition, better character work -- what sets it apart is how it feels like our first glimpse at what Discovery is really going to be. It’s a show about war, about redemption, and about the central principles of the Federation, all explored through the lens of the individual who brought those things into focus. When Star Trek is done setting the table, it’s exciting to get to sit down and dig in.

[7.3/10] “The Naked Now” is the third episode of The Next Generation, and yet, it’s the sort of episode that works much better if you, for instance, plop it somewhere in the middle of the season, or even the series. The power, and dare I say, fun of the episode stems from seeing the normally professional, determined, even stoic crew of the Enterprise devolve into goofy intoxicated fools. But if you barely know who these characters are yet, as anyone just starting the show would, then the contrast between the usual demeanor and the drunken revelry doesn’t quite register the same way.

You need the whimsy of that revelry to work because it’s really the only thing “The Naked NOw” has going for it. Sure, there’s the threat of the alien virus that makes people act without their full faculties, but even if you don’t know how this is going to play out from watching the precursor episode from The Original Series, Riker and Data discover the cure fifteen minutes into the episode, and so there’s little dramatic tension to the hour. You’re either enjoying the break from seriousness and how the crew gets downright silly, or you’re just waiting for Dr. Crusher to figure out how to regoogle the energymotron or what have you in time to develop the antidote.

It’s worth noting that “The Naked Now” is, to my knowledge, the only episode of The Next Generation that is a direct sequel (or something close to that) to an episode of The Original Series. There’s not much gained from that connection. Sure, it’s kind of neat that Riker remembers his history well enough to piece what’s happening together, or that we get to witness someone showering in their clothes rather than just hearing about it second hand, but it doesn’t add much to the proceedings beyond being a sop to the diehard fans.

Still, it’s understandable why the writers chose to recycle this plot in the new series. The drunk-making virus allows you to have your main cast break or reveal character to amusing effect, and the collapsing star nearby creates an easy (if not terribly convincing) threat that (at least nominally) creates extra stakes and urgency in finding a cure.

It’s the latter part that weakens the episode. “The Naked Now” features the first, but sadly not the last instance where the day is improbably saved by Wesley the wunderkind. I can at least appreciate the legwork shown by the writers by introducing Wes’s makeshift personal tractor beam/repulsor beam in the first act, thereby setting him up to do the same with the ship’s version of the same in the last act. But it’s clear from the getgo that TNG finds “Wesley Crusher, boy genius” far more compelling a figure than its audience does.

Nevertheless, even if the destination is obvious and the way the show chooses to get there is worth an eye-roll or two, the ride is a fun one. It’s all too rare that Star Trek goes for straight up comedy, but what we get here is great.

Count me among those who loves the vaudevillian flair of intoxicated Data. It’s really a shame that Brent Spiner didn’t get more opportunities to play the outsized, clownish foil he inhabits here. (Lore offers some bit of salve to that regret though.) The look on his face when Tasha beckons him to the bedroom, the “If you prick me, do I not leak?” line delivery, the pratfall he takes afterward, are all just comic gold. While it’s used for comedy rather than pathos, “The Naked Now” wrings all it can from the contrast of the usually humorless Data having his head scrambled.

While it’s a little exploitative, Tasha’s encounter with Data is a pretty unique and interesting tack here too. Let’s be frank, I doubt her part of the episode was intended as anything but titillation, and the male gaze-y shot of her walking down the hallway, or the barely-there dress she wears that confirmed for me that costume designer William Theiss was back on the payroll long before I saw his name in the opening credits, are pretty embarrassing and shameless by modern standards. That doesn’t even take into account the uncomfortable at best way in which Tasha invokes her childhood escapes from “rape gangs” before seeking physical affection from Data.

Maybe I’m just giving the interaction more weight given what the show does with it down the line. But I do think that, beneath all the problematic elements of how Tasha is used here (which presages Michelle Pfeifer’s turn as Catwoman in Batman Returns), the core of the story is worthwhile. It’s the story of a damaged person in a weakened state seeking comfort and a complete naif, incapable of malice and not fully understanding what’s happening, acceding to her wishes. It may not be what the show intended, but there’s complex emotional and social material to unpack there for days.

Less dramatic (and borderline distasteful) but more endearing are the interactions between Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher. I’ll cop to being a Picard/Crusher shipper, so I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find some glee in the two of them barely able to contain themselves around one another.

But that’s also where the comedy lies here. Watching these two committed professionals do everything they can to maintain their composure, while inevitably giving in, just a little bit, to their unprofessional urges, is amusing as all get out. Everything from Picard’s feeble wave, or Crusher saying she has a “personal matter” to discuss with him, only to correct him that it’s “an urgent” matter, finds the humor in this pair of centered people losing their emotional balance.

That’s the sort of thing that makes “The Naked Now” enjoyable. It’s not the most tightly-written or momentum-filled episode there ever was. It makes little sense that Riker seems mostly unaffected by the infection; the belabored romantic tension between him and Troi is again overblown; and Data replacing the isolinear chips as a game feels contrived. But if you can enjoy Wesley Crusher channeling Ensign Riley and announcing mandatory extra dessert over the PA, or Data not understanding dirty limericks, or Worf growling that he doesn’t get Earth humor either, than the third episode of the series can still be plenty of fun.

7.5/10, rounded up… Any rating rounded off practically compels one to write a comment, @justin. (I added the mention in my previous shout in an edit, so it might not have generated a notification. I promise I'll stop asking for percentage ratings now!)

Is that a bowl of starfruit on Neelix's counter? Hooray for exotic Earth plants being pushed as alien foodstuffs.

Carey is absolutely Voyager's Miles O'Brien. The similarities are striking in this episode, from how he talks to his hair.

Did anyone else notice that Seska says "We have to do something!" right after Torres says "Aye, Captain" over the comm and the bridge doesn't hear her? But later Torres hits her commbadge to close the channel before they start talking about the matrix again? Sometimes these things just…slip through.

OK, enough nitpicking.

More philosophy! And this time, it has substance! No more wishy-washy flip-flopping on the subject of whether there might be an afterlife. Nay, this week it's character-building and Starfleet people getting a little taste of their own medicine regarding sharing technology.

Like so many of the one-shot alien races, the Sikarians have essentially no depth. They still manage to be a little creepy, as @LeftHandedGuitarist remarked. (They're not that creepy, though. Frankly, I think the Sikarians represent what would happen if you took "Minnesota Nice" and turned it up to 11.) That said, the most interesting thing about them is Gath's accent—which is probably because a Belgian actor played him.

[8.1/10] Ambiguity can be both frustrating and brilliant. There is a natural impulse in most people to want to know the answers, to resolve the unknown, but the unknown is also a part of life, and if a television show can harness that, use it to make meaning, it can hit outstanding notes. David Chase knew that with The Sopranos , his protégé Matt Weiner knew it with Mad Men, and Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland seem to know it with Rick and Morty.

Because the last thing you’re likely to think about when you flip off “The ABCs of Beth” (if you’re not reflecting on the amusingly self-aware answering machine gag) is whether or not Beth replaced herself with a clone and left to go mount the universe. Rick and Morty is a show that usually delivers answers, even if it’s content to delay them for months or, in the case of Evil Morty, even years. But maybe some questions shouldn’t be answered.

I think that’s the point of “The ABCs of Beth.” Rick gives his daughter two options: either she can create a painless substitute that will carry her current life forward while she prowls the galaxy in search of meaning or adventure, or she can live her life as is, knowing it’s what she actually chose with clear eyes and real alternatives on the table. The Beth we meet at the end of the episode could be either -- the content clone or the real, happy Beth who’s satisfied at having picked this rather than having it forced upon her.

That’s the cinch of the episode. For many of us sitting home, we have similar choices, even if they’re not quite so fantastical. We can radically change our lives, pursuing abstract principles and goals at the expense of all that we know, or we can go forward with how things are, finding comfort and joy in the day-to-day. There are multiple paths to happiness, Rick and Morty seems to posit, or at least multiple paths to wholeness, and which path you take there isn’t necessarily evident or comprehensible to an outsider observer. But it starts with accepting who you are and what you want.

That’s the noteworthy parallel “ABCs” draws between its outstanding A-story and its less-inspired B-story. Both Beth and Jerry spend much of the episode attempting to deny who they are, blaming unfortunate events on family members, rather than owning them, accepting that the consequences are a product of their own actions.

For Jerry, that means accepting that him dating an alien huntress is a pathetic attempt to make Beth jealous. It’s an interesting way to mirror the two stories, but Jerry’s half of the episode just isn’t as strong. Maybe it’s the hard-to-watch way his kids just bust on him constantly (not that he doesn’t deserve it). Maybe it’s the divorced dad humor that’s pretty tepid, even if it’s spiced up in Rick and Morty’s intergalactic fashion. Maybe it’s that the ultimate twist -- that the huntress ends up going after the Smiths, only run into her ex -- is amusing but predictable.

Jerry’s part of the episode isn’t bad or anything. The bubble gun is enjoyable. Jerry’s barely-sublimated space racism and smugness is used for amusing effect. And there’s some more frank exposing of Jerry’s true colors. But it mainly feels like Rick and Morty needed something for the rest of the cast to do while Rick and Beth hit the high notes, and little that happens in Jerry’s dating life, however explosive, can match it.

But really, who could match the horrible realization that not only was your childhood fantasy land real, but that your childhood friend is still stuck there in it. There’s so many endlessly interesting things that spin out from the unveiling of “Froopyland.” I’d be lying if I said that the reveal that Beth’s friend survived by “humping” the fantastical creatures and then eating his own children didn’t gross me out, but Rick and Morty manages to wring the humor from even that with its bizarre little forest creature play about it.

Stronger still is the emotional and character material. For one thing, we learn that Rick created this fantasy land for his daughter. He claims it’s a practical measure, something to keep her occupied and to keep the neighbors from getting suspicious. But as the Citadel episode hinted with its Rick wafers, there’s a part of Rick that really does care about his daughter, even if it means he shows it in weird ways like creating deranged toys, or letting her help him clone her childhood friend, or giving her a way out of her family.

For another, we learn that Beth, despite her seemingly greater morals and guilt and issues with her dad, is just like him. That’s been a subtle thread throughout Season 3, with particularly resonance in “Pickle Rick.” Beth admits it herself, realizing how she denies the utility of apologies, and elides her own mistakes and past by casting those things as simply how others interpret her greatness. Her unwillingness to face that she pushed her childhood pal in the honey pit, and her then getting into a bloody confrontation with him, is an odd form of self-acceptance, but also a cathartic one.

It leads Beth back to the choice that represents the crux of the episode. If you are the daughter of Rick Sanchez, the miserable, amoral, genius, do you go out and try to ride the universe until it gets tired of bucking you, or do you try a different way, a way that finds happiness in being a part of your family, in doing the everyday. It’s the clearest suggestion yet as to what choice Rick himself made when he left Beth and her mother all those years ago.

But as much as they have in common, Beth is not her father. She feels enough guilt to want to save her friend’s dad from death row, to look at those pictures of her family on the fridge and feel the wistfulness of the thought of leaving him. We just don’t know if that’s enough to change her mind.

Maybe we shouldn’t know. I bet dollars to donuts that one day we will, that the “real” Beth will come floating down in Season 5 and cause some story sparks just like Evil Morty and the Cronenberg Universe Smiths did. But regardless, the force of the ambiguity is clear. There are different ways to live, different ways to try to make your peace with who you are and what you want out of this universe. What we choose, and why we choose it, can be opaque, even to ourselves, and the art that reflects that vagueness, that uncertainty, can be all the stronger for it.

[6.1/10] I have to admit, the show is starting to feel formulaic even as it’s moving the ball forward, and I’m getting a bit tired of the repetition. The show is overly didactic when it comes to the theme of Eleanor not being a joiner or willing to be a part of a group vs. here when she realizes that Chidi & co. like her and want to be on her team. It’s a sweet enough idea, but the show is just too blunt about it to land.

The B-story, with Tahani trying to teach Michael to grow a backbone and stand-up to the reps from The Bad Place similarly ends on a strong note, but fills the coffers with some pretty feeble comedy and tepid storytelling when getting there. The badness of the bad guys is a little too over the top to be funny.

That is, of course, except for Adam Scott, who is just perfect at playing this sleazeball. It’s a complete 180 from his character on Parks and Rec or Party Down. Plus, new Eleanor is Sabine from Star Wars Rebels, which I appreciate, and her instant nerd chemistry with Chidi is certainly cute.

Overall, this one just didn’t click with me. I’m beginning to catch on to the show’s rhythms, and the humor wasn’t strong enough to cover for that in this one.

[7.5/10] Risk is our business. That notable speech from Captain Kirk lays out the essential ethos of Star Trek as a franchise -- that the wild and wooly galaxy our heroes explore is full of dangers and pitfalls, but also full of unfathomable possibility, there to be discovered. The first two episodes of the aptly titled Star Trek Discovery bring this notion to the fore.

On one side is our protagonist, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), who relishes exploration, enjoys taking chances, and is ready to shoot first. On the other is Lt. Saru (Doug Jones), who hails from a species of alien prey, ever reluctant to mix things up. And in the middle is Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who has to find the middle ground between the two chief advisors whispering in her ear.

It’s the type of dynamic The Original Series relied upon heavily: Spock the cold logician, Bones the hot-blooded humanist, and Kirk the leader who had to somehow split the difference. But Discovery’s three-man band differs from its predecessors in more ways than just its welcome lack of monochrome. While the 1960s series often focused on how much logic versus emotion should go into decision-making, its successor, fifty-years later, seems focused on how much risk we should take, when our lives, and the lives of the people we care about, are on the line.

The fulcrum for that point of contention, as it so often is in Star Trek, is some unknown object in space giving the ship funny readings. Naturally, Burnham wants to go check it out; Saru wants to leave it alone, and Georgiou comes up with a measured response that allows for some investigation from her headstrong first-in-command, but with set limits meant to minimize the dangers as much as possible. While walking along the surface of the ancient object that defies scanning, Burnham encounters a Klingon “torchbearer,” bat’leth in tow, whom she kills in a moment of confrontation as she makes a desperate attempt at self-defense and escape.

The Klingon is part of T’Kuvma’s crew, a collection of Klingon zealots devoted to the “Light of Kahless.” T’Kuvma speaks of Klingon unity, intending to light a beacon to reunite the twenty-four Klingon houses in opposition to the perceived threat of the Federation. It’s his ship, which is covered with coffins of his fallen countrymen, that emerges in the aftermath of Burnham’s skirmish, and poses the next major threat for Captain Georgiou.

Burnham consults with Ambassador Sarek, her adoptive father, and concludes that they should fire first -- claiming it’s the only language the Klingons understand. Saru advises retreat and caution, noting that the members of his species who survived did so because they could sense deadly situations, and he senses one now.

In the end, Burnham defies the chain of command, going so far as to give her captain the Vulcan nerve pinch and try to assume to command so as to fire on the enemy vessel. Georgiou recovers in time to halt her second-in-command, with the business end of a phaser, but by that point it doesn’t matter. T’Kuvma lights the beacon, and a swarm of Klingon ships emerge, heavily outgunning the crew of the U.S.S. Shenzhou before their backup has arrived.

It’s a hell of an opening statement from Discovery one that seems to run in the face Star Trek’s exploratory, diplomatic, peaceful ethos. (And it’s also a somewhat cheesy enticement to convince people to purchase CBS’s new subscription streaming service to catch the end of the cliffhanger.) But it’s also one poised to explore new wrinkles in Starfleet’s mission to patrol the galaxy and seek out new life and new civilizations. Humanity’s journey through the stars is not a painless one, but one fraught with beings who may attack on sight, who may not prove receptive to your message, who may disdain your very existence. There is a cost to roaming the frontier, a peril in the unknown, and Discovery’s first hour, brings that peril to the forefront.

But it also foregrounds the clash of civilizations idea that seems a likely throughline for the season. The series doesn’t open with a recitation of those hallowed words about five-year missions or boldly going where no one has gone before. It opens with a unifying demagogue rallying his people around the emptiness of the Starfleet mantra “we come in peace.” To T’Kuvma, the Federation is not the coming of paradise; it’s a threat to Klingon purity, to Klingon sanctity, that must be fended off before it engulfs all they believe in.

It calls to a sense of multiculturalism and a pushback among enclaves that fear their personal cultures will be overwritten in a fashion that’s all too relevant, as Star Trek should be, in light of current events. T’Kuvma isn’t afraid of Starfleet as a military threat; he’s afraid of it as a cultural one. A confederation that would blend humans, Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians is anathema to the Klingon hardliner who worries the same sort of melting pot will extinguish the unique Klingon identity.

That is what he’s fighting for. That’s why he tries to unify the warring houses. That’s his angry response to a broadening world that’s encroaching on his space.

These are weighty themes, and Discovery’s two part premiere -- “The Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” feels true to its roots by wrapping its explorations, space-battles, and hand-to-hand fights in those broader ideas. Despite that, it often falters in capturing the “feel” of Star Trek, for lack of a better term. The series says and does all the right things, introduces a compelling conflict, and throws in a few classic sound effects to soothe the diehards, but doesn’t yet feel of a piece with its forebears.

Part of that comes down to the series’ visuals. Make no mistake, this is the finest Star Trek has ever looked on the small screen. CBS and Paramount clearly spared no expense in terms of the production design, the special effects, and the kinetic action sequences that filter throughout the series’ opening salvo.

But that is, in a peculiar way, part of the issue. Despite officially existing as part of the “prime” Star Trek timeline, Discovery takes most of its visual cues from the J.J. Abrams reboot films. The Shenzou is a dark-tinted version of Chris Pine’s Enterprise, with a floor to ceiling viewscreen and holographic conversations with superior officers. Its frames are filled with dutch angles and even those notorious lens flares. The Klingons are more directly alien, looking more like spiky-headed demons than hairy brutes. Sarek is snootier, more condescending, less detached. The series’ opening credits are a page out of the Marvel Netflix playground rather than a visual journey through space.

This is a slicker, darker, fancier version of Star Trek. On the one hand, that’s an exciting, arguably necessary direction in which to evolve the franchise, but on the other, it just doesn’t feel like home yet.

It doesn’t help (though maybe it should) that the dialogue and performances are uneven across Discovery’s two-part premiere. As all opening episodes must do to some extent, there’s infodumps, “as you know”-style statements, and relationship-establishing scenes that stick out as the heavy machinery of T.V. storytelling being a little too visible behind the curtain. Comments like “The only word to describe it is ‘wow’” would make the writers of Contact blush. On-the-nose statements about choosing hope sting the ears. And while the hard-edged lyricism of Klingons and subtitles can cover for some of it, there’s plenty of the faux-profundity and stilted character declarations that have infected much of “serious” sci-fi of late.

That’s why I’m inclined to give Sonequa Martin-Green, the show’s lead, a bit of a pass for her weaker moments in the premiere. In The Walking Dead, Martin-Green was often grouped with characters who spoke with a certain fanciful verbiage and cadence. That lent itself to a theatrical, mannered tone in Martin-Green’s delivery which frequently carries over now that she’s made the leap from zombies to Xindi. But when not spitting out the premiere’s rougher dialogue, Martin-Green excels at selling confidence, desperation, and even Vulcan detachment creaking toward emotion to help carry the hour.

That’s helpful since her character’s personal journey makes up other main arc of the premiere, and presumably the series. Raised by Vulcans, living with humans, resentful of the Klingons, Michael Burnham exists at the inflection point between the species “A Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” center on. While the “they killed my parents” backstory is generic, and the connection to an established Star Trek family is strained, the notion of how Burnham balances her human heart with her Vulcan teachings and channels them toward a species whose terrorists made her an orphan is fruitful territory for the new series to explore.

It also connects with the attention Discovery pays to race, and the challenges of existing in multiple worlds but not finding full acceptance or understanding in either of them. Burham’s presence on the Shenzou is paralleled with Voq, an albino Klingon on T’Kuvma’s ship. He too is an orphan, one whose captain sees a unique value and potential in him, who faces challenges because of who he is and how he differs from those around him. Both Burnham and Voq lose a great deal in the battle that ensues, one spurred, in part, by how the two cultures view one another.

So much of Star Trek is about managing the risks of such encounters. The premiere of Discovery is good not great, with questionable visuals, performances, and writing. But the strength of the nascent show comes from its premise, from its themes, and from its willingness to confront the good and bad of that, animating, exploratory philosophy at the heart of the series.

There's a cost to roaming the frontier and trying to make first contact (or at least new contact) with alien species. More than a few folks in prior Star Trek incarnation paid the price for it, but outside of the occasional Tasha Yar, they were typically guest stars or redshirts whose demise carried less impact. Discovery features Starfleet commanders following the underlying principles of the Federation and suffering losses for it, while a relative outsider bristles against these tactics which, oddly enough, leave her sharing the philosophy of the Klingons she says should be attacked. Risk is still Star Trek’s business, but it can be a harsh business, where you are, what you stand for, and how you see the faces on the other side of the viewscreen can dictate whether you seek out new life, or end it.

[7.5/10] Risk is our business. That notable speech from Captain Kirk lays out the essential ethos of Star Trek as a franchise -- that the wild and wooly galaxy our heroes explore is full of dangers and pitfalls, but also full of unfathomable possibility, there to be discovered. The first two episodes of the aptly titled Star Trek Discovery bring this notion to the fore.

On one side is our protagonist, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), who relishes exploration, enjoys taking chances, and is ready to shoot first. On the other is Lt. Saru (Doug Jones), who hails from a species of alien prey, ever reluctant to mix things up. And in the middle is Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who has to find the middle ground between the two chief advisors whispering in her ear.

It’s the type of dynamic The Original Series relied upon heavily: Spock the cold logician, Bones the hot-blooded humanist, and Kirk the leader who had to somehow split the difference. But Discovery’s three-man band differs from its predecessors in more ways than just its welcome lack of monochrome. While the 1960s series often focused on how much logic versus emotion should go into decision-making, its successor, fifty-years later, seems focused on how much risk we should take, when our lives, and the lives of the people we care about, are on the line.

The fulcrum for that point of contention, as it so often is in Star Trek, is some unknown object in space giving the ship funny readings. Naturally, Burnham wants to go check it out; Saru wants to leave it alone, and Georgiou comes up with a measured response that allows for some investigation from her headstrong first-in-command, but with set limits meant to minimize the dangers as much as possible. While walking along the surface of the ancient object that defies scanning, Burnham encounters a Klingon “torchbearer,” bat’leth in tow, whom she kills in a moment of confrontation as she makes a desperate attempt at self-defense and escape.

The Klingon is part of T’Kuvma’s crew, a collection of Klingon zealots devoted to the “Light of Kahless.” T’Kuvma speaks of Klingon unity, intending to light a beacon to reunite the twenty-four Klingon houses in opposition to the perceived threat of the Federation. It’s his ship, which is covered with coffins of his fallen countrymen, that emerges in the aftermath of Burnham’s skirmish, and poses the next major threat for Captain Georgiou.

Burnham consults with Ambassador Sarek, her adoptive father, and concludes that they should fire first -- claiming it’s the only language the Klingons understand. Saru advises retreat and caution, noting that the members of his species who survived did so because they could sense deadly situations, and he senses one now.

In the end, Burnham defies the chain of command, going so far as to give her captain the Vulcan nerve pinch and try to assume to command so as to fire on the enemy vessel. Georgiou recovers in time to halt her second-in-command, with the business end of a phaser, but by that point it doesn’t matter. T’Kuvma lights the beacon, and a swarm of Klingon ships emerge, heavily outgunning the crew of the U.S.S. Shenzhou before their backup has arrived.

It’s a hell of an opening statement from Discovery one that seems to run in the face Star Trek’s exploratory, diplomatic, peaceful ethos. (And it’s also a somewhat cheesy enticement to convince people to purchase CBS’s new subscription streaming service to catch the end of the cliffhanger.) But it’s also one poised to explore new wrinkles in Starfleet’s mission to patrol the galaxy and seek out new life and new civilizations. Humanity’s journey through the stars is not a painless one, but one fraught with beings who may attack on sight, who may not prove receptive to your message, who may disdain your very existence. There is a cost to roaming the frontier, a peril in the unknown, and Discovery’s first hour, brings that peril to the forefront.

But it also foregrounds the clash of civilizations idea that seems a likely throughline for the season. The series doesn’t open with a recitation of those hallowed words about five-year missions or boldly going where no one has gone before. It opens with a unifying demagogue rallying his people around the emptiness of the Starfleet mantra “we come in peace.” To T’Kuvma, the Federation is not the coming of paradise; it’s a threat to Klingon purity, to Klingon sanctity, that must be fended off before it engulfs all they believe in.

It calls to a sense of multiculturalism and a pushback among enclaves that fear their personal cultures will be overwritten in a fashion that’s all too relevant, as Star Trek should be, in light of current events. T’Kuvma isn’t afraid of Starfleet as a military threat; he’s afraid of it as a cultural one. A confederation that would blend humans, Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians is anathema to the Klingon hardliner who worries the same sort of melting pot will extinguish the unique Klingon identity.

That is what he’s fighting for. That’s why he tries to unify the warring houses. That’s his angry response to a broadening world that’s encroaching on his space.

These are weighty themes, and Discovery’s two part premiere -- “The Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” feels true to its roots by wrapping its explorations, space-battles, and hand-to-hand fights in those broader ideas. Despite that, it often falters in capturing the “feel” of Star Trek, for lack of a better term. The series says and does all the right things, introduces a compelling conflict, and throws in a few classic sound effects to soothe the diehards, but doesn’t yet feel of a piece with its forebears.

Part of that comes down to the series’ visuals. Make no mistake, this is the finest Star Trek has ever looked on the small screen. CBS and Paramount clearly spared no expense in terms of the production design, the special effects, and the kinetic action sequences that filter throughout the series’ opening salvo.

But that is, in a peculiar way, part of the issue. Despite officially existing as part of the “prime” Star Trek timeline, Discovery takes most of its visual cues from the J.J. Abrams reboot films. The Shenzou is a dark-tinted version of Chris Pine’s Enterprise, with a floor to ceiling viewscreen and holographic conversations with superior officers. Its frames are filled with dutch angles and even those notorious lens flares. The Klingons are more directly alien, looking more like spiky-headed demons than hairy brutes. Sarek is snootier, more condescending, less detached. The series’ opening credits are a page out of the Marvel Netflix playground rather than a visual journey through space.

This is a slicker, darker, fancier version of Star Trek. On the one hand, that’s an exciting, arguably necessary direction in which to evolve the franchise, but on the other, it just doesn’t feel like home yet.

It doesn’t help (though maybe it should) that the dialogue and performances are uneven across Discovery’s two-part premiere. As all opening episodes must do to some extent, there’s infodumps, “as you know”-style statements, and relationship-establishing scenes that stick out as the heavy machinery of T.V. storytelling being a little too visible behind the curtain. Comments like “The only word to describe it is ‘wow’” would make the writers of Contact blush. On-the-nose statements about choosing hope sting the ears. And while the hard-edged lyricism of Klingons and subtitles can cover for some of it, there’s plenty of the faux-profundity and stilted character declarations that have infected much of “serious” sci-fi of late.

That’s why I’m inclined to give Sonequa Martin-Green, the show’s lead, a bit of a pass for her weaker moments in the premiere. In The Walking Dead, Martin-Green was often grouped with characters who spoke with a certain fanciful verbiage and cadence. That lent itself to a theatrical, mannered tone in Martin-Green’s delivery which frequently carries over now that she’s made the leap from zombies to Xindi. But when not spitting out the premiere’s rougher dialogue, Martin-Green excels at selling confidence, desperation, and even Vulcan detachment creaking toward emotion to help carry the hour.

That’s helpful since her character’s personal journey makes up other main arc of the premiere, and presumably the series. Raised by Vulcans, living with humans, resentful of the Klingons, Michael Burnham exists at the inflection point between the species “A Vulcan Hello” and “Battle at the Binary Stars” center on. While the “they killed my parents” backstory is generic, and the connection to an established Star Trek family is strained, the notion of how Burnham balances her human heart with her Vulcan teachings and channels them toward a species whose terrorists made her an orphan is fruitful territory for the new series to explore.

It also connects with the attention Discovery pays to race, and the challenges of existing in multiple worlds but not finding full acceptance or understanding in either of them. Burham’s presence on the Shenzou is paralleled with Voq, an albino Klingon on T’Kuvma’s ship. He too is an orphan, one whose captain sees a unique value and potential in him, who faces challenges because of who he is and how he differs from those around him. Both Burnham and Voq lose a great deal in the battle that ensues, one spurred, in part, by how the two cultures view one another.

So much of Star Trek is about managing the risks of such encounters. The premiere of Discovery is good not great, with questionable visuals, performances, and writing. But the strength of the nascent show comes from its premise, from its themes, and from its willingness to confront the good and bad of that, animating, exploratory philosophy at the heart of the series.

There's a cost to roaming the frontier and trying to make first contact (or at least new contact) with alien species. More than a few folks in prior Star Trek incarnation paid the price for it, but outside of the occasional Tasha Yar, they were typically guest stars or redshirts whose demise carried less impact. Discovery features Starfleet commanders following the underlying principles of the Federation and suffering losses for it, while a relative outsider bristles against these tactics which, oddly enough, leave her sharing the philosophy of the Klingons she says should be attacked. Risk is still Star Trek’s business, but it can be a harsh business, where you are, what you stand for, and how you see the faces on the other side of the viewscreen can dictate whether you seek out new life, or end it.

This episode is one of the best of the season, the writing and tension superb. There is not a single extraneous or wasted scene or moment, and the focus on the story unfolding remaining very sharp.

The salvage mission on the the Anubis by now feels familiar, but I'm glad it's the crew of the Rocinante doing the blowing up rather than running. What they uncover of course are more questions, and almost few answers.

The moment the crew of the Rocinante and Miller meet up in the Blue Falcon, in search of Lionel Polanski, is one of the high points of this season, and one that still thrills me although I think I've seen this episode three times at this writing.

Somehow, and there's a little voice that is telling me this, they will be together for a minute.

One has to feel some type of way for Miller. His heartbreak at finding his answers is heart wrenching. This is some major turning point for Miller. I'm not certain what is coming for him, but Julie Mao will be for him, what the Cant is for the crew of the Rocinante, and maybe for the whole solar system. Either way, this looks like kismet. Never mind the whole, "touch me again and there'll be another body on the floor," bit. It looks like kismet.

One of the things to appreciate with the season winding down, is how it has used detail and visual textures to build a convincing world and story. The little clues we've been getting are beginning to add up.

Listen, I am really digging Amos. He's the last of the Rocinante crew that I've gotten attached to, but I am really digging him.

After a lifetime of love for the Star Trek universe, it's hard to be impressed by some of the iterations between the end of Voyager, and the start of the recent movie reboots. As much as I love Scott Bakula, I panned "Enterprise" sometime after the first season, unable to find a way into the story or caring about that crew.

However, as if the showrunners of Discovery knew what, my intersectional heart was longing for. A powerful new female lead of colour (wearing her natural hair), in a very different take on the Federation and enemies of old. When I realised which enemy of old it was being reimagined—indeed, the extent to which the Federation has been a little reimagined—I became deeply impressed, moment by moment.

I'm uncertain if I like the makeup and costume design for the new 'Others' in the story, and the very 'colourfulness' of their ship interiors, but you know, I might just let it grow on me and see how it goes.

A word here on Sonequa Martin-Green's performance: Yes muh girl! Yes! I like you... A nuanced and compelling performance.

That said, this was an impressive opener. Oh CBS.. you play too much. They banned reviews to pique interest, and I am in for it. Here for it. I'm glad I took the chance and watched, and I'm glad to be so pleasantly surprised. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[7.6/10] Well, I guess I was wrong about last week’s episode replacing the improv-based interdimensional cable eps we’ve gotten previously. But I enjoy this entree full of bite-sized adventures for our heroes. It’s a throwback to Harmon’s “clip show but with new clips” bit from Community and fun to see the mini-stories thrown out rapid fire.

I particularly liked the opening pair of stories. Morty mistaking his new guidance counselor for a scary moon man is the sort of Bailey School Kids schtick with a Rick and Morty twist that really tickled my fancy. By the same token, turning the usual “humans trapped in an alien zoo” routine into a Contact-based hoodwinking is entertaining.

But I also really enjoyed the fact that Rick didn’t just zap away the memories of things that were too heavy for Morty to take; he zapped away his own minor mistakes, like the phrase “taken for granite,” not to mention things that implicate his family members, like Beth choosing Summer over Morty in her alien Sophie’s Choice scenario.

While most of the stories were amusing in that black comic way the show’s mastered, it feels like they’re all another brick in the wall of Morty getting tired of Rick’s bullshit, and the rest of the family’s bullshit too. The twist that both Rick and Morty lose their memories and have to use the vials to figure out who they are revitalizes the premise a bit, but also leads to the bleak realization that after seeing all that stuff, the pair want to have a suicide pact.

It’s played mainly for laughs, with Summer barging in on them and refueling their memories in a desultory fashion like she’s had to do this dozens of times, but like most episodes of the show, it finds the humor in something that, at its core, is pretty damn dark. (And then “no wonder you guys fight all the time and are always behind schedule” sounds like a not so veiled bit of self-commentary about Harmon and Roiland, which is a little discouraging.)

Overall, it’s a fun, rapid-fire premise for an episode that allows the show to deliver its humor and demented scenarios in quick hit format, but which still uses the form to offer a commentary on its two core characters, what they’ve seen, and the frustrations and vanity and ego that drives them to want to end it all. The fact that the show can wring comedy from that is just another pelt on the wall of its achievements.

[7.0/10] This season ends as it began. That’s not just to say that Lynch and Frost go back to the beginning, with repeated scenes from “The Return”’s opening foray back in the Red Lodge, or that we return once more to the Palmer house where, depending on how you interpret “Part Eight” the instigating events of Twin Peaks started. It’s also to say that I have to rate this thing at a flat seven because, once more, I just have no idea what to make of the possible final bow for this show.

But I can tell you what I both admire and frustrate about it. This was not a traditional season/quasi-series finale. This wasn’t the culmination of everything that had come before (which “Part Seventeen” came closer to.) It wasn’t some triumphant or tidy bit of narrative housekeeping that gave everything meaning and summed up what had come before, even to the extent that the at times mystifying Season 2 finale did.

Instead, it was something entirely different than the Twin Peaks that we’ve come to know over forty seven episodes. It is weird and unknowable in the way that the best of Twin Peaks can be, but not in a way that really harkens back to the other red room or otherwise supernatural shenanigans we’ve seen so far.

Rather, it captures a feeling, one that seems to draw a connection to however and wherever Audrey is trapped. Here is Dale Cooper, restored once more, but finding himself waking up in a familiar yet foreign place. He’s drawn to certain places and names -- Judy’s diner, the face of Laura Palmer -- but the world doesn’t recognize him. Names are different. Everything is so close, to present, but also so just out of reach.

I’ve said before that I think Lynch is oftentimes a pretty crappy storyteller. His characters are hit and miss and his plots sputter and stall to the extent they’re worthwhile in the first place. But he is an almost incomparable crafter of moods, of these motifs and atmospheres that provoke something in you even if you’re not sure where, if anywhere, all of this is going.

“Part Eighteen” captures that sense of alienation, the sense of (again, as Audrey putting it) dreamlike arena where you know what you’re supposed to do and where you’re supposed to be, but something feels wrong, everything you know and want and think is important is lingering at the edge of the frame.

So much of Lynch’s oeuvre has involved capturing the surrealism of dreams, the way that one thought leaps into the next without transition or comprehension. But here, he captures a very different sort of dreamlike state -- the one where you live a different life, inhabit a different body, and everything seems normal enough, but the settings are miscalibrated, the world isn’t as it should be, and you can just barely wrap your hands around the sense that there’s somewhere else, something else you’re supposed to be, but that fought can find no purchase where you are.

It’s a finale with very little closure. We get no confirmation on what’s happening with Audrey. We’re left to wonder about what the implication and, moreover, the point, of Steven and Becky’s story is. We don’t know what happens in Twin Peaks after The Good Dale and cockney Iron Fist save the day. (Or do we?) While “Part Seventeen” closed off a surprising number of loose ends, there’s still so much that’s so up in the air or unclear after the show’s final hour which is, I suspect, how Lynch and Frost like it.

You do have Mike making a new Dougie and depositing him with the Joneses, in one of the few scenes that not only evinces a sense of finality, but also one of heartening sentiment. The other comes with the equivalent of Cooper’s last meal with Dianne. There’s the sense that the two of them know that what Cooper did, his saving Laura from her grisly end, changed something, and that whatever it means to cross over, to go past that spot -- the same place The Bad Dale (who’s consumed in black flame here) seemed to be driving -- exactly 430 miles away, will change it. Dale and Diane get to have one last moment of happiness, one respite from the time and distance in which they’ve been separated, to enjoy that bliss, scored to the dulcet tones of The Platters no less.

Despite that musical high point, “Part Eighteen” is a surprisingly quiet, languid episode. My mind drew back to Shadow of the Colossus, a large, often empty video game filled with far away destinations and long sojourns that force the player to reflect on their task and their role in these events during the journey. The Season 3 finale embraces the same idea, not populating its world with the chatter of conversation or the gooey riffs of Angelo Badalamenti’s soundtrack or even much of the electric hum that’s zapped through so much of the show.

Instead, it offers those hollowing silences, where the road rumbles beneath and the dim lights of the highway peeking through an enveloping darkness. “Part Eighteen” is devoted to the scariness of that silence, the places where unnerving thoughts creep in and disturb or peace. More than painting his own portraits, Lynch in some ways offers an empty canvas, one where we’re left to fill in the disturbed blanks rolling around in the minds of Agent Cooper and Carrie Page.

And then comes the punctuation, the return to Twin Peaks but one that doesn’t feel like the warm place with a dark underbelly that we know and feel comfortable with. Whether it’s shot differently or just put in a different context, the place feels alien. As the camera seems to float up the steps of what we know as the Palmer house, there’s a sense of foreboding, of pulling at the wrong threads, or not being able to pull at them hard enough.

There’s clues. The woman who answers is the door gives her last name as Tremond, and says she bought her house from a woman named Mrs. Chalfont, both names used by the elderly woman who guided Laura in Fire Walk with Me and was served meals on wheels by Donna in Season 2. But they only serve to further disorient. Dale stumbles, almost like Dougie, realizing he’s not sure what year it is, or what realm the forces of Twin Peaks may have deposited him in.
Carrie looks up at that house one last time. Certain names, certain faces, sparked something in her, something that prompts her to ask what’s happening. And in the shadow of the house where so much abuse was visited upon Laura Palmer, the horrible truth seems to wash over her brain, and she lets out one last ear-piercing, blood-curdling screech, as the place seems to pop out and shut down in an instant, one last chilling images to make your heart skip a beat in this alternatively stultifying and unnerving show.

After forty eight episodes, I still don’t know if I like Twin Peaks, if the balance of those stupefying moments and those horrifying moments and those interminable moments and those transcendent moments comes out in the show’s favor or not. It is a show with deep flaws, either ignored or praised, but also a singularness that few series have grazed, let alone matched. It can indulgent, hokey, and downright dumb, but also weird, terrifying, and irrepressible when its stars align.

Its finale represents that, the head-scratch, unpredictability of the show, the long pauses that may leave you checking your watch, but also the strange mood that the show at its best could evoke. Twin Peaks is never going to be a show that makes sense, or even really wants to, but one deeply concerned with how it makes you feel. And that means it’s hard to know whether it’s good or bad, or even whether you like it or not, but it is there, and it lingers with you, like reality lurking on the edge of a dream, present and transfixing whether you seek it or shun it or just sit and wonder what it all means.

[7.0/10] Well, I’m back to giving flat sevens to “The Return” as a shrug, because I have no idea how to rate this thing, which is, I think, a good thing. But when lost in a sea of images and scenes you’re not sure you understand, it makes sense to return to the very basics, so let’s go with what I liked and didn’t like.

I liked the reveal that the eyeless woman was, in fact, the real Dianne. A good reveal should recontextualize what the audience has already seen in an interesting and natural way, and the Dianne reveal does that. It makes sense how she would try to communicate with Coop in the nether realm and endeavor to get back to the real world. It makes sense that The Bad Dale would try to hide her away as part of his plan in order to have someone close to the real Cooper on his side in her place. (And the change in hair color to signify the difference was a sort of easy choice that nevertheless worked really well.)

And somehow, despite the fact that we’ve never actually seen the two of them together before, there was something really heartwarming and cathartic about Cooper and Dianne kissing. Dianne was always an unseen but clearly felt presence in the original run of Twin Peaks, and so I can accept the two of them as an OTP. There’s enough hints of something there in the past, and a sense that they’ve been separated for so long that it works.

I did not really like Freddy with the green glove Iron Fisting the Bob orb into shards. It’s fine as a nuts and bolts “we have to move the plot forward” sort of thing, but there’s just no emotion there. I do appreciate how they worked around the death of Frank Silva, and the zooming and biting put the Bob Orb in line with the shapeless form that killed those two young people in the premiere. But I don’t really care about Freddy, and if anything, despite the weirdness, it felt like more of a superhero film solution to this problem than a more off-kilter Twin Peaks resolution to it. (Though I would have been perfectly satisfied if he merely punched the jail cell to knock out Chad and get the rest of the gang in place -- that was a nice moment.)

I did like that Lucy gets a chance to save the day in a scene that seems to call back to Andy pulling a similar trick with Jacques Renault. The quick draw where The Bad Dale shoots Frank Truman’s hat but Lucy takes him out is a little cheesy, but it worked to hold the tension in the moment. Hell, as much her and Andy’s antics have annoyed me in the past, I even got a kick out of her line about understanding how cellular phones work now (all it took was an explanation from The Good Dale)! I’ve given my fair of crap to Lynch and Frost for seemingly pointless nonsense (and granted, there’s still plenty of it) but I’m impressed at how many of their digressions have actually had relevant payoffs.

I did not particularly care for The Bad Dale’s journey into the White Lodge. There’s lots of ways to interpret it (and it’s striking seeing the floating head of Major Briggs there), but The Giant putting his face in a cage and sending him to the sheriff’s office via the same device he once used to send the Laura orb to Earth just didn’t click with me for some reason.

Still, I did like the prophecy/clockwork element to the climax here. Presumably, The Giant acted to get everyone in the right place at the right time, hence keeping Mr. C out of the White Lodge and sending him back to Twin Peaks. Sure enough, at 2:53, the forces align to get everyone where they need to be at the sheriff’s office. Twin Peaks has always had an interesting sense of time dilation, but I like that enough folks picked up on Major Briggs’ hints to get the players in place to banish The Bad Dale, revive Dianne, and set the next step in motion.

And yet, there was something kind of unsatisfying about it that I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s that I think I wanted a scene with The Good Dale confronting The Bad Dale, just to see Kyle MacLachlan act against himself. Maybe it’s that the key to defeating Bob (however temporarily) turns out to be a green gloved rando rather than anything one of the better known characters did.

But in some ways, Twin Peaks thrives on anticlimax and subversion, and I can admire that even if it leaves me cold. I can easily see Lynch & Frost delighting in the notion that they set up this seemingly inevitable, epic showdown, and it comes down to a gunshot from Lucy and some punches from a kid in a gardening glove we only met three episodes ago. It might be a stretch, but I think it’s speaks to a point about the inscrutability of the will of the gods and the randomness of life, that even seemingly unremarkable folk like the Brennans and Freddy can have a vital role to play in the face of cosmic events.

I did not, however, like the sense of a sort of drive by reunion we got once the major threat had been eliminated. Maybe we’ll get more in the final episode, but after waiting so long to get the real Cooper back, and to reunite him with an (admittedly kind of contrived) collection of nearly every major character from the town in the same room, we get some stilted, oddly written remembrances (i.e. statements along the lines of “your dad saw to all of this, Bobby”) without ever really having a chance for the real Coop to actually reunite with anyone other than Dianne. That’s pretty unsatisfying, and maybe that’s intentional, but it’s also a bit frustrating.

That semi-wooden dialogue is part and parcel with some odd expositional moments in this. I don’t know how I feel about the explanation that “Judy” is “Juh-Deh” some ancient dark force (presumably the same one that we saw birthing the Bob orb, destroying those kids in the premiere, and maybe lurking inside Sarah Palmer?). It feels a little too neat for Twin Peaks, and having Cole just give an info dump about it seems odd too. (Plus I could swear I read somewhere that Judy was supposed to be Josey’s sister, not that Lynch & Frost aren’t allowed to change directions from an original plan that never made it to the screen.)

It’s also a bit odd that Gordon Cole and Diane could follow Coop into the furnace-y area that James stumbled onto earlier, but no one else could. I guess to just give them an extra moment to say goodbye? I do like that the Great Northern hotel room key served a purpose (another bit of payoff) in granting Cooper access to the Room Above a Convenience Store, though the sequence itself wasn’t nearly as striking as when The Bad Dale visited there a few episodes ago.

Really, that whole sequence is kind of a mixed bag. There’s plenty to like, with nice moodiness and the melancholy of saying goodbye, but also lots of stuff that doesn’t quite work, like Mike repeating the same old “Fire Walk with Me” poem and more time spent with the enchanted tea pot version of Philip Jeffries making smoke signals in the air.

That said, I loved the tack the episode takes after that. Having spent time in the Lodge, having understood more of the geometry and possibility of this place, Cooper sets out to erase the horrible event that started this all -- the death of Laura Palmer. There’s great symbolic resonance in that -- in the eternal battle between good and evil that has been waged over the course of Twin Peaks, Cooper tries to shortcircuit it at the beginning, to prevent any of these events from happening in the first place.

There’s something affectingly elliptical about that, the notion of Cooper giving up all the life-changing things, good and bad, that happened to him because of Laura’s death, and wipe them away to prevent the instigating evil of the series from taking root. (Granted, he probably should have gone back sooner to stop Leland/Bob, but I’m willing to give the show some leeway in making this more of a symbolic beat than a purely consequential “would you kill baby Hitler?” type deal.) There is a great sense of catharsis in that, in Cooper saving Laura from her fate, while simultaneously erasing all the events the audience has seen over the past twenty-five years. It’s a gusty move from Lynch and Frost, and I admire it.

I also admire how well they integrated Cooper into the decades-old Fire Walk with Me footage and managed to connect it to present footage. Maybe I just need a better TV, but I was impressed at how well they stitched together old scenes and new scenes to make something that feels genuine to what we saw in the film, but also advances the history-changing narrative of the episode in a striking visual way, replete with the body wrapped in plastic disappearing.

I don’t know to feel about the ending, or what to make of it. That ear-splitting shriek can still scare the life out of you, and Cooper and Laura’s trip to (presumably) gastonberry grove in the past is a nicely moody one, filled with the sense of Laura’s distress and possible release an Cooper filled with the righteous, spiritual sense of trying to right past wrongs. But why Laura disappears, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe you can’t change fate, or even saving Laura from being killed still sends her to a difficult place regardless? Someone brighter than me will have to figure that out.

But I can tell you one thing -- I’m still not on board with Julee Cruise reprising her spacy warbling for the show again. Frankly, that goes for all the music in the episode, which understandably reverts to using much of the score from the original series that always put me off sonically. That, however, can be chalked up to taste, and even if it takes me out of some scenes (Cooper’s reunion with Dianne was nearly ruined by that so-cheesy-it-hurts backing track), I can accept it as a part of the show’s DNA.

Overall, this is unquestionably a momentous episode, filled with playoffs and climaxes and challenging new directions to take the narrative. What it amounts to, what it means, and whether it’s any good is something that I just can’t answer. But it got me talking (not necessarily a challenge) and also thinking (maybe more of a challenge) so it’s certainly worth something. Maybe the final episode will help crystalize it all and make things clearer, though knowing Lynch, I’m not holding my breath.

[9.0/10] Best Twin Peaks episode ever? Because I think this might be the best Twin Peaks episode ever.

What makes it so great, you ask? Or so much better than other Twin Peaks episodes.

Well, first off, it was almost all Cooper. The episode starts off with The Bad Dale luring his (officially confirmed) son to a set of coordinates he’s been given twice, and turns Richard Horne into his guinea pig. It’s just the latest abuse of a parent against a child in Twin Peaks, and the callousness with which Mr. C lures his offspring to the top of that rock, only to respond dispassionately when he’s zapped to bits (a trap laid by Phillip Jeffries?) speaks to the depth of the uncaring evil that lurks within Dark Dale.

And wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, there was a bloody point to the whole Jerry Horne getting lost in the woods bit of (seeming) nonsense! Or at least a payoff to it! He’s there to witness his own grand-nephew’s demise at the hands of a man who at least looks an awful like Agent Cooper. While he chastises the binoculars for what he saw with them in a sort of strange, not particularly funny manner, the fact that there was a point to his presence in this narrative at all is kind of amazing.

That’s another facet of what made this episode great -- payoff. After so many teases, so much stumbling around and going down detours, Twin Peaks actually gets down to brass tax and advances the major parts of the story. After fifteen long episodes of waiting, the real Dale Cooper is back in business, and it’s an absolute thrill. I could do without the old Twin Peaks score being piped in for his dramatic return (call me a heretic, I’ve never cared for Angelo Badalamenti’s work on the show) seeing The Good Dale back in action again is great.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the escapades of Dougie, but seeing the good-hearted and competent man take charge of the situation, see the hearts of gold in bosses, kids, and gangasters alike, and confidently race his way to a Casino rendezvous to get to Twin Peaks is a hell of a catharsis after all the trekking it took to get him there. MacLachlan hasn’t lost a step, instantly summoning the old special agent (I nearly fistpumped when he said “I am the FBI”) and bringing him to life once more.

But another element that makes this episode great is not just that Cooper returns, it’s that he returns with the combination of joy and sadness that would naturally follow from this bizarre situation. Twin Peaks has rarely been heartwarming for me -- with its attempts at that vein of sentiment tending to fall flat. But Cooper telling Janey and Sonny Jim that his heart is full from the time he spent with them, and his deal with Mike to make another copy to give the two of them their Dougie back, are the acts of the kind-hearted, decent man that Coop always was.

Still, there’s pathos in that moment, because unwittingly or not, The Good Dale has turned the lives of the Joneses around. He’s solved their problems, financial or otherwise. Fulfilled Janey’s needs as a husband and Sonny Jim’s as a father. Intuitively or not, the Joneses realize they’re losing him, that they’re going back to the overweight, gambling, prostitute-visiting man they lived with before. (Though who knows, maybe Mike can make a better man this time.) The last hug among them, the last kiss between “Dougie” and Janey has meaning because what we as the audience have gained with Cooper’s return is someone else’s loss.

That said, the other reaction-based facet of “Part Sixteen” that sets this installment apart (and, if I’m being a bit snarky, sets it apart from much of Twin Peaks) is that it’s really damn funny. I just loved the scene featuring the standoff between Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and the machine gun-wielding neighbor annoyed that they’re blocking his driveway. There’s such an incredible rhythm and absurdity to the scene, with the FBI staking out the Jones’s house, the Mitchums coming to deliver food, and the neighbor casually interfering in this confluence of gangsters and law enforcement.

And, once more, through no action of his own, a threat to Dougie Jones’s life goes away. There’s is something so delightfully insane about that, the way that problems keep solving themselves, suggesting some form of providence or at least a universe filled with gods with a wry sense of humor. It’s appropriate that that unmarked van reunited two stars of The Hateful Eight because there’s a Tarantino-esque mix of bulletfire, coincidence, and dry remarks that made this a stand out scene among stand out scenes. Hell, even the dialogue was great, with one of the Mitchum’s remarking “people are very stressed these days” and some great reactions from Jim Belushi of all people, both to that line and the explanation for where Cooper comes from.

It’s not all smiles and catharsis though. We get a tense, well-done scene from Dianne, revealing what happened between her and The Bad Dale that fateful night. Only an actor the caliber of Laura Dern could pull off having to command and convey the meaning of a monologue like that and not have it seem overwrought or maudlin. The reveal that not only did Mr. C sexually assault Dianne, but that she too is “manufacture” like Dougie was is a startling one, and Dern owns it the whole way through, wrestling with the realization of what she is and what was done to her. The fact that she give Mike a defiant “fuck you” on her way out is the icing on the cake.

And last but not least, we even get a payoff (or at least the hint of one) for why the goings on with Audrey have been so bizarre over the last few episodes. Whether she’s in a coma or another realm or something else entirely, it seems like she’s not in a real place, instead trapped somewhere that makes her realizes why she’s been feeling unlike herself, why nothing feels right. It gives the show a chance to have Audrey reprise her famous dance, and the strangeness of what seems like the usual episode-ending musical number turning into swinging, swaying tribute to her sultry sashay of old works wonderfully.

That musical fake out even works well, as Eddie Vedder (using an odd stage name) warbles out a topical tune about having lost who you were and being unable to get it back. Cooper has lost twenty-five years of his life, Audrey may have lost the same, and the Joneses are losing something too. But maybe, just maybe, something good is around the corner, whether at the local sheriff’s station or elsewhere. If Twin Peaks can deliver something this great, anything’s possible.