At this pace, something noticeable will happen in about 10 episodes. If producers want to induce boredom with this show, its a success.
I would have liked it more if the sword or the caves were messing with their minds in some artificial way. Kor going mental I would maybe understand, but Worf suddenly lusting for power, that didn't sit well with me at all.
This season feels so disjointed. It still has heart but so much of the season is unearned. I'm sure I'll enjoy the finale but they are ending the show at the right time. The chaeacters are proving to be paper thin in season 3.
They do a lot of things right in season 3. Definitely improved over season 2. Well-balanced A, B, C plots involving a lot of different issues. I like that the girls have stories in their own right. I only wish they got the soccer part right. The pitch seems wrong, the game seems wrong, match preparation seems wrong. I blame bad FX. But it's also everything around the game: You don't present your matchplan on match day. I mean, it's not supposed to be a documentary about pro soccer. I get this. But an infusion of some more realism would probably make the show better.
that was the fakest whaaaat i ever heard lmao great job from billy
Didn't Clarissa's implant stuff use to look better? :thinking:
Yo who TF talks during Paddington. Have some respect for a masterpiece
Stellar premiere, not missing a beat from last season, with two great surprise cameos. Benedict Wong looks to have so much fun, and man, Haley Joel Osment gives all in lol.
It's insulting how fun this show is. Best high fantasy series in recent memory
I liked how many conversations you can have simply with “hmmmmmmmmm” - “hmmm!!” - “hmm...hmm!”, and “yeeeeeessssss”. Highly enjoyable, yessssss?
[9.2/10] One of the problems I often have with The Original Series is tone. It’s the sort of show that will play some confrontation for high drama, only to immediately jump to something campy. Or, as in “The Changeling,” it’ll present a tense, lethal standoff with a seemingly unbeatable foe, only to have Kirk close the episode by making some lame joke that everybody laughs at right before he presumably has to go notified the families of his dead crewmen. There’s nothing wrong with blending tones in principle, but it can be tricky, and the sort of whiplash it creates has hurt many a Star Trek episode.
But “I, Mudd”, by contrast, knows exactly what tone it wants to have -- absurd delight -- and it makes the most of that animating spirit. While I’m not always on the same wavelength of this show when it comes to comedy, the humorous bent of this episode worked on me like gangbusters. I have seen cleverer Star Trek episodes; I have seen deeper Star Trek episodes; I have seen more affecting Star Trek episodes. But I don't think I've ever seen a Star Trek episode made out of more pure, broadly comic delight than "I, Mudd."
That begins with the title character. I had mixed feelings about Ol’ Harcourt in “Mudd’s Women,” but I loved him here. Roger C. Carmel digs into the role with relish, playing Mudd as an oily, outsized, living cartoon character. The way he preens, boasts, takes theatrical offense to Kirk’s insults, just makes him this broad but ebullient presence throughout the proceedings. There’s little doubt that Star Trek is going for big comedy here, but Mudd is a character who can withstand it, even channel it, to wonderful comic ends. It’s a shame that (I think) we won’t see him again until The Animated Series.
But as much fun as Mudd is in and of himself, his best material comes from his interactions with the rest of the crew, Kirk in particular. When Mudd relays how he escaped from his predicament after Rigel 12, his increasing, flabbergasted annoyance at Kirk calling him out on his self-aggrandizing euphemism is superb. The dynamic between the captain and the huckster is particularly well-written here, and it livens each moment the two men share the screen. Beyond that, his exchange with Spock over “selling fake patents to your mother” nicely blends Mudd’s over-the-top expressivism and the consistently great dry comedy of the Vulcan officer.
In the midst of all these great laughs and the superb character-based comedy, “I, Mudd” manages to include a pretty great little sci-fi story to boot. It’s not an especially novel one for Star Trek. We’ve done ancient robots before; we’ve done not being able to leave a planet before; and we’ve done defeat via logical paradox before. Still, there’s enough wrinkles to this one, Mudd included, to make the adventure down on the planet interesting.
Part of that comes from the androids’ “kill ‘em with kindness approach.” Star Trek goes full Asimov here, with the robots realizing that if their duty is to serve man, then the logical endpoint of that duty is to make sure that their guests can never leave so that the androids can make them as happy as possible. What makes that tack interesting is that in contrast to some of the other threats the crew of The Enterprise has faced, these robots are trying to tempt our heroes rather than cow them.
Uhura is offered indelible beauty and immortality (a prospect they raise against nicely as part of the later feint). Unexpected lothario Chekov (seriously, as much as Kirk’s reputation with alien ladies proceeds him, it’s Chekov who always seems to be macking on someone) is waited on by a pair of beautiful ladies with oblique hints that he can do with them what he will. Bone is amazed at the medical lab the robots have, and Scotty feels the same about their engineering shop. It’s not quite the same as “The Menagerie” or, god help me, “The Apple,” but Trek explores the conflict between paradise and freedom with commitment.
Still, it’s just as committed to making the loony most of the predicament presented. While the interconnected artificial beings (paging The Borg) feels like an excuse for a typical “we have to destroy the controlling hub!” solution, it’s the shape that solution takes that really elevates the episode. While the “short circuit the android with contradictions” is a cliché at this point, the way the crew does it -- by acting weird -- is utterly delightful.
To be frank, it feels like a Futurama solution (which is, I fully admit, putting the horse before the cart). It is easy to imagine the Planet Express crew facing a group of logic-bound androids and deciding the best way to make them explode is to be goofy and crazy, just as the Enterprise crew did here. And the way Kirk and company pull it off is delightful.
The manic joy in the eyes of the gang as Chekov and Uhura dance while Bones and Scotty play imaginary instruments and Kirk conducts is just perfect. Chekov being told to stay still and instead doing a little pirouette is amazing. Spock telling identical androids that he hates one and loves the other because of their similarities, or offering beatnik poetry about logic being a tweeting bird or a wreath of awful-smelling flowers has particular comic force coming from him. And the group’s pantomime of the explosives and other imagination game that prove to be too much for the robots show a comedic verve and commitment to silliness that really paid dividends.
In the midst of all this silliness, “I, Mudd” offers a trite but still well-observed take on humanity -- that as much as these artificial creatures may want to study us, there is an inherent, illogical contradiction baked into the human condition, whether in the form of enjoying captivity while wanting to be free, or loving and hating at once, or being able to be enmeshed in real danger while embracing the irreverence of the imagination, that is too much for any purely logical creature to understand.
Part of that contradiction is being able to take a television show committed to drama and danger, albeit a fairly campy one, and spend an episode that blends that sort of adventure with broadly comic goofball antics. Mudd being surrounded by a trio of copies of his scolding wife (who, in a nod to the casting director and costumers, looks like an appropriately severe woman) is the right ridiculous note to go out on. Star Trek doesn’t always get this silly or this comedically exaggerated, but when it does, it’s an absolute joy.
Excellent episode but Kirk really has an eject ion pod button on his console that seems very situation specific.
A reasonably funny episode, but the ending really bummed me out. Is S10 gonna be another dream season, this time in space? Please no, just conclude the actual story.
I loved it but why did they make Videl so fugly?!?!?!?!
༼ つ ಥ_ಥ ༽つ
I thought for sure O'Brien was hustling Quark.
My girl ate the whole city in a day to reset her palate.
Tim Baltz is such a highlight... he's on for 2 minutes but he's on my mind for the whole ep
Just like the previous episode, this one wasn't that enjoyable. This season seems to be declining in enjoyment, for me. Don't get your feelings in a twist. As far as being funny, I hardly have considered that to be so. What elevated it for me was that it was enjoyable to watch. That seems to be less so than when the season began. Maybe a factor that plays into that is that it is already to its end. Well, close. The next episode is the finale, not this one. I don't know, maybe this show is the type of show that's best to be taken in when I've been away from it for a while. That seemed to be why I was very entertained at the start of this season, after having watched the first one long enough before that. I'm almost glad that it'll be over in just one more episode.
Huge uptick in quality from last episode, Colin Robinson is an amazing sidekick but having an episode focused on him still worked really well.
.. a seemingly tepid response to mass murder I thought
The humor continues to be almost non-existent, and a pattern that I first noticed in the season premiere just gets more and more pronounced. Specifically, this is a 19-minute outing (if you don't count the credits) and it contains 16 goddammits and three Jesuses and eight shits. (It's easy to let a subtitles file do the counting for you after the fact.) So while the humor content drops, the vulgarity/profanity content goes through the roof. Yes, of course the show has always had it, but not to this degree, and not combined with such a dearth of funny stuff to go along with it. There also used to be a subtlety to some things that just isn't there anymore. In short, this continues to be a disappointing season.
[7.7/10] Plenty of great stuff in this one. Anytime Leslie has a moral dilemma, particularly one as low stakes as whether to fib about whether the possum she caught is the possum, it makes for a good episode. Leslie’s struggle with whether to take the credit for nabbing “Fairway Frank” and pick up a chit from the mayor’s office in the process, or to be honest that she’s not sure if it’s really him and save a potentially innocent possum is a good one. It has great talking head segments (like the one about Leslie asking herself questions) and other fun stuff like her frantic insistence that April help.
April’s help is a nice deal too. She worries about the fact that Andy caught the possum, because Shawna Malway-Tweep suggests it might win him Anne back. Andy’s boasting and preening in front of “the press” and April’s quiet frustration makes for a nice contrast. And her and Leslie freaking out and hiding and chasing when the possum gets loose in Anne’s house makes for some great comic setpieces. (The same goes for Tom fleeing in a panic as soon as he sees the possum.)
The B-story is a good one too. Mark helping Ron get his woodshop up to code, despite Ron’s insistence that the city code shouldn’t apply to him and his libertarian leanings is another great instance of Ron bending his own principles a little bit because someone is being kind to him. His smile after running the book with the city code in it through a saw and the perturbed noise he makes when he has to then go back and try to read it are both great. It’s a nice Mark-Ron story, which we don’t get much of. (Sidenote: I didn’t expect to have this reaction on rewatch, but I’ve actually really enjoyed Mark as the straight man this season. Still love what happens next, but I wish we’d gotten to maintain at least a little of that.)
Overall, it’s a very funny episode that has great character moments for Leslie, Ron, and April, which makes it a-okay in my book.
what the hell with the thick lines ? that episode looked so cheap :(
Pros
+ Jaime and Bronn stuff
+ Jorah Mormont
+ Sparrows going HAAM
+ Stannis confirmed for greatest daddy ever
+Jon and Melisandre
Cons
- Littlefinger's plan gets dumber and dumber as the season progresses
- The sons of the Harpy shit
- Sand Snakes are somehow even bigger pieces of shit than they were in the books
- Still no Greyjoy brothers, Young Griff, Quiet Isle priest, or Quentyn (aka the best parts of the 4th and 5th books)
Yeah, this is absolute gold
I thought it was kind of boring. It would have worked better as a B plot rather than a full episode.
Another stunning episode.
Ramin Djawadi's music took me back to the atmospheres of some GOT (g)old episodes like 5x10. Even the ending kinda remembers that situation of kings and crowd closed together inside a building that could mean death for everyone.
Up for the Queen that never was, down for some CGI scenes (and it's not the first time this season). But, WOW.
Still not bad, but the worst episode of the season by a long shot. The comedy just felt very broad and not refined.
