Spoilers Is Picard season 2 a failure?
- Thread starter Ometiklan
- Start date
I'm not sure where I stand on it yet. I think it'll either have a charm to it, or it'll get old really fast.
I mean, maybe? It could strike an odd balance depending on the writer.
SEASON ONE vs. SEASON TWO is interesting because my take on the subject is that everything Season One did wrong, Season Two does right and everything Season One did right, Season Two did wrong. Of the two, I'm inclined to think I like Season One better but I certainly think both seasons of Picard are excellent Star Trek and better than DISCO but not quite as enjoyable as Lower Decks for me. I like both much better than Enterprise and a good half of Voyager.
Really, the problem plaguing both seasons is the fact that it really can't rid itself of its HBO-ness. The incessant need to be Game of Thrones that is plaguing so many streaming services. There's a lot more darkness than there really needs to be and while I'm giving Patrick Stewart a pass for giving Picard a Victorian novel backstory (his mother is pretty much the madwoman from Jane Eyre), there's still a lot of mood whiplash going on.
Really, the problem plaguing both seasons is the fact that it really can't rid itself of its HBO-ness. The incessant need to be Game of Thrones that is plaguing so many streaming services. There's a lot more darkness than there really needs to be and while I'm giving Patrick Stewart a pass for giving Picard a Victorian novel backstory (his mother is pretty much the madwoman from Jane Eyre), there's still a lot of mood whiplash going on.
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So far, my only real criticisms of PIC S2 are:
- The bit with the FBI agent doesn't seem to have led to much apart from Q's scene with Guinan
- In general, I would have preferred S2 to continue with S1's premise of being a more psychologically-driven instead of having so much sci-fi bullshit, but if you're gonna have sci-fi bullshit this one is executing it pretty well
- The implications of the Maurice/Yvette flashbacks are troubling. It makes PIC seem to be depicting bipolar disorder as untreatable/uncurable in the 24th Century. The whole bit where we first think Maurice is abusive and then realize he was "just doing the best he could" seems to be evoking the trope of the put-upon reasonable man and the hysterical/crazy woman, which is often a misogynistic trope. And I really find the way it depicts Maurice as being reasonable for locking Yvette up in their home instead of pursuing some sort of medical help to be troublesome. It would all work a lot better for me if there was a line along the lines of, "My father may have thought he was doing the best he could, but he still did something terrible. He should have asked for help. By locking her up and not getting medical help, he still hurt her."
Speaking as someone who deals with bipolar relatives in RL, there's the fact many bipolar people do not seek help because they don't feel they are sick in the first place. In this case, it's explictly stated that Yvette is against seeking treatment for her condition. Which is 100% true to life and something I've had to deal with multiple times with my relatives. And I think Maurice is NOT shown to have been in the right because his wife WASN'T suicidal until her husband locked her up.
Which apparently triggered the mother of all depressive episodes.
And yes, its pretty likely that the real lesson of this is that Maurice and Yvette were 24th century "antivaxxers" who got themselves into a huge tragedy by avoiding medical treatment for something they could probably cure quite easily even without genetic engineering.
I mean Maurcie's actions led to his wife's suicide. Do we need it spelled out he screwed up?
Wow that's a small price to pay. 1 show to satisfy the millions of Disco and Picard haters. They would finaly have something to enjoy watching and write positive things about.
That would shut them up. Thus everyone would have a version of a Star Trek show to enjoy or ignore. If only they knew how to, or wanted to "make it so".
I mean they will hate it. It doesn't matter what the content is. It's on Paramount Plus.
Spock's Brain would be a relief from the self-important flatulence often made since TNG.
Which is why I like Picard 2. It's completely self-indulgent fun.
I hear what you're saying, but my concern is that the way in which Maurice's locking up of Yvette was depicted seems to come across like the narrative is saying it was okay. The framing was, Jean-Luc thought his dad was an abusive asshole; then Jean-Luc realizes Maurice was trying to protect him and Yvette from Yvette's episode of mental illness, so he starts saying of his father, "Maybe I never really knew you," as though Maurice doesn't deserve his anger; and then later we learn that Yvette killed herself after Jean-Luc freed her from Maurice's imprisonment, thus implying that Maurice's imprisonment was reasonable or justified in some way.
I'm certainly not saying any of this was intentional on the part of the writers -- I get what they were trying to do, and it's still very effective. But I am bothered by some of the implications, and I wish someone had advised them to modify the way they executed the concept.
Yvette was locked in her room on that one particular night because she was already in the middle of an 'episode' and was a danger to herself and others at that point. She wasn't normally kept locked up, the flashbacks have been very clear about that. The locking up and the suicide seem to have been the same night that she took young Jean Luc down into the cellars and then left him trapped while she wandered for hours, lost in her delusion. She was already in the throes of a breakdown and Jean Luc was too young to know it. Before the game of hide-and-seek, Maurice said that Yvette seemed brighter than she had been - people who are suicidal often seem brighter right before they go through with it, because the decision has been made and that buoys them a little. It wasn't being locked up for one night that made her suicidal, she was already there, just barely hanging on. Why Maurice didn't call a doctor out to see her after the incident in the tunnels, we don't know. Maybe he was hoping to get her to the doctor in the morning, just wanted to get her safely through the night first. Maybe he hoped she would be okay in the morning, if he could just get her safely through the night. But the context of the story is clear that it wasn't the locked door that made her suicidal, she was already there, the locked door was preventing her doing anything about it, which is why Picard has always blamed himself for opening it.
Well, that's not actually inferior to the nonsense storytelling that they're indulging themselves in now.
Popularity doesnt always mean something is better. Of course not. But in the world of scifi fans It is extremely popular. That's a good barometer i should think.
Again I'm not saying Picard is ALL bad. But it could have been and should have been better.
I do like the fact we got Seven in the show. Would have liked more interaction between her and Picard. They have a kinship with both being assimilated by the Borg. But they have barely interacted with each other over the course of this season.
Rio's is my favorite character of the show so far.
Let's see if Strange New Worlds has improved pacing with more self contained episodes.
I still think DS9 has the best pacing of any Star Trek that was wholly arc based. Still had self contained episodes as well as a main theme running through the seasons.
As for Discovery. It's just a mess. Yes I like some elements but so many things in that show has made me go....HUH?????..
We'll come back to this after I've at least seen an episode. I don't think we'll get a "Spock's Brain" out of SNW. It's really more about how the '60s-ness will translate.
It'll do its own version of it eventually. And we'll be lumping it alongside the original, "Sub Rosa," and "Threshold."
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I like Spock's Brain. It's pulp era sci-fi crazy. The sort of thing a mad Martian scientist on Barsoom would do, or most any alien from Lovecraft.
It's possible to be a Star Trek fan, like Kurtzman, like the new shows, yet still think an episode or two...or even an entire season...is a failure.
And also to enthusiastically return the following week.
I feel like any criticism here is met with notions of "just stop watching then," or claiming someone is trolling, or just being negative...when no, they could be a HUGE Trekkie and still just think an episode was real shitty. Because, let's be real, a lot of shitty episodes exist in this franchise.
And also to enthusiastically return the following week.
I feel like any criticism here is met with notions of "just stop watching then," or claiming someone is trolling, or just being negative...when no, they could be a HUGE Trekkie and still just think an episode was real shitty. Because, let's be real, a lot of shitty episodes exist in this franchise.
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