Yeah, I dunno what to think here. It's definitely like a Season 1 episode than the first two. It felt like a "slice of an arc" rather than a standalone story. It tried to do three things at once (mostly to keep all of the cast involved I think) but really didn't spend enough time on any of them for my tastes.
I would define the Klingon plotline with L'Rell and Ash as the "A plot" of this episode, since it clearly got the most screen time. I honestly didn't mind it. It was done much, much better than the Klingon politics from the first season. Qonos finally felt kind of like a real place (though seriously - is the sun ever out guys?). What made the plot work for me was mostly that Mary Chieffo and Shazad Latif put in damn good performances, portraying the complexity of the emotions that each of their characters felt with aplomb. The scripting here felt a bit tighter too - maybe because this plot was focusing on emotions, rather than exposition. I knew the left field appearance of MU Georgiou was coming, but it was still honestly unwelcome. Her character really only existed as a dues ex machina to move the plot along, and blunted a lot of the earlier emotional impact. Nothing about her reveal made me feel any more confident about Section 31 being a major element going forward.
The B plot was basically Micheal and Amanda Grayson talking alone in a room together about Spock. It was just exposition for the sake of the viewer in a lot of ways, but Mia Kirshner just hit it out of the park in terms of a performance here, which made it forgivable when she was delivering the lines. Unfortunately, she kinda outacts SMG, which made Micheal's responses back seem a bit off in places - a bit too matter of fact. I'm still deeply conflicted about adding this entire tortured backstory to Spock which had never existed. I loved how Amanda basically walked out on Micheal at the end, furious at what Micheal had done to push Spock away long ago - that we didn't get the neat and easy resolution
The C plot - Tilly's "imaginary friend" and its removal - was kinda rote, though it continued to be creepy. I'm happy they went with a technobabble explanation rather than yet more woo. But it still felt like it was awkwardly wedged into the episode - largely to give Tilly and Saru something to do. Hell, Stamets appeared for all of two minutes in this episode - basically just gave some spore techobabble and then sucked the lifeform out of Tilly. I realize in a series like this not everyone can have an integral plot role every week, but his character has been getting quite short shift for awhile now.
