You're gonna get a brain dump of a few episodes here, not just #5.
I gave up on Picard in season 2, but for some reason I decided to give season 3 a go. And the first episode was quite good, much like the first episode of season 2. Then it just gradually degraded into utter, mind-fuckingly stupid purile bullshit.
It's hard to know where to start. That all Changelings carry around Bajoran buckets because?
But it's the dialogue that is just overly offensive. "Congrats on that!" says a 24th century captain of a fucking flying metal machine. "Hot-dropped the saucer section of the Enterprise D on a planet..." what the fuck is hot dropped? I literally don't know. Hot dropped? Millions of lives were lost unless Picard fixed it, but... hot dropped Riker did for fun. Took the entire civilisation section into a planet because...
"Snog a villager on Ba'ku". SNOG? Are you a 1950s parent? And why does a random captain a) have a command in this state. b) know another captain in a fleet of thousands kissed a woman on a planet in one mission about 20 years?
Because the writers want you to know they watched Star Trek, innit? It makes zero sense on every level for this character, but the writers want you to know they know Star Trek.
Put this into context. You're a manager at Sainsbury's. You meet a fellow manager. You know he worked in one of the other 2000 branches. You heard he kissed the finance manager backer in 2003. And you're goanna comment on that. Fuck off.
"Pot are you on about Cannabis?" Just FUCCKKKK OFFFFFFFFFF.
This is the series that gave us The Inner Light, Darmok, The Visitor, The City on the Edge of Forever... and because someone in the 2400s mentioned the word "pot" the fucking Borg human hybrid thought he was on about cannabis?
Arggghhh...... it's just moronic bullshit.
And TOS moved on from TNG, I know life moves on and modernises. I am becoming the old man unkind to change. But it didn't treat its viewers like fucking clowns like the new shows do. That it can say "cannabis" and all its viewers go ho ho ho ho ho this shit is hot dropping on Veridian 3.
I’m good at defending things, and even I am not gonna go too far on defending these. Did he really say snog? Man I have to revisit.
The only things I can say, is it’s not really a Bajoran bucket, it just looks a bit like one — in that it more closely resembles a vase.
And Shaw is a bit Bones-like in his anachronisms, but yeah the ‘pot’ stuff is annoying as fuck. Fortunately we didn’t then get him hunting edibles and getting the munchies, for that authentic Californian politicking (neither left nor right, either side has its cheech and Chong contingent) on the subject.
I suppose there’s an argument that (a) Shaw used his clearance to access all Picards logs, having a bit of an obsession with the former Locutus, possibly in an attempt to seek solace that the guy really was no longer a Borg and (b) Picard was a kiss and tell in the logs kind of guy.
It’s a handwave, but the rest of the seasons stuff has been pretty good, and more enjoyable than anything in a looooonnng time. Probably since Baku.