So, they did a series where almost nothing of any relevance occurs until the final episode,
when all of a sudden all the important stuff starts happening boom-boom-boom —
hey, I think I figured out the problem! Did George Lucas write this shit?
This is a review of “Farewell,” the tenth and final episode of season two
of Star Trek: Picard. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, take heed: spoilers may be ahead.
So. I know I’ve been hard on the show this season — because it’s been tedious and pointless and
unfocused and generally awful — but compared to all of that, this episode was not that bad.
The season leading up to this set a very low bar, and this final episode was able to clear it.
So . . . well done? No. Not well done. Just . . . done. And you know what? I’ll take it.
It turns out all of this, this entire time travel adventure, was just to get
Picard to hide a key behind a loose brick in his house. . . . I’m being a bit glib
with that description — there’s emotional weight behind that act. Picard hiding the key in the past
for his younger self to find in the future is a symbolic act of accepting his fate, accepting
what happens to his mother, and accepting that he is not ultimately responsible for it. It’s
a way of showing that Picard forgives himself, no longer blames himself for the death of his mother.
And that moment kinda works. Of all the resolutions in this episode, it’s
the most effective one. But its impact, like that of all the other beats in this episode
that are meant to pack an emotional punch — and there are quite a few — is
seriously blunted by the fact that it took nine goddamn episodes of television to get here!
And by the fact that precious little of those nine episodes is actually about this story!
If Picard replacing the key had been the emotional climax of, say, a two-hour movie,
or a two-part episode, where Picard’s unresolved guilt over his mother had been
the center of that story rather than just one of a half-dozen meandering subplots,
it might have landed with something like the impact the writers wanted it to. But as it is, at
the end of this season . . . eh. It’s fine. It’s more effective than anything else in the episode.
And that includes Q’s farewell, by the way. Look, I love Q — whenever Q shows up in TNG,
you know you’re in for a good episode. Q episodes are some of the best shows TNG ever did — “Deja Q”
is one of my favorites, hilarious, with some glimpses of Q’s hidden depths. And let’s not
forget “Tapestry,” one of the best episodes of TNG or any other Star Trek series, which tells
a story that is broadly similar thematically to what I guess the story of this season of Picard
was supposed to be, except that it’s way better and it doesn’t take ten fucking hours to do it!
But Q’s farewell here? Eh. It’s not bad. Q’s motivation for doing any of this still
feels incredibly thin and vague and reeks of an after-the-fact explanation by the writers. And
his final scene with Picard reminded me of Star Trek: Nemesis, which is never a good thing. For
me, the best scene in Star Trek: Nemesis has always been Riker’s farewell to Picard
at the end. It’s a moving scene because finally, after all their years together,
Riker is leaving the Enterprise to become the captain of his own ship.
His time as Picard’s first officer — as Number One — has come to an end.
But, the only reason that moment carries any resonance for me at all is because I’ve been
watching these characters for — at that point — about fifteen years in other stuff. I’ve seen
every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’ve seen the TNG movies that came before.
There’s nothing in Nemesis itself to make me care about Picard and Riker’s relationship,
to compel me to feel anything when Riker leaves. Within the context of that film,
that moment is completely unearned. Whatever meaning it has is stolen from other works,
and is only there if you’ve seen those other works first.
Same thing with Picard’s farewell to Q in this final episode of season two of Picard. Has this
season given us any reason to care about Q? John de Lancie has done his usual fine job of injecting
charisma and personality into whatever material he’s been given, but Q’s barely been in this.
And most of his scenes have been him popping in to deliver an info-dump or
some little contrivance to move forward what has passed for a plot this season.
He’s had almost no scenes with Picard, his history with Picard, though referenced once or twice,
has had no bearing on the events of this season. We get this tearful farewell between Picard and Q,
and sure, if you’ve been onboard with TNG this whole time it probably at least means
something to you, but within the context of this season of this show? It means absolutely nothing.
That’s bad writing — bad, lazy writing, which is what has made this such a lousy season.
The resolutions of the other characters are either disappointingly predictable or feel like laughably
half-assed afterthoughts. For an example of the former: Rios and Jurati. They both end up pretty
much exactly where the show has been telegraphing they would. Rios decides to stay behind in the
21st century with Dr. Ramirez and her son, Generic Annoying Child. Because he likes real cigars
and wasn’t traumatized by his time as an ICE detainee — in fact,
that experience seems to have meant so little to him that it kinda feels like that whole subplot,
if you can even call it that, was entirely pointless, which is no less than what I expected,
but offensive nonetheless. They literally had one of their main characters arrested by a
real-life government agency with a track record of actual human rights abuses, for no reason.
It went nowhere. It said nothing. Fucking infuriating.
Oh, and it’s okay for Rios to stay behind in the 21st century because
I guess it was always supposed to happen. Sure, why the fuck not? They haven’t actually cared
about affecting the timeline at any point in this season so far anyway.
Speaking of that — what was the event in the timeline that they had to put right in order to
prevent the totalitarian alternate future? Was it Renee going on the Europa mission? Was it Picard
hiding the key? Was it Jurati becoming the new Borg Queen? Was it that busload of ICE detainees
Seven and Raffi just allowed to run away when they sprung Rios? Would have been nice
if that was it, huh? If the act of freeing unjustly prisoned people had initiated a
butterfly effect that helped lead to the utopian Earth of the 25th century? But that would have
required that the ICE subplot mean something, and as previously discussed, it meant nothing.
Anyway. The change in the timeline they were trying to prevent. The whole reason
they time traveled in the first place. Sure would have been nice if the writers had bothered to,
you know, make it clear what that was, huh?
Adam Soong sees his work destroyed by his clone-daughter Kore, and then pulls a folder
out of a drawer that is labeled “Khan Project” — is that what you would call a ret-Khan? Eh?
It’s a terrible pun, it’s also cleverer than
anything they actually wrote this season for this television show.
And speaking of Kore, she gets the ultimate out-of-nowhere-why-even-bother resolution,
when she is visited by Traveler Wesley Crusher, played once again by Wil Wheaton, who looks and
acts like he dropped in to film this scene while on a lunch break from shooting The Ready Room.
Traveler Wesley recruits Kore to become a Traveler,
because the Travelers protect the timeline, and they’re also in charge of people like Not-Laris,
and Kore says yes because it doesn’t matter what she does,
her character means nothing and has contributed nothing to this season other than giving us a
reason to occasionally see Isa Briones because the writers couldn’t figure out a way to include Soji
in this story. This entire scene with Wesley and Kore, from the writing to the
acting to the way it’s shot and cut, feels like something out of a fan film. It’s embarrassing.
Oh and speaking of Not-Laris, she dies in Picard’s arms after Soong poisons her, but it’s for the
greater good because not only does she protect Renee going on the Europa mission, she also cures
Picard of his reluctance to get close to people, and when he returns to his own time he’s ready
to ask the real Laris out on a date because he met someone in the past who looks just like her.
It’s the worst season of a Star Trek show I’ve ever seen. Congratulations,
season one of TNG — your burden has been lifted. Much like Jean-Luc being exorcized
of his contrived guilt over the death of his mother, you are free. You still suck — but
not nearly this much. And I know some of you will say, “But what about ‘Code of Honor’,
what about ‘Angel One’?” Those are rotten episodes to be sure, but this season of Picard was like one
rotten episode, smeared across — and I cannot stress this enough — ten hours of television.
They took a tiny amount of story — like I said, maybe enough for a movie or a two-parter
on TV — and hyper diluted it. It’s homeopathic storytelling. Unfortunately for these writers,
homeopathy is bullshit. When you dilute something this much, you don’t increase
its potency — you render it so weak, its impact so miniscule, that it’s like it’s not even there.
Some fans have suggested that this season of Picard would play better if you binged
it rather than watched it one episode per week, as it was released. I mean, to each their own,
art is subjective, but personally, I don’t see how that’s supposed to help.
How is watching a confused, poorly plotted, mostly pointless ten-hour series back-to-back
better than watching it one episode at a time? Bad writing is bad writing.
I have a better suggestion: just watch the last episode. Seriously. Nothing that happens in the
first nine episodes of this season is good enough or important enough to the overall story to make
it worth sitting through . . . all of that. Just watch the last episode. There’s a recap at
the beginning, summarizes everything of actual relevance in like a minute —which is more time
than they need — and then, you’re good to go. It’s still not a great episode, or even a good one,
but it’s the best episode of the season, and it’s better to waste one hour than ten.
At least they didn’t end on a cliffhanger.
Those are my thoughts. Please share your thoughts with me in the comments. If you want
to support my channel, you can become a patron at patreon.com/steveshives, or become a channel
member by clicking the join button, or make a one-time gift via PayPal or Venmo — links to
all of those are in the description. Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you in another
video coming out later today for a review of the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds!