I’d love to see Tig Notaro & Stephanie Allyne’s “One Missippi” picked up for a third season somewhere. It’s an excellently real, off-beat little show, and it made me really care about all of the characters during the span of its two short seasons.
For now, I guess I’ll settle for checking out Notaro’s stand-up and looking forward to seeing more of her dry humor in Star Trek: Discovery season four. It is so fantastic that they’ve added her to the cast.
I keep seeing people defend Star Trek: Discovery by saying, “Oh, well, all Trek series have a weak first couple seasons.”
But back in TNG’s day, it didn’t matter as much if they had weak spots, because it was EPISODIC. You can just skip the bad ones.
These days TV shows are all long arcs, stretching across whole seasons or even longer.
A weak season is a much bigger problem if you have to watch that whole season to catch up on what’s happening.
The Star Trek episodes, “Ménage a Troi” (TNG) & “The Muse” (DS9), are so very clearly and completely about how men are more likely to listen to other men than to women.
In each case, Lwaxana can’t escape the control of a man until another man (Picard, Odo) speaks on her behalf.
Of course, when I was a kid watching these episodes, I thought Lwaxana needed men to speak on her behalf because she was a silly, foolish woman. Not simply because she was a woman at all.
In reality, although her demeanor may be silly, she displays great savvy and competence.
The 13-year-old expressed an interest in time loops, so we watched Star Trek: TNG’s “Cause and Effect.” I’ve been saving this one to show the kids for after I’d gotten them fully invested in the show & could be sure they’d pay attention, ‘cause I remember loving it so much myself.
By the third and penultimate trip through the time loop, the 7-year-old was so excited about trying to figure out how they could escape, they were practically jumping up and down, babbling about how the crew should try Riker’s idea and decompress the main shuttle bay instead.