The Greatest Generation - No Pathos in a Bowl Cut (S4E2)

Episode Date: October 12, 2016

While the ship is being duct taped back together after a certain ‘incident,’ the crew takes some time to dredge up grievances with their loved ones. For Picard, it’s his stridently conservative brother. For Worf, it’s his embarrassing parents. For Wesley (the boy?!) it’s an old holo tape of his dad’s that isn’t as exciting to find as that sounds. Are replicators just microwaves? Does retirement still make people crazy in the 24th century? It's the episode where we speculate about what ever happened to Jim Shimoda.

Priority 1 message from Starfleet coming in on Secured Channel. Hey friends of Disodo. Before today's episode, we just wanted to take a moment to talk about the historic labor actions being taken by writers and actors in the American Film and Television industry. If you're a fan of the work done by the people who make Star Trek, we hope you'll join us in standing in solidarity with the folks who actually bring these adventures to life. Over the past several years, the AMPTP, the organization that represents the American Film and Television Production Studios, have reduced the profit from movies and TV going to workers. And in so doing,

they've attempted to weaken the labor unions that represent those workers. They wouldn't even engage the unions on many issues in their negotiations. And so a strike was the only course of action to take. Adam, Wendy and I have been having a lot of internal discussions about how best to stand with the unions and we are continuing those conversations in a dynamic situation. We're doing our best to understand where the picket lines are in these digital spaces,

and we would never intentionally cross one. With the information we have, we feel like we can do more good talking about and supporting the strike and continuing our show as planned. We'll keep you informed about what all this means for greatest trek specifically. Today we're making a contribution to the Entertainment Community Fund. This fund exists to help all the people whose livelihoods have been put on hold because the AMPTP refuses to negotiate

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and season two of Star Trek Picard. We've set up a page where you can also contribute. It's at friendsofdecotoforlabor.com. That's friendsofdececoto for Labor.com. That's FriendsOfDecoto for Labor.com. Link in the episode description. Okay, now let's get on with the show. Here's to the finest crew in Starfleet. Engage! Welcome to the greatest generation, a Star Trek podcast by two guys who are a little bit embarrassed. I have a Star Trek podcast. I'm your host Ben Harrison.

I'm your other host, Adam Pryanaka. I think I owe you an apology, Adam. Oh no. This is an episode that we debated quite a bit about whether or not you were going to Vito. And I talked to you off of the Vito ledge and then I watched it and I really wish I had shut my pie hole and you veto it. Really?

Yeah. That's interesting because when I watched it I remember it being much, much better than I thought than I remember it. Well, that's, it may be my mind state. I've had a real rough first couple of weeks of the month and I was also exhausted when I watched this. I got home after a very long and emotionally trying day and plop down on the couch and we both sort of discovered that our schedules demanded that we watch an episode and record

right then and there. So I was like, oh God. Isn't that fun? Yeah. The demands of the show. Oh, but you know, I would much rather be doing this than letting a day, a published day go by without a new web for the folks out there. Oh yeah, absolutely.

Well, should we get into this discussion? Yeah, why don't we do that? At season four, episode two, family. ["Fixed Up with the Starfish." by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish by The Starfish space station in orbit of Earth where the station has like flexible parts that are wrapped around the saucer section. Kind of a neat looking space station I guess. Like a spider duck. Yeah, it seems like a similar idea to the ones that you see in the films,

like when they'll go to Space Doc and see the Enterprise Park there. Except for those are, and those are like the kind of open air space docs, but they're big enough to have the entire ship inside, and this is only big enough to wrap around the saucer section. Like I bet the number of people that live and work

on this space station is markedly less than the number of people that live on work on the enterprise. I wish we got to see inside of that station a little bit, though. Yeah. Like see some of the real work. Yeah. I mean, as it is, this episode is an exact opposite of the two episodes that came before. This is purely character work.

Yeah, did you get the bends? Yeah. I really did. This starts, I mean, next gen gets knocked all the time for not being too serialized or maybe I and and like this episode is basically a third page to the two episodes that came before. One thing that that really broke this Feldomy was a riker refers to the Borg incident which is like one of the all-time downplays ever. Like the fleet has been wiped out. Millions have been murdered. Picard was kidnapped and then rescued. The Borg incidents. Yeah. Let us not refer to JFK's

drive through Dallas in the convertible, you know. Yeah. the Dele plaza incident. Right. Yeah, maybe like Kevin X Bridge calls the Who Snack Incident. There's not. There's not. Oh, Kevin, what happened? What did you get into last week? I don't really want to track a beverage. Oh, yeah. Oh. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

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Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I don't even know how to pivot out of that.

Yeah. This is an episode with kind of two big-ish storylines in one little like micro storyline. The big ones are Picard and Warf meeting and dealing with their families that they don't get along with super well and the little one is Wesley getting his hands on a hollow recording of his deceased father. But there's like two scenes about that, right? Like there's a scene where Dr. Crusher finds the thing and then there's a scene where Wesley watches it. I don't think there's anything else of any

significance that touches on that. Yeah and micro-c story is right. I mean that's just the briefest touch on what that is. It's so brief that it feels a little bit thrown away. This could have been elongated in such a way to be a true C story. Yeah. Well, I was reading on Wikipedia before you got on that two kind of interesting things about this episode. One was that there was a lot of people on the production staff that thought maybe they would make best of both worlds a three-parter and that instead of this episode it was going to be like more hot, hot, boring action. And the other interesting thing was that people were constantly submitting spec scripts to to do TNG about Jack Crusher. Like people that like the show. Jack Crusher fanfic.

Yeah, like, I mean, what is a real bodice riperie? I guess, I don't know, but this is like one little piece of something somebody submitted on spec that they just dropped into this episode. It's interesting that they had been tempted to push best of both worlds into three,

the best of three worlds. I guess that's what you could call it. Because I felt like part two was a little lacking. Like they were, it had some more filler than part one. Interesting. Well, this episode is no killer all filler. So maybe they had a little bit more filler in their system and they decided to get it all out in one go. Yeah.

I think in addition to the crew taking some shore leave, this episode, especially in the beginning, makes me wonder if some of the camera and production crew took some shore leave. Like, did you notice a ton of camera bounce? Like, they dolly into a dwarf and a two shot in this conference room. And there's some, there's some bounce on that shot.

And then there's also bounce on the surface on some of the steady cam shot. Like, much more than you typically get on this show. And it makes me wonder, like, how many takes do they get? Um, would it surprise you to learn that this episode was nominated for a cinematography? Oh, really? Really?

I'm not kidding. Wow. Okay. I mean, good for them. All right. Should we talk plot a little bit? Yeah. That's what the people come here for.

Yeah. Yeah. Cut all this out. Yeah. That and Pocosby. Worf is working on the phasers when he like, you know, any like reports into Riker and Rikers like by the way i'm looking forward to meeting your parents don't worth is like uh what he's he's real nervous about it because i guess they've just found out about the little uh unpleasantness that he just underwent back on cronos where he accepted discomendation. And I guess he kind of thinks his parents are a little dopey and doesn't...

like he knows that they're there to try and like be there for him and he doesn't find that to be like honorable or sufficiently clinging on. I do not believe any human can truly understand my dishonor. Riker's position on this is really interesting to me because he's so encouraging of Warf to hang out with his family. This is a guy who a season and a half ago was ready to murder his father, like on the ship. So I don't know where you get off, Riker, telling Warf he should be a little bit more

into the idea of his parents visiting. Well, maybe Riker's just, you know, he's looking at Warf he should be a little bit more into the idea of his parents visiting. Well, maybe Riker is just, you know, he's looking at Warf. He's like, oh, this guy's going to do like, you know, he hates them. So he'll do some Ann Bojitsu. Can you imagine what Warf would do to his poor mom with one of those giant Q-tips? He would emerge victorious. His parents were maimed. Shitty parking. Yeah, so, and then the other setup is Picard stuffing some deep vies in a way bag and Troy.

The most uncomfortable, Deffel. Yeah, Deffel, that's really really not gonna lay softly against your side. But Troy is in there and is, she's such a potted plant in this episode. She appears in a bunch of scenes and basically is there to have somebody for the other character to say things to. Might as well as been anybody else. As if Patrick Stewart couldn't emote some sort of internal struggle.

Like for the dopiest of viewers, they have to have Troy ask reflective questions of him. And it's set up that like he's probably suffering from some pretty crippling PTSD after having been turned into the thing he hates most in the universe. He looks super tan in this scene. Yeah, but he's got a little bit of a history of recovery. He's got a little scrappy scrape on his forehead, which is gone by the time he shows up in France.

Rub a little line on it. Yeah, that'll pop right back. So yeah, so Picard is going to go visit his bro in French wine country and try to have like a calm village hang. And for some reason that doesn't sound sufficiently therapeutic to drawing. Yeah, Troy's really needleling the shit out of him. Yeah. What you get when Picard is transported to France

is a really nice exterior, a real complex new exterior scene that I've looked awesome. Yeah, they shot it actually outside. His son little. Not at a strip mall. Mm-hmm. Fun little interaction with the son of his brother, I guess his nephew.

Yeah. That's Renee, right? Yeah, and that was like they did that writing thing where they write in a mistake piece of dialogue that one of the characters says that I like. Like that that seemed far more sophisticated of a writing gag than you normally get on this show. Yeah.

So I dug it. It was the wrong it was the wrong word. It was like it was the kid saying like kind of spilling the beans that his father thinks Captain Picard as an arrogant prick, but he doesn't know the word arrogant. So he says like the first half of it in Picard has to. I didn't like that part. I was referring to the nephew versus uncle, switcheru that they were constantly doing to each other.

That was like a really good thing. I got you. Yeah, that was good. I thought that that other part, the arrogant part sucked. Yeah, that was no good I thought that that other part, the arrogant part sucked. Yeah, that was no good. That was no good. Um, he had a, he, he, we're that both of those things were in this, in, in the one episode. This kid has got that bull cut lick nicky vibe, you know?

He's just a little too cute. Yeah. And you can tell he hasn't seen true tragedy because of the bull cut. He's got a... There's no paythos in a bull cut. Yeah. Certainly not.

Did you recognize this kid at him? No. I am almost positive that this is the kid that plays Picard when Picard gets turned into a little boy. I feel like in like a couple of seasons, there's an episode where like, Gainin and Picard and like maybe one or two other characters have like a transporter accident that turns them into children. That sounds great. Yeah, and I think that this kid plays Picard in that.

That sounds like an episode that we have to see. And it's too bad that we can't confirm this suspicion that you have in any way. No, I wouldn't, I would never do research. Come on. Oh, man. Yeah, cute kid, just like, just two feet over the line of two cute. Yeah. The card rolls up on his childhood home and it's beautiful as you would expect. It's polatial.

There's a lot of regalia around. And he meets the... he doesn't meet. I mean, he sees... because he's met her before the wife of his brother. And and this scene was great to me because he only hints at how shattered he is, but to say that you're fine when you're not is like the one thing that everyone does all the time constantly, but to act like you're fine when you're not is like the acting equivalent of a riddle inside of an indigma Like Patrick Stewart is amazing at that in this at doing that like I I really love the scene a lot. I do too. It makes me wonder like what the people of earth No like how how the, you know, I mean, Starfleet is sort of their military,

like how much the military has explained to them. It would have been cool to get like the starship troopers, Paul Verhoeven, like, style, newsreel thing. Out of the ashes of Buenos Aires comes first, sorrow, then anger. The only good bug is a dead bug. Yeah. Borg on their way to Earth.

Captain Picard, our hero, would you like to know more? Yeah. But like, I mean, if they know everything, they know that Picard was almost personally involved in the elimination of humanity as a species and the federation as a culture, right? What kind of fucking asshole wants to throw him a parade for that? No. Yeah, they want to give him the keys to the city.

Ah, kind of awkward timing there, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, and like Picard is also entertaining like a job offer. Like the whole deal while he's down on earth is he's having major like heavy duty conflict with his brother who's conservative and wants everything to be a grary and non-technological and hates that his son wants to be a starship captain like captain Picard one day and Picard also like visiting with a buddy who is working on making a new continent on on earth. And this guy is like wooing Picard to to end his Starfleet career to take up the directorship of this new continent project, which sounds like crazy mad scientist shit.

If you ask me. Yeah, I don't know what could be so attractive about this job to Picard other than the idea that his chances of being Re-assembulated by the board are probably a little less when you're trying to build an Atlantis type Continent or at least he won't be the tip of the spear when it comes to assimilation I thought they did a great job with Picard's brother's character, and especially his casting, this guy, Robert, has got just total resting prick face.

So, you arrived at last. Welcome home, Captain. He looks like a guy who has played Scrooge in about a thousand stage plays over the years. He's just made for this role. He's got kind of like upper class Michael Cain thing going on. Like if Michael Cain had like a fancier accent, if Michael Cain had known nothing but tragedy

his entire life. Yeah, but spoke like received pronunciation, you know. Instead of, You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off. Yeah. That's what I'm trying to say, Adam. Yeah. Please, please, cut that out.

I don't know if I can help you there. But yeah, I mean, their conflict is real heavy and it makes me wonder like has something that somebody wear Roddenberry down at this point to the extent that like we're gonna have interpersonal conflict be like a main like part of the show because there was a whole lot of it in best of both worlds and there is a whole lot of it in this episode. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I wonder to what degree he was still,

he had his finger in the pie at this point. Yeah, impossible to know, but. Impossible to know without research. Yeah, right. People know what they're signing up for when they come watch this show. Yeah. The A story is the tension between Robert and Picard, and this feels like a very familiar conflict that is even contemporary to today. Right, it's like Picard's brother's eyes.

He is the embodiment of abandonment of all tradition and all of the old ways, and you know, he's just a slave to technology and like the most emblematic part the most emblematic example of that is like when Robair says he doesn't want to get a replicator because it ruins it ruins the flavor of his food like right these are conversations our parents had about microwaves. Yeah, absolutely. They probably just copy-pasted script from the 70s about microwaves and then did I find and replace microwave to replicator. I mean, Robert is setting his ways. He finds all of this starfully chipped threatening and he only has one son and his one son is more interested

in that than eating filthy handfuls of grapes directly off the vine in the hot hot sun. How about the age disparity between Robert son and Robert himself. Robert is an old man. And he's totally old dead. It's like eight or something, right? What the hell, Robert?

Took in his time. You know, it's not like his wife is super youthful either. I mean, she's a, she's a beautiful woman, but like, she's an older woman. Yeah. I guess when you live on a winery, like anything goes, right? Maybe they're actually pretty young, but the Vino has really taken its toll, you know?

Yeah. Possible. Meanwhile, up on the ship, worst parents beam up and... Mother! Father! His mom has got similar Kelzone hair to Leop Brahms. Yeah.

His dad is a dead ringer for Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery and celebrity jeopardy. Thank you pretty smart, don't you, Trebek. What with your daigo moustache on your greasy hair? Oh, man, that's a great call. Yeah, the beard that cannot possibly be real. Yeah. I don't know what you were expecting, Warf's parents, to be like, but their Russian, Eastern

Black sensibility felt spot-on to me. I was like, oh, yeah, of course. Like, that sounds right. Yeah, I don't know if they had ever established what part of Earth Warf grew up on. I guess his parents used to be starfleet officers, but now they're retired crazies. Is that basically what it says about right? Yeah. Dad's a little bit obsessed about his old career. Yeah. Yeah. He's got like, he keeps, he tells anybody a little listen about how he's got

schematics for the galaxy class ships all over his house and he wants to impress people by knowing which direction to walk to find a turbo lift. And, yeah, and, and, and, and Worf is just, he's doing the kind of like, exasperated 16 year old, or like, or, he's doing the exasperated college student showing his parents around the college town. Like, yes, mom, there's lots of restaurants on this street.

This is where all the restaurants are in this town. The main way that Michael Doran shows expression is by widening his eyes, and it doesn't matter what the circumstances. Like he could watch an attempted murder on his brother. He could be receiving a discomendation on the Klingon home world. His parents could be annoying.

In all of those cases, Michael Doran just widens his eyes as a show of emotion. You must let them see the fire in your eyes. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't say that to be disparaging of Michael Dorn's acting because it's got to be really hard to act with the loaf, right? Yeah, I mean, he does have a heap and help in of mom's meat loaf

on right on the front of his face and there. I mean, he's a good character, you know? I think he does a lot with it. He's showing his parents around the ship, giving them the tour, like a lot of people when their parents go see their workplace, there's like, it's a little awkward. You introduce them to the people you work with.

They ask a bunch of questions. You know, you sort of share the glance of what are you gonna do that's kind of fun yeah I just reported your son to HR because he got really aggressive with me because I showed up to work 14 seconds late right yeah yeah this is another reminder that why doesn't Warf have an outward facing cabin? He's like a senior bridge officer, and he doesn't have a window to his quarters.

Oh. Isn't that weird? Yeah, he does have that cool vanity chair though. Yeah. That like crazy balls chair with a face mirror right next to it. It's basically all stimulators. Yeah. It's like a nest of stimulators.

Yeah, it looks pretty, it looks pretty penit, punishing. And in terms of what kind of whack-off session you could get involved with on that thing. He's got the mirror nearby, because he likes to see himself when he sits in it. Yeah. If the part of the tour is he takes him down to engineering and my heart leapt a little bit because one of the shots opens on a like a couple of hands close up fixing some isolinear chips because everything you know they're retooling the ship in the wake of the

Borgs and I was like, oh my god, is this, if this is Jim Shemota, I will be so excited and then it's just some, some rando. It's just some asshole and not Jim Shemota. Yeah, fuck that guy, right? Fuck everyone except for Jim Shemota. I think that guy's having fun. No way. No, he looks super serious. He's not having any fun at all. I wonder what happened to Shimoda after episode two, like, like as a career. Like, do you think he was demoted worse than those admirals in conspiracy? Because that's not fair. Shimoda is never nubbing. No, man, Shemota is, I don't think Shemota gets demoted. I think, I think Shemota,

he was also a contract laborer too. So they're limitations. Well, he was the assistant chief engineer. Oh, shit, I guess he was. I thought he was wearing one of those jump suits that the contractors were. He was, but maybe that was like a cover all. Like he was doing something in the greasy. He was, but maybe that was like a cover all. Like he was doing something really.

He was doing dirty work, yeah. Yeah. My fantasy is that Jim Shremota retired from Starfleet, started a beach bar. Yes. You know, or maybe like a swim up bar at a pool at a resort on Riza. That sounds so nice. Yeah. I think Shimoto would fucking run that shit right, you know?

He knows how to have a good time. If I opened a bar, I would call it Shimotas. Can you imagine all the cool shit on the walls inside Shimotas? It's just licensed plates and iso linear chips. Yeah. Oh, it would be so good. I love the teaky drinks at Shemotas.

They have the best mites. If our show ever gets big enough, how big do you think our show would need to be for opening Shemotas to be just an obvious business opportunity? More obvious than it is right now. Shemotus to be just an obvious business opportunity. More obvious than it is right now. Oh man, I wonder if Stewart Wellington would go in on it with us. That guy knows how to actually run a bar.

Here's what we do, Ben. At Greatest Gen Con 2017, we have a pop-up bar and we call it Shemotus. Boom. Done. That is sold for a thousand dollars. Oh, it's gonna be far more expensive than that been. Yeah. We're gonna go broke doing this, but we're gonna have so much fun. Oh, we're gonna have a lot of fun.

And we're gonna get very drunk. All right, so back on the planet. Tensions between Picard and his brother, Robair, are increasing. And it's not helping that he's entertaining the idea of taking this job with, I guess, what we're made to believe is a childhood friend or an adolescent friend, like, friend of his from the way back. And Picard's doing some day drinking because he's like really kinda,

he didn't come down to Earth expecting to be considering a major career change like this. And so he's like, hey, it's 11.45 in the morning. Why don't I pop open some of the 46 and get my day go? You know? When you're on vacation a little day drinking doesn't hurt at all. No. Um, but uh, but his brother who is at work joins him and then they like,

they have like a big walk out to, to the edge of the grape field. And this is like kind of an interesting long study cam shot. This is on the bouncing study cam. Well, that's pretty smooth. It's not that bad. I mean, and it's interesting lighting because they let them walk through like a pretty shadowy couple of places

on their way to their big fight. And uh... And Robair is like needling him the whole time, just pushing him and testing him and testing him. It's like you're unraveling a big cable in the sweater. Someone keeps knitting. Knitting. Knitting.

Knitting. Knitting. Knitting. Knitting. Knitting. Knitting. Eventually Picard is like, hey, leave me a fuck alone. Nidding! Nidding! Nidding! Nidding! Nidding! Eventually Picard is like, hey, leave me the fuck alone and actually throws a punch. And then they put on a couple of very sexy bikinis and get down into the mud and do some mud wrestling. The scene looks like so much fun.

It does. They're rolling around and they're doing that thing where they pick up scoops of mud and fling it at the other person. Yeah. I have a good friend who is in the costuming union here in New York. She works on films and TV shows. And whenever she sees a scene like this and we know, we're like watching TV together, she'll be like, oh my god Because they probably had to have like six copies of the wardrobe from this scene

And you know those deep v's aren't cheap, right? Now they don't pay for themselves No, so yeah, they're like rolling around in the mud. They get completely soaked from head to toe with mud. And then they bust up laughing. And this laughter opens the flood waters for Picard, where he is initially laughing. And then he really starts to connect with the horror of what he has been through. And it admits to Robert that he is really horrified by what he did,

even though he was powerless to prevent it. You know, he was the instrument that the board used to cause a lot of death. This scene almost made me feel guilty, Ben, because like we had talked, we talked over the last few episodes and for the entire run of our show about how much we were craving a shattered character, how much, how, how, how uncontemporary the show seemed because it was lacking that. And now we got what we wanted. Well, I feel like the kind of, this is all directing.

I am going to wager, but I feel like this, this scene with Picard breaking down, kind of didn't stand on its own convictions because his face is covered. I think that the mud that is all over his face really takes some of the wind out of the sale of this performance. And I thought it was a real shame because like this is is the scene that we came to see in this episode.

And if they just had him wipe some of the mud away a little bit, I think it would have been 10 times as effective. I actually came down on the other side of this. I thought Patrick Stewart is acting in mud face, which is unfortunate. But like I thought he was super affecting and it's the same challenge that Michael Dorn has and LaVar Burton has, you know, trying to emote something heavy while having most of, if not all of your face covered is a challenge and I thought Patrick Stewart was able to Get through that for me at least but I could tell that it wasn't as effective for you

Yeah, it just I don't know it's It wasn't an A-plus Rebear's wife comes home and finds a hilarious uh, Robert's wife comes home and finds a hilarious track of mud prints across her floor. Like, it looks like they brought in like a bucket and remudded their feet every single step that they took. It was like a late 80s Capri Sun commercial setup like mom comes home from the grocery store. She's like, kids, what are you doing? Like money, footprints leading to a bigger mess. Yeah, and it starts, you know, it is very camp. It starts on the on the tile floor,

but goes across onto the like fancy carpet. And you know, this like, Shetopacard is is like it's no joke they got nice shit in there this isn't replicated stuff yeah yeah yeah so they they fucked some some real stuff up and they should feel bad but they're very drunk yeah they're just having fun just a couple of brothers getting up to no good this is kind of the the scene that seals the deal. Robert and John Luke, uh,

buddies once again. Yeah, they've, uh, they've, uh, they've brokered a piece and it really came from, like, Robert had a ton of pent-up jealousy about Picard and his career and his success. Mm-hmm. And for his brother to sort of admit weakness, to admit the

the huge loss that one could possibly endure while still surviving it sort of broke that dam between them. I mean, Robert saw his humanity again and it brought them together. It humanized him. The dishumanizing of Picard humanized him to Robert. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. And plus, plus when he saw that John Lucas no sexier in his bikini than Robert was in his, you know, he was like, all right, you right, you're not totally perfect. Well, I mean, Picard's not, Jean-Luc's not making babies like Robert is. Robert still got bullets and that good. So I think this is where we cut to the scene with Wesley watching the

holographic tape that his father made him and I guess the premise is that his father had this idea that he would record little hollow tapes for Wesley all through his childhood and then You know give it to him at some point but Wound up buying the farm way before that project could really get underway. So there's only one tape. And so this is an artifact from when Jack Crusher was a new father and is taping this for Baby Wesley.

And it's a pretty like saccharin speech, I thought. But I thought Will Wheaton did a good job of, you know, some kind of wordless acting, showing him, showing him dealing with this. Do you think Beverly is a bad mom? Or do you, to rephrase that question, do you think Beverly is reluctant to tell Wesley about the existence of this log up until now? Like, do you think that was a good decision on her part or a decision that you support?

I suppose neither of us can judge, neither of us are parents, but. No, well, I do have a cute dog. Right. I don't know, I feel like he's kind of old enough to deal with it. And she sort of half claims to have forgotten that this existed when she pulls it out of the box.

So I don't know. I don't really have a strong opinion on that. I don't know. I think it's time for her to stop protecting him. He has been an old soul his entire life. Like give him the stuff he's supposed to have. Don't withhold because you think it's going to protect him. I just thought that was kind of lame.

Okay, fair enough. So yeah, and then just to wrap up the Worf storyline, it is indeed true that Worf's parents wanted to be there to console him about his discommentation, uh, Gainin kicks it to them about how Warf really loves them despite the fact that he would never admit it to them. And, uh, as he's like

walking them off the ship, uh, they bump into Captain Picard and they get to meet Captain Picard and that's really fun for them. So that is the exciting conclusion of the episode. Oh no, there's that one last scene where they were Robert and Marie are looking out the window at Renee who's like chilling out under a tree, like looking up at the stars, right? Yeah, the final scene of this episode is basically the Dreamworks logo.

And that's it. Yeah, it's a very sentimental episode, ultimately. Darmak, Angelo, and Denaga. A greatest-gen live show is something you don't want to miss. Why? Well, it's a great opportunity to see me and Ben in person, but that's not all. FODs from all over gather at these shows to cosplay, to do pre and post-show hangs, to make friends, and share their embarrassment.

Hey, let's make a pretty great name for a tour. Let's do it. The Share Your Embarrassment Tour is coming in August 2023. We've got a bunch of dates in a lot of great places. Go to greatestgentour.com to get more info. That's greatestgentour.com for dates and ticketing information for the Share Your Embarrassment Tour. I'm Jordan Morris.

And I'm Jesse Thorne. On Jordan Jesse Go, we make pure, delightful nonsense. We were open awesome guests, and bring them down to our level. We get stupid with Judy Greer. My friend Molly and I call it having the spaceweards. Pat Noswald. Could I get a Balrog burger and some air-gorn fries? Thank you.

And Kumail Nanjiani. I've come back with cat toothbrushes, which is impossible to use. Come get stupider with us at MaximumFun.org. Look, your podcast apps are already open. Just pull it out. Give Jordan Jesse Goatry. Being smart is hard. Be dumb instead.

Oh, rats, hey, hey, hey, oh, I'm about to count you in line. These clouds are really freaking me out. I hate having to stand in line and boy, what do I? These giraffes do not smell good. No, they do not, and they've such short necks. But I'm hearing we need to get on this off. We've got to get on the art. It is about terrain,

it's about historic humanity. Hey, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Are you Noah? Yeah, I know we look like humans. We're actually, we're podcasters. We are podcasters, so it's different. Have you heard of Ono Ross and Carrie? We investigate spirituality, claims of the paranormal, stuff like that.

And you have a boat and say the world's gonna end, so seem like something for us to check out. We would love to be on the boats. We came to by two. What do you think? Ono Ross and Carrie, available on MaximumFun.org. DADORK. Did you like it though? I think my mood may have factor in big league, but I didn't love it. I found myself being more annoyed with it than enjoying it. How about yourself? It was better than I remember.

I think when I saw it the first time as a kid, as like a 10-year-old, I don't think I could really understand like how deeply it was addressing the indignity of what happened to Picard. And that is something that I think maybe you just need to be older to grasp. At the time it was like, there was a mushroom cloud that had just occurred on the show, and I was like ready to fill that vacuum with more action shit.

And to get a third chapter that was quiet and we be an occasionary funny was disappointing to me at the time, but right now I have to admit that I liked it. Fair enough. Ben, you often said like during tough times that this show acts as a kind of salve for you. Does it work that way when it's a disappointing episode also? Like is it like pizza when it's still, when it's bad, it's still pretty good? Yes, absolutely.

Like, but I, you know, I'm not usually picking the episode, you know, I, my, especially, you're playing a little random track are you no before we started this show my my way was to just be working on one of the series at any given time right and yeah I don't really skip around so so yeah like it doesn't really matter what the episode is, if I want to watch it. Speaking of random trick, though, I was just on an episode of random trick, the podcast on the incomparable network hosted by Scott McMulti, and I had a lot of fun.

And if you're interested, go search iTunes or whatever podcast you're using and search random trick. We talked about an episode of Enterprise and I also dished a little bit about the history of our show. Oh cool. I got to say a bunch of our viewers told me that you were on that show. That was how I found out and a number of them were concerned that that you were cheating on me. Oh no, no. I wasn't cheating. You don't want to break up a happy home bin. I'm sure you'll go on random track someday. We'll see about that. Not if it's an enterprise episode.

It will veto that. I don't know if you're allowed. I don't think that's how random track works, buddy. So many rules. Yeah. Random Track is the show that probably most prevented me from starting a Star Trek podcast initially, because I was like, the premise of that show was so good that I don't know if I have anything

to add to Star Trek podcasting. Little did you know how much you had to add. How many fart jokes? How many dick jokes? It was really lacking all of those things. Yeah. We're doing good work. Hey, Ben. What's that, Adam?

Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda? Drunk Shimoda? I sure did. Drunk Shimoda is the award we give to the character that's doing something silly or having the most fun. And my drunk Shimoda in this episode is for the mayor of La Barre France, who wants to have a pretty party for locutus of Borg, give him keys to the city. I was just thinking about like, I know that like, this is a future where people are honest and intellectually conscientious. But I can't imagine that the people of Earth

are not feeling fairly traumatized by the image of Jean-Luc Picard right now and to put him on a float and take him down mainstream in your little village. Seems so insane. It so is. And can you imagine? I wish we had met that character. Oh, I wish we had met that character.

I feel like it would be easy for Picard to RSVP, like Parader or relevant. Keys or futile, like, like, following to that, that old pattern that he was in the last week. Yeah, yeah. So, that's my drunk Shimoda for this app. A rare off-screen drunk Shimoda. It becomes even more rare than that been because we pick the same Shimoda and they're full of off-screen.

No way! Yeah. I thought nothing was more ridiculous or tone deaf than that decision. That is, it's insane. Yeah. I can't think of an equivalent, really. No, it's real weird.

I mean, I guess they're trying to tell us something about what the people of Earth felt about this, and they're like 100% ready to forgive Picard, but based on my experience in contemporary life, I cannot imagine that. It's interesting to me that Picard's family doesn't betray any of that at all. There is not even a whiff of, you almost killed all of us. Right. There's no resentment about that.

Even from Robert. Yeah. Like the source of Robert's resentment is Picard's success. It's not that he almost murdered everyone on Earth. Yeah. And like it dovetails with Robert's suspicion of technology, right?

Right. Oh, you went and got sucked up into this lifestyle where you got turned into a technological terror. That's what happens when you use too many microwaves. Yeah. You become one. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Ah, so silly.

Yeah. Yeah. Good Shimoda bin. Good Shemota, Ben. Good Shemota, Adam. What do we have coming up on the next episode? The next episode is season 4 episode 3, Brothers, after being summoned home by his elderly creator, Data clashes with his evil brother, lore. Do you remember this episode, Adam?

God, the first two episodes of season 4 cast such a shadow that I think it's going to take me a while before I get to episodes that I remember again. This is one that I don't recall at all. It makes me realize that data did not appear at all in the episode we just reviewed. That's right. He has no one to visit on Earth. That's kind of sad. Maybe they were just off shooting,

because so brothers, he plays lore, data, and Nunean soon. So there's like scenes where like three Brent spiders are on screen at once. He's interacting with each other. Yeah, so maybe they were just like off somewhere filming that stuff because it's so complicated to film, you know, just timing and special effects-wise. Just to be clear, you're thinking that this show filmed two episodes concurrently or not

concurrently at the same time? Yeah, I mean, I don't have anything to base that on other than I know it is really hard to make that type of scene work. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they were like, hey, let's just write data out of episode two so that we can really like make episode three work. We're going to cover them with a bunch of love in another episode.

Let's give them a break. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, so vetoes are reinstated obviously Do you have any temptations surrounding this episode? I think it would only be responsible for me to veto an episode that I remembered and I don't think it would be fair for me to use one on one that I didn't so Okay, I'm gonna keep it in the pocket. I remember kind of liking this episode So I will gonna keep it in the pocket. I remember kind of liking this episode, so I will not veto either. All right, fair enough. A bunch of people were expecting me to veto

best of both worlds part two. Yeah. I mean, people were expecting me to also. I enjoy doing crazy shit with my vetoes, but I'm not a monster. No, come on. You're first and foremost self-serving and people wouldn't like our show if we didn't get through both of best of both worlds, right? Right, I'm chaotic fun and I'm just being chaotic cruel to do that. Yeah. You know what is the opposite of cruel It's a piece of long and simple battle, which long and thus has a busy, healthy, long,

young and poor, yeah. You know what is the opposite of Cruelebin is the great amount of support we receive from our viewers who go to MaximumFund.org slash Donate to contribute to the production of our show. Yeah, it's easy and fun to do and it really helps us out. A lot of people tweet at us, why don't you guys have a Patreon? We have a Patreon and it is maximumfund.org slash donate. Same exact principle.

It is you giving us a small amount of money on a monthly basis to support the production of this show, and every little bit is deeply appreciated by us. And, you know, if you support, you get to listen to this show knowing that you're helping make it. That's right. There's a couple other ways to help support the production of the show too. You can buy a t-shirt. You can buy a jumbo tron ad, otherwise known as a priority one message on our show.

And we are very appreciative of any reviews that people write or leave on either the iTunes site or anywhere else. And tell a friend, tell a friend to listen to the program. I think our show is a lot better than its description. You can tell your friend that. You gotta believe me. It's a great show.

Everybody knows it's an amazing show. It sounds terrible, but it's really terrific. It's very grabby, but people love it. This joke's as much tragic as funny at this point. God, yeah, no kidding. Uh, we've got to thank our, uh, the people who make the music of the show. Yes, me. One of them being, one of them being dark material, who is the creator of the Picard song, the

acts as our main theme and interstitial theme. Yeah. It's, it's a character in our show. Yeah, and, uh, our, uh, our priority on music is made by our friend Adam theme and interstitial theme. Yeah. It's a character in our show. Yeah, and our priority on music is made by our friend Adam Rekusia. Go listen to his podcast, The Pub from Current Public Media. It's great. I listen every week and I really enjoy it.

It's much smarter than this show. I don't listen to many other podcasts, but I listen to that one. Yeah, so good. And with that, we will be back at you next week with another great episode of Star Trek the Next Generation and an episode of the greatest generation that is probably having eternity I'm just gonna be your captain. I'm just gonna be your captain. I'm just gonna be your captain. I'm just gonna be your captain. I'm just gonna be your captain. I'm just gonna be your captain. I'm just gonna be your captain.

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