* Ok so apparently we currently have a free trial subscription to Paramount+ for some reason so I am going to try to watch the Picard season premiere because I lack the courage to kill myself quickly.
* It opens on the bridge of a starship filled with explosions and people being killed by robot tentacles. So par for the course.
* Picard says “computer activate self destruct sequence!” and the computer immediately starts counting down from 10. Ships today are so advanced they don’t even need that code Kirk had to put in. They’ll blow themselves up on a whim.
* But then in a shockingly original narrative device it says "48 HOURS EARLIER" and Picard is back on that damn vineyard again.
* Hover-drones are hovering up and down the rows of grapes, beaming the grapes off of the vines to collect them. Which I guess makes sense but just looks silly to see.
* Picard picks up a fresh bottle of wine and the vintage label is beamed onto it (???).
* In season 1 Picard had two ex-Tal Shiar Romulan servants who kept his house clean and changed his adult diapers, a married couple named Larex and Jarex. They were vaguely interesting but abruptly vanished from the story for no reason in like the third episode.
* Now in season 2 Jarex has apparently been dead a year and a half for unexplained reasons and Larex, a 50-year-old Irishwoman, is putting the moves on 107-year-old Picard.
* Um hello power dynamics?
* "Cheers, Big Ears," says Picard, then pumps his fists enthusiastically when he correctly translates some Romulan gibberish. Classic Picard mannerisms.
* "I thought you chose the stars, Picard, but are you running away from something?" she asks inexplicably. "Why are you always alone?"
* Picard says that his personal wants and desires are secondary to his commitment to duty, forgetting that he has been in retirement and without commitments for like 20 years.
* Picard almost kisses her but then betas out and she leaves.
* Where the fuck is Beverly Crusher?
* Then there is a flashback to Picard's childhood on the vineyard. He is dressed like a 1920s Oliver Twist.
* "Will you fight less here?" Picard asks, followed by a quick-cutting montage of his dad beating his mom. Great!
* "If you hear us shouting, look up at the stars and imagine how tiny our voices sound out there," his mom tells him.
* All of TNG happened because Picard was running away from his childhood trauma of having an abusive father. Just like Gene Roddenberry intended.
* Picard is so old. They should have called it Star Trek: Imhotep.
* "We often refer to space as the final frontier," Picard says in a speech at Starfleet Academy, "but the older I get, the true final frontier seems to be time."
* Picard introduces "the first fully Romulan cadet at Starfleet Academy" and the camera cuts to Legolas, the male warrior-nun from season 1 who was always cutting people's heads off with a samurai sword.
* Meanwhile in space Seven of Nine is beating space pirates with a wrench.
* Her crew consists of the EMH program of Captain Rios, Picard's pilot-for-hire in season 1.
* Captain Rios as I'm sure you don't remember had a dark and tragic backstory that manifested in him crewing his ship with half a dozen holo-people all played by the same actor as Captain Rios, because he was a complete narcissist.
* I mean because they each represented some fragment of his broken psyche. Or something.
* Idk why Seven has this one when they could have just hired Robert Picardo but okay.
* "Computer, disengage hologram safety protocols!" Seven says and then the EMH starts punching the pirates. Why would she even have that turned on?
* They capture the pirates and the EMH randomly starts psychoanalyzing Seven: "A lifetime of humans reacting with fear and prejudice to your Borg enhancements may have inhibited developmentally appropriate relationship skills."
* He says it in Spanish of course because that's more diverse.
* "Reacting with fear and prejudice" is so on-the-nose as a description of humanity in Star Trek it's hard to believe the writers didn't put it in intentionally as a fuck-you to the audience.
* Then a glowy green space anomaly appears.
* Meanwhile in the Beta Quadrant we cut to Data's "daughter" who ended up having no actual connection to Data whatsoever. She exposits that the Federation is no longer racist against "synthetics."
* Over at the bar Dr. Agnes Gerardi, who murdered Measure of a Man's Bruce Maddox in season 1, tells a bald guy that she was recently cleared of that murder for reasons of "alien-induced temporary insanity."
* "I'm half in the bag," she says.
* If you look on social media/Reddit there are a lot of bots I mean Star Trek fans saying "boy Picard season 1 sure was bad but this new season premiere is a big step up and I loved it!" They are LYING.
* Suddenly Captain Rios is there in orbit. His Starfleet commission has been reinstated apparently and he's now the captain of the Federation starship STARGAZER.
* Rios smokes a cigar on the bridge and gives orders in Spanish. He's going to investigate the green glowy thing and wants Agnes aboard because she is a main character.
* "Make it so!" he commands. "The pressures of legacy!" Agnes titters.
* Back on Earth Picard exposits to Raffi, the drug addict 9/11 truther who made Picard check his privilege in season 1, that he is now chancellor of Starfleet Academy and is considering updating the Kobayashi Maru test. I know what that is!
* Raffi and Seven are a lesbian couple because Chakotay was that bad in bed.
* Raffi makes several pointed remarks about Picard being lonely and avoiding working on himself.
* Legolas is about to ship out. Picard gives him a book written by Spock and this piece of advice: "Live a little!"
* Seven meets up with Rios at the green thing, which emits a mysterious transmission. "It's a Unix system, I know this!" says Agnes, translating the message.
* "It says 'Help us, Picard!'" Cut to commercial break.
* Meanwhile Picard goes to visit Guinan's bar, which conveniently located in some dingy alley where they could shoot on location for cheap and just add a few CGI affects to an air conditioner.
* Guinan's bar is building number 10 on Forward Avenue.
* "Why are you so old and fat now?" Picard asks. Guinan explains that her people only age slowly if they choose to. "I've noticed that humans don't like to be reminded of their mortality so I try to keep up."
* What
* Picard has come to complain about his love life. "You only date women you know you won't have to stay with," Guinan tells him.
* Picard is afraid of commitment!
* "Why did you decide to go to the stars in the first place?" she asks him. Man what a lucky coincidence for the writer that so many different people all happen to be asking him this same question at the same time.
* Picard starts talking about new life and new civilizations but Guinan says the only place he's ever been afraid to explore is his own heart. "I think your answers are not in the stars and they never have been."
* Later an admiral lady brings a copy of the glowy green thing message to Picard's house. The entity wants to join the Federation so Picard must go back into the field. He arrives on Rios's ship and casually remarks that this isn't the same Stargazer he served on.
* So what was even the point
* For once the set design doesn't look bad actually. Lighting is too dim and all the surfaces are way too shiny but it's the closest they've gotten in any of these shows.
* "PICARD" the mysterious anomaly says in a voice that is clearly the Borg while Seven just stands there cluelessly.
* A Borg ship emerges from the green glowy thing. Instead of being a geometric shape it looks like a bunch of spikes because that's more badass.
* Agnes and Picard want to hear the Borg out and let them join the Federation but Seven is like y'all crazy let's just kill them.
* "THERE IS NO MORE TIME," say the Borg. "WE ARE SENDING OUR QUEEN TO NEGOTIATE WITH PICARD."
* "They can't transport through our shields," says Rios. Am I crazy or haven't they always been able to do that?
* Oh they just do it now anyway.
* The queen materializes on the bridge dressed like Darth Vader. "We wish for peace, but first we require...."
"What?" says Rios. "What do you require?????"
"Power!"
* Borg queen shoots out Doctor Octopus tentacles and jacks into the ship's computer. The bridge officers open fire, which has no effect, and the queen kills them all with magic green lasers that emanate from her body like a Power Rangers villain.
* "Cease fire!" Rios orders but no one listens to him.
* "She's assimilating the ship!" says Seven. "Not just our ship, the entire fleet!" says Agnes. This is where Picard activates the auto destruct.
* "Authorization: Picard-Zero-Zero-Zero-Destruct-Zero!" Yay, he said the thing.
* "Look up," the Borg queen tells Picard in his mother's voice. Then the ship blows up.
* Picard wakes up in his vineyard in an alternate timeline where Trump won in 2020.
* Q appears as Deepfake Young John Delancie. "You're a bit older than I expected, Picard," he says. "Let me catch up." and he turns into Old John Delancie.
* That's fine but it's very apparent that they could only afford to show him de-aged for like two seconds.
* Picard is like Q, you bastard, what's going on here! "You've been thinking a lot about second chances lately. Welcome to the very end of the road not taken."
* TO BE CONTINUED
* Hurray, it sucked.
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