I think the problem with Wesley was that TNG was not self-aware of how annoying a smug child prodigy is. Other than a memorable exception (“SHUT UP WESLEY”), he was sincerely put forward as a “chosen one” with whom younger viewers were meant to identify. It was TNG trying to be a family show.

Adira, while a genius like Wesley, feels flawed in ways that Wesley was seldom allowed to be. In her handful of scenes, she felt more like a real teenager than Wesley ever did.

Also consider how rough that year must have been for her. It’s her 2020. There’ll be people I haven’t seen since March of this year who, once I do get to see them, hopefully next spring(?), it will have felt like a decade.

I’m making my way through DS9 for the first time, and my interpretation of Jadzia Dax is not as a plural being (7 personalities in one body), but as a unique blend with access to all of the symbiont’s hosts’ experiences. There are several times where she refers to past-tense Jadzia as being distinct from Jadzia Dax,…

The music swells (again, and again, and again), there’s hugging and tears, and it’s so clearly and obviously manipulative that it sets the rest of the hour off on a bad foot almost immediately.

As an English speaker accustomed to "they/them" as plural (despite the many exceptions to that rule), using those pronouns for a Trill makes intuitive sense, as a being with more than one consciousness. Indeed, now I regret DS9 failing to treat Dax as a plural being, a community on two legs.

Getting more Ezri vibes from them. 

Word is that Adira will go by they/them pronouns later in the season. Information is moving fast on this point.

I just watched all of Enterprise for the first time myself, and I agree with your sentiments 100%. There’s like maybe 3 great episode (tops), and the rest are just either fine and very generic or rip your hair out awful.

You’ve not lived until you’ve had to fight off a seagull trying to steal your Cornish Pasty as you stand on a train station platform in the South West of England.

And yet, every season, we get grinding gears, people hot-gluing runway looks, and choux that needs to be chucked.  *sigh*

I worked with an MD who years ago competed on the TV show Jeopardy! The one question he should have nailed “Insulin is made from this organ in the human body?” rendered him completely blank. I imagine it is a series of things which cause problems. Cameras, unfamiliar set up, lack of sleep, giddiness, too much…

It looks like a French Defense by Black, specifically the Winawer variation, in which Black uses his king’s bishop to pin the opposing queen’s knight to her king, which sharply increases pressure on her king’s pawn and hence forces her to commit to a less flexible (but space-gaining) advance of that pawn to e5 (five…

Yes. If you’re going on The Amazing Race, you learn to drive stick. If you’re going on RuPaul’s Drag Race, you learn to sew. And if you’re going on The Great British Bake-Off, you practice goddamn choux pastry. I love Linda, but choux should have been a piece of cake for her.

I’m sure I say this every year, but choux is the single easiest recipe to memorize: 1 stick butter, one cup water/milk, one cup flour and four eggs. Scale it up or down from there and you’re set for anything. How does someone as experienced as Linda cock that up? And how does anyone go on this show without practicing…

“Her substance abuse issues are established early on, but her moments of binge-drinking and pill-popping excess are too archly depicted to ever approach rock bottom.”

I hate it when the bakers ignore bits of the brief. That was how Manon got herself sent home that time. Also people who go on this show need to practice their choux pastry and creme pat. Both always seem to come up a couple of times a season at least.

I wanted to eat all those tarts and pasties. Though last time I had a pasty in England, I was chased by geese who wanted my lunch.

I’ve not really been a huge fan of Disco or Picard, but the one thing I can say is that they’ve avoided the overwhelming same-iness of Enterprise. There are a few Enterprise episodes I really like, but huge chunks of the show (like most of season 2) feel like they were done better before on other trek shows.

But also speaking to your point about you never having seen a relationship get better after infidelity. In my anecdotal experience, I have in some cases. And legit better in terms of the relationship being healthier and cheating not happening again.