Agreed. Sunset Tree is the most immediately accessible. All Hail West Texas is the masterpiece, but it's the last of his lo-fi recordings, and that could be off-putting if you haven't already adjusted to his unique voice.

…and it almost killed me.

Man, I am getting SO wasted on Captain Picard Day.

@Jeebus — thank you for "weird stump ship." That's been my argument all along for why they never separated. It was supposed to be cool, but ended up looking dumb.

Yeah, we're gonna have to work a lot harder if we have to come up with Thoughtful Riker stuff to spice up the Drunk Riker and Lecherous Riker bits.

@Jeebus — beautiful.

Yeah, Richilieu, it was weird. And I don't remember it happening before. And no, I don't think our friend was even the main culprit, exactly. He said some provocative, mildly off stuff, sure. But it just led to a barrage of pretty distasteful rape-related jokes, and people started to get queasy. It wasn't really Zack…

@UM - win. I was trying to think of something on those lines, but came up empty.

How to cope when Dad's been assimilated, or Mom is turning into a lizard.

Uh, yeesh. This is why we WEREN'T going to do a Frakes thread this time…

I liked that Troi story for the punchline—to paraphrase somebody here a couple weeks back, the key to command is being willing to order Geordi to his death. Sold!

Nah, I want Bashir to suffer. Just because. Ezri was cuter than Keiko, anyway (though both are fairly annoying).

Man, when "Inner Light" actually comes up, in a couple of months, we're going to set a new record for comments. Unless we've all usd up our best material talking about it every week.

@Jammer- I knew I wasn't the only one who felt that way, but it's good to hear. Yeah, Shimerman was actually pretty damned funny when he got decent material. The character should never have been made to carry a whole episode, though. (I will maybe—MAYBE—make an exception for "The House of Quark.") But every other…

Cookie Monster has been waiting YEARS for this moment. And yeah, it was deeply satisfying. I love that blue guy.

Heh. Well, I meant Troi's memory, apparently of hooking up with Riker after work one day. I don't remember it that well, but I remember it seeming like she wasn't entirely into it.

@Politest - this was a trope that the writers openly acknowledged. They called them "O'Brien must suffer" episodes, and made sure it happened at least once a year. Because it was entertaining, and Meaney was damned good at it. Those were some of the best episodes. "Hard Time," "Whispers," etc. Damn, "Whispers."

Eponymous - oh, yeah, it was a risk, and I applaud them for it. I was arguing that it would be much riskier now; the word's gotten that much more radioactive. (Rightly so, I guess.) An essentially "PG" type show like DS9 wouldn't use it now, I don't think.

He named himself after Worf's kid. A questionable decision.

I'm in the middle, I guess. Some of those scenes were okay—but more Picard scenes would have been better. This is universally true.