I feel like Lower Decks is entering a slump, and “Something Borrowed, Something Green” is the episode where I can point at it. It’s Season 4, Episode 4. The press release from Paramount said Tendi is summoned back to Orion for a wedding, and that doesn’t even begin to cover it.

You’re going to notice I’m by myself this week. Baby Know-It-All is taking the week off, and she’ll be back with us next week.

There are two things happening in this episode, an A plot and a B plot, which is par for the course for Star Trek. The A plot is Tendi and her Orion wedding, and that’s where you really start to delve deep into Orion culture. For me that was the bright spot of the entire episode.

Two Mark Twains and a Bonsai Tree

I’m just going to tell you this entire B plot, because I want to hurry up and get it out of my way.

Back on the Cerritos, they focus on Boimler and Rutherford now that they’re roomies, bunking together as lieutenant JGs. These guys get along so well, and then all of a sudden one of them wants to mist their bonsai tree and they get into an argument about it. Ultimately they go to the holodeck and they both dress up as Mark Twain. There’s a whole thing. Somehow, in the act of talking old-timey, they find common ground and get along.

This plot thread is very underdeveloped and it goes off the rails really fast, because they try to make it relevant and you sit there and go, okay. If I had to borrow something from another YouTuber I watch, Jeremy Jahns: I don’t know that I’m going to remember the B plot in T-minus one day. Yeah. I’ve pretty much forgotten that subplot already.

So later on, Captain Freeman and the crew are supposed to be scanning a nebula, and there’s another race there, another group of people. I told you I totally forgot, because it was that unimportant. They face off with these guys, who are like, we’re the ones supposed to be doing this, blah blah, and there’s this whole argument. So Boimler and Rutherford have this brilliant idea: what if we make you both dress up as Mark Twain on the holodeck? It doesn’t go well. Finally they mention the bonsai tree. The dude’s like, oh yeah, let me see what that is. He looks at it, he’s totally mystified by it, and then he decides to eat it. And then it’s, that was kind of good, all right, you guys can go ahead and do the scanning.

It was a silly B plot. It really was. It didn’t make any sense and it had nothing to do with anything.

Orion Is a Party Place

The real story, the one everybody cares about, is the through line between Tendi and her family.

It starts when the invitation comes. Tendi, T’Lyn and Mariner are the ones who head to Orion, and you find out that Tendi is actually part of one of the five major houses. Throughout the whole thing she makes certain statements to T’Lyn, oh, so this is how the culture does this, that or the other, and it’s just T’Lyn the whole time taking all these notes.

How many times did Mariner get stabbed with a knife? It’s clearly a lot, and the whole time she’s like, yeah, it’s part of the culture, we’re partying, woohoo. It’s so funny, because Baby Know-It-All, half asleep, goes, “Well, that’s a party place.”

Then you get to the real party. This is the part that puts the adult in adult animation, so be forewarned. The afterparty is where you find out that Orion pheromones are definitely a real thing, and the pheromone addicts, if you will, love to just live in the stink. I was like, ew. Really. Ew.

Overall, though, you do get this really interesting look at the culture. Apparently, whenever someone’s going to get married, bridal kidnappings are a big thing. Tendi’s mom sends her on the mission to go find her sister, who’s been kidnapped because it’s her wedding. Tendi tracks down her ex-boyfriend first, and from there they track her sister to this place where the two of them used to go. It’s the place where Tendi told her sister she was leaving for Starfleet.

The Sister Who Had to Step Up

That’s the heart in the middle of this entire plot thread. You find out her sister had to step up and become the prime. Tendi, as the prime of her family, meaning the eldest daughter, was a highly trained assassin. And she’s like, yeah, I’m really good at that stuff, but science is where her heart lives.

That made total sense to me. I enjoyed seeing it and I thought it worked really well.

I thought it was interesting, too, for a reason that worries me a little. We’re at Season 4, and they’re playing this “Tendi hates being considered an Orion” thing almost like a character defect of hers. By Season 4 these characters are arcing as hard as they can. They’ve become lieutenant JGs. So at the end of the day I feel like they’re living in this space a little too long.

That Same Goofy-Looking Ship

The one thing I skipped is the very beginning. The episode starts with an Orion ship happening upon that same goofy-looking spaceship we’ve seen in the last two episodes, the one that’s destroyed Romulans and destroyed others. And now it seemingly destroys this one. I say seemingly because we don’t know. There’s a bright white flash, and the effect they’re using implies destruction, but so far all we’re really learning is that these ships are disappearing.

I’m pretty interested to find out what it is myself. Something needs to happen, because this is where I feel the slump coming on.

The Verdict

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, Episode 4, “Something Borrowed, Something Green,” is a 6 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good. The B plot was kind of sad and made no sense.

You can tell me this is a cartoon, Mr. Know-It-All, what are you talking about, how’s it supposed to make sense… but you’ve had three seasons of episodes that more or less made a lot of sense, even in their own cartoonish world. Even the crossover made some kind of sense. This just felt like story for story’s sake. The Tendi part, all of that, was fine. The rest of it I really could have lived without.

In Star Trek, for the most part, B plots have always helped serve the A plot. Usually it goes like this. The A plot is this brand new alien species we’re meeting and this new technology they’re going to share with us. The B plot is this ingenious young kid working on a science experiment for class, going through his stuff and learning to be more confident. These guys are doing this other thing, and at some point the two things intersect. Then it’s the genius kid who’s got to look at the problem with new eyes, because he’s not jaded like an adult and he’s not slanted one way or another, and he helps solve the thing.

I literally just wrote most any episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is primarily where Lower Decks lives. So that’s a big tell for me. Guys, where does the intersect happen?

I’m not going to belabor that point too much.

Give me your theories on that ship. What do you think it is? And let me know what you thought of the episode. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.