Sadly, this is the best episode of the season thus far. Not because it offers a coherent story, a marginal improvement over previous efforts, or an ounce of logic. Simply put, it pauses the stupid just long enough to offer a genuine moment of compassion and insight into these characters.
Ro Laren was a brilliant character, and brilliantly portrayed by Michelle Forbes. Ro provided a third layer - a new depth to the TNG formula that was sorely missing from the Roddenberry Season 1-2 formula - that allowed for the possibility of inter-crew conflict and the questioning of Starfleet morality. She's the prototype for Kira Nerys and the highlight of the later seasons of TNG, and she made every episode she appeared in better.
She makes this shabby, ridiculous episode better, too.
Like most things "Picard", Ro shows up just long enough to explore a throwaway subplot and is quickly shown the door. It's one of the show's most striking and consistent failures: platforming it's rickety, tiresome plots on the audience's nostalgia for some of TNG's best-written tertiary characters. Season One murdered two of the great TNG creations in cold blood. Season Two purported to be about Q, though really, Q had next to nothing to do. One can only guess who Season Three will resurrect and slaughter in the remaining handful of disappointments. For this episode, Ro shows up to deliver a plot device as stale as Worf/Hurd's sub-lame Good Cop-Bad Cop B-story.
The writers manage an overwrought but effective conversation with Ro that dramatically slows down the episode to establish one key element of the story: more Changeling drama afoot! It's forgivable, however, because we get to see two actors nailing a scene. It's not a particularly well-written scene. Any newcomer to "Picard" could easily leave the scene imagining that Ro left ole Jean-Luc at the altar. But the scene works like it should because, after all, it wouldn't be an episode of "Picard" without an endless parade of guilt and regret. They finally landed one.
But how bad is this show? Not one, but two fake deaths and a ticking time bomb figure profoundly into it's story arc. And in the laziest laze of Lazidom, it turns out that Jack is not only a soap-opera trope, but a super-weapon trope as well.
I am thankful that the great Rene Aberjonois is dead only because I can rest assured that he has not been conned into returning to this quivering dungheap of a show. Though, I'm happy Forbes took the bait. It was a nice touch in a show that could really use a touch-up.
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