Now that I have seen this, I'm glad that they took their time telling the story. Instead of just barreling through in one or two episodes. A good story unfolds like origami.
It appears that Hugh Borg knew more about what was going on between Soji and Narek than he ever let on. He knew that Narek was slime. And this works to Picard's advantage.
Picard goes to a Borg cube for the first time since he was Locutus. Once a Borg, always a Borg. Which gives him a lot in common with Hugh.
And Picard is always Picard, even with his damaged crew. Raffi is a mess. There is one Genuine Starfleet shill, and a Romulan protector/assassin who refuses to do what he's told. But Picard being who he is can still get things done- even with the deck stacked against him. Will it be enough?
Meanwhile, Soji is starting to flip out, and Narek takes advantage of the situation to get information that he shouldn't have. Because it appears that it never really was about two android girls, when there's possibly a whole planet of them. But the more that we see, the more that we know that the ban on lifeforms like Data was something that the Tal Shi'ar wanted, and they infiltrated Starfleet to make it happen- even while Picard was trying to save billions of Romulans.
If only Picard could get Starfleet to listen, but Starfleet is no longer Starfleet. It occurs to me that we haven't seen Starfleet from the point of view of being on a starship, we are seeing Starfleet that is falling to pieces, from the outside. And as Starfleet fails, so does the Federation.
Can one man fix something that's so broken?