Jammer's Reviews

"Something Borrowed, Something Green" opens with an Orion support ship being destroyed by the powerful Mystery Vessel that attacked the Klingons and Romulans in the season's first two episodes. It's a scene that's exactly as the other two were — completely divorced from the rest of the episode and advancing this supposedly "serial" plot in no real way because it provides no additional information, but merely more of what we already know. If this is supposed to be some sort of poker-faced parody/commentary on bad serialization, then mission accomplished, but that doesn't seem like the intent.

This scrap of plot does, I suppose, ever so loosely tie into the main plot, as it provides Freeman with slightly more reason to insist Tendi return home for her sister D'Erika's wedding, which she's reluctant to do because she wants to keep her Orion past buried rather than in full view of her friends. ("D'Erika" — I love how we're now just adding consonants and apostrophes to the beginnings of regular names to make them "alien.")

So, return home Tendi does, where we learn that her family is loaded, and that Tendi was the "prime" daughter who was supposed to carry the mantle in following the Orion-ist of the Orion-isms before she decided to run away and follow her own path in joining Starfleet. To provide this story with meat, we learn that D'Erika may have been kidnapped before her imminent wedding — which is in accordance with Orion custom — but her return is overdue, making it suspicious. So we embark on a journey through Tendi's abandoned past life in her search for her sister.

This leads us to a couple of nightclub encounters, including one with a drinking game that includes a poisonous scorpion-like creature, and a venture into a "hump dungeon" where female pheromones rule the day (in a commented-upon callback to "Bound," one of Enterprise's worst episodes). The episode is at its best and most relaxed when it's just hanging out with the girls and doing a bachelorette party comedy (minus the bachelorette), featuring hijinks and knife-throwing. The best gag, albeit not hilarious, is probably Mariner getting repeatedly stabbed by daggers thrown in her general direction — as well as those not thrown at her at all.

Eventually, we learn D'Erika kidnapped herself (as the Dude would say), and is lying low in an old childhood hiding spot, where she and her sister resolve their family differences over a swordfight. The Tendi/Orion backstory (Tendi was a fully trained assassin, but ran away from her life because she never wanted it, resulting in D'Erika having the role thrust upon her instead) is layered into the hangout premise and makes for some breezy, inconsequential LD fun.

On the other hand, the whole business aboard the Cerritos, where Boimler and Rutherford calm their roommate tensions with a holodeck scenario where they both play the role of Mark Twain (reference: TNG's "Time's Arrow") is one of those things that seems like it wants points purely for oddness, rather than actually clever or effective humor. Extending this idea to the Hard-Headed Alien of the Week is a predictable turn. What's not predictable, because it's so pointlessly random, is the alien's decision to eat Boimleford's bonsai tree. Funny? I can't say so. It's a joke with no setup or punchline. Or in other words, not a joke.

Bottom line: This outing is a middle-of-the-road affair that's passable, but pretty far from inspired.

Previous episode: In the Cradle of Vexilon
Next episode: Empathological Fallacies

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