Star Trek: The Next Generation - 4x04 -Suddenly Human

    The Enterprise picks up a few alien teens who are injured in some training.  Among the survivors is a human boy, who identifies as one of the aliens.  After a bit of research, it's discovered that the aliens had taken him, as a baby, during a war.  This leads to some conflicts about the boy's identity, along with some questions of who should be caring for the boy.
    With a title like this, I really thought this would be a Data-centric episode.  Instead, it's actually a pretty dull affair.  Most of the episode mines material from making Picard uncomfortable with being a father figure to the boy.  What's worse… is that the episode has an angle that goes unused.  Worf was in the same situation.  He was a child survivor of a battle that left his family dead.  It turns out much later that he has a living relative that he thought was dead.  This remains unmentioned throughout the episode (to make sure, this background had been established for Worf prior to this episode.  This isn't material that was later written.)
    The other big problem with this episode is that the ending isn't satisfying.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - 4x03 - Brothers

    Just as the Enterprise is trying to rush to a star base for some medical needs, Data flips out, and takes control of the Enterprise.  He's been called home, to visit his creator.  Of course, Lore has also been called home.
    This episode was a mild disappointment.  The first half of it is fun.  Data outsmarting the crew, and Picard's frustration with his lack of control.  Then once Data reaches his destination, the story just slows down to a crawl.  A lot of this information is interesting, but it plays out so slowly that it isn't satisfying.
    Brent Spiner gets to play Data, Lore, and Dr. Soong.  I enjoy seeing both Data and Lore interact, since Spiner seems to get how to play him right.  Dr. Soong isn't as enjoyable.  I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I think Spiner never got the full character developed in his head.

The Simpsons - 23x06 - The Book Job

    Lisa discovers that young-adult fiction is written by committee, and the books are driven by market research and ghostwritten by teams.  After she tells Homer about this, he decides that it's a good idea to try doing this.  He recruits Bart, and they assemble a team to come up with a book, write it, and sell it.
    This is probably one of my favorite episodes of the past  five seasons or so.  It's handled in the style of the Oceans movies, which have such a satisfying structure that it would be hard to dislike it.  Everything moves fast, and it feels great.  When Homer recruits Bart, the back-and-forth between them is just brilliant.
    The story is reasonably complex, and there's just enough double-crossing going on to make things interesting.  But none of it sounds like they just needed a quick way out.
    While I was watching this, I mentioned how great it is when they adopt a format from another movie or show.  I brought up the episode 24 Minutes, which I still find wildly fun (even though I've never watched an episode of 24.  Go figure.)  Cathy pointed out the episode Behind the Laughter, which I hadn't considered.

The Simpsons - 6x21 - The PTA Disbands

    Springfield Elementary is running out of money, leading to escalating conflicts between Principal Skinner and the teachers.  When the teachers go on strike, Bart takes the opportunity to play pranks all over, Lisa gets focused on achieving the satisfaction that schooling brings, and eventually, Bart needs to bring an end to the strike in order to prevent Marge from being his teacher.
    Yep, that's not a great summary.  The episode is a bit scattershot, but it's still very enjoyable.  The things I don't like are very brief things - like the time lapse of Skinner and Krabapple arguing and pounding on the door.
    But there are great things, like the foreman with Bart's voice.  The brief, unnecessary gags, like the bullies playing games in the arcade.  Cathy's a big fan of Lisa's storyline, especially when Lisa comes up to Marge, begging to be graded.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - 4x02 - Family

    A collection of short stories involving the crew and their relationships with family members.  Worf's human parents visit the Enterprise.  Picard visits his brother on the family vineyard in France.  Crusher gets a chest of keepsakes from her deceased husband, with a recording to pass on to Wesley.
    There's a lot of humor to the episode, but it balances out with some fairly emotional bits.  The Worf storyline is mostly played for laughs.  It does have a nice scene where Worf realizes that human parents support their children through adversity.
    Wesley's story is the weakest.  I've never cared much about his father's death, since the issue is never explored too fully.  Plus, it's hard to care much about what happens with Wesley.
    Picard's story is the A-plot here.  Picard's brother, Robert, is a firmly conservative anti-technology stalwart.  He blames technology for replacing too many things, and harming the value in hard work.  While synthetic wine is available, he feels it doesn't compare to wine he works to make.  He dislikes replicators.
    It's clear that Picard has a balanced view of these things, especially since Robert is written in such a two-dimensional way.  But Robert's antagonism of Picard is useful.  When they eventually start fighting, that gives away to laughing, then to Picard confronting his fears about his experience with the Borg.  It turns out that Picard feels personally responsible for the information the Borg were able to gather from his brain, and how many lives that cost.  We rarely see Picard allowing himself to feel bad about his decisions, since he typically takes the path that preserves life.  Here, the loss of life was too large, and he feels like he could have made a better decision, or he could have been stronger.
    It's a great episode, although Wesley's story is kind of weak, and Worf could have used some tweaking.  But for an episode that was written by Ronald D. Moore, it's up to his usual levels of quality.

The Simpsons - 11x21 - It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marge

    Otto is about to get married, when the wedding is called off.  The fiancee, Becky, lives with the Simpsons while she gets her life back together.  While Becky gets more popular with the family, Marge is worried that Becky will replace her.  This leads to a third act where Marge is declared insane.
    I like this episode.  There are some good deliveries, some good gags are strange enough to be memorable (like Moe getting shrimp stuffed into his open mouth).  For some reason, the episode has a poor reception.  I'm not sure why, especially since the 11th season has a few other episodes that are noteworthy for being horrible - Kill the Alligator and Run, Saddlestore Galactica, or Take My Wife, Sleaze.  This isn't a spectacular episode, but it's still pretty good.

Futurama - 7x08 - Fun on a Bun

    After attending Oktoberfest, Fry winds up stranded in an underground neanderthal world, while Leela blames herself for Fry's presumed death.  Bender works on trying to win a sausage contest.
    The AV Club gave this a kind of middling review, and while I can say that it didn't reach the peak of the best of Futurama, it's a pretty decent episode.  There wasn't anything in it that stood out as being spectacular, like the previous episode's Hermes/Zoidberg ventriloquist act.  But the episode felt uniformly funny.
    I did enjoy how dark the episode seemed to get, when it looked like Fry was falling into the sausage grinder.  And the idea of Leela eating Fry's remains.
    The episodes have fallen into a pattern of trying to provide an emotionally resounding ending by having Fry and Leela kiss.  The payoff just isn't there.  None of them have the heart-wrenching feeling of when Leela says "Please don't stop playing, Fry.  I wanna hear how it ends." during The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings.