When the Cerritos visits a planet with a society converting to post-scarcity, away teams are sent to help the inhabitants tear down the vestiges of capitalism. Boimler is behaving differently, believing it might be the key to jump start his career. On the ship, Rutherford is less chipper than normal without Tendi around. Meanwhile, on the Orion homeworld, Tendi's family is drawn into a struggle for its continued existence... as Tendi learns that her sister is pregnant.
With the season five premiere so masterfully balancing comedy and introspection, a half-dozen character story lines, and a bucket of obscure Star Trek jokes... it was kind of inevitable that the next episode might not reach the same heights. "Shades of Green" is still a good episode with all the same elements that make for the best Lower Decks installments; it just isn't as deft in balancing it all in a perfect "meal."
A lot of the best comedy here is pretty subtle. Star Trek has always been set in a "post-scarcity" society, where everyone's needs are satisfied by a replicator or socialist ideals. How a society gets there has always understandably been waved away. By focusing on this moment of changing over for some random alien planet, Lower Decks gets to present a lot of jokes (mostly sight gags) about the end of capitalism.
It's against this background that we get a subtle story about Boimler learning he has to be true to himself (and not to the thing he perceives as a "how to succeed" manual that he stole from his doppelganger in the previous episode). Still less subtle is a nice subplot about Rutherford, wallowing in his feelings about losing his best friend. To be clear, his "wallowing" looks like many other people's best day, in terms of keeping a positive attitude. Which makes it all the more remarkable (fascinating?) that T'Lyn is able to pick up on this and react appropriately. Vulcans don't tend to be emotionally intelligent (and I've been watching a lot of Enterprise lately, where they're portrayed as especially dim in this regard), so it's refreshing to see a Vulcan character who gets it.
Meanwhile, Tendi spends the episode inside a 1980s sitcom. That's what the "D'Erika doesn't know that D'Vana knows that she's pregnant" plot feels like. You know that sitcom way in which one question would puncture the whole premise, but no one asks it? That way that someone behaves so outrageously that everyone around them ought to notice, but no one says anything? It's not only the stuff of 80s sitcoms, but cartoons, of course. So it doesn't feel too out of place here, even though it isn't my favorite element of the episode.
Still, this subplot does contribute other things I like. Star Trek has done "solar sailing ships" before and "stellar racing" before; the way both are incorporated here sort of feels like a chocolate and peanut butter thing that "just tastes great together." And I love that the writers aren't going to stretch the taffy any longer about Tendi being separated from the Cerritos. We got a few episodes out of it, and now we're going to put the crew all back together for the too-few episodes of the series we have left.
I give "Shades of Green" a B. It wasn't a favorite of mine, but it did at least set the stage for the rest of the season.
