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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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Oh, I wanted to like Enterprise so badly. I saw they cast Scott Bakula as Archer and I was "yippee! a good actor with a broad range who can do emotional and quiet scenes!"

I should have known from the title theme music it would go badly.

The sexy Vulcan. Writing it into canon that no, this is not a terrible joke, Vulcans do think Humans are literally stinky and smell bad. Archer's balanced set of chips on both shoulders. The Vulcans being the bad guys always (apart from Sexy Vulcan). The de-contamination gel scene (oh God, the dreadful attempts to be raunchy yet censor-friendly, the joke about the prostitute that was straight up lifted from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). That bloody beagle and Archer willing to smash the Prime Directive into pieces and start an interplanetary diplomatic incident because he couldn't keep his damn dog on a leash and a race of beings who had never even seen a dog before had no idea how to treat it. Trip and his 'aw shucks' Good Ole Boy schtick. I liked Malcolm and that was the only thing really I did like. Doctor Phlox who is as funny as toothache and can't they just get a first aid kit instead? Then they had to turn Archer into Action Hero Kick-ass Archer with the time travel arc and I waved bye-bye and never went back, even as people said "no, it does get better in later seasons!"