"It was raining in the city by the bay. A hard rain." The Big Goodbye was always one of my favorite episodes of season 1. I thought the depiction of the time period was excellent. The casting of Redblock, Dix's friend the Lieutenant, and Leach were very good as well. Redblock, the mob boss everyone's afraid of, The Lieutenant, the life long ally, and Leach, the annoying little gun crazed minion. I must say 1940's outfits also compliment Picard, Crusher, and Data very well. I thought Picard's was the best with Beverly in second. Of course Beverly looked the best.. .for obvious reasons.

The wacky insect aliens the Jarada were quite annoying after a while. They dissed the heck out of my main man Will Riker saying pretty much that since he wasn't captain he was useless. I also thought their language was a tad...strange. It must've taken along time to come up with considering they had to find the perfect pattern of rhythmic grunts and long S sounds.

This was also the first of many episodes across all of the Star Trek series where the crew got trapped in a holodeck or had to resolve something in a holodeck. One thing I found rather funny was how, according to Riker, Geordi had all the know how to repair the holodeck and yet Wesley fixes it. That's one thing that the show seemed to overdo at times early on. Have Wesley out do the officers. Granted he was supposed to be a genius who was ready for a new plain of existence (Although Will Wheaton is already out there), but.. come on! A what.. seventeen year old kid who hasn't even been to the academy running circles around the senior officers? Oh Well. With Wesley you either love him or hate him.

A few other amusing things I liked about the episode:

When Picard was being interrogated, the "bad cop" was screaming at him and Picard just smiles and says "Oh this is good. I read this many times and this is exactly like it." Or something like that.

That Leach guy started annoying me. "I so want to kill her!" What a wack job. Like I said though, that was good casting because that's what a lot of those guys were like.

Also when good ol' Data socked that mobster in the face and he goes flying 500ft. You can't help but think "Go Data."

This episode gets a four out of five for me. It is an excellent episode, but not the calibre of a "Best of Both Worlds" type episode.

RATING:

out of 5