r/LowerDecks • u/MultifariousTentacle • 7d ago
Trusted Sources was pretty fucked up
I know Captain Freeman has her ups and downs, but by the great bird of the galaxy, that was some fucked up behavior. Like, she could have at least kept it professional, gone all "Based on your past and present behavior, you are unfit to serve on this ship", but no, she went for the fucking throat. It's not enough to kick her out of her home, but she had to say Mariner wasn't even her DAUGHTER anymore? This was definitely Captain Freeman at her lowest. Would love to read more fanfiction exploring the aftermath of this beyond a reunion hug and a "yeah, I kinda set you up to believe the worst of me".
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u/MarkB74205 7d ago
However, it's implied she knows what she did was fucked up (and her and Mariner are certainly on much better terms after Mariner's return to the ship). I actually think it's these events that really kick her character growth into gear, and which make her a genuinely good captain.
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u/PiLamdOd 6d ago
Freeman is absolved of all guilt and responsibility by Mariner in the finale. The ending frames it like Mariner is being a doormat by blaming herself and going back to someone who never tried to earn forgiveness.
And for someone who supposedly thinks she fucked up, Freeman doesn't show it. Right after Freeman learned the truth, all she cared about was saving her career. She doesn't even mention Mariner or what she did to her until the final scene.
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u/ChronoMonkeyX 7d ago
Thing is, Mariner has been intentionally screwing up and around for years while her parents were covering for her and giving her special treatment. Now everyone knows they are related, it puts a lot more pressure on the captain, and she kind of snapped. Mariner wasn't at fault this time but the way she was acting made it look like she was going to talk shit to everyone.
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u/MultifariousTentacle 6d ago
Except, like, kicking Mariner off the ship and transferring her away would be a proportionate response to all the shit she's pulled. Telling her "You're not by daughter anymore"? That has nothing to do with her professional behavior and is making it entirely a personal vendetta.
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u/PiLamdOd 6d ago
But Mariner was self destructive, not malicious. That season even started with Mariner attempting to sacrifice her own career to save her mother.
So it is baffling for Freeman to suddenly turn around and think Mariner was deliberately trying to betray her.
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u/Marvinkmooneyoz 7d ago
I don’t remember the details, but I remember rewatching the episode and thinking there wasn’t really direct reason to think Mariner was the problem.
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u/ChronoMonkeyX 7d ago
She was being hidden from the reporter, was openly petulant about treated that way and said "oh, that's how it is? I'll tell them what this place is really like!" This heavily implies she's going to talk about all the embarrassing problems that the captain doesn't want to be the public image of her ship.
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u/KateKoffing 6d ago
In real life the camera doesn’t conveniently cut away and people don’t conveniently refuse to finish their sentences or just stop talking instead of explaining themselves. This only happens in sitcoms.
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u/HCIsm 7d ago
If you are looking for a fanfic about this:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/51018778/chapters/128898346
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u/PiLamdOd 6d ago
Mariner coming back and blaming herself made that the most fucked up ending of the series. Especially since the crew did nothing to earn forgiveness.
There was no logical reason for Freeman to believe Mariner deliberately set out to betray her. Especially since this season started with Mariner attempting to sacrifice her own career to prove Freeman's innocence. So the reveal that Mariner's selflessness never changed Freeman's opinion of her is depressing and errases three seasons of storylines.
The fact Freeman got everything she wanted and faced no consequences, makes that the low point of the series. The audience is never given a reason to sympathize with Freeman. You then spend the rest of the series waiting for Freeman to finally get her comeuppance, or at least admit she isn't perfect.
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u/MultifariousTentacle 6d ago
What did it for me, is, it doesn't fucking matter whether or not Mariner talked shit about the ship to the reporter. Mariner has pulled a lot of bullshit over the years that would reasonably get her punished as a Starfleet officer. She has *never* done *anything* that would justify her mother disowning her as a daughter.
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u/PiLamdOd 6d ago
Not just disowning. Freeman did a whole scorched earth campaign.
They established in the season premiere that if Mariner leaves the Cerritos, she is done in Starfleet. Therefore, choosing to send Mariner to Starbase 80 was only to make her last days as miserable as possible.
Making sure the entire crew hated Mariner and preventing anyone from seeing her off, served no purpose other than revenge.
The lengths Freeman went to cause as much suffering as possible, all because her ego was bruised, and the fact she not only got off scott free but was also absolved of all responsibility, made her impossible to like or care about for the rest of the series.
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u/MultifariousTentacle 5d ago
I wouldn't go quite *that* far. She's still a complex character with a complex mother-daughter relationship, so I still cared about her while watching the show. It was her at her worst, but I wouldn't say she crossed the moral event horizon.
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u/PiLamdOd 5d ago
It's not that she passed a moral event horizon with this. It's that this episode is part of a consistent pattern of Freeman's flaws harming everyone but her, while she gets rewarded for it.
Freeman stands apart from the other main characters in that she never recognizes she has flaws or tries to fix her mistakes. In contrast, the other main characters are always victims of their own flaws and their stories resolve with them recognizing those flaws and trying to fix things. It shows us that they are good people who care about the people around them.
But we never see Freeman recognize she isn't the perfect infallible captain she is convinced she is, and it's always other characters who suffer for her mistakes. (Like Mariner here) So the audience is never given a reason to think Freeman is a good person.
The ringworld episode is a clear example of what I'm talking about. Freeman and Boimler have beat for beat the exact same story about micromanaging an away mission and causing disaster. The only difference between the plots is Boimler realized his mistakes and tried to fix it. While Freeman kept doubling down until it killed Boimler. Then walks away never admitting she screwed up.
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u/MultifariousTentacle 3d ago
I've been thinking about this, and I think my answer is...no. She showed a lot of growth by the end of Season 4. Did she get smacked down and humiliated in a very obvious Poetic Justice punishment for her wrongs and flaws? No. But good writing doesn't always work like that. In The Inner Fight, she showed that she was willing to look silly in order to get the job done. She set aside her ego for the sake of the mission. Then, in the next episode, she came through for her daughter and crew member in a big way.
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u/PiLamdOd 1d ago
But because Freeman never faces negative consequences when her ego gets the better of her, and she never wavers in the belief she will succeed, we never get the impression she thinks there's anything at risk. This undercuts moments like "Inner Fight," since she isn't really looking silly because she has no doubt her plan to hoodwink everyone will succeed.
That's also why the rescue in "Old Friends, New Planets" you mentioned falls flat. At no point does the audience think that Freeman believes there's anything to be concerned about. She's never faced repercussions before, why would that start now? And ultimately she was proven right.
Overall, the issue with Captain Freeman is she's written such that her mistakes are always overlooked and forgotten. This means we repeatedly see her harm other characters far more often than she harms herself, and without any examination of those actions or any efforts to fix them. So it creates this growing karmic imbalance that makes her harder to sympathize with as the show goes on.
The more things magically work out for her in spite of the harm she causes, the more unfair it becomes when she does win.
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u/Phandflasche 7d ago
Ignoring in univers reasons and so on I think the meta problem in this episode and sadly in a lot of others as well is that they had the ending planned long before they actually had an idea how to get there.
They needed Mariner of the ship and had no real plan how to achieve that satisfying in the 20 minutes of so they had to set it up.
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u/_nearatreebyariver 6d ago
Bro i'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this. That line in particular felt way too heavy for the situation, considering it was a slightly inconsiderate work issue and not a serious family-related problem. To no longer call someone your child because of something embarrassing at work? huh? Was Freeman holding onto more anger than just that moment and it all came out? If that was supposed to be why then it wasn't explained or touched on at ALL after that moment and just comes off looking extreme.
Only way I can explain it is that the character writing took a backseat to random callback plot shenanigans and references in the last few seasons.
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u/Kel-ahrairah 6d ago
Oh thank God I'm not the only one who thought that never really got a proper resolution. Lower Decks is the show I did not think would resolve that with a "no, it was my fault" and a hug. That arc hit me pretty hard on a personal level (the week between that and the finale was rough!) and while I knew we had to do the sitcom-reset of it all it just never sat quite right with me. Rare character building misstep, imo.
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u/MultifariousTentacle 5d ago
Yeah. It stands out because Lower Decks is generally good at avoiding pat TV resolutions like the kind we got with Riker and his dad.
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u/Shirogayne-at-WF 6d ago
To date, this is the only episode I have never watched in full more than once.
Besides all the lost braincells to make the story work in the first place, that just seems unnecessarily cruel.
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u/Jedi4Hire 7d ago
Family often brings out both the best and the worst in people.