9 Ups & 1 Down From Star Trek: Lower Decks 5.3 — The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel

Commander Ransom has always been the jock, but in this case, Jack was, quite frankly, a bit of a jackass. In Shades of Green, Ransom was all chilled out with Boimler over the (just one) combadge. In The Best Exotic Nanite Hotel, he was chilly and chiding of the lieutenant. And poor Ensign Manhaver! We all felt him flipping the bird — as the canary before Boimler — in Ransom's direction.

Unlike those inflatable rings on the lazy river, Ransom's reasoning for exposing his subordinates to mortal danger after mortal danger didn't hold water. You can't just push people into harm's way because you 'believe in them,' or because you believe they like it (as per Manhaver).

Though Lower Decks is, of course, a comedy, in which hyperbole is rarely enough, it all felt just a little oddly (sometimes literally) over the top. Surely Ransom knows his officers too well by now, and they him, for any such miscommunications? In the end, as the Commander himself admitted during his last-minute, chained-up, apology to Boimler, he did, I'm afraid, simply "[come] off as pretty cruel".