Review: Star Trek: Lower Decks “Room For Growth”

Overview

Mariner, Boimler, and Tendi clash with their arch-rivals as they pine for the newly opened fancy quarters on deck 1, which could be theirs depending on the results of a lottery drawing. Unfortunately, some crew members want to hack the lottery’s algorithm to make sure they get the results in their favor. Turns out, the competing crews actually have a lot in common and appear to form a bit of a friendship near the end, but not before a litany of back-stabbing takes place and sees Mariner and her pals thankful about where they are.

Delta Shift and the Cerritos engineers go on mandatory relaxation leave, the problem is, the engineers are constantly interrupting their break with menial tasks. This causes the Captain the snap and be held for medical analysis. The engineers feel bad and build a machine that takes the stress out of the Captain in a matter of seconds and it works like a charm.

Our Take

One of the things that is beginning to irk me about this show that is probably more of a platform decision than one from any of the producers, is that for whatever reason, Paramount+ bleeps out crass language…on a streaming service…why? I get that the streamer is probably following the rules of network broadcasting originally printed in 1994 as it pertains to this, but this is 2022, streaming networks should not be afraid of having crass language, moreover, should NOT be censoring it. Series like Rick and Morty, Family Guy, and South Park are just infinitely yummier when the cuss bars come off and they just let it rip.

As for this week’s episode, the “B”plot focusing on a subset of the Cerritos crew ending up on a different planet to try and remove stress had quite a few similarities to the Rick and Morty episode “Rest and Ricklaxation” in that both episodes featured machines being used to remove stress/toxins from one’s body. Obviously, the results are vastly different, and personally I think “Room for Growth’s” beats leading up to the “B” plot climax probably was thrown away fill-in for the aforementioned episode, but I’m glad it got used somewhere because the puppies, mud baths, and other stress relief efforts were hilarious and the engineers attempting to sabotage any attempt at relaxation killed me EVERY time.

As for the “A” plot, I love it when there’s some sort of internal civil war going on with the crew of the Cerritos because it forces new alliances and friendships and will they/won’t they stick it out in the face of getting a silly prize. It makes for classic sitcom set ups in a sci-fi setting that pay off, with this week getting a lot of super funny moments. Another shout-out has to be given to the Titmouse crew for the continuing fantastic production quality during the action sequences that should NOT be missed.