Review: 9 Years to Neptune “Rawhide”

Overview

Phillipe The French Robotic cook goes on strike so Suzy and Sascha both offer to cook for the crew, leading to a cooking competition between the two. In their efforts to beat each other, Suzy becomes too distracted to recognize Quentin and Quincy’s severe homesickness. Ultimately, RJ steps up to improve their morale.


Our Take

Much of the Competition between Sascha and Suzy is hosted by Kashmere who decides to use her influencer status to glamorize the contest often taking verbal jabs at Stuart’s love life or fashion sense sometimes without any sort of reason. And the show even pokes fun of the reality show tropes of the frequent zooming in on characters’ faces for the sake of building suspense.

But as the contest progresses, we do understand where Suzy’s kids are coming from in being homesick. But out of everyone here, at least the borderline psychotic RJ understands they need something to do if they can’t leave earth. When Quentin and Quincy attempt to leave earth, the AI system points out something oddly specific about the emergency escape method that clearly sounds like either a design flaw or a plot device for a future episode.

Overall this was an ok episode. We also see Natalie with her self-deprecating puppet co-worker Pauline for the 2nd time who is in a chippier mood than usual. Predictably the two separate storylines converge into a meaningful ending with a message about giving time to the people you care about and how it can easily slip away. It also left me with even more questions than answers such as an oddly specific design flaw and how much the AI knows that is not telling everyone else…