In fandom, both "Imaginary Friend" and "When the Bough Breaks" are often on the "we don't like it" lists. Which is fair, but is it due to the plot content or how it's presented for the preferred demographic, or why the same story can't appeal to multiple demographics simultaneously?
I just sat through both these stories, of course. Both are well-acted. Neither is the nadir of the show's run...
To be fair, one is a little heavy-handed but nothing terribly or so offputtingly-so, and there's probably a reason for that, assuming the kids watching actually can understand what's being told and if that's the reason that most dislike it... But both do seem aimed at younger audiences, which is an interesting deviation from TNG's format (seasons 1 or 5 as relative) - TNG generally tended to be more adult, in one form or another.
IMHO, "Imaginary Friend" - for the adults, whose who can stick with the plot, get a nice payoff when the imaginary friend becomes Freddy Krueger's replacement-in-training. But a story indulging an imaginary friend... this is where a 26-episode season can come in handy. As much as it can be for ensemble crew focus rotation, there's a wider range of storytelling that can be done compared to a season, in 2.0~2.6x the number of episodes that we get nowadays. It's more than just filler that can be done.
Also, the "violence" in "Imaginary" is also lightweight, reminding that the goal is to creep the kids out and not the adults (never mind how, after season 1 got away with so much more, they couldn't really "go there" again.) Which is for the best, as Isabella turning around and getting all scythe-happy on the crew like Leatherface would probably be a bit much and the set designers having to clean up the fake blood splatters on the corridor bulkheads... never mind that the kiddos wouldn't get an iota of sleep for weeks, unless they had certain conditions that can be found in some meaty medical manual somewhere...
"Bough" gives me the impression it's trying to appeal to wider audiences, especially for the then-topical issue of the ozone layer despite the irony of all the big 80s hair needing all the hairspray for which contributed massively to the CFC issue (Now, real life science and other factors helped mitigate the problem, and hairspray probably wasn't "the biggie" as far as contributors goes, but TV shows helped send a message in a "show vs tell" way to try to induce awareness. Or can, anyway. Even more fun, a lot of hairspray cans nowadays use nitrous oxide or other gasses to compress with. So maybe read up on the ingredients, but I still wouldn't huff the scent, even if it's free laughing gas. It's no laughing matter to have draig bamane. Wut now? That's a fun aganram, but anyhoo... )
"Imaginary" does a better job at keeping scope of the situation presented in the plot, while "Bough" isn't sure if the Aldeans are kidnapping only the 7 kiddies who won the cereal box write-in contest or the whole lot of all the kids onboard the Enterprise. That's the other nitpick regarding "Bough" in a nutshell, the scope and scale of the main issue (literal kidnapping) really don't hit home as much as it could. But the ideas are there, and they're presented decently enough overall, and there's a lot more tidbits of ideas in it than "Imaginary", some of which were less tropey than others.
Both have shiny happy endings, though "Bough" feels more like the saccharine TOS way. Really great f/x, though.
"Bough" also has some romanticism and poetry at the start of the episode. Heck, even kids at age 7 or whenever have to learn Calculus, theorizing that human brains will have evolved that far. But plop any one of us in 1724 for comparison and it's easy how such an extrapolation could be postulated. Not to mention a surfeit of other issues it touches on, in ways that "Imaginary" hadn't. Odd, I now feel a need to elevate my rating of it just a tad more.
Imaginary: 4.5/10, it's cookie cutter season 5 and has a novel idea in its favor
Bough: 6.5/10 it's not season 1's worst by any means and is arguably too ambitious, but gets the job done and is easier to watch.
But, yeah, neither excite nearly as much as other episodes from their respective seasons. Plot content, tone, presentation for those are definitely not "for the kids". What was my original point again? Ah yes, cookie recipes swapping the flour with fish eggs. Yuck...
I just sat through both these stories, of course. Both are well-acted. Neither is the nadir of the show's run...
To be fair, one is a little heavy-handed but nothing terribly or so offputtingly-so, and there's probably a reason for that, assuming the kids watching actually can understand what's being told and if that's the reason that most dislike it... But both do seem aimed at younger audiences, which is an interesting deviation from TNG's format (seasons 1 or 5 as relative) - TNG generally tended to be more adult, in one form or another.
IMHO, "Imaginary Friend" - for the adults, whose who can stick with the plot, get a nice payoff when the imaginary friend becomes Freddy Krueger's replacement-in-training. But a story indulging an imaginary friend... this is where a 26-episode season can come in handy. As much as it can be for ensemble crew focus rotation, there's a wider range of storytelling that can be done compared to a season, in 2.0~2.6x the number of episodes that we get nowadays. It's more than just filler that can be done.
Also, the "violence" in "Imaginary" is also lightweight, reminding that the goal is to creep the kids out and not the adults (never mind how, after season 1 got away with so much more, they couldn't really "go there" again.) Which is for the best, as Isabella turning around and getting all scythe-happy on the crew like Leatherface would probably be a bit much and the set designers having to clean up the fake blood splatters on the corridor bulkheads... never mind that the kiddos wouldn't get an iota of sleep for weeks, unless they had certain conditions that can be found in some meaty medical manual somewhere...
"Bough" gives me the impression it's trying to appeal to wider audiences, especially for the then-topical issue of the ozone layer despite the irony of all the big 80s hair needing all the hairspray for which contributed massively to the CFC issue (Now, real life science and other factors helped mitigate the problem, and hairspray probably wasn't "the biggie" as far as contributors goes, but TV shows helped send a message in a "show vs tell" way to try to induce awareness. Or can, anyway. Even more fun, a lot of hairspray cans nowadays use nitrous oxide or other gasses to compress with. So maybe read up on the ingredients, but I still wouldn't huff the scent, even if it's free laughing gas. It's no laughing matter to have draig bamane. Wut now? That's a fun aganram, but anyhoo... )
"Imaginary" does a better job at keeping scope of the situation presented in the plot, while "Bough" isn't sure if the Aldeans are kidnapping only the 7 kiddies who won the cereal box write-in contest or the whole lot of all the kids onboard the Enterprise. That's the other nitpick regarding "Bough" in a nutshell, the scope and scale of the main issue (literal kidnapping) really don't hit home as much as it could. But the ideas are there, and they're presented decently enough overall, and there's a lot more tidbits of ideas in it than "Imaginary", some of which were less tropey than others.
Both have shiny happy endings, though "Bough" feels more like the saccharine TOS way. Really great f/x, though.
"Bough" also has some romanticism and poetry at the start of the episode. Heck, even kids at age 7 or whenever have to learn Calculus, theorizing that human brains will have evolved that far. But plop any one of us in 1724 for comparison and it's easy how such an extrapolation could be postulated. Not to mention a surfeit of other issues it touches on, in ways that "Imaginary" hadn't. Odd, I now feel a need to elevate my rating of it just a tad more.
Imaginary: 4.5/10, it's cookie cutter season 5 and has a novel idea in its favor
Bough: 6.5/10 it's not season 1's worst by any means and is arguably too ambitious, but gets the job done and is easier to watch.
But, yeah, neither excite nearly as much as other episodes from their respective seasons. Plot content, tone, presentation for those are definitely not "for the kids". What was my original point again? Ah yes, cookie recipes swapping the flour with fish eggs. Yuck...
