How Star Trek: Lower Decks Inverts One Of Television's Oldest Tropes

This post contains spoilers for the latest episode of "Star Trek: Lower Decks."

When it comes to the "will-they-won't-they" romance, the "they won't" option is woefully underrated. For decades, TV fans have been trained to have an almost Pavlovian response to characters with good chemistry, expecting them to follow a pretty rigid narrative pathway towards endgame coupledom — or, at least, a much-hyped hookup. The rom-com trope rulebook includes plenty of plot points designed to finally get the two fated characters together, from an "only one bed" situation to a love triangle to a fake dating scheme.

"Star Trek: Lower Decks" played around with the latter trope this week when besties Tendi (Noel Wells) and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) were tasked with going undercover as a married tourist couple on Ferenginar. Instead of kicking their relationship into high gear, though, the challenge proved both uncomfortable and hilariously high-stakes. At episode's end, the pair declare that they're better off as friends since, as Rutherford says, they have "no natural chemistry." Then they jump into a vent and roll around on top of each other while working out an engineering problem.

It's clear at this point that Rutherford and Tendi do have love for one another: they blush their way through the episode, compliment one another's appearance, and Rutherford even says that Tendi's green eyes should be a universal symbol of love. Yet the high-pressure situation doesn't actually push them closer together, instead putting focus on an aspect of their relationship that they're clearly not keen on exploring at the moment. Whether the pair are happier as friends, prefer a sex-free relationship, or are just shy, the final twist is a delightful inversion of a popular (and sometimes lazily employed) trope.

"Star Trek: Lower Decks" has always taken a more carefree approach to relationships than most previous Trek series. The Cerritos crew on the whole seems to be vaguely pansexual, and most of the team members aren't overly-serious about their relationships. It's the same refreshing recipe that makes shows like "What We Do In The Shadows" and "Our Flag Means Death" feel modern, charming, and very, very funny. Ransom (Jerry O'Connell) comments on the crew's unorthodox dating habits early in the episode, saying, "Since the Cerritos is statistically the horniest and least romantically committed crew in Starfleet, we have no married officers aboard."

It's pretty cool to see the show commit to that bit, not just because romantic relationships aren't a prerequisite for happiness, but also because there's something fun about feeling your brain rewire its own deeply ingrained viewership expectations as you watch a rare "they won't" plot unfold. The latest episode gets hilariously over-the-top in its romantic machinations, as Rutherford and Tendi are required to do an intimate photoshoot, sleep in a heart-shaped bed, eat sexy chocolate sculptures of each other while talking about their attraction, and, in the request that finally leaves them running from the restaurant, consummate their marriage in a setup that sounds a lot like the premise of the British reality show "Sex Box."

All the while, the pair are endearingly awkward and obvious, calling each other pet names like "Pudding Bear" and "Muffin Skunk" and declaring things like "We got married at a wedding!" At the same time, Boimler (Jack Quaid) gets sucked into an office-set rom-com — one that feels like a cheeky commentary on the ways in which will-they-won't-they plots can be a way to earn cheap engagement from fans. It's easy to make your characters hook up, but is the obvious choice always the right one? The show, literally called "Will They, Won't They," is a "workplace sitcom where everyone is secretly in love with each other." In that TV world, characters are constantly hooking up and getting into messy romantic entanglements, whereas the actual Lower Deckers are more practical in their approach to love — and, in Tendi and Rutherford's case, perhaps just value their friendship more.

While the show's decision to keep the two coworkers in platonic(ish) territory might feel novel for TV in general, it actually has a lot of precedent in Star Trek history. Namely, many of the most popular not-quite-canonical same-sex pairings in the show's history, from Kirk and Spock to Bashir and Garak to Geordi and Data, have displayed palpable chemistry or deep love, only to in some way or another duck back under the "just friends" umbrella. Not only is the latest episode of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" putting a surprising, uncommon twist on a popular trope, but it's also riffing on the many obviously romantic friendships of Starfleet eras past and present. After all, if you think Janeway and Seven would have ended up condemned to a life in the sub-aquatic sulfur mines in this situation, you're sorely mistaken.

New episodes of "Star Trek: Lower Decks" drop every Thursday on Paramount+.