Profit and Lace

*** (3 stars out of 5)

Otherwise known as "Some Like It Hot with Troll Dolls", this episode tests the limits of how much you like Ferengi. Just as Quark is doing with his new employee, Aluura. He gives her a copy of "Oo-mox for Fun and Profit" and implies that her job is on the line is she doesn't pass the orals. (Aurals?)

Speaking of misogynists, Zek was deposed when he added an amendment to the Bill of Opportunities. Ferengi females may now wear clothes. 53.5% of the population can enter the job market denied them for thousands of years. Perhaps predictably, this has caused more panic than the entire Dominion War. Somehow, Zek's only way back to the throne is forcing his in-laws to cold call the FCA, then dazzling them with his female's brilliance.

The only commissioner who agrees to the meeting is Nilva, influential deviant and Chairman of Slug-O-Cola. The company is so conservative, their advertising slogan hasn't changed in 300 years: "Drink Slug-O-Cola- The Slimiest Cola in the Galaxy". (Still better than Coke: Enjoy Stomach Cancer.)

Quark picks a fight with his "evil feminist" mother over the havoc she's wrought, and gives her a heart attack. So while she adjusts to her new heart, there's no impressive female to impress Nilva. Or IS there? Dr. Bashir does a gender-change on QUARK and then, I'd imagine, either cauterized his memory or tore his own eyes out. The Lumbering Lumba is born.

"Lumba" believes Slug-O-Cola could compete with Eelwasser by appealing to the new female market. Nilva believes Lumba is appealing. Brunt tries to reveal the sham. Lumba reveals the goods... and she's close enough for Nilva.

"Profit and Lace" is not even a little bit popular. To hear the Internet talk, it's the worst episode of the series, too funny to be serious, too serious to be funny, and proven to cause brain embolisms. But then again... Nobody's Perfect.

Family Business

**** (4 stars out of 5)
The Ferengi Commerce Authority (FCA) holds Quark accountable. You see, his mother Ishka has been earning profit! They send a Liquidator to stomp on the problem. So Quark (with Rom in tow) flies home to quash their "Moogie" before the government sells her.

"My house is my house," says Quark by rote.
"As are its contents," Liquidator Brunt replies.

Moogie Ishka never got the hang of subservience, but now she's a radical. She wears clothes and everything! Quark's head still rings with childhood taunts. "Your mother won't chew your food. Your mother talks to strangers."

Quark shouts at his moogie for her insolent ways. "You're not like other females. You like to think about things. You have opinions."

Moogie wants to push her society towards enlightenment. It's got a long way to go.

(Also, I don't quite know what I'm supposed to think about Rom's use of his vibrating ear machine. Is this merely good aural hygiene?)

The three bars of latinum Ishka made from her beetle farm is the tiniest tip of the iceberg. She's got her own financial empire under multiple aliases.

"Moogie's got the lobes for business!" Rom observes.

Rom spent a decade longer in the hobbit-hole than Quark did, and he learned the truth about their father. Keldar was a good family man, but a business failure. "He couldn't hold onto latinum if you sewed it into his pants!"

I love Rom so much here; finding his voice in the family as peacemaker.

For love of her sons, Moogie "confesses" and surrenders her fortune to the FCA. (Well, a third of it. She's not the type of cash-hungry lady goblin to repent or relent.)

Star Trek magazine and I UTTERLY disagree about "Family Business". They give it one star and call it the worst of the season.  I think it's remarkable. Our first look at planet Ferenginar! Three wonderful new characters in Andrea Martin's cunning Ishka, Jeffrey Combs' blunt Brunt, and Penny Johnson's Kasidy Yates (the freighter captain selected by Jake to be his dad's new love interest.)