Neelix was awful, and probably made worse because I wanted to like him from the start.
Without getting into Kes - which compounded the Neelix problem for me - I started to hate him less in the last few seasons when he went all dark sad clown. I was still viscerally annoyed, but he turned into almost a Michael Scott type character. He was horrible, but you could see the the pain that made him that way.
I really want to see both characters and actors swap shows.
“Back on Meepos, Unlcle Kalvash would reconfigure the deflector relays to reinforce phasers at random intervals, thus disrupting the enemy’s shields. That certainly keep sheep on their toes!”
“Cousin Larry, before you approach that woman I must inform you that your chances of dating her are approximately 1.78X10^48 to one.”
I would watch the hell out of that. So many wacky mixups!
Swing and lounge had a bit of a resurgence in the '90s. It was probably a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ fad, but it was a whole thing for a certain demographic.
I say this as a genuinely uncool person who had listened to very old music from a very young age. (see username) It was unnerving to have other young people suddenly expressing positive interest in my record collection, but it was also nice that companies were reissuing some better content on CD.
That being said, Vic Fontaine was cartoonish and I hated those episodes. If it was meant to be a homage, it was a poor one.
I hadn’t even thought about the comparison to Guinan or Quark. The comparison makes Neelix so much worse. Guinan didn’t need a redemption arc . Quark had a good one. Neither of them were annoying.