Four episodes in, Star Trek: Picard is finally finding its footing, now that Picard is free of Earth and finally has some gravity plating back under his feet. After a slow start in the first three episodes, the captain is on his ship, he assembled most of a crew, and he's on mission. And while Episode 4, "Absolute Candor," is still something of a digression as we add more characters to the proceedings, it's one that reveals more of who Picard is and finally feels like it's pushing the story to pick up some forward momentum.

Most of "Absolute Candor" continues to fill in the blanks surrounding Picard's role in the Romulan rescue from 14 years before the show started, with much of the action taking place on Vashti, a world where Picard (Patrick Stewart) helped settle Romulan refugees. Here, we get our first close look at how the Federation's abandonment of the Romulans affected actual people--the failed rescue left once-prominent and successful people stranded on a dusty, underdeveloped world, where resentment has been left to fester.

A lot of that resentment surrounds Elnor (Evan Evagora), a Romulan orphan Picard helped rescue in the lead-up to the big evacuation and left on Vashti, with the expectation of finding a better home for him later. Fourteen years later, Elnor is all grown up--and angry that Picard abandoned him, and the rest of the Romulan people.