Entertainment
Iconic Star Trek Character Was Written So Badly, The Showrunner Intervened
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Here’s a story that dates me (hey, it’s not like anyone else was dating me at the time): I was a high school student when Star Trek: Voyager was on the air. I watched the show with the rest of my geeky friends, and we generally enjoyed the wacky adventures of Captain Janeway and her misfit crew. We also spent hours (and I mean hours) making fun of Neelix. He was the ship’s cook, but he might as well have been its mascot because he was always written as the broadest form of comic relief. Why, we wondered, did Star Trek go out of its way to make a new character such a butt-of-the-joke oaf?
As it turns out, Voyager showrunner Michael Piller shared those same concerns. When reading the script for the Season 2 episode “Twisted,” he began to worry that the writers were transforming Neelix into nothing more than “the buffoon of the ship.” That’s when Piller decided to take definitive action. He didn’t make Neelix into a deadly serious character, but he decided to do the next best thing. In the very next episode, he removed the character’s growing jealous streak that he rightly assumed viewers would absolutely hate.
Orange Man Bad
This all goes back to the most problematic thing about Neelix: his extremely underage girlfriend. In the Voyager premiere episode “Caretaker,” Neelix goes out of his way to save Kes, his Ocampan mate, and they both join Captain Janeway’s crew. Kes presents as an attractive young woman in her early ‘20s, but her species ages at a different rate than those of us here on Earth. She’s only one year old when she joins the crew (no, really!), and the writers had to take care not to present Neelix as the dirtiest old man in the Delta Quadrant.
That’s actually how Michael Piller’s concerns about Neelix began. The previous episode, “Elogium,” dealt with Kes’s mating drive activating years ahead of time, forcing her and Neelix to consider whether they were ready for children. While it’s bizarre enough to watch the weird orange alien try to figure out if he is ready to breed his one-year-old girlfriend, “Elogium” also made Neelix into a jealous figure. Specifically, he started thinking Tom Paris was being too friendly towards her and that the pilot was secretly trying to put the moves on Kes.
Jealousy, That Orange-Skinned Monster
When Piller read the script for “Twisted,” he became concerned about an early plot point in which the crew was celebrating Kes’s birthday (she had finally turned two). Neelix made her a cake, but Tom Paris gave her a locket. Once more, Neelix felt jealous of the hotshot human pilot. According to Captains’ Logs Supplemental – The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, Piller was “terribly concerned about Neelix.” He was “afraid we were going to destroy this character if we made him the buffoon of the ship. If all he is is comic relief, we’re in trouble.”
For better or for worse, Piller decided to focus on only one of the ways the writers had transformed Neelix into the comic relief: his jealousy. “The jealousy he was showing toward Kes was becoming irritating, so we wanted to put that to bed quickly,” he said. Accordingly, Piller made sure that “Parturition” (the episode that came directly after “Twisted”) killed this particular character conflict. That episode begins with Neelix and Paris having a fight over Kes, but then they are sent on a mission where they crash land on a hellish planet. They must fight for their survival and take care of a baby alien, ultimately becoming friends who never fight over Kes again.
It’s a heavy-handed fix, admittedly, but Michael Piller’s decision is one that Gene Roddenberry would have agreed with. The Star Trek creator never wanted his main characters to constantly bicker with one another, but Paris and Neelix were constantly fighting over Kes. Thanks to “Parturition,” Piller effectively killed the conflict that was driving these two characters apart. If you think that kept Neelix from being written as bad comic relief, though, I’ve got a whole shipload full of leola roots to sell you!
Entertainment
Marvel Icon Punished For Having A Huge Bulge
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Have you played Marvel Rivals? If you can get over the fact that it’s basically a reskinned version of Overwatch, it’s a lot of fun. This is a hero shooter where you take control of a character from the wide world of Marvel. There are a variety of team-based multiplayer modes; this variety, along with the fact that the game is free-to-play, keeps players coming back for more. How do the developers make money, though? Simple: they charge players for “skins” which completely change the look of the character. Many skins are modeled after famous outfits from the comics, and others are modeled after character designs in the MCU.
Whatever their original inspiration was, though, all of these skins have one thing in common: they are way hornier than you’d expect them to be. There are plenty of revealing outfits that pair perfectly with thirsty character designs that players can’t stop drooling over. Unfortunately, players recently discovered that the game had gone a little too far with Captain America’s latest summer skin. You see, the skin gave Cap a bulge so big that it messed up some of his in-game animations. This caused the Chinese developer to do the unthinkable: they shrunk Captain America’s penis, and they waited until the Fourth of July to do it!
The Battle Of The Bulge
Every year, Marvel Rivals developer NetEase Games releases skimpy summer swimwear outfits for various characters. This may seem like just a cheap way to appeal to gooner gamers, but it’s arguably a throwback to the ‘90s, when Marvel similarly appealed to horny comic book nerds with thirsty swimsuit specials. Captain America got an especially scandalous skin this summer, one that was basically short shorts and a skimpy tank top that showed off his hairy, muscled chest. Normally, fans would be panting about Cap’s thick legs and arms, but this skin made them fixate on something else: the comically huge bulge of the character’s penis.
Seriously, this thing wobbled with its own physics. While fans were both excited and scared (scaroused, if you will), some wondered if Captain America having such a huge package was an accident. Like, maybe the character model got tweaked in such a way that its pelvis was extending outward, giving the appearance of a much larger bulge. At any rate, it definitely seemed to be a mistake. In the game, Cap has an emote that echoes the recording in Spider-Man: Homecoming where he pulls out a chair and then sits in it. Previously, players activating this emote with the summer skin encountered a bug: Cap’s big, floppy unit clipping right through the chair!
Now, without making any kind of official announcement, NetEase games seems to have fixed the issue. While Captain America still has an impressive bulge, it’s not as obscenely huge as it once was. Furthermore, it no longer clips through the chair when players use the aforementioned emote. All’s well that ends well, right? Sort of. While the timing could be a coincidence, many players couldn’t help but notice how the Chinese developer waited until Independence Day to shrink Captain America’s weiner down to size. Do y’all really think this will even slow down an aroused Cap, though? It’s like the man says: he can do this all day!
Entertainment
Raunchy Cameron Diaz Comedy Now On Netflix Reminds Us How Good We Used To Have It
By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Cameron Diaz rode the romantic comedy train until the very end. She was the breakout star of There’s Something About Mary and then kept cranking out romantic comedies for over a decade, ending with 2014’s Sex Tape opposite her Bad Teacher co-star Jason Segel. Now on Netflix, the comedy isn’t the best she’s ever done, but it does stand out as ever since, Hollywood has become allergic to the thought of a mid-budget sex romp comedy. No one’s approached YouPorn for product placement ever since.
Cameron Diaz And Jason Segel Have No Idea How The Cloud Works
Sex Tape is a different type of romantic comedy. Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel play Annie and Jay, a married couple who still love each other, but the days of spontaneous sex marathons are behind them. That leads to the idea of filming a sex tape with the goal of hitting every single position from the Joy of Sex. It works, except Jay isn’t able to delete the video afterwards. Every iPad he’s given away for Christmas has synced to the Cloud and since he set them up, his videos are accessible from each and every one of them.
That kicks off a race against time to remove the video from all of the iPads, though they admit what happened to their friends, Robby and Tess (Rob Corddry and Elle Kemper), who decide to tag along since they have nothing better to do. Sex Tape rapidly devolves from there into doing cocaine with Annie’s boss (Rob Lowe) and breaking into the YouPorn headquarters complete with a cameo from Jack Black. Despite the premise, if you enjoyed Game Night, Sex Tape hits similar beats and jokes.
The Last Comedy Diaz Made Before Her Hiatus
The outlandish plot and the audience’s waning appetite for comedy didn’t hurt Sex Tape at the box office. A production budget of $40 million was tripled during its run, and that’s not including the DVD/Blu-Ray sales of over $7 million, both of which were pushed with an “Unrated” cut of the movie. Coming in fourth in its opening weekend meant losing to Planes: Fire and Rescue, which likely stung a little. Diaz and Segel’s second outing together has been a streaming staple ever since ensuring that they’ve had the last laugh.
Sex Tape was one of Cameron Diaz’s last projects before a nearly decade-long hiatus from Hollywood. From 2015 to 2022, Diaz focused on other projects, including her businesses, raising children, and writing a book. She came back alongside Jamie Foxx in the Netflix original Back in Action, followed by the AppleTV original Outcome with Keanu Reeves in 2026. In 2027, Diaz returns to her most successful role: Princess Fiona in Shrek 5.
Romantic Comedies Have Gone Extinct
Her bread and butter, the romantic comedy, no longer exists on the big screen. It used to be that a great comedy would permeate the culture and be quoted nonstop for months, if not years. Social media has shortened the lifespan of every movie. Movies aren’t quoted as often, they don’t stick around as long with all of their best scenes and moments being spoiled all over our feeds as soon as they hit theaters. Hollywood needs to redesign the romantic comedy and the more action focus of Sex Tape combined with Diaz’s nudity was the last gasp of relevancy for the genre.
Anyone who wants a throwback to Hollywood comedies can check out Sex Tape on Netflix. Maybe someday studios will take another crack at them.
Entertainment
I found the best robot vacuums for every floor, budget, and level of laziness
Read my full review of the Narwal Flow 2.
The Narwal Flow 2 is the robot vacuum to splurge on if you take the cleanliness of your hard floors seriously — it takes a certain confidence in cleanliness to walk around in bare feet at home. Between the sturdy XL roller and hot water mopping, the Flow 2 has the elbow grease to soak up large liquid spills and melt away sticky or greasy droplets without smearing.
If your household is prone to spills, perhaps from kids, pets, or frequent guests, the Flow 2’s accurate obstacle and mess detection technology will come to the rescue for those big in-the-moment messes.
If you’ve sworn off mopping robot vacuums after a cheap one streaked your floor with dirty water, a roller mop robot vacuum should be your next move. The Narwal Flow 2 is my top recommendation halfway through 2026, mostly because it never really missed a spot in the several months that I was testing it.
Roller mop robot vacuums mitigate smearing in a few ways. The bath towel-like material is already thick and absorbent, and constantly rinses itself to keep the spill from being dragged across a clean floor. If the roller gets too soiled during a bigger cleanup, the Flow 2 automatically returns to the dock mid-cleaning to wash the mop with hot water. The Flow 2’s roller actually has flat sides like a conveyor belt, which Narwal says gets more direct surface coverage than the sliver of a cylindrical roller mop hitting the floor at any given point.
In my testing, the Flow 2 consistently mopped up spills of various consistencies, from true liquids like red wine and milk to sludgier splatters like pancake batter, chunky pasta sauce, and most impressively, globs of dried syrup. The Flow 2 is one of just a few robot vacuums that mop with hot water, making it able to dissolve the syrup without leaving the floor sticky. Hot water loosens the bonds that make grease slimy and hard to lift off hard surfaces with force alone, so the Flow 2 handles oily or greasy liquids better than robots mopping with room temperature water. During dry vacuuming, the Flow 2 did a commendable job with cat hair and small debris on rugs and kibble, cat litter, dirt, and crushed dried flowers on hard floors. I appreciate that the app allows up to three cleaning passes in the same session.
The Flow 2 is also such a thorough cleaner simply because it knows what kind of mess it’s dealing with — its AI spill detection is the most intuitive I’ve seen in 2026. The Flow 2 snaps a “before” photo when it approaches a mess that’s bigger than a few crumbs or a single droplet. After cleaning the rest of the area, the Flow 2 comes back to the dirty area for intensive zone cleaning. My Narwal app was also full of photos of extension cords, phone chargers, shoes, and random cat toys that the Flow 2 saw in my apartment while cleaning, even if the object wasn’t directly in the way. No one has time to tidy up before sending their robot vacuum out every single day, so it’s comforting to see such direct proof that the Flow 2 is, in fact, reacting to obstacles in real time.
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