yikes

A gash on her side from a close call: “I’m fine, Abram, just pass me the alcohol,” face set and ungiving.

His stomach revolting against a bad meal at an inconvenient time: “You're fine, Lucas, keep walking,” nails digging into his arm, dragging him down the crowded street.

Dark circles under her eyes after a shaky night: “I'm fine, Abram, practice your French,” sipping her coffee like he can't see her bloody cuticles.

And Neil has always been a fast learner. “I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine,” his litany walking away from a burning car, alone for the first time in his life.

“I'm fine,” to Coach Hernandez, to Coach Wymack, to the Foxes.

Is it a family heirloom they've been passing down one generation to the next for ages until Neil breaks the cycle? Did Mary have a mother who held her shoulders back from their hunch, whispered in her year, "You're fine, Mary, behave yourself" when introduced to her future husband? "You will be just fine Mary, don't make a scene" when they're packing her bags to send her to another continent?

Or did Mary have to learn to be fine all by herself? Alone on the other side of the ocean from her real home, stuck with an abusive husband and his minions in a big empty house? On the run with her son, knowing they'd be running forever or until they were caught?

Did she learn the importance of being fine for her son? "Just do as she says, you will be fine" hiding her own trepidation when Lola drags him to the basement, knives in hand and dangerous smile on her face? "It's just an Exy game, Abram, it will be fine" knowing full well it isn't? "You're fine, I'm fine" all the time on the run, trying to shelter him from the worst of it she herself cannot escape, trying to be strong for him when everything seems hopeless?

It’s difficult to fully articulate the hold that Patrick Stewart had on audiences when TNG was airing. Between the hundreds of magazine covers, the talk show circuits, and the paparazzi nonsense, the amount of baldness puns editors were compelled to create was astounding.

It was like the media fixated on this man because he had catastrophic levels of charisma and audiences were losing their minds over him (TNG was regularly beating network shows in ratings), yet he was so far removed from the narrow Hollywood standards of beauty that it vexed and haunted these people for years.

Baldness was a joke in Hollywood. 75% of George Costanza's identity revolved around bald jokes. If you were a bald actor, you were cast as a villain or a buffoon, never the hero. And if you were losing your hair, you had to slap a wig on or risk losing your career. Yul Brynner was somewhat of an exception but he was from a much different generation of Hollywood and even Bruce Willis didn't fully shave his head until 1994 (post TNG success incidentally).

In Patrick Stewart's case, there was often an undercurrent of snide putdowns with many interviewers, drawing focus to his baldness over and over and over again with low hanging jokes. It was like you could see their vanity-based paradigms cracking in real time and it was strange to witness. Imagine how bizarre it would be if talk show hosts today could only ask The Rock, Vin Diesel, or Jason Statham about their bald heads.

But karma swooped in to the rescue. In 1992 Stewart was voted TV Guide's "Sexiest Man on Television" with a whopping 54% of votes. He beat out the likes of Luke Perry, John Corbett, A. Martinez, and even Burt Reynolds (with a total of 20 contenders).

The middle-aged bald guy in the syndicated sci-fi show beat out the hottest of the Hot Guys™️ and it wasn't even remotely close.

^ Bald joke

Now, I don't actually know which wig it was that he auditioned with... he apparently got The Wig Mandate last-minute, so his wife had to pick one out from one of the plays he had recently acted in. Rumor has it that it was the wig he wore in "I, Claudius".

...But this is the image usually associated with the story:

I've heard people claim that they decided to let him go without a wig because they just couldn't arrive at anything that looked natural, or that they didn't want to deal with having to put the main character in a wig every day. These people are obviously just making stuff up without actually thinking very deeply about it; for every single scene featuring Worf, who appears in all but four episodes of TNG, Michael Dorn had to be fitted with a latex forehead and makeup, a wig, and fake facial hair.