Rhonda’s Take on Episode 2.18: “Profit and Loss”
“That’s the thing about love. No one understands it, do they?”
Garak delivers this line at the close of the episode, but it so concisely summarizes the theme of the episode, I’m using it as a starting point. During this episode, we follow Quark’s love story and Garak’s love-of-country story.
The title “Profit and Loss” announces this as a Ferengi episode, but it turns out that it doesn’t refer to business dealings, rather it focuses on a previously unexplored aspect of Quark. Throughout the series, we’ve been treated to Quark as Ladies’ Man, but as a lothario, not as a committed lover. Here we meet Quark the Romantic.
Armin Shimmerman communicates Quark’s excitement at seeing Natima as he skitters out of the bar with a bottle of wine to greet her on the Promenade. Their pillow talk later in the episode is truly titillating as they retell their date on Quark’s first holosuite where he painted her face with honey that attracted a butterfly whose wings fluttered as quickly as the beat of his heart.
Of course, this is Quark so not even romance can go smoothly. We learned that Natima defended Quark so that he wouldn’t get in trouble for selling food to the Bajorans during the occupation. Natima says she saw his choice as brave. They had a whirlwind love affair that was the best month of either of their lives, but Quark ruined it by using her accounts in some of his dealings. Now, he argues that he has learned his lesson and says he will abandon his bar to Rom if she will let him follow her.
Several of my notes for this episode include reflections about Quark seemingly desiring women who abuse him. He is always pining for Kira, who blatantly tells him she finds him despicable, or for Jadzia, who he knows leads him on for free drinks. Natima greets him with a slap, but this doesn’t deter him, and she continually rejects him, but he always looks for a glimmer of hope (“I heard that! You hesitated!”). By episode’s end, I actually felt that the love between Quark and Natima was genuine.
This episode also develops our “simple tailor” Garak further than before. He will remain enigmatic, but his background and motivations are subtly dribbled out. At the start of the episode, he and Bashir are enjoying one of their lunches. As they argue about making decisions, Garak says he will always choose the State while Bashir says one must always be true to oneself.
By the end of the episode, we might argue that Garak has found a way to choose the State and be true to himself. Although, since Garak never says anything directly, we can’t really know for sure. His choice near the end may only have been an action out of dislike for one man.
It is clear that Garak has reported Natima and her two students to the Cardassian government and that he has suggested the prisoner exchange. It isn’t clear whether he knew Gul Toran would show up to assassinate Natima, Rekelen, and Hogue or whether Garak planned to turn his gun on Toran the entire time. When he tells Quark that he “did what he did” because he loves Cardassia, we are left with the idea that he agrees with Natima’s movement to push Cardassia from a military empire to a civilian-led coalition. Yet, if he does, we have to question why he reported their presence in the first place.
Let’s celebrate Garak’s wonderful dissembling, especially through use of analogy. When Quark visits him in his tailor’s shop, they discuss a dress Quark is presumably going to buy for his “lady friend.” Garak explains that what is popular in one moment might be an affront to the eyes in the next and warns that the movement Natima is aligned with may go out of fashion. When opening negotiations with Sisko for the prisoner swap, he refers to the trio as “terrorists” who are no more than “annoying” and “inconvenient” to the Cardassian empire and demurs that it is unimportant or else it would not be entrusted to him, a “simple tailor.”
Sisko yet again expresses doubt that there is anything “simple” about the station’s Cardassian tailor. The banter between Garak and Gul Toran hints at Garak’s unsavory past. We know that Garak is exiled to the station. We still don’t learn why, but Toran talks about Garak’s previous history. He looks around Garak’s shop and announces, “How the mighty have fallen,” and judges Garak as “adjusting so poorly to exile.” After giving Garak the assignment to assassinate the political dissidents, he says, “You’ll think of something; you always did in the past.” These are delicious details about Garak and Andrew Robinson plays the layers of the character with deliciously understated intensity.
Quark and Garak are an unlikely pairing, but in this episode, the characters allow us to investigate multiple meanings of “profit” and “loss.” This time neither term refers to gold-pressed latinum, rather both refer to matters of the heart. For Quark, his profit comes from Natima’s declaration that she does love him, yet he must lose her to her cause. Garak tries to profit by snitching to Cardassia to perhaps regain favor, yet he is willing to lose these meager gains to profit the homeworld he loves. We may never understand love, but it doesn’t matter when the journey leads through such richness.
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