Acronym on a pay stub / FRI 3-11-22 / Characters at checkout / Name of a family that took in an extraterrestrial / Company whose corporate logo is known as the Fuji / Scourge of the 2020s, colloquially / Cho's predecessor in Star Trek series / Color whose name comes from the French for unbleached

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LUNA (49D:1960s-'70s Soviet space program) —

The Luna programme (from the Russian word Луна "Luna" meaning "Moon"), occasionally called Lunik by western media, was a series of robotic spacecraft missions sent to the Moon by the Soviet Union between 1959 and 1976. Fifteen were successful, each designed as either an orbiter or lander, and accomplished many firsts in space exploration. They also performed many experiments, studying the Moon's chemical composition, gravity, temperature, and radiation.

Twenty-four spacecraft were formally given the Luna designation, although more were launched. Those that failed to reach orbit were not publicly acknowledged at the time, and not assigned a Luna number. Those that failed in low Earth orbit were usually given Cosmos designations.^[1] The estimated cost of the Luna programme in 1964 was US$6–10 billion. (wikipedia)

I'll start with what I didn't like. I didn't like NRA because I never like seeing NRA no matter how it's clued. Obvious, this kind of condemnatory clue for the corrupt white supremacist gun org. is better than a neutral clue, but even if you clue it as the National Restaurant Association, I'm never gonna like running into this three-letter answer. I keep trying to get constructors to take it out of their word lists entirely. And now here I am, trying again. The other answer that really rubbed me the wrong way was 'RONA. I have always, from the first time I heard this "slangy" expression, found it way too cutesy a term for a disease that caused so much death, to say nothing of general physical and economic suffering. I also actually rarely hear it. It feels almost dated. People just say COVID. It's neutral. Now, I don't really wanna see COVID in my grid either, but for some reason 'RONA makes me wince even harder than COVID would. Guess I'm not quite ready for a breezy tone when it comes to the modern plague. Oh well. So now that those two answers are out of the way, I can get to the part where I say this puzzle rules and finally I feel like I can breathe clean puzzle air! This week has been so ugsome that it's nice to get to a grid that just flows, where the clues make sense and the answers seem broadly accessible and the level of craft is so high that you might not even notice it. I mean, it's not a showy grid, it's just a highly smooth and well-polished one. The grid has great flow, and hardly a longer answer is wasted. TABULA RASA is maybe a little on the plain side (!), and I don't really know what a BRIDGE LOAN is (and financial terms tend to make my eyes glaze over), but everything else was just delightful to my eyes (and internal ears, if that makes sense). MELON BALLER! (10D: Kitchen gadget also known as a Parisienne scoop). The least useful gadget in the kitchen! (if you're me ... actually, we don't even own one). I just love that such a thing exists, and I like saying it. MELON! BALLER! Also, it sounds like a melon that's really good at playing basketball, so I like thinking about that, too. DROP-DOWN MENUS, "I HAVE TO RUN!," BONUS ROUND ... all of it manages to be both broadly familiar and fresh-seeming at the same time. Did I enjoy the puzzle? The answer is not NOT! It's not DEFINITE MAYBE. It's just yes. Yes yes thank you.