To
Space And Beyond #TheOrville #FOX #3weekroundup #review #recap
#premiereweek
All pictures courtesy of FOX
It’s
that time of the year again, ladies and gentlemen. That’s right, it
is time for us to sift through the good, bad and downright putrid
refuse that is the new crop of TV shows to find out if there’s
anything new worth watching this 2017-2018 season. That’s right,
it’s Premiere Week! Well, OK, technically premiere week came, like
a week or two ago and I’m doing my first TV review on a show that
has been out for the last four or five weeks, but you get the point
and you know why. “Why?” You ask. You must be new here. For any
new readers, let me say that I do a review of the first three
episodes of a series, rather than the first one, because I (unlike
other reviewers) see the benefit in letting a show build to
something. Judging an entire series by its first episode—an episode
that is already going to be overstuffed by its very definition and
struggling to set tone and pace and wow-factor—to me is a little
over-reactive. There are tons of shows that, frankly, don’t catch
on with audiences or critics the first episode out and take a little
time to build before people are truly wild about it. Case in point,
the first season of Seinfeld. The ratings for the first episode of
that were terrible because few people knew who he was and it came on
as a late spring/summer show. So, I always say that it may be
excruciating at first, but give a show at least three episodes before
tossing your viewership to some other mindless show.
So,
with the yearly disclaimer and explanation on why I do a
three-week/three-episode roundup of new shows, what do I have to say
about FOX’s new Seth MacFarlane-created The Orville. Is it a fun
space adventure into the unknown and great beyond, or does this thing
crash and burn back to earth before ever reaching the stratosphere?
Let’s find out together!
As
I said, The Orville was created by Seth MacFarlane who, in another
unexpected twist, decided to also star in the show himself. But wait,
you’re saying that’s not unexpected as he voices all of his
show’s lead characters with the exception of the defunct The
Cleveland Show. You’re also thinking, “Another unexpected twist?
What the hell was the first one?” Ha! The first one is that this
show is not an animated comedy like Family Guy but is actually an
hour-long live-action dramedy that tries to straddle the line between
Seth’s trademark humor and the weightiness of a primetime sci-fi
drama in the vein of Star Trek or Battle Star Galactica. So now we’re
going from that first twist and leap-frogging the second twist (which
I revealed first) to go to the main thrust of the show, you follow?
After the second to last sentence where I referenced those two other
sci-fi shows, you’re saying, “Star Trek? Battle Star Galactica?
Really?” Yes, your thought is correct. This is a show about a
newly-appointed space captain and his crew who voyage around space
encountering new species, visiting new planets and going where no man
has gone before... and a lotta places that man apparently has gone
before. This is Seth’s ode to Star Trek, Star Wars and any other
interplanetary sci-fi geekdom allusion you can conjure. Or is it?
Hold on to that question until the end because it plays a very
important role in my overall critique of the series.
Anyway,
Ed and his wife Commander Kelly Grayson get a divorce and we zoom
ahead one year to see that the Union (this series’ Star Trek
Federation) is in a mode of Manifest-Destiny-type expansion and needs
to fill 3000 exploratory and combat spaceships to cruise the galaxy.
Only because they are in need of so many captains does Ed get the
call/promotion. And while he can’t choose his first mate (protocol,
I assume) he can choose his first driver (forgot the name the show
uses and it’s really just easier this way). The man he chooses to
helm his ship is Lieutenant Gordon Malloy played by Scott Grimes. He
is supposedly one of the best pilots in the Union but was recently
demerited for doing some kind of badassery that helped to save his
previous crew but damaged a spaceship. He’s also the hard-drinking,
wise-cracking red head that seems needed in every spaceship film or
TV show these days.
Now
that we have the three main white characters, we fill out the cast
with the Union-provided doctor played by veteran actress Penny
Johnson Jerald; the Klingon-knockoff Lieutenant Commander Bortus; the
second pilot Lt. John LaMarr or the black guy that’s supposed to
actually look like a black guy and not an alien; and the young strong
alien girl who is fourth in command, Lt. Alara Kitan played by
Halston Sage. Kitan is there because she is super strong because the
atmosphere on her planet is a lot denser and there’s more gravity,
so she was able to move quickly through the ranks in the Union
military.
Anyway,
with all the key players met, they embark on their first mission to a
planet that they use their warp-drive to get to, so it’s a fair
distance from earth. A routine supplies-drop, upon arriving they are
told by the guy who contacted them that the planet needs no supplies.
Instead, what they need is protection. This planet is an outpost
planet that serves as a “scientific playground.” Filled with
researchers, all they do is make scientific discoveries and study
various things that are brought to them from around the galaxy. Their
most recent breakthrough has come in the form of a machine that can
create a time bubble around things and then speed-up the time within
said bubble. For example, they take a freshly-picked green banana,
put it under the bubble, then watch as it goes from green to yellow
to black and finally a flattened, juice-less peel. Though time for
them has passed in seconds, inside the bubble a full month has
passed. Well, they see the military application for this and are
afraid that these white aliens who look, literally, exactly like that
white alien woman from that last Star Trek Beyond film, will come and
take it and use it to wipe out entire armies by aging them rapidly.
I’m not sure if these are supposed to be the big baddies in this
series like the Borg or Vulcans or Klingons or what have you, but I
do know that they are defeated rather easily.
After
a few members of the crew point out that the guy who called them for
help had a dog licking its balls in the background of the video-call,
the aliens do invade and the crew escapes back onto their ship where
they then devise the plan to give the aliens precisely what they
want. But what they do is send the aliens the machine with a redwood
tree seed already lodged in the aging mechanism. They turn it on, set
it for 100 years, then send it to the aliens who are quickly
destroyed by a 100-year-old giant redwood growing through their ship.
Admittedly, I thought this was pretty cool and an inventive way to
defeat an enemy without having to fire a single shot of some strange
phaser or photon-blaster.
And
surprise, the person who helped come up with this genius idea was
Adrian’s character, Ed’s ex-wife. At this point some of you who
are still reading this (maybe even some who have seen the show) are
pissed not just because you think, “Gosh, this guy can’t write,”
but because you think I totally buried the lede and that I should’ve
mentioned that Ed’s ex-wife was made his second-in-command earlier.
However, the setup was so obvious from jump that this, to me,
should’ve been assumed. Plus, it is in the actual description of
the first episode, so...
What’s
interesting is that not only did she request the assignment to
apologize and basically fem-blame (when a woman blames a man for all
her problems) him for her cheating—the usual “you were distant
and worked a lot” shtick—she was also the one who went to his
superior and suggested that Ed be given a captain position, vouching
for his lethargic and unprofessional behavior for the past year as
being totally influenced by her cheating. In the end, Ed
half-forgives her enough to no longer object to her being his second
officer. And so begins the voyage of The Orville (named after Orville
Wright).
In
the second episode, we are treated to more couple’s bickering and
forced getting along when The Orville is contacted by a ship in
distress. As it just so happens, the ship has Ed’s mother and
father on it who, instead of properly explaining why they were on the
ship, delve into something to do with a colon exam and seeds getting
lodged into the folds of the rectum and you’re supposed to laugh
but... eh! So, in order to see what’s going on, the captain and his
ex-wife/first officer leave the ship (they take a smaller ship, and
here it should be noted that it doesn’t seem like they have the
advanced power to beam-up to something, but this other ship does).
With the third-in-command nesting on an egg (yeah, we’ll get back
to this in the third episode), they turn to the young Kitan to
captain the ship while they briefly step off.
The
brief step-off becomes anything but when they get on the ship and
find it empty, then step into an elevator which locks them in and
beams them away to places unknown. Suddenly, back on board the
Orville, the crew see that what they thought was this huge ship is
nothing more than an oversized ring pop floating in space. On Kitan’s
command, they tractor-beam it toward them only for it to blow up
before they can get it on board and examine it. This is her first big
mistake and it knocks out some of the power. She gets treated like a
child by the older parts of the crew and she is told by the doctor
lady to stand up for herself and actually be in command because they
left her in command for a reason.
Meanwhile,
as the Orville tries to figure out what happened to Ed and Kelly, the
two exes awake in what looks exactly like their old New York
apartment and I have an immediate recognition/premonition of what
this is. For a full day they look out the window and see the New York
skyline and I am amazed because I just keep wondering how much their
apartment cost and how much money they were making in 2417 because
this place has a serious view. You can’t even get great views in
some million-dollar apartments in New York now (trust me, I watch
Million Dollar Listing New York), I can only imagine the astronomical
prices 400 years from now.
 |
| The Black Guy |
Anyway,
as it turns out they spend a night reminiscing and not having sex
until they finally awake the next morning to see that the familiar
apartment view has been replaced with what’s actually outside: a
bunch of red-skinned aliens staring back at them. Yep, this is a zoo.
As it turns out, there are at least two races of beings that think
themselves so advanced that they are superior to almost all other
life: that being the robots of which Isaac is a part, and these
red-skinned aliens. You can see that they clearly are more advanced
because they have the beam-me-up technology that has, up until this
point in the series, been absent. The crew discovers at the same time
that the red aliens put out space-lures to fish for new animals for
their exhibits and have finally caught some humans.
Disobeying
the orders of Union command, Kitan orders the crew go rescue Ed and
Kelly and wade into the dangerous territory of these red aliens.
Luckily, she takes Isaac with her to speak with the red alien
zookeeper, as the red aliens see the robot’s people as equals.
While the alien at first wants to kill Ed and Kelly after Kitan and
the robot make up a lie about the two being infected with some
disease, Kitan makes a deal with him for their release. The deal:
instead of keeping the live humans they get hours and hours of
reality television to show in that animal cell block, beginning with
The Real Housewives of New Jersey. And it is here that I let out a
hardy laugh for the episode.
With
all restored, the episode ends with Bortus finally hatching his egg
and discovering that the child that comes out is a... girl, and this
leads into the third episode.
A
little background on Bortus and his people. These Klingon-looking
people are apparently a race of all males. A joke is made early in
the series about them not squabbling over having to put the toilet
seat down or not and it is revealed that Bortus only pees once a
year. They are an efficient people and highly logical and
emotionless. So, Bortus and his partner (also a male) decide to have
a baby. They do this by Bortus laying an egg and hatching it, which,
as I previously said comes out female. Apparently, this anomaly
happens at least once every 75 years but luckily Bortus and his
people have a gender-change procedure that they do right after the
baby’s birth. And here was where I started to take offense to the
show.
So,
the crew follow Bortus’ people back to their home planet where more
eye-rolls came to me as they flew to the surface. Apparently, the
entirety of the planet has been industrialized as these people are
huge exporters of galactic weaponry. It looks bleak, red and marred
by destruction and weapons testing. Anyway, they land and have a
tribunal or court case concerning whether there is need to do the
surgery or not. Naturally, Commander Kelly is the one to defend
Bortus’ new decision to not have the surgery, mainly floundering
with arguments that have almost no bearing whatsoever on the actual
court case or Bortus’ people. This is one of the reasons why I
disliked it so much but I digress. I’ll save my critique until
after the grade.
Anyway,
Captain Ed has this brilliant idea to scan the planet and he finds
female life. In fact, there is a female of Bortus’ race that is
living high up in a nearby cave from the city in which they find
themselves. They bring her to the tribunal where she testifies that
she was born female and her parents escaped to the city’s limits to
raise her, opting not to have her sex changed. And she lived this
amazing life and is happy. The opposing attorney rightfully points
out that while she may be happy, she is living the life that the
parents precisely wanted to prevent for Bortus’ baby: she is
ostracized and has no connection to actual society. Then, in the most
“gimme a frickin’ break” moment in the series so far, she
quotes from the planet’s greatest author and everyone is offended
that she would sully this author’s words, only to then realize that
she was actually that author the whole time. Puh-lease!
In
the end, her testimony does nothing and the baby still undergoes the
gender reassignment so that Bortus and his partner are left with a
beautiful and healthy baby boy.
What’s
my score? I give The Orville a C- to a
D+. Yes, two grades. I know. I try not
to do that, but in this case it seems necessary. For starters, this
show has a lotta issues, so many that it’s hard to know where to
begin. Let me give it credit in the one thing that it is trying to do
right, which is stay true to Gene Roddenberry and other futurists’
idea of humanity being able to come to a point in time in which we
can all get along and explore and learn more than we war and churn.
The swift-moving, heart-pounding action of Star Wars, Battlestar
Galactica, Stargate or even the newest Star Trek movies and shows
ain’t nowhere near this series. It is not an action/adventure
series. However, that doesn’t make it boring. Again, this was the
original intent of Star Trek: to explore. So, older fans that are
nostalgic for the non-shoot’em up style of the original Star Trek
might find this to be a happy equivalent.
I
will also give this show props in the design of its various creatures
and aliens and even the costumes and effects, though I have a slight
gripe in that the way the show is lit makes it feel too much like it
is being shot on a sound stage. Holy crap, I just realized exactly
what it feels like. It feels like some of the old skits that Mad TV
and/or SNL used to do to make fun of Star Trek. It is lit the exact
same, so even though you can clearly see that they’ve spent some
money getting the costumes and special effects right, the lighting
still makes it all look a little cheap.
Ultimately,
the two biggest gripes I have with this show is that it is not
funny/doesn’t know what it wants to be, and that the writing is so
subpar that any exploration of today’s social or political ideas
comes off as being more bumbling than a Three Stooges episode.
Beginning
with the comedy, we already thought we knew what to expect with Seth
MacFarlane not only being the creator but the lead star of the show.
And while we do get a lot of his brand of comedy, what we also get is
a lot of his brand of recent comedy which is not very good. Let me
break this down for you: When Family Guy first premiered way back in
1999 (oh my god, that’s seriously been on almost twenty years? Man,
where does time go?) Seth could stay with a plot throughout a full
season of the show and through one full episode. The cancellation and
subsequent renewal only strengthened the funny. But in more recent
years (and the reason I stopped watching Family Guy) the show has
become moreso a collection of different scenes that serve to setup
the next gag rather than a cohesive plot. Don’t get me wrong, they
do all still have plots, but there are so many cut-aways, fourth wall
breaks and clips that scream “laugh at this” that you end up not
laughing as much as you maybe should. The same went for Ted 2 and A
Million Ways to Die in the West. Seth has settled into a tone of
gag-comedy that diffuses the intelligence and satirical acid of early
Family Guy episodes for a “don’t you find this funny” type of
nudge in the gut at every joke. To me, this is what Twin Peaks did in
similar fashion, except it insisted “don’t you find this deep and
thought provoking?” It was because of this that I really only
laughed once or twice an episode which is a terrible time/influence
ratio for an hour-long dramedy. It just isn’t funny, plain and
simple.
This
problem is made even worse by the ill-delivered lines of the actors.
The funny thing is that while I’ve seen almost all of these actors
in something else and enjoyed what they did there, here I find that
each episode feels like someone else’s turn to see if they can
outdo the bad acting of someone from the previous episode. I thought
Adrian was bad on the third episode, Halston on the second and Seth
on the first. And, this in no way is an offense against Seth’s
looks because I actually think he looks decent, I don’t think he
should be in front of the camera. Most scenes he’s in, he is like a
vanilla ice cream cone in July—he melts into the background. The
supposedly witty lines he delivers are meant to come off as charming
or even endearing in some instances but never quite make it past that
Frat-boy level of snark that is programmed in all of us to just
accept or ignore. He’s like that coworker who thinks that everyone
else thinks he’s funny so he’s constantly making jokes, and then
his coworkers keep giving him pity laughs which only feed into his
idea that people think he is funny. Bottomline: there’s something
about his performance that just does not work here.
The
other reason and partial first reason why I said I gave this show
such a low score is because of the writing mixed with the show’s
identity. This show doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. You
hear the name Seth MacFarlane and you immediately think, “Oh,
comedy! Of course.” But as I stated, the comedy parts really aren’t
that funny. What’s more, there really aren’t that many comedic
moments per episode, whether that be one-liners, gag-setups or visual
ha-has. Actually, there are more dramatic and semi-dramatic moments
in the show than there are truly comedic moments, or at least more
dramatic moments than those moments where you ask yourself if you
should be laughing or not. You could almost say that this is more of
a poorly-executed drama with comedic elements thrown in sparingly
rather than a melding of the two genres. The fact that the show takes
itself too seriously while floundering in the comedy is no more
apparent than in the third episode.
I
had so many gripes with this episode not just because I’m not a
feminist but because I don’t know what the hell it was trying to
ultimately say about gender identity, personality changing, choice,
feminism, masculinity and the like. As an environmentalist and
someone who loves nature, I always find it highly offensive when it
is shown that it is solely men’s fault for polluting or ruining
nature such as on Bortus’ all-male planet. There are plenty of men
who love nature just as much if not more than women just as plenty of
women have no problem destroying the environment. Then finding one of
probably the only females on the planet and giving her the honor of
being the planet’s/species’ most famous and thought-provoking
writer was such poor writing that I almost turned the show off and I
never do that for anything (I think I can count on one hand how many
movies I’ve turned off because I couldn’t take it anymore).
Forget the sexism stuff and just consider these questions because
apparently the show would have us believe that: this hermit woman who
has no contact with society, lives in a cave that looked like it had
little to no electronic hook-ups to the city a few miles away, and
who no one even knew existed, somehow became the PLANET’S most
famous author and nobody knew she was female, or have never seen a
picture of her or have never talked to her even over the phone? Even
if she was writing under a pen name some of my fellow authors have to
know how illogically stupid this is. And this is supposedly 400 years
in the future.
The
even bigger problem is that the show jumps back and forth between
trying to go for a fun and light-hearted spoof or parody tone to
after-school special at the drop of a dime. The episode with Kitan
commanding the ship and her going to the doctor for advice felt less
like a woman to grown-ass-woman talk and more like an after-class
talk between Cory and Mr. Feeney, or Mr. Kotter and any of his
troubled students (I know, that’s reachin’ back, right?). The
show feels like it wants to make bold statements about things but is
too timid because it doesn’t have the glossy armor of being “just
a cartoon” to allow its audience to sponge out whatever message
they want to glean.
“But
you haven’t explained the two grades,” you say. OK, the two
grades is because I felt like I was grading two different series in
one, which ultimately brought both series down. I think that this
show actually has a lot of potential. With Star Trek being
exclusively on CBS All Access, this could fill a niche that fans have
been craving for over a decade and end FOX’s reputation for getting
semi-quality sci-fi shows and canceling them after one season, but it
needs to do two things and neither, surprisingly, is getting rid of
Seth as the lead. If I were to give advice, I would tell the show to
get a new showrunner for starters, then decide on one style, which I
know would be difficult to do for MacFarlane. I think deciding the
style would be difficult because, and this seems crazy, but I
actually think that the show works better as a drama with quirky
characters than as a comedy and definitely better than the dramedy it
is trying to be. I think getting a new showrunner—maybe someone off
the Syfy channel or see if the District 9 director would be
interested in doing TV (hell, it looks like that planned Aliens
sequel ain’t goin’ nowhere)—would really fix both issues. A
new showrunner could get in new writers who can write snappier
dialogue and new, more creative situations as opposed to old Twilight
Zone retreads—I mean humans caged as animals for alien viewing?
Really? The ZONE did that 50+ years ago, and people still indulge in
their Zone marathons every July 4th and New Year’s so
you’re not fooling anyone.
But
if they were going to go with the comedic tone, then they need to get
some of (read: all of) the people behind that old Galaxy Quest movie,
which is probably what a lot of people thought they’d be getting
when tuning in to The Orville. The writers, producers and director
behind Galaxy Quest were all able to make an exciting and funny film
out of a ridiculous concept. The Orville is taking a well-worn
concept and playing it too straight-faced and the writing isn’t
smart or well-informed. Again, I think this could do really well if
they re-tooled to choose either drama with two funny characters in
Seth and the redhead (make everyone else serious or give them biting
humor), or going all-out hilarious. But what it is now is not working
for most people.
Should
you be watching? Eh! While I don’t really think it was boring, it
was very predictable. And I think that regardless of what tone they
go with for the show, the actual lighting needs to be changed so that
it doesn’t look so sketch-comedy-show-ish, but I do see it being a
time killer for people who love Star Trek and aren’t willing to pay
for CBS All Access quite yet. The Orville airs at 9pm on Thursdays
only on FOX. Catch previous episodes On Demand and on FOX.com.
What
do you think? Have you heard of The Orville? If so, have you seen it?
If not, do you think you’ll check it out now? If you have seen it,
what did you think? What improvements, if any, do you think the show
should make? Who is your favorite character? And what the hell is
Norm MacDonald doing voicing that strange snot-blob thing? Let me
know it the comments below.
If
you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel
#AFuriousWind, the
NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or
the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen.
For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult,
check out #TheWriter.
Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected
here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast
action/crime check out #ADangerousLow.
The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the
mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary
on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the
mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the
Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone
Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. Join us
on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow
my blog with that Google+ button to the right.
Until next time, “Space. It’s big
and... black, and seems to stretch on forever.”
‘Hey, I know somethin’ else that’s
big and black and stretches on forever! Ha!” – a quote from Big D*** Willie
P.S.
Crude, I know. That was a test. If you didn’t laugh at that line,
then chances are you probably won’t be laughing too often at this
show. And if you did, then chances are that you still won’t be
laughing very much at this show. I’ll try to think of a better
sign-off line next time.
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