Earlier this year when Fox started airing commercials for The Orville I was rather unimpressed, but curious. The ads did not really draw me in and gave me no real idea about the show. The humor looked like it was going to fall flat and all in all just not work.
I actually was picturing the show to last a few episodes and then fade away.
I watched the first episode and it seemed to back up that belief. You could see what it was trying for, but it was missing its mark. The humor all felt forced with an awkwardness I couldn't explain.
Yet there was something there that made me want to give it a chance.
Episode by episode it has grown better. They seem to have figured out the pacing and how to work the humor into the episodes so it feels natural.
Fairly early on the show made it clear it wanted to deal with some serious issues. In their third episode 'About a Girl' they jumped right into some significant moral and societal issues, that did not seem to fit with how the show had been sold to us. It was truly surprising.
Now from the get go this was clearly Seth MacFarlane's ego project. This is the guy who gave us Family Guy and the Ted movies. For him to try to do serious sci-fi... Even though he was behind bringing us the brilliant reboot of Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson, picturing MacFarlane writing a serious show just didn't seem possible. I was expecting the bizarre, unhinged humor of Family Guy, without morals or good taste getting in the way. With such mature writing, it is hard to believe this is the same guy.
And Seth MacFarlane's Captain Mercer is not an interesting character. It is clearly MacFarlane is playing space captain because he wants to. But I am all for letting him play if he can keep the rest of the crew interesting and give us these stories.
What we are getting with the Orville now is an old school style Sci-Fi, looking at sci-fi tropes in a episodic format. One of the most noticeable differences between Orville and say Star Trek:TNG (which is the show I would say it most closely resembles), is that the characters in Orville are relaxed, not taking themselves overly serious. While this does make it feel nonmilitary (seriously, I do not think I would want this team out there protecting me) it allows for a much more honest dialogue between characters. When you have the second in command say "this may sound like I'm talking out of my ass" with the reply "then please make sure you enunciate" during a briefing, it works.
The Orville is not the show I was expecting it to be, but it has become enjoyable and the farther along we go the better it seems to become. MacFarlane seems to be figuring out how to make it work and will hopefully keep following what we have seen in the last few episodes that have worked so well.
