Why Is There No Love for 'The Orville?'

The suns has made several rotations since the third episode, "About a Girl" was released, and the reviews I have been reading have been less than favorable. With a 20% score on Rotten Tomatoes and only a slight improvement 36% on Metacritic, it seems everyone has a bone to pick. IMDB has given it a 7.5.

Liz Miller of the IndieWire's biggest critique seems to be that the latest episode brings up ideas of gender and sex changes, but fails to actually make a clear commentary on them. I can agree with that to some point, and while it doesn't address transgender and intersex issues, it brings them up. From raising them it then takes a step back to simply state that the genders are equal. For the more progressive viewers, this was a missed opportunity. However, as someone from a rural town, this is exactly what was needed.

You Are Not McFarlane's Audience

Let's face it, most people are going to watch the Orville simply because it has Seth McFarlane. The worshipers of Family Guy are going to flock to the show and most of the jokes, the tone, the timing, or "the delivery of a joke feeling intensely unnatural" (Kelly Lawler, USA Today), I would put my money to say that they weren't written for you.

Kelly is welcome to feel that, in an aside between the Captain and his First Officer arguing about who gets to be the car in Monopoly undercuts the plot, I would not blame her.

It does undercut the plot, but that's not all there is to a series.

It's about the development of characters, showing a real and well rounded world that people can exist in. When I watch Galaxy Quest I tell myself, "This is how I would act if aliens came to me tomorrow." When I watch Star Trek I tell myself, "This is how the world can be if the entire planet gets its act together."

When I watch The Orville I tell myself, "This is probably how we're going to end up."

Technology evolves faster than people. The flaws that people are dealing with today will probably still be battled hundreds of years for now. So the youngest Bridge officer taking multiple shots on duty for courage, the first officer ordering a "marijuana edible" from a console on the bridge at uneasiness of seeing her ex husbands parents, those are ways people cope with things today, and will most likely in the future.

The point is all of this "filler" or muddiness that other critics are picking up on, is approachability. The Orville is written for a wide swath of people. It is not written this way to make large statements about how to better mankind (let's save that for Star Trek), but it's written to bring the issues that most people would avoid, or otherwise ignore to the table.

Final Thoughts

I have high hopes for The Orville. It has only aired three episodes so far so it is definitely too early to tell, but I think the jokes aren't in bad taste or awkward. The characters are diverse and individual and it's at least alerting people to problems and ideas that exist out in the ether. I'm going to continue to tune in because every joke doesn't have to land. I know the show was written for (hopefully) everyone to enjoy. If MacFarlane and The Orville can turn one person onto Star Trek (where they make firmer statements about right and wrong), then I feel it succeeded in its intent, because it already has me laughing, and that is the only two goals as far as I can tell.