RED ALERT! Billed as the spiritual successor to Galaxy Quest, Seth MacFarlane’s new show The Orville copy/pastes the Family Guy creator’s same old jokes and adds millions in effects. Let’s get this out of the way from the start. If you’re looking for this to be something like GQ the TV show, then you will be sorely disappointed. Wait for the Amazon reboot. The Orville is less GQ and more an attempt by MacFarlane to fulfill a childhood dream of being on a Star Trek show, which is great. He even utters a line about a boyhood dream not two minutes into the first episode. More power to him. But this isn’t a Star Trek show, and so the dream should take a form with its own direction and purpose. Instead, it’s Macfarlane’s usual shtick in space.
The Orville stars Seth MacFarlane (he also wrote and created the show) as Captain Ed Mercer, a talented starship officer who falls on hard times when he finds his wife cheating on him with an alien. Cue the first dick joke. Mercer is given one last chance to command a ship of his own, the titular Orville. To make it as contrived as possible, his ex-wife (Adrianne Palicki), also an officer, is assigned as his second-in-command. In the first episode, they’re sent on a uninteresting mission which becomes a battle ground between Mercer and the antagonist aliens known as the Krill.
4. Don’t Undercut Drama Or Action With Jokes
One of the biggest things that plague the first episode of The Orville is a problem persistent throughout A LOT of modern shows and movies. It’s the undercutting of drama with a joke. It happens in basically every Marvel movie, Star Wars, and beyond. A scene plays out that’s supposed to be important for the film. The scene is meant to create a weight and add drama. But then, as if producers are scared of leaving a scene on a serious tone, they add in a one-liner joke. The quip basically makes the entire scene a joke and thereby, erasing all dramatic tension and becoming meaningless.That happens repeatedly here because, again, MacFarlane simply can’t help himself.
