Now on Thursdays!
(This review contains
spoilers!)
This episode was a surprise for a
number of reasons. For one, by the looks of it The Orville has decided to flee the competition of Sunday night,
instead resting in a decidedly quieter Thursday spot. This review is late
because I didn’t know about the change, so that’s my bad.
Given the potential I’ve seen in this
show despite the overall lackluster quality of the first two episodes, I
decided to employ the three-episode rule and give it one last shot to prove to
me it can be a show worth watching. If this episode still didn’t impress me, I
was out.
Maybe it’s because I had such low
expectations, but I found myself really enjoying this episode. It was
everything I thought The Orville should
be wrapped in a neat package: it took itself seriously and tackled big subjects
like a real Star Trek episode would,
but at the same time it still had several actually funny moments. That’s not to
say it was perfect, because a lot of the issues that plagued the first two
episodes are still here, but the episode as a whole is surprisingly poignant
and smartly written.
Following up from last week, we’re
seeing the direct continuation of Bortus’ baby storyline. (I’m learning the
character names as best as I can, bear with me) Given that his species is only
one gender, Bortus wants to change the child to a male, a sentiment echoed by
the rest of his species. However, the main crew disagrees, saying the child
should decide what she wants to be when she’s older.
There’s some interesting subtext about
transgender people here, though never too much that it feels like the show is
beating you over the head with the message. Throughout the episode the aliens
who want to make the switch are rightfully painted as the bad guys, although there
is a lot of smart discussion about not only gender politics but also stuff like
birth defects from the main characters.
The episode is also surprisingly very
funny. The opening scene on the holodeck (I’m sure it has its own name, but let’s
be honest, we’re all calling it the holodeck) with the dancing Mexican bandits
was the show’s first real laugh out loud moment for me. Even better was how
Bortus was convinced that keeping his baby a female was the right way to go.
Similarly to the Real Housewives reference
from the last episode, while it was a pop-culture reference, it was integrated
into the story in such a way that made it both really funny but also pretty
emotional when it was called back to at the end of the episode.
This isn’t to say that all the jokes
are funny. There’s still plenty of references to certain male body parts to go
around, and no, none of them land. It’s really disheartening to see that this
low form of humour is the show’s biggest crutch is relies upon, because at many
times it risked dragging down what was otherwise a pretty smart and funny
episode.
While I do have a concern that this
might be a case of the blind man getting lucky once, this episode was pretty
darn good. It blended the serious storyline of Bortus’s child with some light
and funny humour very well, and the ending is extremely satisfying and well
thought out. More of this, please.
FINAL SCORE
7/10
Good
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