We all know Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) is a geek. His pop culture satires on Guy are proof of this, even though some of those cutaway gags reek of heinousness.
To that end, after his last animated creation, Bordertown, crashed & burned last season, MacFarlane decided to try a live-action series for once. His latest, The Orville, skewers science-fiction convention while at the same time being a left-handed homage to the Star Trek franchise. Fox debuted The Orville with a pair of Sunday night offerings, two weeks ahead of CBS' launch of the latest Trek series, Star Trek: Discovery, which otherwise will be online only for the balance of the season (Boo! Hiss!), a risky venture in and of itself.
The Orville is set in the 25th century, which also would suggest a homage to Buck Rogers. Ed Mercer (MacFarlane) has seen his career trend downward after divorcing his wife, Kelly (Adrianne Palicki). His rating has fallen so low, his assignment to the Orville seems to suggest that his superiors were that desperate to find a captain for the ship. Like later incarnations of Trek, the Orville is a diverse crew of alien races interacting with humans.
The Orville has settled into its regular home on Thursdays on Fox, but that may have been a mistake, considering that it has to deal with ABC's lineup (Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder), and it's only going to get worse in a couple of weeks, when CW's Arrow moves into its new home, directly opposite Orville. Comics fans will likely flip from Orville's lead-in, Gotham, to Arrow if they don't think MacFarlane can measure up in front of the cameras. After all, Mercer isn't the same kind of lunkhead as, say, dumber-than-a-bag-of-hammers Peter Griffin (Family Guy). What keeps the show grounded is having Jon Favreau ("Iron Man") on board as an executive producer. Favreau also directed the opener.
In this scene, Mercer finds out from Admiral Halsey (special guest star Victor Garber, Legends of Tomorrow) that Kelly is joining his crew.
Do I think it'll succeed? No. As noted, The Orville has a rough road to navigate opposite Scandal and, in 2 weeks, Arrow. It's a test of MacFarlane's acting range, and I'd not be surprised if Fox moves the show back to Sundays before the end of the season.
Rating: B--.
Because Seth MacFalrlane is at the helm, FOX has been promoting The Orville as if it were a spoof of sci-fi conventions a la Spaceballs, but in actuality it's more or less a straightforward love letter to the likes of Star Trek, peppered with the occasional Family Guy style jokes. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to tread any ground that Gene Roddenberry hasn't already tackled, and done better. So The Orville's not funny enough to be a comedy, not serious enough to be a drama, not epic or thought-provoking enough to be science fiction...what is it?
ReplyDeleteSomewhere in the middle seems to be the consensus.
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