The Orville: Future Unknown
August 3, 2022 10:18 PM - Season 3, Episode 10 - Subscribe
The crew of the Orville rescues an old friend from Planet Downvote, and performs ceremonies bringing them closer together.
Be sure to watch for:
Be sure to watch for:
- Klyden and Bortus in the second-most-dangerous game!
- Relationship advice from John that goes awry
- A little simulator program that Kelly and Talla dreamed up
I want a Season 4... there's still so much to explore (Mercer's daughter for one, the creepy Cronenberg creatures from early in the season as another). But if that's it for The Orville, if there's no Season 4, then Seth has brought it in for a smooth landing, with a nice bow on top, to make sure we have a beginning, middle, and end.
posted by ewan at 7:16 AM on August 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by ewan at 7:16 AM on August 4, 2022 [2 favorites]
This was such a solid season, and this episode was incredibly cozy compared to the High Drama of the last few episodes. Surprising guest star, return of an old friend, and paying off a joke set up episodes ago.
Also, Bortus with hair of any kind never stops being funny. Bortelvis had me agreeing with Klyden 100%. "HOORAY! HOORAY FOR YOU!" (Plus I need Klyden's bowling shirt, or the dress uniforms, or ideally both.)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:44 AM on August 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
Also, Bortus with hair of any kind never stops being funny. Bortelvis had me agreeing with Klyden 100%. "HOORAY! HOORAY FOR YOU!" (Plus I need Klyden's bowling shirt, or the dress uniforms, or ideally both.)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:44 AM on August 4, 2022 [4 favorites]
One other thing: Mark Jackson conveys SO much with a blank expression and a little nod of his head. It's really fascinating to watch. It's almost more impressive when he's not wearing the helmet.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:45 AM on August 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:45 AM on August 4, 2022 [1 favorite]
OMG, I actually have Klydens shirt.... Hahahahaha.... (Got mine from Daddy'O's online, they have different styles that rotate through - rumour has it that the site may be part owned by Charlie Sheen, which I didn't know until years after I stopped buying bowling shirts from there)
posted by rozcakj at 6:20 PM on August 4, 2022
posted by rozcakj at 6:20 PM on August 4, 2022
I want more of this show. Just brilliant.
Also, gotta appreciate having the episode end with Penny Johnson Jerald's character happily married and surrounded by friends and family, thus fixing the biggest issue with the end of DS9.
This show needs to run at least until they get to the baseball episode.
posted by BeeDo at 7:02 PM on August 4, 2022 [5 favorites]
Also, gotta appreciate having the episode end with Penny Johnson Jerald's character happily married and surrounded by friends and family, thus fixing the biggest issue with the end of DS9.
This show needs to run at least until they get to the baseball episode.
posted by BeeDo at 7:02 PM on August 4, 2022 [5 favorites]
I hope they get another season, but this did kinda have "series finale" vibes. We'll see.
Cozy's not a bad word for it. I remember somebody saying that the 2016 Ghostbusters movie felt like it was made entirely of deleted scenes, and this kind of had that vibe too but in a better way. These felt like good scenes that would normally be cut for time, lots of cute character stuff.
We had to pause the episode to look up who the heck Lysella was. She originally appeared way back in 2017, it wasn't the most memorable episode and there have been zero callbacks since, so when everybody was freaking out about her now we wondered if she was from this season and we'd missed an episode! Giorgia Whigham did look distractingly familiar, but I think she just reminded me of Nancy from Stranger Things.
If this show does come back, I hope they back off on everybody singing. They're not bad songs or anything, but in an episode that's already as long as a feature film we really don't need to slow things down any more with musical interludes.
Let's give a shout-out to those makeup artists! When they read the script for Bortus and Klyden's bonding ritual, you know they were like, "We have to make these guys up from head to toe, even their butts, and it has to stand up to them running around in the hot sun?" Their pain was our gain, because it was a really fun scene. It's good to see Bortus and Klyden in a better place as a couple. Klyden was just swooning over Bortus during the Elvis stuff, and it was cute as hell.
Apparently Whigham's set to join McFaralane and Scott Grimes in an upcoming Ted TV series, and finding out that show exists kind of made me go, "Oh, yeah. Seth McFarlane is... Seth McFarlane." He's shown such a different side of himself with this show, it's kind of hard to connect this dude to the Family Guy/"We Saw Your Boobs" dude. I feel like him going back to doing goofy bro comedy would be kind of a regression, and I get the feeling he feels the same way. Every interview I've seen with the guy makes it very clear he's totally over Family Guy and The Orville is where his heart is.
I noticed that Mercer's wedding officiant speech was very close to Kirk and Picard's wedding speeches from Star Trek: TOS and TNG. ("Since the days of the first wooden sailing ships, all captains have enjoyed the happy privilege of joining together two people in the bonds of matrimony...") It was a cute little Easter egg when they brought the TOS speech back for TNG, and you know McFarlane was stoked to do his own variation! The man's Trekkie dedication is truly impressive.
Sigh. I hope this show comes back.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:33 PM on August 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
Cozy's not a bad word for it. I remember somebody saying that the 2016 Ghostbusters movie felt like it was made entirely of deleted scenes, and this kind of had that vibe too but in a better way. These felt like good scenes that would normally be cut for time, lots of cute character stuff.
We had to pause the episode to look up who the heck Lysella was. She originally appeared way back in 2017, it wasn't the most memorable episode and there have been zero callbacks since, so when everybody was freaking out about her now we wondered if she was from this season and we'd missed an episode! Giorgia Whigham did look distractingly familiar, but I think she just reminded me of Nancy from Stranger Things.
If this show does come back, I hope they back off on everybody singing. They're not bad songs or anything, but in an episode that's already as long as a feature film we really don't need to slow things down any more with musical interludes.
Let's give a shout-out to those makeup artists! When they read the script for Bortus and Klyden's bonding ritual, you know they were like, "We have to make these guys up from head to toe, even their butts, and it has to stand up to them running around in the hot sun?" Their pain was our gain, because it was a really fun scene. It's good to see Bortus and Klyden in a better place as a couple. Klyden was just swooning over Bortus during the Elvis stuff, and it was cute as hell.
Apparently Whigham's set to join McFaralane and Scott Grimes in an upcoming Ted TV series, and finding out that show exists kind of made me go, "Oh, yeah. Seth McFarlane is... Seth McFarlane." He's shown such a different side of himself with this show, it's kind of hard to connect this dude to the Family Guy/"We Saw Your Boobs" dude. I feel like him going back to doing goofy bro comedy would be kind of a regression, and I get the feeling he feels the same way. Every interview I've seen with the guy makes it very clear he's totally over Family Guy and The Orville is where his heart is.
I noticed that Mercer's wedding officiant speech was very close to Kirk and Picard's wedding speeches from Star Trek: TOS and TNG. ("Since the days of the first wooden sailing ships, all captains have enjoyed the happy privilege of joining together two people in the bonds of matrimony...") It was a cute little Easter egg when they brought the TOS speech back for TNG, and you know McFarlane was stoked to do his own variation! The man's Trekkie dedication is truly impressive.
Sigh. I hope this show comes back.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:33 PM on August 5, 2022 [4 favorites]
I think this was a good send off. I appreciated the lighter tone of this one. I also couldn't remember who Lysella was and, yeah, a call back to an episode from 2017 doesn't seem like such a smart idea. She also felt like the B-plot to expand this baby to 90 minutes and, man, if this show comes back, I hope the episodes are less than an hour again. Too much padding.
posted by crossoverman at 11:58 PM on August 6, 2022
posted by crossoverman at 11:58 PM on August 6, 2022
Lysella was one of my favorite characters, even if the Planet Downvote plot was a little sad because it depended so heavily on John carrying the Idiot Ball around. I'm glad we got to see her again.
The Orville is featured heavily in a recent Disney+ trailer, be interesting to rewatch all the episodes w/o commercials.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 12:21 PM on August 9, 2022
The Orville is featured heavily in a recent Disney+ trailer, be interesting to rewatch all the episodes w/o commercials.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 12:21 PM on August 9, 2022
Without commercials, New Horizons episodes are like movies.
posted by Servo5678 at 2:20 PM on August 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Servo5678 at 2:20 PM on August 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
Without commercials, New Horizons episodes are like movies.
A an hour and 20 minutes, they are 4-reel movies.
posted by mikelieman at 4:32 PM on August 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
A an hour and 20 minutes, they are 4-reel movies.
posted by mikelieman at 4:32 PM on August 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
The problem with The Orville, from the very beginning, is the dopey humor. They'd make these perfectly good sci-fi episodes and then every episode had two or three goofy jokes in it that were insultingly stupid. Slapstick or dumb jokes or just silliness that felt tonally off.
The strength of The Orville, from the very beginning, is its commitment to showing true alienness. Isaac's bizarre complete lack of human affect. Bortus' tone deafness. Lysella's complete fish-out-of-time shtick of not understand the world of The Union. I've written about this before; in Star Trek aliens are always there to be exaggerations of humanity, to reflect on ourselves. Orville also has the exaggerations but it seems in service to a "what if?" question rather than dragging it back to how we are in 2022 America.
So how wonderful this episode brought both themes together; the goofiness and the alienness, and have the two work together so well. Isaac was an absolute delight here. Trying to muddle through human mating rituals, making a total hash of it, and yet that all being quietly humorous. Both laughing at Isaac's awkward failures (inviting every single Kaylon!) and also sympathizing with his failed efforts to to fit in. Bortus trying to be part of the group and having no clue that his Elvis and his fractured digs were a complete failure. In a Star Trek kind of context that would have been awful, offensive and silly and just a failure. But here in the Orville there's room for some dopey jokes and some silly behavior and somehow that worked great with this theme of alienness, reinforced it and made it work. Bravo!
Also I will forever live for Claire storming in on John and dressing him down for telling her man to go looking for a little strange before the wedding. The sound and fury of that, just a delight.
I watched this whole episode ignorant of the thought there wouldn't be an Orville Season 4, so I was sad to read the comments here suggesting there might not be. As things stand today it looks pretty on the edge, I imagine it depends on the viewership numbers. I sure hope they get another season though, this show is something special.
posted by Nelson at 10:25 PM on August 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
The strength of The Orville, from the very beginning, is its commitment to showing true alienness. Isaac's bizarre complete lack of human affect. Bortus' tone deafness. Lysella's complete fish-out-of-time shtick of not understand the world of The Union. I've written about this before; in Star Trek aliens are always there to be exaggerations of humanity, to reflect on ourselves. Orville also has the exaggerations but it seems in service to a "what if?" question rather than dragging it back to how we are in 2022 America.
So how wonderful this episode brought both themes together; the goofiness and the alienness, and have the two work together so well. Isaac was an absolute delight here. Trying to muddle through human mating rituals, making a total hash of it, and yet that all being quietly humorous. Both laughing at Isaac's awkward failures (inviting every single Kaylon!) and also sympathizing with his failed efforts to to fit in. Bortus trying to be part of the group and having no clue that his Elvis and his fractured digs were a complete failure. In a Star Trek kind of context that would have been awful, offensive and silly and just a failure. But here in the Orville there's room for some dopey jokes and some silly behavior and somehow that worked great with this theme of alienness, reinforced it and made it work. Bravo!
Also I will forever live for Claire storming in on John and dressing him down for telling her man to go looking for a little strange before the wedding. The sound and fury of that, just a delight.
I watched this whole episode ignorant of the thought there wouldn't be an Orville Season 4, so I was sad to read the comments here suggesting there might not be. As things stand today it looks pretty on the edge, I imagine it depends on the viewership numbers. I sure hope they get another season though, this show is something special.
posted by Nelson at 10:25 PM on August 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by Marticus at 2:55 AM on August 4, 2022 [2 favorites]