2x01 Ja'loja

[5.8/10] It feels weird to say, but I miss the days when Seth MacFarlane just did raunchy, free association style pop culture gags. I’m not going to say that Family Guy was the greatest show ever, but when it was pitching its fastball, it had a freeform comedy vibe that generated laughs, even if most of its stories were paper thin. I’ve soured somewhat on MacFarlane’s comedic stylings in the years since I was in high school, but you can feel his zany Airplane! influences on display in the show with its rapid-fire, anything goes gagwork.

Because the alternative is this, an episode where MacFarlane attempts to represent relatable human relationships in a funny and organic way and makes an utter hash of it. I’ve said before that I like The Orville best when it’s just initiating Star Trek, and the least when it’s trying to be a romantic comedy or, heaven forbid, a romantic melodrama. Sadly, this one is practically all romcom, with only Bortus’s Moclan pee ceremony to give it even a whiff of Trek wonder and exploration.

The rest of the episode tries to Love Actually its way through a series of different romantic entanglements with a vague anchor of the Space Prom that Bortus is hosting after his cultural rite is complete. Sadly, it’s about as successful as that abomination of a film in terms of representing how love and human relationships work.

The worst offender on that front is Captain Mercer himself. Just to be clear about what’s going on here, Mercer not only pressures his subordinate officer into rekindling a relationship with him, despite the fact that she’s made her wishes clear and has to report to him, but then he stalks her on a date and lies about it. It’s utterly despicable, making Mercer seem like a total, boundary-violating asshole. But we’re still supposed to like/sympathize/root for him because hE’s iN lOve.

Give me a break. I know that The Orville is trying to go for a Casablanca vibe, with MacFarlane fancying himself some modern day equivalent to Humphrey Bogart. But this behavior is totally unacceptable. I had truly thought this show turned a corner on that front at the end of last season, with Mercer realizing that whatever his feelings, it was inappropriate for him to date Grayson while he was captain of this ship, and being a real adult about it. Instead, here, he’s a creepy jerk, and it poisons the well even before the series sets up some hacky love triangle.

The gender politics of this storyline are just awful. God help me with the advice Mercer gives Cassius, to basically be a dope rather than someone who’s understanding and empathetic. It’s supposed to be a sign of maturity that Merer helps out his erstwhile romantic rival, but his advice is so retrograde that it doesn’t aid in making the captain seem like less of a self-centered manchild. Cassius, for his part, is in the wrong for trying to excuse Mercer’s behavior. As bad as it is to say, Grayson getting mad at him for his “calm down” comment is such a hoary trope. All of that is on top of the silly fact that we get a scene of a lovelorn Mercer looking through what looks like a J.Crew catalogue of him and Grayson together.

It just sets up a bad love triangle that I already have no interest in between Mercer, Grayson, and a dimestore Bradley Whitford. At best, the show is trying to slap Mercer together with the new dark matter cartographer (???) or, heaven forbid, Kitan.

Speaking of which, Kitan’s storyline is at least half-amusing. While I really hope the show isn’t trying to position her to get together with the captain, I like Bortus of all people trying to set her up on a date. I’m glad that Mike Henry is back as Dan the big-headed alien, and as corny as some of the humor is, the two of them together at least have comic chemistry with Dan’s utter awkwardness and Kitan’s polite toleration of it. Her totally fair takedown of his poem was particularly good, and you feel for her.

You vaguely feel for Malloy, with his reticence to ask out the new cartographer, but it doesn’t go anywhere. All we get is a lame scene in the simulator where Malloy’s lesson is...improvise (read: lie) to women when you have to. The gags about LaMarr two-timing a two-headed alien is pretty weak to boot.

That just leaves the one story I really did like, which was Dr. Finn dealing with her son having fallen under the influence of a bad kid. Like a lot of storylines on the show, the setup is pretty generic and cliché -- Marcus gets into trouble at the behest of his delinquent friend James. But the execution is endearing.

There’s some real conflict when James’s parents blame Marcus for hacking his way into a bottle of vodka when James was the real ringleader. It feels more real when both sets of parents are convinced that their kid is good-at-heart was simply swayed by a bad influence. We even get to see more of the unusual but heartening blended family that Isaac is drifting into with the Finns, when he proves (or at least suggests) Marcus’s innocence and James’s guilt, earning an “I love you” from Dr. Finn. I’m curious where they’re going to go with Dr. Finn and Isaac as a pairing, but it’s the only even quasi-romantic relationship on the show I’m even a little invested in or intrigued by.

Overall, this is a disappointing start to the new season, one that leads into the series’s unavailing romcom side, with the attendant array of cheesy tropes and failure to understand how real relationships should, let alone do, actually function. Hopefully the rest of the season leans more into the speculative fiction aspect of the show.