2x04 Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes

[7.7/10] Three quality episodes of The Orville in a row? Should I be naive enough to bet that this show has truly turned the corner? If this episode’s moral -- about having hope even when you’ve got good reason to be mistrustful -- is correct, then maybe I should.

Let’s start with the episode’s biggest achievement -- this is not only the most I’ve ever liked Captain Mercer in a romantic pairing, but it’s the most I’ve liked him period. On the romance side, there’s something way more sympathetic about his desire to believe that what he and his betrayer had was real, at least at some level, then his continued efforts to cajole Grayson into a relationship. MacFarlane and the actress who plays Teleya have better chemistry than the other pairings the show’s tried or hinted at (though oddly, mostly in her Krill form). There’s something about their combativeness but honesty with one another that’s way more engaging than any ex-related drama.

But it’s also the best take on Mercer The Orville has offered us so far. Here, he’s not only a solid Union officer, making difficult but reasonable decisions about whether to give interrogators command codes, when to hide away rather than trek on, and when to go it alone in order to setup the distress beacon necessary to effect a rescue, but he represents the core values of the Federation (sorry, the Union). He is selfless and self-sacrificing; he is resourceful and compassionate when he has reason not to be, and he lives his belief in better relations and understanding between enemies. It’s the most admirable (no pun intended) he’s ever seemed, embodying a compassionate professional rather than a bro-y faux-everyman.

The setup is a good one too. I’ll admit, I had my suspicions about Mercer’s girlfriend, even if I didn’t guess the twist. The reveal that his paramour is, in fact, pulling a “Trouble with Tribbles”/Seska here is a cool one, that recontextualizes the warm relations we witness in the first part of the episode, and has added depth from picking up a character from Mercer’s last encounter with the Krill. (Hell, even the fact that her name is “Lt. Tyler” feels like a nod in that direction.) Stranding two people who have reason to despise one another but who have to work together is a tried and true blueprint for a story, and this one utilizes it well.

The B-story sees Malloy wanting to take the command exam and running into trouble with everything from the psych eval to The Orville’s equivalent of the Kobayashi Maru test inside the simulator. It’s a little disconsonant with the rest of the episode, but there’s some solid laughs here and there, and Grayson delving into why Gordon wants to be a captain and the demands of the job is a nice beat for the two of them. What’s more, it eventually ties in nicely with the A-story, which ends up being an object lesson on what being a leader entails, outside of protocols and tests.

Here, it means finding common ground with your adversary, asking for trust from someone who’s turned on you and returning it when you have every reason not to, and reaching someone where they are -- to prove that you have a soul and are as capable and worthy of being respected and trusted as anyone. The way the script mirrors the struggles in understanding between the Union and the Krill versus the same struggles between Mercer and Teleya is quite nice. There’s even some good symbols of that trust and understanding, with Mercer repeating his jacket-offering bit to Teleya from when she was cold in his quarters as a human to when she’s under threat from sunlight in her genuine Krill skin.

There’s something rousing when they do show trust and get rescued, despite the attacks from some seamonkey-looking orcs. And there’s something sad when the Billy Joel needle drop hits and Mercer is clearly still stinging from the loss of something fake that nevertheless had the kernel of something real in it. He hopes that kernel will be enough to bridge the gap between two peoples who don’t understand one another, as it did for Anna and the King in The King and I. And I hope it’s a sign of this series’s growing maturity and grace in its second season.