Better series lead. Ed Mercer from "Orville" vs Burnham from "Discovery?"
- Thread starter Jayson1
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That, too!"You got wood."
The man obviously worked hard enough to be a starship pilot. Could just be Riker syndrome? Found something he was happy with. But it can't be that, because the character is black and anything that is done is somehow racism.
Um, Gordon Malloy is another who doesn't seem to work to his potential. All one has to do is actually watch the show and see that the above is bollocks where The Orville is concerned.
I can't wait to see a Gordon centric episode. 
It seems, from my vantage point, that LaMarr and Malloy were meant to be a team of jokers at the start. Then it looked like that Malloy started to have better chemistry with Isaac, which left LaMarr kinda hanging out there. So they shift LaMarr to Engineering where they will couple him with Yaphit.
I don't dismiss racism, I think it is a scourge on humanity. At the same time, we have to be careful not to take any character or decision attached to a character and call it racism. Or try to attach racism as the reason someone dislikes a particular show or character.
I just found Michael Burnham shallow and poorly written (I think Finn and LaMarr were better conceptualized on the drawing board). I don't hang that on the actor, but the writers who really didn't seem to know how to write Star Trek as a modern serious drama.
And none of them are as deep or well-crafted as Maeve (Thandie Newton) from Westworld.
I don't dismiss racism, I think it is a scourge on humanity. At the same time, we have to be careful not to take any character or decision attached to a character and call it racism. Or try to attach racism as the reason someone dislikes a particular show or character.
I just found Michael Burnham shallow and poorly written (I think Finn and LaMarr were better conceptualized on the drawing board). I don't hang that on the actor, but the writers who really didn't seem to know how to write Star Trek as a modern serious drama.
And none of them are as deep or well-crafted as Maeve (Thandie Newton) from Westworld.
True a lot of the "edgy melodrama" comes off as like a bad fan-fiction idea of what drama in Star Trek should be like. It's too sappy and contrived for me.
I tend to think if someone had pitched Pocket Books a "Spock's secret sister who has Klingon trauma" character, they would've been laughed out of the office.
Shame it wasn't in the writing stage...
Maeve is awesome, one of the best SFF characters to have come along in quite a while.
Please no Westworld spoilers here. Thanks!
Well, Newton won an Emmy - that her character and performance is awesome isn't a spoiler, exactly.
Of course not.Well, Newton won an Emmy - that her character and performance is awesome isn't a spoiler, exactly.
Yes, you're saying that the line about Compton had some "value", in other words, something "positive". My point is that the line wasn't intended to be positive at all. It was placed in the episode to get a cheap laugh based on a negative stereotype of Compton.
And as I wrote before, good for you for bothering to research something about which you were previously ignorant, however, don't assign your own naivete to the masses. Most Americans knew exactly what Lamarr meant by the joke, without having to look it up. That's why the joke was used. If the mases were ignorant of the Compton stereotype, do you think he would have still used it?
How do you know 'Gordon gleaned the context'? We know you did because you just told us, but how do you know Gordon did as well? And please don't say "subtext".
The Compton joke had one purpose, and one purpose only; to get a laugh based on the stereotyped image Compton has in the media. No amount of fanciful reaching for other meanings is going to change the obvious.
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One of the biggest problems with The Orville is something some critics wrote about before the show debuted. The show doesn't know what it wants to be. At some points, it appears to be a parody because of the broad pie-in-the-face jokes, at other points, it appears to want to be a TNG style space opera, at other times a "serious" drama.
The show doesn't do any of these things with enough consistency or quality to comfortably fit into any of the categories. GalaxyQuest was a great parody because it understood the trekverse and it's fans thoroughly. Using that knowledge, they crafted insiteful observations, exaggerations, and jokes on the subject.
I call Orville a parody because, with jokes about Compton and the Seinfeld on the view screen episode, that is the closest description I can come up with for the show. But, truth is, the writing would have to get a lot sharper for the show to qualify as a proper parody.
This is just my opinion I get that people like the show just fine the way it is. I don't dislike The Orville at all. I liked some of the episodes, but for me, it is as light weight and inconsequential as it gets.
If Seth wants to keep calling it a "dramedy", he needs to ramp up the drama, sharpen the jokes, and stop always going for the cheap laugh.
Well, that's, like, your opinion.
I think it's pretty self-evident that every line is intended to have value—entertainment value at the very least. It's highly doubtful that the line was scripted with the intention for it to be of net detriment to the show's reception, because that would be self-defeating.
And, it doesn't have to have been intended to have the effects that it had for me. I was simply sharing my personal experience. At no point did I claim that my experience was typical or that the line was scripted with people like me in mind.
It's perfectly clear that you don't think much of it, because you think it was for "a cheap laugh." There's really no need for us to discuss this further.
And that's, like, my opinion.
I think the Orville fits "dramedy" just fine. It feels like a very much like a typical day at work, some with jokes and some with more drama.
Lamar was fine. He's an immature wise-ass just like his mate Gordon. If they hadn't made Lamar the way he was we wouldn't have had the best punch-line in Season 1.
The two of them need to be the adolescent goofballs that they are, always getting into mischief.
The problem is that they RETCONNED the character to be a genius who only play-acts to fit in. That just makes no sense. If he really had such great abilities he wouldn't care as much about social acceptance. I just don't buy it. I don't know if Seth got blowback for the character (i.e. people twittering that he's "problematic") but it sure seems like it. I'm all for Seth taking a risk on giving him more responsibility, but not based on some magical test-scores he had at the academy but more of an attempt to get him to rise to the occasion, sort of the equivalent of the Alex Cora technique of giving underdogs a chance. Even then, there, I'd prefer him paired up with Gordon.
If you suddenly have Lamar walking around all calm and collected like Tuvok or Avery Brooks it's not going to be true to character and frankly it will be BORING.
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If I was watching Disco for light adventure I would agree with your opinion, man.
But, I'm not, they are equal in my eyes. In my opinion, which I am right about
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