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News Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville

I don't think the amount of humor is the problem so much as the placement of humor. Take it out of the serious scenes. Let serious scenes be serious and have gravity, let the light scenes have the comedy.

And, the main two characters could stand not to have a dynamic so blatantly reminiscent of 'CBS sitcom couple'. Dumb guy and sagely woman.

One thing that's starting to bug me in Orville is all the alien characters are constantly talking about their things that make them distinct from humans. Every time somebody points out a thing that makes the alien different from the human, they then explain the evolutionary reason they evolved this way. Elara is strong because of hte high gravity on her planet, Brotus can eat stuff because of the toxic nature of his atmosphere. Sure, when you're just introducing new aliens, you give them a little bit of indulgence there, but these things do not need to be so overexplained. When they do it, the dialog comes off as extremely unnatural, and they've been doing it in every other scene.

The biological things that make aliens different from humans are major parts of their characters but they shouldn't be the sole defining characteristics of the characters. Pretty much every scene with Elara has her strength the subject of the conversation.
 
mos6507 said:
I'm wondering what the odds are that The Orville may deliberately retool so that the comedy quotient is dialed severely back... The feedback seems to indicate that people would receive it better if they did that, but is Seth really dead set on having things just as they are? That's why I'm really interested in seeing where the rest of the season goes. I'm okay with comedy but it has to be integrated with the story and not feel like "insert dick joke here".
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I don't see any need to retool it. The show already has a decent balance of humor and drama, drawing heavily upon lots of inspiration, both inside the genre and outside. They don't end on a joke, there is often a serious point to many of the stories, as well as an open ended question.

The only thing that will improve is the characters as the actors become more comfortable.
tharpdevenport said:
The problem isn't the jokes, the problem is how the jokes are handled. "Scrubs" and "Newsradio" knew how to handle their jokes. Seth, so far, in this series doesn't seem to know.
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Subjective, mostly because Newsradio was hit and miss and Scrubs got progressively worse as the series ran on.
Ed Mercer said:
It's MacFarlane's way of saying "Remember that it's just a show, you should really just relax," and boy is that needed in this genre now.
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Indeed, that needs to be remembered with Orville and DSC.
 
I agree with mos6507 that the humor makes the show uneven. It is artificial. And it is causing me to lose interest with each episode. During the last one I began to read a book. The show has potential, but if it stays like this, I will likely stop watching it.
 
Well, if the show encourages literacy that's a good thing.

This is really not the show for people who treat spaceship shows solemnly.
 
I treat good writing solemnly. So far Orville is only on mediocre level in this regard, because it fails to be a dramedy, but it is only a drama with inserted comedy.
 
Yeah...sorry, but solemnity about pop culture is not a virtue under any cicumstances.

However, if you are looking for something pedestrian and unimpressive that takes itself entirely seriously, there's a new Trek series on All-Access.
 
Salinga said:
I agree with mos6507 that the humor makes the show uneven. It is artificial. And it is causing me to lose interest with each episode. During the last one I began to read a book. The show has potential, but if it stays like this, I will likely stop watching it.
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The humor felt more natural to me than most properties :shrug:
 
Ed Mercer said:
Well, it wouldn't be the same show at all.

The humor is fine.

It's MacFarlane's way of saying "Remember that it's just a show, you should really just relax," and boy is that needed in this genre now.
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I don't have a problem with the humor. I have a problem with how it is utilized or placed sometimes. There are moments when the humor suddenly appear in moments when it is not really needed. It seems as if Macfarlane cannot make up his mind if this series is a spoof or something to be taken seriously.
 
All of the contemporary 20th century references are what's getting to me. It tends to throw me out of the story. Are people still going to be collecting stuffed Kermit's, listening to Cyndi Lauper or watching Star Wars in 400 years? Weren't there any cultural achievements in the 400 years between then and now? And yet, boxing hasn't been around for centuries? I understand that they're not supposed to talk like characters from Star Trek, but at the same time, they probably shouldn't talk like people from now either. There is a balance there that they are not obtaining very well.
 
Turtletrekker said:
All of the contemporary 20th century references are what's getting to me. It tends to throw me out of the story. Are people still going to be collecting stuffed Kermit's, listening to Cyndi Lauper or watching Star Wars in 400 years? Weren't there any cultural achievements in the 400 years between then and now? And yet, boxing hasn't been around for centuries? I understand that they're not supposed to talk like characters from Star Trek, but at the same time, they probably shouldn't talk like people from now either. There is a balance there that they are not obtaining very well.
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That stuff is there for us. References to the music of 23rd Century pop star Gremlacc or that classic 2377 Holo Space Conflict doesn't have the same impact.
 
Turtletrekker said:
All of the contemporary 20th century references are what's getting to me. It tends to throw me out of the story. Are people still going to be collecting stuffed Kermit's, listening to Cyndi Lauper or watching Star Wars in 400 years? Weren't there any cultural achievements in the 400 years between then and now? And yet, boxing hasn't been around for centuries? I understand that they're not supposed to talk like characters from Star Trek, but at the same time, they probably shouldn't talk like people from now either. There is a balance there that they are not obtaining very well.
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What about Shakespeare? How many phrases in in contemporary English are from those plays?
What about Star Trek and the fact that there is little cultural media referred to? Bones gives Kirk a copy of "A Tale of Two Cities." Picard is maybe the closet with Dixon Hill, but he still prefers Shakespeare as well?

What balance would be preferred?
 
I watched the "First 6 missions trailer" and wanted to post this in the "versus Discovery"thread but that was closed.

My observation was from the Krill episode - they all looked the same. Like, exactly the same, same mask replicated over and over, same costumes. Compare to Discovery, which has gone to great lengths to give all their Klingons unique looks. I'd have to see the entire episode (only got to wait until 2018 for Fox' sake) to see how much of an issue it was, but... yeah.

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King Daniel Paid CBS Plant said:
My observation was from the Krill episode - they all looked the same. Like, exactly the same, same mask replicated over and over, same costumes.
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I thought there was some variation in the jaw line of the captain. But I might be misremembering. Could be because Discovery is spending nearly 9 million dollars per episode, versus two to three million for The Orville.

Though bonus points for The Orville. I can actually understand what the Krill are saying.
 
Many of those klingons have identical prosthetics. Maybe they jazz them up and spray different color paint on them.
 
fireproof78 said:
Subjective, mostly because Newsradio was hit and miss and Scrubs got progressively worse as the series ran on.
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There's subjective and then there's subjective with a basis. You said my quote was subjective but yourself followed it up with your own subjectivity.

However, there's a difference between the two shows I cited and "The Orville" -- "The Orville" isn't sticking the humor and a number of fans and critics agree, where as both shows I cited stuck the humor from episodes one.

Never mind the banana, fear the subjectivity. ;-)
 
fireproof78 said:
What about Shakespeare? How many phrases in in contemporary English are from those plays?
What about Star Trek and the fact that there is little cultural media referred to? Bones gives Kirk a copy of "A Tale of Two Cities." Picard is maybe the closet with Dixon Hill, but he still prefers Shakespeare as well?

What balance would be preferred?
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Oh please. There's a difference between Shakespeare and Kermit the f****** frog.
 
It occurred to me: these pop culture references only work because it's on now. In the future there will be other pop culture references and those will be notably absent because they hadn't occurred in real life at the time the show ran, so the pop culture references it did make will stick out way more then than people think they do now.
 
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