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THE ORVILLE S1, E9: "CUPID'S DAGGER"

Rate the episode:

  • ***** Excellent

    Votes: 15 19.2%

  • ****

    Votes: 26 33.3%

  • ***

    Votes: 15 19.2%

  • **

    Votes: 18 23.1%

  • * Fear the banana

    Votes: 4 5.1%
  • Total voters
    78
The Wormhole said:
Don't know if "thicker skin" is the term I'd use, but I do have to wonder what those offended were expecting. It's been said in other threads about this show, this is a Seth MacFarlane show and so far it hasn't really crossed any line that previous Seth MacFarlane shows haven't. Indeed, if anything it's remarkably tame by his standards.

For example, Family Guy is a show which has never shied away from making jokes about rape and sexual deviancy. It's supporting cast includes a serial rapist and a pedophile. It's a show which has made some pretty offensive remarks about rape and rape culture. There was one of their "cutaway gags" which featured Marge Simpson getting raped and another which made fun of Elizabeth Smart.

Family Guy's been on the air for eighteen years. Everyone is aware of it to some degree. Everyone knows what to expect from the name Seth MacFarlane. If you're going to sit down and watch another Seth MacFarlane show, don't get upset at it for being a Seth MacFarlane show.
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Yeah, but Orville sets a very different tone than Family Guy and tries to have Trek style moral messages. Family Guy has a tone of total amorality and presents sexual deviance in a way that doesn't justify or defend it. Orville is a show that establishes a moral center in previous episodes, then totally ignores a situation its moral center should apply to.

I do think Finn was raped, but she wasn't raped by Yaphet, she was raped by Blue Cosby just like Ed and Kelly. The fact that Finn rebuffed him in the past doesn't necessarily mean, from his perspective, that she wouldn't change her mind. And she wasn't acting like she was impaired, she was acting like she had changed her mind. Yaphet is a pool of goo, you think he can recognize the nuances of human facial expressions? Blue Cosby is the one responsible for impairing her judgment.

Blue Cosby basically roofied Ed, Kelly and Finn. If Orville doesn't want to pass judgment on that, then it shouldn't claim to take a progressive moral position in other episodes.
 
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BillJ said:
Probably just the more economical way to go. Not every show gets Discovery's $8.5 million dollar an episode budget.
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Sort of how I see it, honestly all of the sets and set decorations look cheap and crappy. It could be an intentional look they're going for just the "shoestring budget" look of TOS or 80s/90s Sci-Fi series but it's probably more likely they just really don't have the budget to spend a lot on sets, I mean why spend tons of money to make a fancy looking "futuristic" table when you can go to Ikea and get one for a fraction of the price?

The episodes obviously put a lot more of their money into the makeup prosthetics (which really shows. the alien looks in this show are often fantastic and this episode took it to a new level between the Elevator Guy, the Emcee at the karaoke night and the two warring aliens, not to mention Alien Rob Lowe.

So yeah, if they only have so much money to spend I'd rather see them spend it on impressive makeup and CGI and not fancy furniture.

And she wasn't acting like she was impaired, she was acting like she had changed her mind.
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She didn't "just change her mind" or have a change of opinion she went from -11 to 11! She went from yelling at him and threatening to file a report with HR to wanting to have sex! You'd think some alarm bells would've gone off.
 
It was a coup for macfarlane to get Rob Lowe to play the blue alien. Did he play him in the pilot too?
Bortus almost singing the Titanic song was funny.
Can't believe yaphit scored.
The bickering aliens reminded me of TNG's Lonely Among Us
 
I could totally see Blue as a recurring character. I don't think Rob Lowe was playing him in his original appearance though, that BLue also had a wierd alien voice for his one word... Sounds like something they decided against doing again once they cast the genetically perfect Rob Lowe. Damn can that guy turn a head,

Mark
 
Does anybody else feel the same way about the whole Dr. Finn and Yaphet thing? To me, it's quite obviously a play on Kira and Odo on DS9, but is flipping it a bit and asking, would Kira had eventually fallen for Odo if he was in his Blob form most of the time?
 
tharpdevenport said:
And if Yaphit can get it from Darulios' cloths, then was there a secret elevator orgy we didn't see? Ed patted that alien with the big head on a shoulder.
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Yaphit didn't get it from Darulio's clothes. After a glop of Yaphit was left behind on Darulio's leg, Darulio picked it up with his bare hand and deposited into Yaphit, again his bare hand essentially "going inside" Yaphit.
JD said:
Wow, I'd never seen that Marge Simpson bit before, that is just downright disturbing. I used to really enjoy family guy, but I don't know if it just me, but it seemed like that kind of stuff got worse and worse as it went on. They finally lost me when Peter was raped by a bull at a rodeo and then repeated harassed on the phone, and whole thing was treated as a big "joke".
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I'll admit, Family Guy reached a point where it was more just doing offensive humour for the sake of being offensive rather than just pushing comedic boundaries. I'm fine with an offensive joke, provided it is funny. As Family Guy went on, a lot of their jokes were becoming more and more offensive but weren't really funny.

For what it's worth, I don't actually consider either of the clips I linked funny, and indeed while rewatching them while writing that post, I was shocked at how graphic the Marge Simpson one actually is. Though I will confess to laughing when Peter was raped by the rodeo bull.
 
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:shifty:
 
The crew gathered together for some karaoke was a welcome relief from the stodgy TNG episodes where the crew got together too watch people play some really boring classical music. I was just thinking the other day that it would be cool on Trek to see the crew of a Federation starship watching a rock band perform and then they did the karaoke bit on the Orville this week. Not quite the same thing but better than the typical classical music (or jazz) performance. Nothing wrong with classical music but is that really at the music they have in the Star Trek future? I'm glad that The Orville isn't so stuffy.
 
Enterprise is Great said:
Nothing wrong with classical music but is that really at the music they have in the Star Trek future? I'm glad that The Orville isn't so stuffy.
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I think they used classical music in Trek to avoid paying royalties. Interestingly Discovery didn't do that with that party scene a couple of weeks ago, but they can afford it.
 
Tribble puncher said:
Does anybody else feel the same way about the whole Dr. Finn and Yaphet thing? To me, it's quite obviously a play on Kira and Odo on DS9, but is flipping it a bit and asking, would Kira had eventually fallen for Odo if he was in his Blob form most of the time?
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I see the Finn and Yaphet bit as a running gag, not a serious issue like the Kira and Odo relationship. Finn's relationship with her children, or her decision to conceive alone as a single parent, or her ethical moral compass, are serious issues, but the Yaphet thing seem to be mostly for fun. Maybe I'm wrong and it will develop into something more, who knows... I like the way you see it. Can somebody fall in love with an non-corporal being? How would it evolve? Reminding of the human-android love affairs we see in sci-fi movies from time to time. Still, Yaphet is so obnoxious, it's hard to see him as a serious contender.
 
I don't remember the details of when yaphit was talking about his family. But did he say that his mother is now his brother? :lol:
 
Trekker4747 said:
She didn't "just change her mind" or have a change of opinion she went from -11 to 11! She went from yelling at him and threatening to file a report with HR to wanting to have sex! You'd think some alarm bells would've gone off.
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Humans have wild changes of emotion all the time, and I don't think any human male or female would seriously question it too hard if a person they were attracted to suddenly threw themselves at them unless they were acting drunk or out of it. Yaphet doesn't have the knowledge the audience has, he only has his own perspective colored by his own experience.

Also we've been focusing on Ed and Kelly and not focusing so much on the fact that the entire crew collectively decided to rape the foreign diplomats on their ship.

It's fine if Orville wants to establish a tone of total amorality, if they want to finally admit they are trying to write a strict comedy. But they can't have their cake and eat it too, they can't take a moral stand against giving sex changes to infants, then take a stand against rushing to judgment based on social media reactions, then not judge people for date rape in the next episode. It's either a show where moral actions have consequences or it's not. Star Trek is, Family Guy is not, Orville was .... until this episode.
 
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Cyrus said:
I don't remember the details of when yaphit was talking about his family. But did he say that his mother is now his brother? :lol:
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Claire asked Yaphit about the portrait "Is this you and your mother." His response, "Sort of. My people reproduce through mitosis, so my mother split apart to become me and my brother."
 
Cyrus said:
I think they used classical music in Trek to avoid paying royalties. Interestingly Discovery didn't do that with that party scene a couple of weeks ago, but they can afford it.
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I don't think they'd only listen to classical music but I think classical music would have longevity whereas the pop music of today would mostly not have longevity, so it always raises my eyebrows when they are playing pop songs that are popular now. I guess that's easier than making up future pop songs.
 
No. nope, nada... not good, uninspired and with some really awful humor.
I won't even go to the sexual abuse side of the story cause I doubt they even thought about it in the first place..
Really bad..
 
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