With ‘The Orville,’ Macfarlane is lost in space
When assessing Seth Macfarlane’s projects — “Family Guy,” “American Dad!,” “The Cleveland Show,” the “Ted” movies and “A Million Ways to Die in the West” — it’s important to keep things in perspective. With his success-to-failure ratio, as a baseball player, he’d be headed to the hall of fame. As a surgeon, he’d be headed to prison.
With his latest, the sci-fi comedy (?) “The Orville” (5 p.m. Sunday, Fox), let’s just say it’s a good thing he didn’t go to medical school.
Macfarlane stars as Ed Mercer who, 400 years from now, docks his spaceship at his apartment at the end of a hard day’s work only to catch his wife, Kelly (Adrianne Palicki), in bed with a blue alien.
After a year of drinking, slacking off and nearly ruining his career, Ed is given command of the midlevel exploratory spacecraft the U.S.S. Orville. “The truth is, you’re nobody’s first choice for this job,” he’s told by Admiral Halsey (Victor Garber). “But we have 3,000 ships to staff, and we need XXXX captains.”
Because “The Orville” adheres closely to the “Star Trek” mold, the crew is a mix of humans — the
LAWRENCE
helmsman (Scott Grimes), the chief medical officer (Penny Johnson Jerald) and the navigator (J Lee) — and aliens. With the latter, Macfarlane gets,
I’m not sure if “creative” is the word, but at least he seems more interested. The chief of security (Halston Sage) is a petite 23-year-old with super strength. The science and engineering officer (Mark Jackson) is part of a “legendarily racist” species, although through the first two hourlong episodes he doesn’t actually say anything racist. And the second officer (Peter Macon) comes from an all-male planet and only urinates once a year.
The potty humor lands right in Macfarlane’s sweet spot. Sunday’s premiere contains more references to balls than an inventory check at a sporting goods store. And, during a video chat with a scientist in distress, there’s a dog in the background licking himself. In case you somehow miss it, the navigator asks, “You see that dog in the background licking (himself )?” “First thing I
saw,” the helmsman replies.
The crew wouldn’t be complete without a first officer, which is where Kelly comes in. Get it? Ed’s ex is his XO! It’s like the pitch for a screwball comedy without the screwball. Or the comedy.
Fifteen years ago, Fox had an hourlong series that was
a mix of sci-fi and humor. It was called “Firefly,” it hailed from Joss Whedon, and the network couldn’t have known less what to do with it.
Fox marooned it on Friday nights and aired the episodes out of their intended order, making the action difficult to follow.