I just started season 3 of The Orville, and was quite disappointed. Until this point every episode had been amazing, but season 3 has only had one or two good episodes so far.
In this post I will discuss episode 1 in particular and why it was the worst episode in The Orville.
In episode 1 we get to see how Isaac is being mistreated and hated by the crew, due to what transpired in season 2. I have read through several posts regarding this, and many say it feels like a bad episode because the incident was in the middle of season 2 and we never got any hint of the mistreatment until this point, that it essentially came out of nowhere.
I don’t think this is the main issue with the episode, as Isaac hasn’t been in focus again until this point. Then what is the issue?
The issue with the episode is that Isaac isn’t the main focus at all. It wasn’t made about him.
How is that possible you may ask?
If you pay attention at the start of the episode, it is dedicated to someone who died.
And throughout the episode it becomes clear that it is a response to that person dying, presumably of suicide, and rather than being focused on Isaac and his situation, the episode plays out as a way for the writers to process that persons death.
From the episode alone we get quite a lot of information about that person, that he was a stoic and private person who no one really knew too well and ”each got to know a different version”.
That is from Isaac’s funeral, odd right? If the episode really had been about Isaac, it would have had several of the characters speaking at the funeral, of more concrete memories, flashbacks to fun moments, or their actual complex feelings of betrayal and sadness, wouldn’t that have been great?
Instead we see Ed saying that no one really knew Isaac, and a hall not even half full of people.
Which leads us to the second problem.
Isaac was mistreated by the crew, harassed, and repeatedly told he was better off dead, that they wished it.
Then he commits suicide due to this, and no one seems sad? We get no regret or complex emotions from the crew. Take Gordon for example, he even says that he agrees that Isaac shouldn’t have been reinstated, which makes sense a little as he was Isaac’s friend and probably has a lot of emotions about his betrayal. But then Isaac dies and we get nothing? No regret no tears or anger that he can’t be angry at him anymore? No funeral speech or hint to his reaction. Not even an aborted attempt to speak at the funeral? And what about the rest of the crew??
We needed conflict, to see one person mourning and another being happy and not regretting their action, and seeing them clash and debate Isaac’s actions. To process it.
We needed the crew to acknowledge that they drove him to suicide and their response.
But nope, instead, we are told that it is no one’s fault that he did that, not even when you told him to die to his face. That suicide doesn’t make sense as a choice, and is essentially a stupid choice made by a person who ”can’t see the future”.
The fact that ”it is no one’s fault” is even stated not just one time, but several.
And yeah, for the characters they choose to voice it, it makes sense, one wished he would die and another was a mother comforting her son,
BUT it was the writers who chose to have them say it, to include it not once but twice.
And yes, for that person who died in real life who the writers knew but didn’t know well, perhaps that was the case (though I have a feeling that person wasn’t well liked or something problematic had happened, as they were deflecting guilt using Isaac).
But for a story where Isaac is harassed, shunned by all, and repeatedly told to die. AND ACTALLY DIED.
Damn, that is bitter to hear.
Then Isaac is brought back to life (and considering the crew barely got to grieve in the episode, was there ever any doubt about it?) and nothing changes. The crew still hates him, no one apologizes or regrets their action, and Isaac will apparently only stay alive because dr Finn wants it. Because ”her life is better with him in it”. And for some vague hope of the crew liking him more in the future.
That’s… a really bad episode.
It made me so mad for Isaac’s sake. Not just because of the crew, but because of the writers.
They didn’t write an episode about harassment and suicide, from Isaac’s perspective. Instead they wrote an episode about a slightly hated guy that they barely knew and was super stoic and private, who committed suicide and now they are questioning, is it right or wrong? They aren’t to blame because no one can be blamed when someone commits suicide, it’s a choice that doesn’t make sense, or perhaps some people are just born not being able to handle the world, we don’t have a choice to live, maybe suicide is a matter of preference and a choice made in a vacuum, we are all different and like different things after all? Some may naturally just not like life. Right? That makes sense, it’s not like the world is to blame or work colleagues could have forced that choice. And even if they weren’t the nicest, it’s really that persons choice because suicide doesn’t make sense and only a person who can’t see a future exists does that. Right?
To write an episode about a suicidal person and then write it as if one of the crew who hated on him wrote it. A love letter to themselves rather than the character.
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