Five-Minute Orville: "Old Wounds"

[Zeke]

Welcome to 2023! I have big plans for 5MV this year, so let's get off to a big start with something I've been waiting for the right time to launch: Five-Minute Orville.

It's been one of the great mysteries of my lifetime that with five Trek shows currently airing, Seth freaking MacFarlane, who isn't making one, is somehow making the best one. I have many gripes with The Orville, but its heart is actually in the right place. It managed a downright weird transition from fan tribute in the first season to actual sci-fi in its own right thereafter. And it takes itself seriously enough for fivers to work (though it's sometimes a close call, especially in those early days).

A proper subsite is coming, but for now, here's Five-Minute "Old Wounds". May this New Year's launch bring the show luck for getting renewed this year!

[Nate the Great]

*waves*

[Wowbagger]

Kelly: Hurry! They've almost caught up!
Mercer: I just can't get this door open! It's so tightly closed, like a jar -- a jar of --
(long pause)
Alara: Sir?
Mercer: Alara, I just thought of the greatest joke in history and I am going to make it every chance I get for the rest of my life.

This fiver is better than the episode it fives.

I say this as a fan of The Orville overall. Their pilot was awful and now maybe I can just give people this fiver so they can skip the pilot.

[Wowbagger]

Gordon: This is amazing, Ed! But before I can get a new job, I'll need to kill this holographic enemy.
Enemy: GAK!
Mercer: Why would... oh, because you needed experience.
Gordon: You know me so well.

CONFESSION: I didn't get this one.

Halsey: Sorry, no luck finding a first officer. You'll have to leave without one.
Mercer: Oo, I had an idea about that! I'll see if I can get into a dangerous situation with a bunch of criminals, something where we have to work together to survive, and I'll make their leader my first officer. Oh, we'll have trouble getting along at first, but over time --
Halsey: Yes yes, fine. Whatever gets you off my station faster.

"Over time" = by the time Joe Carey breaks his bones in the second episode.

Gordon: Awww, I was hoping our version of warp would have "slip" in the name.
Mercer: Are you still on that slipper thing?
Gordon: Don't tell me you don't see it!

This sounds like actual dialogue. I can hear it.

Gordon: Oh, it goes way beyond that. I promise you, nobody who so much as looks like me could ever stand her.

I'm forced to conclude that Gordon has been in stuff.

Mercer: Wow, tardigrades sound amazing! I wonder if they could even steer a starship?
Aronov: I will thank you not to mock our serious discovery.

Got 'em!

Mercer: I didn't, he killed everybody the first time. But then I used the Omega 13.

THIS one I understood, hooray hooray.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

I say this as a fan of The Orville overall. Their pilot was awful and now maybe I can just give people this fiver so they can skip the pilot.

I found it much better on second viewing, when I knew what to expect from it: a real sci-fi setting but no real sci-fi content just yet. Prep yourself for Galaxy Quest and you'll have a good time. My parents loved it!

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

CONFESSION: I didn't get this one.

You need experience to get a new job, right? And killing enemies is worth XP.

I'm forced to conclude that Gordon has been in stuff.

You didn't think you were making a dirty joke, but the guy who "looks like" Gordon isn't a Scott Grimes character, it's Scott Grimes himself. See, he was married for a while to Adrianne Palicki...

(The other not-spelled-out casting joke is toward the end. Victor Garber, who plays Admiral Halsey, was one of the main stars of DC's Legends of Tomorrow.)

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by Zeke

You didn't think you were making a dirty joke, but the guy who "looks like" Gordon isn't a Scott Grimes character, it's Scott Grimes himself. See, he was married for a while to Adrianne Palicki...

Gracious. Imagine working 12-hour days on a television show opposite your ex-wife. What the heck, Hollywood.

(Meanwhile, Seth was apparently having something with his security officer, and then she left when it fell apart, which is its own kind of gross.)

[Zeke]

The supreme irony is that they also got together on the show. They had an office romance while making a whole show about how bad an idea that is!

Seems to happen a lot in Hollywood. My personal favourite example, for its severe twistiness, is Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Carpenter on Dexter. They played Dexter and Deb, who grew up thinking they were blood siblings -- neither knew that Dex was adopted until Season 1 of the show -- and the actors got married. Then they got divorced. And then the show had Deb fall in love with Dex! It must've been even more awkward on set than it was in-universe. (Mercifully, that storyline was strangled in its crib when Deb found out Dex was a serial killer -- the person she loved was his "normal" persona, and now she knew he'd been faking that all his life. Still creepy though.)