Yeah, but they don't have to pay extras here, so... they don't.

Wha ? ? ?

Better Late Than Never (5  Stars)

https://youtu.be/RbZIRd-IoLo

Love this show. It's definitely mindless fun, but I tell ya, it's a great fun hour of being somewhere else.

William Shatner, Henry Winkler, Terry Bradshaw & George Foreman playing around Asia. Commentary, horseplay and just jacking around.

Definitely recommend as a summer wrap up.

The mind control bit was hilarious.

After hearing about the third episode, "About A Girl," I took a plunge I don't normally do and bought the season pass for The Orville and watched the first three episodes.  I'm liking this, it's definitely more "Trek with jokes" than "Family Guy In Space," which is what they tried to sell it all.

The first episode, "Old Wounds," is the weakest, which wasn't surprising.  They have to introduce the ship, the crew, the world, the mission... and they do it in a pretty standard, linear way that always kept me from being able to write my own version of this.

BTW, I'm a fool: I just not noticed that the Orville itself is inspired by a bottle opener, they just put some extra rings on (and I do like how the rings turn on in sequence).

Episode two, "Command Performance," put young Alara in command of the ship for the first time after an away mission goes wrong.  It reminds me of Enterprise, the whole "new ship trying to do something for the first time," and Alara is wonderfully flustered as she tries t earn everyone's respect and figure out exactly what to do to save the day.  We also get much more of Ed and Kelly together and see how they compliment each other but just can't make it work in a marriage.

Episode three, "About A Girl."  Throughout the episode, I kept thinking "I'm watching Star Trek."  And I haven't felt that in a long time, it was a wonderful melancholy.  Everyone seems to be surprised that the show went there, and did it so well.  Really makes me wonder what's coming in the future (I just not remembered that Charlize Theron is going to be in an episode).

I also love the little mentions of contemporary culture, which Star Trek never really did.  Orville has references to 20th century pop culture, they quote Beyonce in an episode, Seth MacFarlane has a Kermit The Frog on his desk, Kelly gets a pot brownie (sorry, "one cannibis edible").