The Orville: New Horizons (Season 3) – TV Review

TL;DR – The terrain constantly shifts out from underneath the crew of the USS Orville, as enemies become friends and friends become enemies.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I streamed this on SBS OnDemand

Ed and Kelly look out over Earth.

The Orville Review

A few years ago, it was announced that Seth MacFarlane, most well known for Family Guy, would do his take on a Space Opera, a show like Star Trek but with more jokes. It was a premise that had me both intrigued and concerned. That is because I was sure you could make that balance work, just that it would be hard, and Season One was rough at times. But by the time Season Two drew to a close, it had wholly found its feet and was soaring forward. Now it is time to dive into the much delayed and possibly final season, titled New Horizons, and if it is the end, at least it went out on a bang.

So to set the scene, in The Road Not Taken, the threat that the Kaylons pose is shown when we see a universe where the crew of the USS Orville never came together, and the galaxy is in ruin. But there is hope, and the team come together for some last-ditch time travel shenanigans to set the timeline right. It worked. But now, everyone on the ship has to work to get it ready for the next attack, and while the refit takes place, there is a lot of resentment brewing on board, with most of it landing square on the lap of the ship’s lone Kalon crewmember Isaac (Mark Jackson). While captain Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane) and first officer Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki) work to keep the ship together, there are crew members like new navigator Charly Burke (Anne Winters), who lost people in the war and have legitimate reasons not to trust. But they will need to find that trust because the galaxy is on the precipice of collapse. Now from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.     

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Movie Review – The Last Summer

TL;DR – This is a perfectly fine film, but it felt like it could have been more if they had gone for something other than the shotgun approach to storytelling.

Score – 3 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene

The Last Summer. Image Credit: Netflix.

Review

It has been a long time since the sort of wholesome teen romance film was in vogue. You know the sort of film that can get away with having bloopers during the end credits. In some respects, this feels like a lost art that was only recaptured recently thanks in part by a number of films on Netflix. Well today we take a look at an interesting example of this genre that has moments of real joy in between moments of real dullness.

So to set the scene, it is the last summer after the end of high school where everyone is having fun before having to move away for college. Our story revolves around a group of teens that sort of know each other from school as they endure heartbreak after heartbreak. You have Griffin (KJ Apa) who is coming home from prep-school, so he feels disconnected for most of the people who stayed in Chicago. You have Alec (Jacob Latimore) and Erin (Halston Sage) who are going to different colleges so they decide to pre-emptively break up. Also Audrey (Sosie Bacon) has been put on the wait-list from even her back-up, back-up College and does not know what she wants to do with her life. All of these stories sort of collide with each other over the summer as people’s priorities are put into focus.

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TV Review – The Orville: Home

TL;DR – In Home, The Orville finally finds that balance between the absurd and the sincere and creates one of their best episodes so far.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

The Orville: Home. Image Credit: Fox

Review

So far this season The Orville have continued on in its mission to highlight the juxtaposition between the absurd and the sincere. Now, this is something that you can completely do, but the show in both Season One and so far this season just couldn’t quite find that right balance. Well with Home I think they really are starting to head in that right direction and it doesn’t hurt when you throw in some great guest cast and beautiful art design help along the way.

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TV Review – The Orville: Primal Urges

TL;DR – With Primal Urges we see how The Orville is not afraid to tackle really important issues, but that it has yet to quite get that balance right  

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Orville: Primal Urges. Image Credit: Fox.

Review

One of the issues facing the world today is porn addiction, free porn is literally at most people’s fingertips if you have an internet connection and it can be devastating to a relationship. The Orville looks at Porn Addiction in the context of a relationship that has completely soured but there is still a child involved, which is a situation that is very familiar in the world today.

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TV Review – The Orville: Ja’loja

TL;DR – This first episode was all about us getting back into the groove with The Orville and its juxtaposition of absurdity and sincerity, but not all of it works.  

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Orville: Ja'loja. Image Credit: Fox

Review

I finally got the chance to see Season One of The Orville early this year when it finally got a release down under, and I was struck by how funny and also how many serious issues it tackled. It was not just a Star Trek parody with the first officer and captain being exs, okay it is totally that, but it is also a beautiful sincere look at the work, with some fantastic characters and alien races. Now that Season Two is about to start, I am really interested to see how the show evolves going forward, and can it keep this interesting juxtaposition going.

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TV Review – The Orville: Season One

TL;DR – While at first look this might have been just a Star Trek homage or at worst a blatant rip-off. Instead, it finds its feet and becomes a charming exploration of the future and the mess and opportunities that could come.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

 

The Orville. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox & Fuzzy Door Productions.

 

Review

I have been wanting to catch The Orville for quite a while but there was no streaming or TV that picked it up here in Australia, so I was expecting this was something that I might only get to see when it dropped on Blu-Ray. But with SBS announcing they had picked it up and would be showing Season Two I jumped on a watched the whole first season in one night, which meant that clown appeared at a very confronting time late at night. But binged the first season I have, and now it is time to jump in and see if it was worth the wait. Now before we dive in, a quick reminder that as we will be looking at the season as a whole, there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.

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Movie Review – Paper Towns

TL;DR – It’s not a bad film, just somethings do not quite work.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Paper Towns. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.


Review

Paper towns is a name given to fake towns places on maps by cartographers so that they can check for plagiarism, (as a lover of all things maps, I love little things like this), it is also the name of a book by John Green and now a movie. Before I go on I should mention that I have read the source book Paper Towns and overall I had mixed response, some things really worked while others didn’t. I would talk about what those things were, but unfortunately, they are at the core of the book, so we would be not just dipping our toes into spoiler territory but diving head first, which is something I want to avoid. So with this is mind how does the film do? well not bad actually.

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