| Episode: | 9 | | | Writer: | Liz Heldens | | | Air Date: | 09-Nov-2017 |
Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing some thoughts down about the ninth episode of The Orville, Cupid's Dagger.
The official synopsis for the episode says:
"The Orville is called to mediate a peace treaty between two warring cultures, but tensions run even higher between Ed and Kelly when a familiar face boards the ship. Meanwhile Yaphit declares his love for Dr. Finn with surprising results."Or to summarise: "Skip this one". At least that's how I read it. The tension between Ed and Kelly has to be my least favourite part of the series so far, with Yaphit's love for Dr. Finn being a close second place, so I'm already getting ready to call this my least favourite episode so far. I've got all kinds of preconceptions formed. But I suppose I'll have to actually sit and watch it first before I can really list all the reasons I hate it.
This will be one of my quick reviews without the epic screencap recap; just a few opinions, a couple of observations perhaps, and a lot of SPOILERS.
The answer to the first question is presumably writer (and executive producer) Liz Heldens, though the story plays off so much established continuity, turning old jokes into running jokes, that I was shocked to find it wasn't another Seth MacFarlane script. In fact, it calls back to so much from the pilot episode that they could've made this the season finale and it would've made a nice bookend. It's even got a return appearance by Row Lowe as Darulio, and I had zero idea that was him under the blue makeup in the pilot episode. For all its flaws, Orville always brings its A-game when it comes to getting cameos from A-listers.
I have to admit, the episode didn't exactly go the way I was expecting it to. I mean sure I guessed that the two races had a common ancestor, and I figured out pretty early that Kelly must have been drugged (because she continually said "It's like a drug" over and over), but I'm pretty certain I didn't expect Ed and Kelly to become romantic rivals after they both fall for the guy she cheated on him with! I've seen a few of these 'love potion' sci-fi plots over the years, but I don't think I've seen that particular set up before.
The episode leaves it a mystery for a while whether Darulio is consciously involved in what's happening to Ed, Kelly and Claire, but the answer turns out to be 'yes'. Well okay, he didn't touch Claire, but he deliberately offered to shake Ed and Kelly's hands without wearing gloves or giving them any warning of what would happen. Right after saying 'ending the bloodshed is bigger than the three of us' as well! He thinks it's all a harmless joke, with the only consequence being great sex, and it's only when he's staring at fleets about to wage war outside his window that he actually grows some kind of a conscience and decides to do something. Though his solution turns out to be 'drug the ambassadors too'. I found that Lowe managed to make the guy surprisingly likeable, considering that I also wanted to strangle him, but he reminded me of another colourful character from another series I watched recently: Kilgrave on Jessica Jones. He's a charming guy with zero concerns about casually taking away other people's free will.
This is a light comedy episode that doesn't want to dwell too much on the morality of what's going on, and I was mostly okay with that, but I think it didn't quite go far enough in the end to outright say that what this guy did was pretty fucked up. The characters had clearly lost their agency as the pheromone overrode their judgment, duty, hatred, even their sexuality, and that'd be bad enough even without Darulio taking advantage of them when they couldn't have possibly given consent. It may be socially acceptable to do what he did in his culture, but he's been to Earth before and he knows damn well it's not socially acceptable to others.
Sure the episode shows that the consequences were getting pretty bad, with Ed and Kelly reliving the nightmare that ruined their marriage, spaceships exploding outside due to their negligence, and a woman haunted by having to shoot two men dead last episode threatening Yaphit with a pistol, but I would've been happier if the episode had ended with Darulio being taken away to some utopian sci-fi rehabilitation centre. They could've kept his last scene exactly the same, with Ed and Kelly being reasonably civil to him, but then he holds out his hands to be cuffed before being taken to his shuttle. That's all it needed for me. Because I don't feel like he learned his lesson here and he's just going to do it again to someone else.
At least taking Ed and Kelly out of action gave Alara and Bortus a chance to take charge and save the day. Though the episode had me worried for a moment when Alara confronted Darulio; it had me dreading a scene of Ed and Kelly both catching her in bed with him. I can't really blame them for making the choice they did, as the stakes had really reached 'oh fuck it, drug them both' levels by that point. Though giving the nurse a commendation for it was maybe a step too far.
But one thing the episode definitely nailed was the alien prosthetics and costumes. It's hard to imagine the two races having a common ancestor, but they definitely shared a skilled makeup team. Other things I liked include: the beautiful space shots, Yaphit trying to use his guitar as a technological super-pheromone substitute, poor confused Gordon trying to defend the concept of labels to a love-struck Ed, the old school sexy soundtrack shifting to horror music when Claire shows up at Yaphit's door in a dress, and the running elevator gag. Also, Bortus doing karaoke.
There didn't seem to be much hope for Cupid's Dagger, but right now I'm thinking that this is probably my favourite of the whole run so far, and for an episode that's all about Ed and Kelly's relationship that's pretty incredible. The Star Trek spin-offs never really worked for me when they went full farce like this, because it felt like they were breaking the reality of the show (and they were bad at it), but The Orville was built for this kind of terrain and is perfectly comfortable here. In fact, for maybe the first time so far the comedy feels perfectly integrated into the plot without any of the weird tonal shifts. Plus it ends with the hope that maybe this time Ed will finally quit hassling Kelly over her sleeping with a smurf now, even though she doesn't quite get handed the 'get out of infidelity free' card she would've liked.
COMING SOON
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