Pria

The latest episode of The Orville wasn't just an homage to Star Trek: The Next Generation, but to Firefly too. It felt directly inspired by two episodes (though not an exact copy of either), Trek's "A Matter of Time" (about a time-traveling hustler) and Firefly's "Our Mrs. Reynolds" (about a grifter who takes in most of the crew, and the captain in particular).

Unfortunately, I found it a weaker episode of The Orville, on a few levels. The script was in a general shape, but lacking polish. The ex-spouse conflict between Mercer and Grayson was a great theme to explore, but the dialogue was a bit ham-fisted. The title character of Pria was a great stone to make ripples in the pond, but not quite alluring enough to believably captivate Mercer, nor quite clever enough for the audience to ever really believe her over Grayson.

On the performance side, I learned about the limitations of Charlize Theron. She is, without question, a strong actress. She's made many great films and has been great in them. I haven't seen the one for which she won an Oscar (Monster), but I have no reason to suspect she didn't deserve it. But television is a different animal -- a merciless beast that must be fed.

Films shoot just a couple pages a day, over the course of months. Television shoots a whole episode in just seven or eight days, filming up to 10 pages a day (or more) at times just to keep on schedule. There's little time for rehearsal, only slightly more time to try multiple takes and finesse a performance. A television actor has to be in the ballpark on the first try, calibrate quickly to director suggestions, and nail a scene fast to make the day. I think it's not saying much bad about Charlize Theron to say that (from this performance, at least), television simply isn't for her. She came off rather wooden, and certainly couldn't wrap her tongue around the technobabble. She was there at the request of her friend Seth MacFarlane, and now will return to the movies, where she'll shine again.

I place the blame on Theron because I know she had a good director on this occasion: Star Trek's own Commander Riker, Jonathan Frakes. Frakes is an excellent television director, having cut his teeth on The Next Generation (many of its better episodes), and having since worked on a number of other shows. What's more, he works well with actors; in fact, I'd say he teased out the best performances in the show so far from MacFarlane (as a dopey, smitten Mercer) and Scott Grimes (as Malloy, in the "pranking Isaac" subplot). Frakes also did some flashy camera moves in this episode -- nothing that broke the show's style entirely, but definitely more ambitious than the norm.

Still, it's a shame that Frakes' episode this season was the one that could have used another draft on the script. It was more disorderly than an actual disaster, but when the comedy subplot plays as stronger than the main story line, something is definitely off. I give "Pria" a B-.