Last night's episode of The Orville "Twice in a Lifetime"

Okay, after watching the episode 'Twice in a Lifetime', I think I may finally be starting to adjust to the tonal shift between the first two seasons of this show and the new third seasons (which is more or less like a 'reinvention' of the series since it now has 'New Horizons' attached to the title of the show). If I just accept that this is how the show is now, I can move on from the fact that it's quite a bit different to how the first season was.

I thought this was a good episode exploring the consequences of time travel, and there was some real 'weight' felt with the morality of erasing people...but it felt like the last bit of the episode was more worried about giving us a light show with the Orville returning to its 'present' than dealing with the ramifications of what Ed ordered done to Gordon. Also, 'present' Gordon just accepting it no questions asked felt like the show's way of *telling* us 'See? Gordon's okay with it, so Ed did nothing wrong!' instead of letting us decide for ourselves. It felt too neat and tidy for my liking.

Anyway, it took me a while to figure out the wife was played by Leighton Meester (she's changed somewhat since her Gossip Girl days, but after taking a really good hard look at her I eventually figured it out). I know probably everyone hates Charly because of her resentment towards Isaac...but I get her POV. At least they provided some of the episode's humour with how they interacted on Earth with people from another time period (maybe that's why this was the first episode of Season 3 I really enjoyed - because it felt like it had some of that old Season 1-style humour, whereas the rest this season have been pretty humourless). Scott Grimes did a really good job this episode and showed he has good acting chops (which he doesn't get to show enough when he's relegated to the 'comic relief' a lot of the time).

I don't really have that much of a problem with the show wanting to be more 'serious' sci-fi now...I just wish it'd started that way instead of the drastic change between first season and this one. 

Finally watched it. Great episode. I love time travel stories.

I was also surprised at first that Gordon was OK with Mercer’s decision but come to think of it, it makes perfect sense. He was a different Gordon from the one that had lived in that timeline until 2025. For 2015 Gordon, Mercer was right and 2025 Gordon was wrong.