Spite, Sincerity and Seth MacFarlane

On Fandom, The Orville and the Importance of Being Cringe

The other night, I was watching some TV with my wife. We’ve been watching The Orville, a Star Trek parody written by and starring Seth MacFarlane. This is somewhat of a strange choice for us. She’s a huge Trekkie, but has a certain distaste for MacFarlane’s humor that many of the fairer sex share. I, on the other hand, have never been more than a casual fan of Star Trek. Personally, I prefer my “Star” of the “Wars” or “Gate” variety if I’m being honest. I saw the original series years ago, but it didn’t make much of an impression outside of being a somewhat camp cultural artifact. I watched much of The Next Generation during the pandemic and generally enjoyed it, but also kind of wanted a “best of” list near the end to skip over the less interesting episodes (reads as: “Wesley episodes”). I’m not a fan of Seth MacFarlane’s particular brand of humor, either. I haven’t watched an entire episode of Family Guy in over a decade, and I haven’t had much interest in MacFarlane’s forays into film. In fact, MacFarlane’s Movie 43 was literally the worst movie I’ve ever seen, and I’m convinced that it was either a money laundering scheme or Seth had dirt on the surprisingly good cast. That having been said, we found ourselves inexplicably enjoying The Orville and it’s become our regular Friday night show.

At first, I wasn’t quite sure what I liked about it. The early episodes were more or less Family Guy in space. It was the crass, toilet humor and Gen X snark one would expect from MacFarlane. Not offensive, just kind of mediocre. But hey, it was the kind of mediocre that you can have on in the background while eating dinner or getting caught up with your partner about their day. But then something strange happened: I found myself getting invested. About three quarters through the first season, The Orville more or less drops the parody angle and becomes a sci-fi series in earnest. The parody slowly morphed into some actually pretty well thought out sci-fi concepts or unexpectedly sincere and heartfelt character moments. One has to wonder if MacFarlane, a notorious Trekkie, had been sitting on some Star Trek scripts since college and had used all his clout to get a back door into making a Star Trek show. And then it hit me about why I liked The Orville: Seth MacFarlane loves Star Trek.

Yes, at its heart, The Orville is parody. But it’s clearly made with genuine love and passion for Star Trek. By contrast, much of modern sci-fi and fantasy seems to be made by people who have disdain for the source material and its fans. There is a Netflix adaptation of The Witcher whose showrunner seemed to actively dislike the source material and made efforts to distance herself from it in favor of her own vision. So much so that the star, a vocal fan of the source material, left the project. The creator of the Disney Plus series The Acolyte derided previous eras of the franchise and blamed the subsequent failure and cancelation of her series due to poor ratings on “toxic fans”. Similar comments have been made by stars and writers of Amazon’s Tolkien inspired series The Rings of Power. Amazon also made an adaptation of the Wheel of Time book series (that I’m personally a big fan of) that diverged so heavily from the source material in tone and plot that it may as well have been a different story.

How did we get here? How did there come to be such an antagonistic relationship between the people who create entertainment and the ones who consume it? It’s common to see writing that refuses to take itself seriously and instead of sincerity, opts for the crass, edgy and ironic. Writers who disregard the source material and the fans of the franchises they're hired to write for often end up changing stories and themes out of spite, leading to disappointment for longtime fans while often failing to attract new ones. As a result, writing made with genuine love and passion seems so rare that even an admittedly okay at best series like The Orville somehow sticks out. So, where better to start with the problem than with Seth MacFarlane’s big break?

While he worked in obscurity throughout the 90s on shows like Johnny Bravo, Dexter’s Laboratory and Cow and Chicken, Seth MacFarlane may be best known for his hit series Family Guy. The series debuted in 1999 on Fox and after a brief cancellation, it was brought back and by the early 2000s had become a full-fledged cultural phenomenon. My first exposure to MacFarlane’s work was with Family Guy around this time. I’m not exactly a fan these days, but when I first saw it in 2004, it was maybe the funniest thing I had ever seen. Granted, I was 13 at the time, but being a 13-year-old boy in 2004 is maybe the platonic ideal of how to enjoy Family Guy. By the mid-2000s, the Simpsons was in a nosedive of both quality of writing and cultural dominance that it has never pulled out of, and Family Guy picked up the torch.

The Hallmark of Family Guy’s humor- in addition to the controversial cutaway gags- was irony, pop culture references and 4^th wall breaking meta-humor. This final point- which would eventually just come to be known as “meta” became one of the defining traits of pop culture in the 2010s and beyond. Of course, MacFarlane was not the first one to employ this sense of humor. Another writer who utilized meta-humor was Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire and Firefly fame. Whedon would go on to popularize the self-referential and snarky humor that seemed incapable of having a serious moment without immediately undercutting it with a joke. At the time, this felt fresh. It was campy, but it was done with a nod and a wink to the audience. Yeah, this fantasy stuff is a little goofy, ain’t it? Superheroes? What if they made a joke about how impractical their cape is? Just like you and your nerdy friends make when over analyzing your favorite movies, TV shows and comics! You see, the writers are in on the joke, but they’re also fans. There was a genuine sense of community and camaraderie in the geek culture fandom in this era. But the writer who embodied the meta humor era better than anyone else was Dan Harmon.

Dan Harmon is another writer who, like MacFarlane, labored for a decade in obscurity before catching his big break. However, his sense of humor was so idiosyncratic that it often led to him getting fired from the projects he worked on. Until in 2009, he had a pilot successfully picked up by NBC in the series Community about a lovable gang of diverse misfits attending a community college. In my humble opinion, the first three seasons of Community are some of the funniest, smartest and best written that American TV has to offer. The final three seasons also exist. But after Community (which was only ever a modest success with a cult following) was finally canceled for good, Harmon finally struck gold with his next project which became a cultural phenomenon.

You knew it was coming

So much ink (or it’s digital equivalent) has been spilled discussing Rick and Morty that there’s almost nothing left to say. If I’m being honest, I don’t personally care for Rick and Morty. The series was not without its charm, but it went downhill after the redeeming factors of the show- some decent sci-fi concepts and smart humor- increasingly went out the window for the worst aspects of the writing. Spiteful, mean-spirited humor, crass grossout gags and a desperate attempt to be “edgy” became the show’s new calling card. However, what may have ruined the show’s reputation (in addition to a famously insufferable fanbase and a co-creator who was accused of domestic abuse) was how self-referential and meta the show got. The rabid fanbase would constantly theorize in online fan communities and the writers in turn reacted to their impossibly high expectations- alternating between either deliberately subverting fan expectations in some cases or pandering to them in others. But this incestuous dynamic was only just getting started.

In 2015, the Walt Disney company purchased the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas. Since then, Disney has released five movies and a dozen or so live action/animated series. The reception has been… mixed. Full disclosure, I was a big Star Wars fan as a kid, and I’ve categorically disliked everything from the Disney era except the 2016 film Rogue One (and the first two seasons of The Mandalorian were okay I guess). But I more or less checked out of the franchise after The Last Jedi since I disliked the film so strongly. Look, I’m not going to relitigate The Last Jedi discourse. Perhaps even more so than Rick and Morty, there’s nothing left to say on the subject. Half of the audience seemed to love it, and half hated it- something that writer/director Rian Johnson seemed to have intended. However, there is one thing about Rian Johnson and the marketing of the movie before it was released that rubbed me the wrong way.

“Your Snoke theory sucks” was something that Johnson posted on Twitter in the leadup to the release of The Last Jedi. At the time, there was still a lot of enthusiasm in the online Star Wars fandom. Many theories on the identity of the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke were floating around on Twitter, Reddit and message boards- this was a part of the fun. But Johnson’s comment felt different from the winks and nods from writers like Joss Whedon. Johnson wasn’t in on the joke, he was making one at your expense. You’re lame to care. If you’ve ever been to any kind of fan convention- you know this feel. You had a great time sharing the experience with all the other nerds. You know in your heart it’s a little silly, but it’s just for a weekend and you’re having fun with people who share your passion. But then you run into some normies in the convention’s hotel lobby- bemused boomers who scoff at your enthusiasm and the illusion is broken. You get mocked at a Denny’s for your cosplay featuring leather pants (random example that I have no personal stake in) and like Adam and Eve after eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you’re suddenly self-aware and you’re ashamed.

This is how many felt about Johnson’s comments. What’s worse, when The Last Jedi was released, the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke was… nobody, and he was unceremoniously killed off. I’m not going to litigate if this was a good creative decision or not, but there is something deeply unsatisfying about a writing decision that has nothing to do with the story itself. By all appearances, the writer of a movie of a beloved franchise made a creative decision purely to spite the expectations of a large portion of the fans. Not a decision based off of what would make sense for the story or characters, but what would generate controversy and buzz. In turn, he was harassed online by a certain minority of the fanbase, and this relationship became mutually antagonistic.

Writers have always dealt with unrealistic expectations from fans and would even sometimes poke gentle fun at them, but the direct feedback loop of the internet (Twitter in particular) was a new dynamic that proved to be toxic. “Toxic fanbase” was a term that started to be used more and more in the discussion of the relationship between fans and creators. This was sometimes a criticism that carried weight. Some terminally online fans who were unable to separate fiction from reality would take to Twitter and voice their displeasure to actors in targeted harassment campaigns. With the push for more diversity and socially progressive themes in media that’s been popular in the last decade, these harassment campaigns sometimes took on a very ugly racial or gendered tone. In retaliation, the writers of these properties would double down on these themes seemingly to spite this small but vocal minority of the fanbase. It’s easy to sympathize with people who are getting harassed simply for being in movies that were arguably not up to par or for their ethnicity. In other cases, however, the actors/writers seem to revel in the controversy and use accusations of racism or homophobia as a shield from criticism.

This is a dynamic that seems to be more and more common across multiple franchises and art forms. The meta conversation about the works themselves, the consumers and producers seems to be baked into the cake.  As a result, there’s a cottage industry of YouTubers who became famous for criticizing everything that comes out of Hollywood- ranging from nebulous accusations of “woke” to more substantive critiques about the writing, respect of the source material and handling of representation. Again, this is a mutually antagonistic relationship. The 2022 Disney Plus series She Hulk: Attorney at Law even had a major villain based on an obscure YouTuber of this genre called “Doomclock”. I, like many others, had no idea who this was until the show premiered and the writers parodied their Twitter nemesis. But I, like many viewers who don’t follow the Twitter discourse, merely felt confused and wondered why the writers seemed to be using their platform to spite a type of person represented by a very small minority of terminally online weirdo instead of just making something timeless and enjoyable for all audiences.

Guess which one is a low-budget Youtuber and which is the billion dollar studio

This is what I and many people I’ve talked to about this seem to feel- confusion. I’ve more or less checked out of most major franchises I used to love, and I’ve completely left online fandom spaces for the same reason. It's just not fun anymore. If you had told me a decade ago, there would be live action adaptations of Tolkien’s work, Wheel of Time and Obi Wan Kenobi starring Ewan McGregor, my nerdy little heart would have done backflips. But more than anything now I don’t feel anger or disappointment, but apathy. I just don’t care anymore. I go to sci-fi and fantasy for entertainment at the end of the day. It’s meant to be an escape from day-to-day banalities. Something that can be a reprieve from the stress of the world and that at its best can inspire hope. But now, there is no escaping the meta. There is only “the discourse”.

Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed The Orville so much. By any fair metric, The Orville is only okay. There are some great episodes with some genuinely cool sci-fi concepts and heartfelt moments, but there are also some real stinkers. There’s some pretty heavy-handed social commentary like an episode in which the heroes find themselves on a planet where the whole society revolves around social media or a planet where there is a rigid social caste based on astrological signs. There is a race of all male aliens that are used to explore gender roles, sexuality and trans issues that have episodes that range from tasteful and thoughtful to cringemaking, preachy and exploitative. There is even an episode near the end of the series that may actually be one of the worst episodes of television that I’ve ever seen. In a tonal clusterfuck, a 45-minute episode of network TV features a father processing his daughter starting to be interested in boys, a child making a pass at a grown man, terrorism, long scenes of philosophical debate, explicit scenes of child torture, extremely graphic violence involving gouging out an eye and even a musical cameo by Dolly Parton. The series also features a heavy dose of shitlib Hollywood politics. In keeping with the tradition of Star Trek: The Next Generation, A sizable portion of the airtime is devoted to the crew going to less advanced planets to lecture their inhabitants for their backward, less evolved ways like some kind of space NATO.

And yet, The Orville still has an undeniable charm. Pretty early on, I got the impression this was a passion project for MacFarlane. After the first season, The Orville more or less drops the snark and becomes a sincere, passionate performance that at its best is evocative of the Star Trek of the past. The rest of the cast is made up largely of MacFarlane’s long-time collaborators, established sci-fi series alumni and seasoned character actors finally given the spotlight. The set and costume design eschews over the top parody and seems to be made with genuine imagination with a blend of practical effects and tasteful CGI. Going into it, I was expecting something like the butt aliens of Assica 5, but the costume design seems to be well thought out and consistent with the world building. As the series goes on, it feels less like a parody made in 2017, and more like some lost sci-fi channel original series made in 2004. One gets the impression that this is what MacFarlane always wanted to do. He treats the source material with respect and dignity. He even somehow refrains from singing.

I think that’s why I like The Orville so much. You get the impression that this is what Seth MacFarlane really believes and what he values. Love it or hate it, you can't deny it's honest. This was something made with passion and love. For better or worse, Star Trek is something that influenced a vision of the future for generations. I get the impression that this is Seth MacFarlane at his most sincere. Sincerity, not spite, is what makes stories timeless. Art created with passion but lacking skill often feels more genuine than art made with skill but lacking passion. I hope to see more art made like this- not perfect, but honest. Not with cynicism but hope for the future. This is a universal tradition that goes back to the beginning of human history when we were all huddled around the fire, telling stories to make the night seem less dark and those we love feel closer. These are the stories that bring us together and remind us why life is worth living.