Question The Orville returns

So, the first episode of the new season is not flashy CGI stuff as you'd usually expect. Instead, it's a shipboard character-development episode based around relationships between the ship's crew. Kelly hooks up with the Orville's schoolteacher, Doctor Finn finally gets together with Isaac (the pair were initially shipped in the episode 'Into the Fold', where Isaac became a honorary member of the Finn family), and there are relationships teased between Alara & LaMarr, as well as Ed and the ship's new Dark Matter Cartographer. Oh, and that joke from the first episode about Moclans only peeing once per year finally pays off, as the episode is a homage to the TOS episode 'Amok Time' with Spock's Pon Farr replaced with the Moclan Ja'lo'ja (peeing ceremony). Great little things in the episode include a better look at some of the circuitry and maintenance panels aboard the ship (which have TNG Isolinear-chip-style processors/data modules), the reveal of at least one fancy restaurant aboard the Orville, the return of the shuttle cloaking, and plenty others. One particular change worthy of note, and both subtle as well as noticable, is that Mark Jackson, Isaac's actor, has changed the robot's accent to give a wider range of emotion. In some scenes, he expresses subtle, human-like tone changes. This is such a fantastic example character development, and quite rare in film and television. It's not often you see a character beginning to change via the sound of their voice.

The next episode dealt with two things. First is Porn addiction. Hey, stop laughing. Yeah, in a comedic take on the Next-gen episodes dealing with holodiction, Bortus gets addicted to simulator porn, something that has apparently been going on since the end of the episode 'About a Girl'. As a result, he is home late, his sex life with Klyden becomes non-existent, and Klyden then stabs him and nearly kills him. Apparently that constitutes a divorce in Moclan culture. They attend couple's counselling, Bortus secretly obtains virus-infested hardcore holoporn, infect the Orville with a porn virus, and as a result manages to nearly burn the ship up in a dying star while the crew attempts a rescue of a civilisation about to be destroyed by the expanding star. A few things of note in this episode include the beautiful CGI of a star vapourising the atmosphere and sea of a dying planet, and the introduction of EVA suits into the show.

The third episode literally came out a hour ago here, I just finished watching, and I am stunned. This episode was the one which everyone expected Alara to leave in, as her actress had taken up a position on a Netflix teen-drama. But she didn't. The episode is set primarily on Alara's home planet of Selena, which is apparently kinda the most beautiful and advanced planet in the union. Apparently, it's a cross between Vulcan and a garden world from pretty much any other sci fi setting. Except the planet has a gravity that can crush a metal beer bottle flat outside of gravity fields, and has saturn-like rings surrounding a wispy, cloudy atmosphere.

Oh, and there's a whole bunch of new species, some of them looking like they'd fit right in in the Hawthorne Basement Bathrooms. The 'Porn-Creation Race' who Bortus gets his holoporn off is basically a bifurcated mouth on a stalk and looks really fucking weird. Then there's species that look like a Sontarran had his eyes stacked vertically over his mouth, a species that looks vaguely like a humanoid anthro fish (one of whom is the Orville's bartender), oh, and there's now gravity suits which is cool, and...