WARNING: This thread WILL contain unhidden spoilers for this episode and every episode before it. You are allowed to talk about future episodes of the series, but put ANY information that comes after this episode behind spoiler tags.
The Orville season 1, episode 7 "Majority Rule"
Written by Seth MacFarlane, directed by Tucker Gates.
The Orville is sent to rendezvous with a missing research team on a planet strangely parallel to 21st-century Earth. While exploring the surface undercover, Lieutenant John LaMarr (J. Lee) is (in)advertently disrespectful of the planet's culture and finds that his life hangs in the balance of what everyone else thinks about him. Running out of time and options, Lieutenant Alara & Dr. Finn offer a sympathetic local (Giorgia Whigham) the ride of a lifetime in exchange for her help.
Originally released: 26 October 2017
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What did you think?
I don't think I dislike this one as much as many others. That said, it definitely serves LaMarr poorly. He's more "dick" than "charismatic dick". Nothing he does in the episode is particularly funny, most of it is just inane and unserious. A lot of people ended up hating the character as a result. I do like LaMarr ... in any other episode of the show.
We must bring some preconceived notions about a society built on upvotes/downvotes coming in from ... well. I think they could have found a better metaphor by using something a lot of us have experienced here or the old place: sometimes you'll get downvoted for saying something reasonable but unpopular. Obviously, correction is bad, but it's mostly presented here as an overly severe punishment for doing something legitimately wrong.
Another problem with voting to rank people/Internet comments is that it punishes minority views regardless of whether they're in the minority because they're wrong or because they're different. Inherently, this is a system that promotes conforming to what we used to call the "reddit hivemind". Obviously there's worse systems, but it's a flawed one and the episode doesn't really explore it with the nuance it could have.
MacFarlane has talked about the book So You've Been Publicly Shamed and the Justine Sacco incident as inspirations for the episode. That's probably why the episode focuses mostly on overreactions to genuine slights. As far as that's what it was going for, it's fine, but I would have liked it to pry a little deeper.