While there's obviously a big joke at the core of this episode, I love what a contemplative story we get for this one. Opening on Mercer commiserating with the incomparable Jason Alexander as bartender Olix is a delightfully understated way to pick up. The general tone of The Orville allows for a captain who is more open about the unexciting side of the job than we usually see in sci-fi generally or Star Trek specifically.
We get a lot of great interpersonal character moments besides that: Mercer and Kitan identifying their similarities, Grayson and Mercer debating the objectivity of a captain in a relationship with a member of the crew, Isaac standing up for Claire and Marcus. Plus, we get that memorable zipper scene between Malloy and LaMarr. Of course, there's also the introduction of the alluring Janel.
Huge future episode/season spoilers
The first "I love you" from Claire to Isaac, which isn't quite meant literally at this point, is really cute to see. It's small stuff like this that keeps Claire's arc believable throughout the show. The warm look she extends to him at the Ja'loja afterparty is another nice push toward the future.
With Teleya-as-Janel on rewatch, we get to see the reversal of Mercer and Malloy going undercover as Krill in the episode of the same name. On first viewing, Janel and Malloy's one-sided exchange comes across very naturally as Gordon flirting while Janel is still getting her bearings as a new crew member with a chatty counterpart, but her remaining quiet probably has more to do with the fact that she's still brand new to interacting with humans in general.
When these first broadcast, I was fortunate enough not to know that Teleya and Janel were played by the same actor, so I wasn't expecting any subterfuge at all. With that said, I absolutely love the foreshadowing on Mercer's "You know what would be great right now? A Krill invasion" followed by Janel coming to sit with him at the bar. Although she doesn't get many scenes in this episode, they're very rewarding on repeat viewings.
There are some slightly less-great moments, mainly around Mercer being a petty, jealous creep. It's unbecoming behavior for a captain and only sort of works because The Orville (the show, and I guess Cassius the character) treat it as a quirky foible rather than basically disqualifying. If you take these scenes seriously, they do hurt his likeability, so it's kind of necessary to accept that it's only as big a deal as the episode tells us. Even writing this much about it, I'm taking it too seriously relative to what the show intends.
I was surprised to read that Jason Alexander was cast very late. After filming had already begun, the actor who played season 1 bartender Kanoot had to drop out due to his claustrophobia under the heavy prosthetics. This episode is perhaps as close to Seinfeld as the show ever gets: it's essentially about nothing. We mostly see characters sitting around having conversations and/or farcical relationship struggles. It feels like if you were going to plan ahead of time to introduce Jason Alexander in an episode, it would be this one. And yet, that was just good fortune.
Overall, this makes for an excellent return and has me excited to continue the rewatch.