The Orville’s “Cupid’s Dagger” Uses a “Naked Time” Story to Help Ed and Kelly Move On

A week after going all stand-alone with an adventure focused on the show's least utilized characters, Isaac and the Doctor, The Orville returns in "Cupid's Dagger" to its default setting of focusing on Ed and Kelly. The ship is tasked with its biggest diplomatic mission yet: acting as a mediator between two warring races while awaiting DNA results on an ancient artifact which might determine who has the rightful claim to their planet. Ed and Kelly need to be at the top of their game to contain this potentially combustible situation. So, now would be a really bad time for that blue alien Kelly slept with a year ago to come waltzing back into their life, and an even worse time for him to project pheromones which turn our two central characters into love struck teenagers. Oh, crap. That's exactly what happens, isn't it?

Yep. But it all works out, and now Ed and Kelly are even since he slept with the same guy she did. At least I think that's point. Actually, I'm not sure what they're trying to say here. I'm pretty sure, though, that's not what they were really going for, but whatever it is I hope they'll move on to something else.

"Cupid's Dagger" is the 9th Orville episode, but it is the fourth to primarily concern itself with Ed and Kelly's messy breakup and uneasy future. Mercifully, this should be it for this storyline. We first learned about it in the pilot then watched the characters remember how much they hated living together when they were forced to cohabitate in that weird zoo then saw Ed eat some humble pie when his new girlfriend almost destroyed them even though he'd been warned by Kelly and wrote her concerns off as jealousy. Now, Ed has learned first hand just how irresistible that damn blue alien Darulio (recast as Rob Lowe) is, albeit after first acting hypocritically in forbidding Kelly from actually moving on.

Since the entire show started with Ed and Kelly's breakup and the inherent conflict in the premise is a divorced couple commanding a ship together, their tension and history together will always pull focus, and understandably so. However, "Cupid's Dagger" was far more interesting in the brief moment it took to acknowledge Bortus' ongoing marital difficulties than it was throughout any of its discussion of Ed and Kelly's past or future. One is a dramatically rich scenario, the other a kind of hackneyed TV show premise, forcing them to concoct a scenario like the two warring aliens in this episode who seem to be metaphorically speaking to Ed and Kelly's shared blame and need to learn how to better co-exist.

To "Cupid's Dagger"'s credit, it starts off seeming like it's going to be a basic riff on Trek's "The Naked Time"/"The Naked Now," with Kelly, Ed AND The Doctor all quickly losing their inhibitions. However, unlike in those Trek stories the affliction never spreads ship-wide and thus gives us several scenes where other characters, like Malloy and Alara, get to ask, "Are you alright? You seem weird right now." Thus, it ultimately falls on Alara to save the day, which she does. Again (not her first time taking charge this season). It also falls on the audience to simply ignore the rather questionable ethics of a blue alien who goes around knowingly infecting others and chalking it up to no big deal since all that happens, in the end, is they have some great sex.

The ending leaves open the possibility that Kelly's initial affair with Darulio was a pheromone-induced fling, which is kind of upsetting. Kelly has already spent a good chunk of her time on this show apologizing to Ed for the affair, but she's also made a fair point that he emotionally abandoned her long before she stepped out on him physically. To that end, she's owned her mistake but refused to take total blame for the situation, forcing Ed to eventually acknowledge his part in all of it. To now say that she may not even have been in control of her faculties when she made that mistake sort of retroactively cheapens her as a character all in the service of most likely trying to make her seem more sympathetic, more like an equal victim in the scenario.

But I did say "leaves open." Lowe plays his final moment of Darulio acknowledging the possibility of her being under his spell at the time of the affair as if he knows the true answer but prefers to say whatever he thinks will make her feel better. What will make me feel better is The Orville finally moving past Ed and Kelly dredging up their past.

THE NOTES & NITPICKS

1. Looking forward to someday hearing "Songs in the Key of Bortus"
2. Classic Orville pop culture reference: that a 25th-century karaoke party would only feature songs from the late 20th century.
3. How fast were Ed and Kelly walking that Alara couldn't catch up to them at full sprint after they only had a 15-second start?
4. My Lord, Rob Lowe is almost unrecognizable under all that make-up.
5. That random alien was right - they should have elevator music. Can't believe that never occurred to me in all my years watching the music-less Star Trek turbolifts.
6. Pretty impressive for a blob to develop enough, um, dexterity to play guitar chords.
7. Wow. Never expected them to actually show us the Doctor and Yaphit doing, well, whatever it is they were doing.
8. So many reasons Darulio should have recused himself from the assignment.
9. Seth MacFarlane has written himself into love scenes or post-coital scenes with Charlize Theron and Rob Lowe this season.
10. Thank you, random nurse exposition and your explanation for how the ending makes sense.