Every Sunday, we pick a new episode of the week. It could be good. It could be bad. It will always be interesting. You can read the archives here. The episode of the week for September 16 through 23 is “About a Girl,” the third episode of Fox’s The Orville.

The Orville might not be this fall’s worst new TV show, but it sure is the most confusing.

What Fox has now decided to call a “space adventure series” is neither comedy nor drama, funny nor poignant — even though it clearly believes it’s straddling both lines in a particularly clever way. (It is not.) As it turns out, Seth MacFarlane creating a show where he plays space captain in a barely concealed Star Trek sandbox is exactly as confusing as it sounds.

But I’m not here today to talk about how bewildering The Orville is in general; I trod that ground plenty hard in my initial review of the series. Instead, I’m here to talk about how baffling I found The Orville’s third episode in particular, and why it’s the best encapsulation of why the show doesn’t work at all, despite its lofty ambitions.

Here are the basics of “About a Girl” (a title that should already signal some winky weirdness ahead): In The Orville’s future universe, the all-male Moclan alien species reproduces by hatching their offspring in eggs. But the crew of the Orville — the spaceship captained by MacFarlane’s character, Ed — find themselves in a bit of a pickle when two Moclan crew members, Bortus (Peter Macon) and Klyden (Chad E. Coleman), hatch a female baby. The new parents immediately request that Dr. Finn (Star Trek’s Penny Johnson Jerald) perform a “corrective” procedure to make the baby male.

Written by MacFarlane and directed by Star Trek’s Brannon Braga, “About a Girl” deals with enormously complicated questions of gender with a staggering bluntness that somehow still manages to be vague. (And for what it’s worth, it is not altogether clear if anyone on the show knows the difference between “sex” and “gender,” as MacFarlane’s script uses the two terms almost interchangeably.)

Bortus eventually changes his mind thanks to a spontaneous viewing of the 1964 Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special (which is centuries old in The Orville’s reality, but that’s true for all of the show’s pop culture references). The classic holiday tale convinces him that his child’s unusual status could become an unexpected advantage despite everyone believing otherwise. But Klyden disagrees, and the ensuing firestorm of controversy eventually leads to Ed and his second-in-command Kelly (Adrianne Palicki) arguing against the drastic measure of changing the baby’s sex in a Moclan court of law.

When executed with care and research, science fiction stories like these are absolutely able to tackle difficult social issues in a thought-provoking and illuminating way. And in the right hands, “About a Girl” could have succeeded in doing exactly that. But regardless of what The Orville may have been trying to accomplish — likely “one of those Star Trek special episodes, except written by Seth MacFarlane” — the episode ultimately turned out hopelessly ham-fisted.

“About a Girl” is a bizarre throwback to gender talking points of yore

If this episode had come out 10 years ago, it might have looked a bit more progressive. But in 2017, as thinking on gender continues to evolve, the episode comes off for what it is: a repetition of flat talking points that are too basic even for the “transgender” Wikipedia entry (which, as I’ve now realized, is obviously flawed but surprisingly thorough!). Hell, it’s not even clear if MacFarlane is trying to have a conversation about what it means to be trans versus what it means to be intersex — which are, of course, two completely different things. That’s how haphazard his terminology is throughout this episode.

The Orville’s characters spend most of “About a Girl” having circular conversations and then repeating their plodding points to other people who weren’t in the room for the first round. Every so often, someone will stop fretting over the ethics of forcing this surgery on a baby to crack a random MacFarlane joke. When Bortus tries to compare his child’s sex to a cleft palate that must be corrected, for example, Ed counters that having a vagina “doesn't give you a lisp — I mean, depending on how you use it."

The tone of the entire episode is whiplash-inducing; it repeatedly swings between comic indignation and solemn, didactic declarations of purpose. Moreover, “About a Girl” might take place centuries into the future, but its overall vibe feels outdated even for 2017.

Dr. Finn insists over and over again that she won’t perform a “sex change,” a term that GLAAD specifically advises writers to avoid using. Kelly and one of the Orville’s female technicians, Alara (Halston Sage), try to convince the Moclans that girls can be strong too, which feels more like MacFarlane trying to prove his feminist bona fides than like a relevant argument concerning the topic at hand. (Kelly in particular gets fired up in this episode, warning the Moclans not to “start passing out penises” before she’s finished saying her piece.) And when Klyden reveals that he was also born female but underwent the same surgery being discussed for his baby, Bortus berates him, saying his partner “lied” and “withheld” information — a pernicious trope that’s often been used to paint transgender people as inherently deceptive.

Eventually — and despite an eleventh-hour appeal from a female Moclan who’s apparently been hiding out for years — the court decides to go ahead with the surgery, thus ending the episode on a somber note. But every character on The Orville is very obviously proud of themselves for at least having the courage to have these conversations in the first place, an opinion clearly shared by MacFarlane for having written this script at all.

“About a Girl” feels like Seth MacFarlane trying to be a progressive ally — which, swing and a miss, bud

I first saw this episode ahead of The Orville’s panel at this summer’s Television Critics Association press tour. Initially, I couldn’t understand why on earth we had been allowed to see it early — until I realized that it was, in theory, the kind of episode the network expected critics clamoring for more inclusive stories would love. But in practice, “About a Girl” is very obviously written from a perspective that doesn’t understand the subject matter it’s trying to dissect at all.

That’s why, in the end, the most fascinating thing about the episode is also completely accidental. In Fox and MacFarlane’s eyes, “About a Girl” probably seemed like a daring way to take on a controversial topic, an unflinching examination of prejudices, a conversation made progressive by the mere fact that anyone was willing to have it at all. But while going through the motions might have been enough even just a few years ago, it’s not all that forward-thinking — or, frankly, all that interesting — to spit out musty talking points in order to boost your progressive cred.

The Orville airs Thursdays at 9 pm on Fox. If you want to check out this weirdo mess of a show for yourself, you can catch up on Hulu.