Hey everyone, welcome to the debut of The Redenbacher Report! Here I, the official Redenblogger Matt Murphy will give my thoughts on the latest happenings on The Orville. This season really has been an embarrassment of riches so let’s dive right in.

Seth knows his Trek and has managed to add his own unique flavor that works way better than it should. The best episodes of The Orville have you laughing your ass off one minute and crying your eyes out the next. Last weeks episode “Lasting Impressions,” was no different. The Bortus smoking storyline was comedy gold and Gordon’s relationship with Laura was so well executed that it’s given me a lot to think about in the days since it aired.

The idea of taking a cell phone and replicating someone’s life is a very cool concept and show’s the influence 21st century technology has had on us, even just in the 50 years since the dawn of Star Trek, or even since Enterprise. It’s so cool that we’re talking about iPhones, which are greatly inspired by the communicators in Trek. So we have a show influenced by Trek talking about tech inspired by Trek. Everything that runs downstream of Trek is just greatness, accompany that with some Black Mirror vibes and we’ve got a hell of a cocktail.

This episode dove into two forms of vices we deal with today, two separate forms of addiction. We didn’t focus too heavily on the cell phone addiction part, although I can only imagine what would happen if the crew of The Orville all got smart phones preloaded with Tinder. Who knows, maybe Gordon won’t be able to shake that desire for a phone.

On this week’s episode of the podcast we talked about what myself and my cohost Ben would put in a time capsule. I jokingly said that I’d like to put in a copy of the “Bad Luck Brian” meme and that’s how Bad Luck Gordon was born! If you’d like to hear the birth of a meme and much more check out this week’s awesome episode of The Redenbacher below! We’re also available on most podcast platforms!

This episode also gave us Kelly’s fantastic speech to Gordon about how past relationships shape us. The point she made about how Ed never meeting and splitting up with her would’ve meant no Orville was so cutting. A brilliant way to try and use logic to manage one’s feelings. I made this point on the podcast as well, but it made me think of Seth MacFarlane pitching his Star Trek show to CBS and how they shot him down. If that never happened we wouldn’t have the joy of a program we have in The Orville. Good writing sticks with you, and that was one of the best speeches I’ve heard in any television show. It makes you think of all the what if’s there are as well as make you think about the impact you have on other’s lives both positive and negative. This show is for a lot of people what Star Trek was to kid’s growing up in the 60’s, 70’s and beyond.

This episode also gave us Kelly’s fantastic speech to Gordon.

This episode was aptly named as it really will leave a Lasting Impression on me. Scott Grimes killed it on the mic and on the screen. Leighton Meester was awesome as Laura, I didn’t know she had such a great voice. It was awesome seeing Tuvok, Tim Russ is always a welcome edition to any space faring show. You can feel the love for Star Trek threaded through every inch of this show. It’s quite contagious.

With that I’ll wrap up this first edition of The Redenbacher Report with a thank you. Thanks for reading and/or listening to the podcast and thank you to Orville Central for allowing us to be a part of this wonderful website. This show has been phenomenal and getting to express that to you out there in the Sci Fi sphere has been amazing. Thank you. You can follow me @TheRedenbacher on Twitter and Instagram for some laughs or check us out on Podbean, as well as iTunes, Spotify and Google Play, we’d love to have you aboard!