LGB relations

Season 1-2 are great, S3 is much darker

The Orville carries the spirit of Star Trek: TNG, with the first two seasons surprisingly mature, fun and uplifting. Season 3 turned dark, grim and downbeat. There are amazing (musical) moments, specially to do with Gordon. But they double down on the Alphabet content and liberal vs conservative political issues.

It deals with many modern social and political issues (in particular US issues), like TNG, but it lacks the wisdom and wit to present a more nuanced and balanced perspectives from different sides, unlike TNG.

S3 in particular sometimes felt like a woke-liberal propaganda against everything they think are the roots cause of evil: conservatism, religion, family and patriotism.

Give the series a go, it’s nowhere near Picard or Discovery level of wokeness.

Mildly woke but has bigger problems

S1 is Family Guy meets Star Trek, as a fan of both shows, I had a blast.

S2 - S3 it gets more serious and they kind of killed the jokes. There are some good episodes here and there such as the illusions episode in S3 but there is no long-term vision for what the show wants to be and execution is mediocre. They needed to be more concise and preferably focus on exploring the universe. Also a whole bunch of episodes were regarding the "trans" son/daughter of one of the crew mates. I think 1-2 episodes regarding the topic were fine but that was a major plot point for S3 and it got boring. They do make a very based and anti-woke decision in the end for what it matters. I also really liked the romance between Issac and a crewmate I don't want to spoil. Really well done and the only well-written romance in the entire series.

It's mildly woke in S3 as a different crew mate discovers she was a lesbian because it's Hollywoke nowadays. She won't be back but to me it feels like the writers wanted to step in the middle between the woke and the anti-woke camp as in having a lesbian come out but also kind of hide it until the middle of the season and in the end it wasn't relevant to her arc at all.

Unfortunately S3 was mediocre so the show is probably dead, I easily recommend S1, S2 to an extent and only watch a few episodes in S3, feel free to skip the trans arc as it was quite boring. In comparison to Kurtzman's trash called modern Star Trek, this feels leagues above but I'd put it on about the same level as Enterprise S1/S2 or Voyager, some good episodes but no consistency and generally they need to up the writing to survive. Modern shows need to be great for long-term success and not just good and unfortunately this is mostly just good.