This feels like the first “new” episode of The Orville. What I mean is, everything that came before (maybe except for About a Girl) feels like the original idea for The Orville. The original Fox pitch to get them to allow it in the first place. Pria feels like an idea that was had, or acted on after The Orville started production.

The humor is smarter and flows so much better. The whole leg gag is very overt but it’s also still one of the funniest things in the series for me so far. But stuff that they say off-handed no longer has a “pause for laughter” feel to it like a typical Family Guy joke does. They just drop the joke and keep going with the assumption you caught it.

This is also the first time that you see Ed and Kelly look like they’re ready to be friends and leave their past behind them.

And of course, Charlize Theron is a great guest star, not simply one of Seth’s friends doing a cameo.

Pria is a very standard bottle episode, but I’ve been waiting for this one because of the leg gag, the excellent visuals, and canonizing flying spaghetti monsters as a real race of beings.

Regarding the time travel, this is the third time seen this episode and I think I finally understand how the timeline changes work. The way this show regards time travel, and this comes up in a not small way later in the series, is that the presence of quantum mechanics prevents anything from being set in stone in both directions. If you tamper with the past, the future doesn’t suffer the consequences right away, it’s still possible to keep the “old” future or correct the changes. If those quantum variables are removed from the equation, it solidifies everything related to it.

So when Ed orders the singularity destroyed in the 25th-century, everything that happened up to that point was set in stone - The Orville was not destroyed, Isaac has to clean up his slightly-roasted body, Gordon still needs a new leg. But everything future-tense was reset - Pria disappeared because she never traveled back in time in the first place. Even though Pria and 29th-century tech saved the ship.

Did all 29th-century looting of the past get undone? Since stuff only gets taken right before it’s destroyed, would it even be possible to know the difference? It’s also possible that something completely different happened on the 29th century side of the singularity.

And between Seinfeld, Junior Mints, Mr. Potatohead, and a reprise from Ed’s Kermit doll, this episode has a LOT of product placement for some reason.

Even so, this episode is one of the highlights of the first season.

(Those ceiling panels are clearly not load-bearing. Rookie mistake by Isaac to hide a leg there.)