#ninaedits

Umbrella Academy - The Last Week

The Orville - Learned v.  Innate Leaders

I was thinking about The Orville and something came to me. There are two types of leaders: learned and innate.

Innate leaders are people who are just born leaders. People who lead without even trying. They are outgoing, charismatic, confident, and courageous all without trying. Others are learned leaders. People who have to work hard to become and stay good leaders. People who have to constantly worry about being good leaders. In most movies and TV shows innate leaders are men. Women are shown to be learned leaders.

This is where The Orville comes in. It flips this concept on its head. Ed (the man) is the learned leader and Kelly (the woman) is the innate leader. In a lot of ways Kelly fills out the more stereotypical male hero role, that’s a whole other post though. The extra layer is that Ed is captain and Kelly is his first officer. While she is a leader in her own right Ed is the leader of everyone aboard The Orville including Kelly.

Ed spends a good amount of his story arc worrying about his leadership skills. Is he a good captain? Does he deserve to be in the captain’s chair? Is he a good leader? How do you live with your choices as a captain? He’s also not always good at it. The whole Kelly-helped-me-get-here episode is a good indicator of Ed’s struggles with self-doubt. As a leader in a military outfit a debilitating level of self-doubt can be fatal.

That’s why he goes to Kelly, because he needs the help of someone who is innately talented. Kelly just knows what to do in situations like this. She leads with her gut, another stereotypically male writing trope. Ed has internalized a lot of self-doubt and maybe a bit of self-hatred, probably from early childhood abuse (see the bullying law named after him).

I don’t know if any of this is intentional or just the way the script was conceived, but it is interesting.