The Orville is a science fiction comedy-drama series that follows officers on a Planetary Union space vessel as they explore new planets and battle with evil alien threats. The show is hilarious, thought-provoking, and heartfelt. Fans have even taken to calling it “better Star Trek than modern Star Trek.” While it’s a phenomenal series, there is one big blemish that prevents it from being even better, and that is the character of Charly Burke.

Charly is an ensign who came into the series at the start of Season 3 and departed in the finale of the same season. During her time on the show, it became obnoxiously clear that she’s the worst character in the entire series.

While most characters throughout the series are fleshed out with unique personalities and complicated emotions, Chaly’s only personality trait is that she’s angry all the time. When a scene has a comedic atmosphere, she brings the mood down with her annoying angst and aggression.

The end of Season 2 had the Kaylon go to battle with just about every other military power, which resulted in a lot of lives being lost. Because of this, Charly’s anger is often directed toward the Kaylon, which is understandable. However, Isaac, the Kaylon on board the Oville, stood against his own kind to save everyone. Still, Charly directs much of her hatred toward him anyway. Isaac is a fan-favorite character. Having someone fighting so hard to oppose him is not a great way to get fans to like them.

Charly also never seems to stop talking about the Kaylon. Instead of being written like a character, she’s written more like a vessel to remind the audience that the Kaylon were the villains for this duration of the story. However, we already know that. We have eyes and have been watching the show. Plus, there are plenty of battles with them. There’s no need to make a new character just to remind us the Union were at war with the Kaylon.

There are moments in the writing that are clearly done to make her seem like she’s hurt from a tragic backstory, but instead of grief, it just comes out as more anger. All this aggression is a bit annoying when there are real issues being discussed among the other characters. She feels too immature compared to any of the other characters in the show, and not in a plucky young sidekick kind of way.

The series forces her into the spotlight, which detracts from the audience spending time with characters they actually like. Instead of following Ed and Kelly into the action, seeing how Bortus handles his family’s drama, or yucking it up with Gordon, the audience spends quite some time watching Charly fussing. When we do see experience stories with these other characters, the season is great, so why not spend more time with them instead of Charly?

On top of that, her character is built up to be someone super important, but isn’t. She’s an ensign, a low-ranking officer, and yet she’s given a job on the bridge with all higher-ranking officers and goes on incredibly important and dangerous missions. She even went on a mission with the ship’s captain and the president. An ensign wouldn’t be doing that. It makes no sense. It makes the audience feel like she’s being forced into the spotlight, and she’s far from the character we want to be seen getting the extra story and attention.

As an ensign, she’s also insanely unprofessional. She undermines her superior officers and constantly argues with them. She’s never reprimanded for her insubordination, either. If anything, she’s rewarded by being given the important assignments on cool alien planets. 

What’s truly strange about all of this, though, is that Charly doesn’t feel like she’s meant to be antagonistic in stories like Klyden is. She’s clearly meant to be a good guy that the audience roots for and someone to make the audience see the main conflict from multiple sides. However, she’s pointlessly terrible which makes it easy to dislike her more than actual antagonists in the series.

The Orville really is a fantastic series that everyone should watch. It’s just a bit of a bummer that this single character distracts from that by being the absolute worst.

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