Content warning for themes of child abuse, sexual assault and suicide. Spoilers for “Moral Orel.”
“Moral Orel” was a show on the late night [adult swim] programming block lauded for its style of edgy comedy surrounding a naive and optimistic, but well-meaning God-fearing boy named Orel. As the show shifted tone from morbid comedy to depressing psychological drama, it would result in it being canceled because the groundbreaking narrative pushed boundaries: primarily, the depiction of processing sexual trauma from assault.
There are a ton of different themes covered in this show that would be too numerous to list, but some of the main themes surround the usage of Christianity as a justification for one’s actions rather than a cause someone genuinely feels connected to. It doesn’t poke fun at the religion and its practices but rather points out the hypocrisies that people fall into by not fully understanding why Jesus acted the way he did. This leads to characters in the show using religion as a method to abuse children and force them to conform instead of questioning why they’re treated horribly. There are also themes of neglect, misogyny, homophobia, ableism and sexual assault combined into a single courageous story that sheds light on touchy themes rarely represented in media, especially TV shows in the 2000s.
The best example of this serious interaction with these subjects comes in the form of Orel’s dad, Clay Puppington. In the first two seasons, the common structure of the show revolved around reasons he would beat Orel. At first, it felt awkward to laugh at Orel’s misguided goodwill somehow always going wrong and resulting in a beating, but after season three it was hard not to cry, not only for his suffering but a good portion of other people’s lives too. This is the exemplification of the transformation the show went through.
Some of the best scenes in the show are due to Clay’s depicted self-destructive misery. He’s a terrible human being but a well-written character. His struggle is one rooted in generational trauma, but at the end of the show Orel is shown as a father without a belt on his waist to indicate that he would never want to inflict the same pain his father did to him.
There’s an infamous episode of “Moral Orel” named “Alone” from season three. It follows three of the women in the show and their coping mechanisms within their different rooms in the same apartment complex. In this episode was the scene dubbed “too dark for [adult swim]” involving the teacher at Orel’s school checking all of the locks on her door and then turning on the radio to hear that the man who raped her took his own life in prison during a sermon by the local reverend about how all children shouldn’t get aborted. This made the show not get renewed for a fourth season.
Many people who have experienced sexual assault could find the episode to be extremely comforting as well as fear-inducing at times, as they view a victim-survivor’s processing of this trauma. If shows on [adult swim] like “Xavier: Renegade Angel” can get away with off-hand sexual assault jokes but you draw the line at a victim-survivor processing their trauma, there’s a certain sense of hypocrisy that’s in bad taste at best and sickening at worst.
But what if the show gets renewed after all this time for some reason? It’s possible they won’t capture that same spark if they brought the show back today. I simply wish the team could have fully and authentically told their story at the time of creating it after putting so much work into it, only for the show to not be renewed.
I am so incredibly grateful that the team of “Moral Orel” chose to stick to their authentic storytelling despite setbacks. The result is a story with so much love put into it that it will stand the test of time and comfort the disturbed after the clay melts.