♪ I hate you Jesus, you rotten little fink ♪

I hate moral orel original songs because they are So catchy but there is not one situation in which it is ok to have them stuck in my head. I'm a choir singer I'm going to have to go to evensong on Sunday with "I hate you jesus" playing in my head while they do the readings smh

question to the MO fandom:

Do we generally agree that in School Pageant the Jesus musical is a parody of Jesus Christ Superstar?

because if so it means that MO called Andrew Lloyd Weber a no-name loser who's only good song is Judas'.

(i just wondered thet if it's about 'Heaven on Their Minds' or 'Superstar'?)

Moral Orel #36: “Dumb” | October 30, 2008 - 12:15AM | S03E06

Dumb takes place during School Pageant and Nature parts one and two. It begins with Joe, Orel’s delinquent friend, returning home from the school pageant. His father, the way-too-elderly Dr. Secondopinionson, couldn’t make it. He’s too old to move. Joe is a dick about it, and his allegedly middle-aged half-sister (the adultswim.com description calls her this, canon disputed?), who has a traditionally masculine voice.

That last bit is a little contentious in times where more people are aware of transgender issues. In a previous episode, she was Principal Fakey’s receptionist, and we heard her through what appeared to be a tinny-sounding speaker, but when they cut to hear speaking on the receiver she’s seen pinching her nose, the actual reason for the bad sounding speaker. I don’t think the intent of the joke was to mock transgender people, it was just meant to add another layer to the previous joke. That probably doesn’t keep the portrayal from being uncomfortable for some viewers, but eyyyy what can you do? Hope that detached nihilistic irony comes back into fashion one more time before the world ends, I guess.

Nurse Bendy calls Joe’s sister. It turns out she calls her to keep tabs on Joe so she can use biographic details on her own ersatz child, Sonny. We saw her talking to her teddy bear family in a previous episode, Alone. From here, Joe winds up going on a journey to reunite with his mother, whom he was told died during child birth. He finds out from Coach Stopframe that this isn’t the case. He eventually meets Nurse Bendy, said to be his actual mom. He likes her youth and her filthy ‘tude. The two begin to bond, and she takes him to her apartment to meet her teddy bear family. He disrespects them, sticking his tongue out at Sonny and what not. He fucked with the wrong hombre in that regard, for Sonny can dish it out exactly as hard with a simple squeeze. Sonny and Joe…  they are quarreling!

Joe beats the shit out of his father out of anger, but this is played sorta for laughs as it happens in the background. He tries to go back to Bendy’s apartment and sees Sonny in the trash. He finds her at work and she explains she threw him out because he didn’t work anymore, and that she hoped Joe could be her Sonny. The episode ends with Joe and Bendy imitating Sonny’s retractable tongue. It's heartwarming as fuck. Credits roll. 

This is a really great episode which demonstrates how this show managed to transform itself into something soulful and emotionally affecting while staying entirely in character. The style of joke-writing, the characterization, the absurdly hyperbolic explosion of anger displayed by Joe when he beats up his dad, it’s all very much in line with what Moral Orel has always been. The ending is heartwarming and sweet. The episode is scored by “Failsafe” by The Choir Practice, which is also a New Pornographers song. It’s written by Carl Newman from New Pornographers, but The Choir Practice version was actually recorded and released first if wikipedia is to be trusted. I think I prefer the version in this episode. It just sounds so beautiful in this episode. 

There are continuity tie-ins: We see Orel before and after the hunting trip. We also see Bloberta clutching Dr. Potterswheel’s handkerchief. Joe’s fear of getting old is explored a little more, which was most recently alluded to in Orel’s Movie Premiere. Nurse Bendy’s teddy bear family was first introduced in Alone from earlier in the season (I already mentioned this, but I struggled to think of a third thing). 

One dark thing to note is that the script for an unproduced episode, “Narcissism”, reveals that Nurse Bendy is 24, which means that she gave birth to Joe at the age of 12, which means Joe’s father prooooooooooooobably deserved his beating. It might potentially explain Nurse Bendy’s arrested development. 

These episodes take place in different moments in the chronology of events of Moralton surrounding Orel’s hunting trip. Some of them, like this one, take place across a span of them. And it’s fun trying to untangle it all. But this episode and Alone sorta tell me that trying to perform an actual fanedit of the show, attempting to make a movie or something out of these highly-connected episodes, would ultimately be a failure. Seeing Nurse Bendy’s traumatic freak out in the middle of these scenes probably wouldn’t enhance the story of Joe and her connecting to one another as mother and son. They’re probably better off as two separate things. But I’ll still download it and watch it if you make one. Just saying.

44 NIGHTS OF OREL

The 44 Nights of Orel was an event where Adult Swim showed the entire series in a special running order where continuity-specific old episodes were meant to enhance the season three premieres.

This episode was preceded by Elemental Orel, because it shows Joe’s Elderly father (for the first time?). After that was Holy Visage, which Dino says they went too gross with the wound (I agree!) but this episode shows Joe’s father working as a doctor, hence it's inclusion.

guys.....where dose orels big movie premiere fit in the timeline

cause like orel was freaking out over the judas song but then innocence happened which led to grounded then enviably nature so.....im sitting here just going....huh????

help??

pls??

cause RIGHT after orels big movie premiere WAS nature so

Moral Orel #33: “Innocence” | October 17, 2008 - 12:15AM | S03E03

Season three’s objective is to unpack the events of Nature as well as Clay’s abusive nature. This strips Orel of his Innocence. Hey, that’s the name of this episode. 

Was never that big on this one, as it feels like it’s half comedy show/half math problem. A little more interested in answering the question of what the heck was going on at the end of Grounded than it is in being very funny.

Embarrassingly, this lead me to spending most of the time I allocated towards writing this write-up to me sussing out a roughly story-chronological order for the episodes of Moral Orel. As far as I can tell, nobody has really done a scene-by-scene breakdown timeline kinda thing. I didn’t do that. I just listed the episodes and shuffled the order so they’d be less scrambled. It won’t be part of this write-up, because I only like doing things that are a waste of time, and including it would make it technically not. 

Okay, so this episode takes place immediately after the School Pageant, which they say was “4 weeks and 1 day ago”. The main, most useful takeaway that I realized here was that the accepted running order of the show is mostly represented on HBOMax, but I think Orel’s Movie Premiere ought to trade places with School Pageant. Apparently they were supposed to air that way but didn’t. School Pageant is the last season two episode to take place before Nature, and some of season three is set in between. Nature parts one and two weigh heaviest on this season, but School Pageant is a pretty close second.

In this one, the adults have a meeting without Orel, after Reverend Putty has the apocalyptic realization that god is mad at Moralton, in part because of the “God I Hate You Jesus” song featured in said School Pageant. There were also the many catastrophes that were brought on by Orel, perhaps acting as a tool of God’s. The parents vow to delay their smiting by not giving Orel anymore advice. Orel, champing at the bit for adultlike sageness, gets pushed from adult to adult, who offer little nuggets here and there after being browbeat by a wisdom-hungry Orel. This causes him to cobble together one of his more disgusting outings (as seen at the beginning of Grounded), which actually did air before this, but I covered it when it aired as part of the April Fools’ stealth premieres. 

I get why airing Grounded, a heavier episode that dives a little further into Clay’s abusiveness, after Nature despite it taking place afterwards makes sense. This makes less sense, but it’s ultimately a playful exercise that I’m not terribly mad at. The disastrous moment in time when all of Moralton tried to stop giving Orel advice and failed to thwart a terrible misunderstanding from happening anyway is a decent idea. I just think it gets to a point where it’s just spinning it’s wheels and is just marching adequately towards its conclusion which we already saw. 

There is a little bit of foreshadowing for Orel’s teacher, who is seen cutting out a news clipping about a rapist. This is touched on in the upcoming “Alone”, and was meant to pay off in an episode called “Raped”, an unproduced episode that had it’s script leaked. Also worth noting: Jay Johnston is not in this episode, but his characters are, voiced by different people. Scott Adsit voices Coach Stopframe, and David Herman voices Principal Flakey. This is maybe the biggest bummer of the season. I didn’t look that hard, so I did not find a source for this, but I was always under the impression that Jay Johnston similarly didn’t like the direction the show was going in and blew off recording for it. Perhaps he was busy planning a fateful trip to our nation’s capital. Heh, that would be cool :D 

44 NIGHTS OF OREL

I'm gonna keep using this picture. It is just too nice not to. These episodes aired before tonight’s episode:

Grounded (official premiere; originally aired stealthily as part of an April Fools stunt)

Loyalty (literally just for the “omelet facemask” joke which is called back in School Pageant)

School Pageant (takes place before Innocence). Innocence (This one!)

Moral Orel #26: “School Pageant” | June 9, 2007 - 12:15AM | S02E16

This one’s wonderful. There’s a school pageant at Orel’s school about the life of Jesus. Orel assumes he’s a shoe-in for the lead (as does everyone else). But the part of Jesus goes to one of the Jews-for-Jesus clan after the writer/director finds out he’s the nephew of a famous Broadway producer. The writer/director of this play, by the way, is Dale Armature, a former member of the Crucifolks. They’re a famous christian folk band that have been previously seen in the series on posters and stuff around Moralton. He was basically forced out by the other two, a youthful couple who broke up the band and reformed as a solo duo. Dale is desperate to find success again, and it’s shown that he pined after the young woman in the group, holding out hope that one day she would be his. The stakes could not be higher for this poor sap.

Orel gets wrapped up in all of this because, although he’s the favorite to be cast as Jesus, he winds up playing Judas. After receiving a pep talk from Dale (which drives home the idea that Judas is a very important figure in Christianity, perhaps even part of God’s plan?), Orel learns to love playing Judas. In fact his genuinely delightful song “God, I hate you, Jesus” easily steals the show, and becomes the only memorable bit from the play.

Things don’t end up going Dale’s way. The play is recognized as a flop, and he makes a fool out of himself in front of his former partners, as well as the famous Broadway producer. Then there’s a montage of various townspeople, weeks into the future, all cheerily singing Orel’s “God, I hate you, Jesus” song. The final scene is an entire church congregation singing along to it. The camera pushes in on Orel’s face. He chuckles to himself: “wow, everybody sure hates Jesus! …whoops.” 

This one’s just really fast-paced and well-made, and it’s centered around a very fun song that is actually quite catchy. It’s nearly a self-contained episode, though there are certain things about Moralton that might puzzle first-time viewers. Example: there’s one moment that references a previous episode where reverend putty is trying to pitch the concept of an “omelet face mask” to Dale. This is a reference to the episode “Loyal” where the reverend first thinks this idea up and really falls in love with it, and he takes time to derail his sermon just to write it down and pat himself on the back. It’s one of the more pathetic things he’s done; attempt to home this extremely tepid joke into a play because he lacks any other creative talent. I can relate. Whoops.

more than one screenshot, but these pics are relatable because of how nervous Orel is