Officer Don Orville

Infobox character
name = Don Orville


caption = Wayne Knight as Officer Don Orville
first = "Assault with a Deadly Dick"
last = ""
cause = End of the series
episode = 58
species = Earthling
gender = Male
occupation = Police Officer
title = Police Officer
family =
spouse = Sally Solomon (on-off girlfriend)
portrayer = Wayne Knight
creator = Bonnie and Terry Turner
imdb_id = 0022413

"Officer Donald 'Don' Leslie Orville" is a fictional character in the NBC sitcom "3rd Rock from the Sun". He is portrayed by Wayne Knight and works as a Police Officer in the fictional town of Rutherford, Ohio. The character is first introduced to the series late in the first season, in the episode "Assault with a Deadly Dick", in which the Solomon family go to the police for help after they fall victim to crime.cite episode |title=Assault With A Deadly Dick |episodelink=List of 3rd Rock from the Sun episodes#Season 3: 1996 |series=3rd Rock from the Sun |serieslink=3rd Rock from the Sun|network=NBC |airdate=1996-04-30 |season=1 |number=17]

Work

Although Don works as a police officer throughout the series, he is often shown to be somewhat incompetant, for example, in "The Physics of Being Dick" he lets Dick interrogate a criminal with him, despite it being highly illegal.cite episode |title=The Physics Of Being Dick |episodelink=List of 3rd Rock from the Sun episodes#Season 3: 1997 - 1998 |series=3rd Rock from the Sun |serieslink=3rd Rock from the Sun|network=NBC |airdate=1998-02-25 |season=3 |number=21] Also, when he is paged, he never appears to know what any of the crime codes actually mean.

As well as this, he often makes a blunder of things, for example, in "Stuck With Dick" he thinks Mary's house has been broken into and attempts to burst in through the front door, but ends up making a mess of it and shouting "Ass it right there, freezehole!",cite episode |title=Stuck With Dick |episodelink=List of 3rd Rock from the Sun episodes#Season 3: 1997 - 1998 |series=3rd Rock from the Sun |serieslink=3rd Rock from the Sun|network=NBC |airdate=1998-04-30 |season=3 |number=18] and in "Dick's Big Giant Headache, Part II", he claims to always be losing things, adding "I even lost a whole dead guy once".cite episode |title=Dick's Big Giant Headache |episodelink=List of 3rd Rock from the Sun episodes#Season 4: 1998 - 1999 |series=3rd Rock from the Sun |serieslink=3rd Rock from the Sun|network=NBC |airdate=1999-05-25 |season=4 |number=24]

As the final season draws to a close, Sally discovers him hiding in a frozen foods freezer during the robbery of a local store, and he admits that he is a coward, and only joined the police force because he thought he'd be safe around all the other officers.cite episode |title=The Thing That Wouldn't Die |episodelink=List of 3rd Rock from the Sun episodes#Season 6: 2000 - 2001 |series=3rd Rock from the Sun |serieslink=3rd Rock from the Sun|network=NBC |airdate=2001-05-22 |season=6 |number=19]

Relationship with Sally

Throughout the series, he maintains an on-off relationship with Sally Solomon, a coupling which sees her in the dominant position, and able to persuade him (usually using her feminine wiles) to do anything she wants.

As an ongoing gag of the show, one of the pair appears to be able to tell when the other has entered the room, and says their name, before turning round to see them (notably, in the episode "Two Faced Dick", in which Dick and Sally swap bodies, Dick enters the room and Don still thinks it is Sally, before turning round to find himself shocked).cite episode |title=Two Faced Dick |episodelink=List of 3rd Rock from the Sun episodes#Season 4: 1998 - 1999 |series=3rd Rock from the Sun |serieslink=3rd Rock from the Sun|network=NBC |airdate=1999-01-05 |season=4 |number=10] Another of the pair's running gags is that the conversations held between them are somewhat dramatic, and remeniscant of an old film noir 1930s crime drama.

Notes

External links

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