http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-1-serenity (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-1-serenity)
'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 1: 'Serenity'
By sepinwall
Tuesday, Jun 8, 2010
Okay, as discussed previously, one of the shows we're going to be revisiting each week this summer is "Firefly," which Fox aired intermittently (and out of order, which we'll get to) in the fall of 2002. We'll be following the intended air order (i.e., the way the episodes are presented on the DVDs), which means we start out with a look back at the show's two-hour pilot episode, "Serenity," coming up just as soon as we vote on the whole murdering issue...
"Don't think it's a good spot, sir. She still has the advantage over us." -Zoe
"Everyone always does. That's what makes us special." -Mal
Joss Whedon series tend to grow in fits and starts. "Buffy" didn't really come into its own until the start of its second season, "Angel" not until the end of its second, "Dollhouse" not really until Fox canceled it and Whedon had the freedom of not worrying about that show's future. And Joss will cop to all of this without apology.
"Firefly," on the other hand? That was the show Joss understood from the start, even if Fox didn't.
Fox ordered "Firefly" based on the two-hour "Serenity" pilot, then panicked and elected not to run it first... or second... or fifth... or at all until they were basically done with the show and could throw it on the air the Friday before Christmas as a gift "for the fans."
To this day, the decision baffles me. It'd be one thing if Fox decided they didn't want to air a two-hour pilot, but you can always split those things up over two weeks. (That's how ABC aired the "Lost" pilot, even though that was designed to air as a two-hour event.) But "Serenity" does such a thorough job of introducing the world Whedon had created, and the small group of characters we'd follow through it, and how they related to one another - all while featuring plenty of action and suspense and humor - that it makes no sense not to lead off the series with it.
By opening instead with "The Train Job" - which we'll discuss next week, but which trades very much off the things we learned about these people in the pilot - Fox more or less crippled the series before it started. And "Firefly" was not a show that could afford to come out of the gate hobbled. It's a sci-fi show, and sci-fi shows (particularly pure space operas like this one) have had a lousy track record on the networks in recent years. And it's a Western, which have had no kind of track record on the networks for decades and decades. "Firefly" was already debuting with a "Please Don't Watch" sign hung off the ship's port engine. While I doubt the show could have succeeded even if the episodes had all aired in order, starting out this way sent out danger signals even to the serious Whedonites.
Because the show ran out of sequence, it often came across as disjointed. By the time "Serenity" aired at the end of the show's network run, for instance, everybody knew that Simon and Book were good guys, so the attempt to make Simon appear sinister (black suit, black sunglasses) and to cast doubt about who the government mole on the ship was just feels like wasted time, as does the exposition about the Reavers and everything else.
Watch the series in order, though (and then watch the feature film that followed, also called "Serenity"), and you see that it came out of the gate fully-formed. The characters, the world, the style and tone were all presented in "Serenity" exactly as they'd be throughout the brief run, and with such confidence and heart that it improbably vaulted past "Buffy" and "Angel" to become the most beloved Whedon show (at least among most of the Joss fans I've encountered).
The opening scene in Serenity Valley not only prepares you for the way that Whedon is going to be mining all kinds of classic movie iconography for this series (it's a pretty pure last-stand sequence from war films of many eras), but sets us up with the fundamental idea behind Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and the series. Mal is a man who believed deeply in a cause, believed that others cared as much about it as he did, was betrayed to learn he was wrong, and now believes in no one and nuthin' but himself and his crew. He runs the good ship Serenity to stay away from the hated government he was rebelling against, and to create a very small world for himself where he has as much control as possible over protecting the lives of the people on board.
Fillion was previously best-known for a run on the sitcom "Two Guys and a Girl" (without the pizza place), and of course he's gone on to much bigger success playing the obnoxious hero on "Castle," and this role certainly calls on his dry, funny side at times. But it also calls on him to evoke a kind of Hollywood leading man machismo from a bygone era - a little bit Han Solo, but even more Steve McQueen. He's wonderful, and helps me buy into the sci-fi/Western mash-up more than I otherwise might have(*), and lends weight to the value of the other characters.
(*) Specifically, I never loved how literal most of the show's Western elements were. I get the idea that the border moons all have fewer resources and lamer technology than the Alliance-affiliated worlds, and that it therefore makes sense that we'd see horses and older guns and whatnot. But the idea that so many people five hundred years in the future would adopt the clothing and colloquialisms of 19th century America always struck me as a false note - like Joss wanted to be absolutely sure we understood that the show was a parable for the South of the Reconstruction era. I think he could have gotten the point across without putting Mal in a duster (though he does look good in it), showing us lots of prairie women in gingham dresses, etc.
I was lucky enough to see a very rough cut of this episode the summer before "Firefly" debuted, so I came into the show the way Whedon intended. And the moment I knew I was in with this show for good came during the climax, when Dobson is holding a gun on River, and Mal - frustrated from how things went with Patience and eager to get the ship off the ground before the Reavers show up - walks up, shoots him between the eyes, and keeps on moving like it's nuthin', because there just isn't time for negotiation or recrimination. That is the kind of man Malcolm Reynolds is, and the kind of world he has to live in, and it's dark and thrilling and kind of funny.
"Serenity" introduces us to all our major players (I'll have more to say about everybody else in the bullet points), as well as larger universe elements like the Alliance, the Reavers, Badger, companion culture, the mingling of Chinese and American culture, etc., and usually does it within the context of an exciting and/or comic set piece (like everyone bracing themselves for a possible Reaver attack, or the standoff in Badger's office). It's a pretty ai ya swell 90 minutes of entertainment.
So why, again, did Fox not want to show it first?
Anyway, some other thoughts:
There aren't a lot of completely functional couples in the Whedon-verse, but he gives us one here in Mal's loyal, badass sidekick Zoe (Gina Torres) and the ship's goofy pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk). Torres is great at the strong-but-silent thing, and Tudyk comes closest of all of the Whedon surrogate characters (Xander, Topher, etc.) of talking very much like his creator.
Along with the overtness of some of the Western stuff, the other element of the show I never totally loved was the idea of companions as revered figures in this new culture. I'm not saying that social mores couldn't have transformed that much over the course of 500 years that prostitution would become a respected, highly-cultured profession. But as the show itself admits, both with the behavior of Inara's first client and then with the ugly way Mal so often speaks of her job, sex-as-commodity isn't something that humans will just innately accept. There will still be plenty of jealousy and hang-ups and misplaced feelings, and I would think that would still be widespread enough to make the companion culture something that's tolerated or accepted, but not something that would make them be considered among society's elites. And yes, I know there is historical precedent for this, like the courtesans of the Renaissance. But enough people react to Inara in some variation of how Mal does that it always bugged me. And, for that matter, the sheer hostility Mal has for her job - even if much of it comes from jealousy - always got in the way of the Unresolved Sexual Tension between these two for me. Your mileage may vary.
There are a couple of little pop culture references in this one - Wash and Mal quote a few lines from The Beatles' "Cry Baby Cry," the Alliance ship is named after Dortmunder (the thief hero of Donald Westlake's comic caper novels), and Wash and Kaylee talk about doing a Crazy Ivan (which is an actual submarine maneuver, but was made widely-known by "The Hunt For Red October") - and when I asked Whedon about them at the press conference the summer before the show premiere, he actually looked a bit sheepish and said that wasn't something he wanted to do a lot of going forward. "Buffy" had been defined in part by all the references to Scooby-Doo and whatnot, and he wanted this world to be a cleaner break, and for any references to be more about homage than about characters namechecking old movies and songs.
Along those lines, Shepherd Book's line to Kaylee about wanting to walk the world for a while sounded very much like something out of David Carradine's "Kung Fu," and we see in the first showdown with Dobson that Book is a far more capable fighter than your average pastor. I loved "Barney Miller" as a kid, am always happy to see Ron Glass and enjoyed the unlikely flavor that he provided to this show.
Adam Baldwin had been wandering around Hollywood for 20 years before this show, finding steady but often unremarkable work because of his size and screen presence. The role of Jayne Cobb - stupid and ugly and untrustworthy, but also capable and funny and surprisingly loyal in spots (check out how he peeks in from outside the infirmary to make sure Kaylee's okay) - reinvented his career, turning him from That Big Guy Who Isn't Really A Baldwin Brother into a cult hero. I think it's fair to assume the "Chuck" writers had watched themselves an episode or 12 of "Firefly" before they began writing the role of John Casey for him. My favorite Jayne moment from the pilot: Mal reminds Jayne that he's just supposed to scare Dobson, and Jayne shrugs and says, "Pain is scary." The push-pull between those two characters will be an ongoing source of dramatic and comic tension throughout the series.
It's been a few years since I watched the show, and I had almost forgotten how ridiculously charming Jewel Staite was as Kaylee, whether she's delightedly eating a strawberry, reassuring Mal that her getting shot was nobody's fault, or contentedly patting her engines after the Crazy Ivan maneuver saves them from the Reavers. Question: how closely does Kaylee fit the definition of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl?
Along with Fillion and Baldwin, Summer Glau has probably generated the most fan love of any of the actors on this show, but she doesn't get to do a whole lot in the pilot, since River is in a box for the first half and coming in and out of sedation for the second. With Sean Maher's Simon, meanwhile, Whedon is trying to set up a kind of relationship between him and Mal like the one Jimmy Stewart's civilized lawyer had with John Wayne's unapologetic gunslinger in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." And Maher (who was coming off two other short-lived Fox dramas in "Ryan Caulfield: Year One" and "The $treet") is okay in the role, but not really as capable of going toe-to-toe with Fillion as I think Whedon might have wanted.
Okay, so that's a lot on "Serenity," and I'm sure you will have many more things to discuss in the comments. The one thing I will ask is that we try to be respectful of the people who are coming to the series for the first time with these reviews. You can allude to developments that happen later in the series (or the movie), but don't get too specific or spoil anything big, okay?
Back next Tuesday with "The Train Job," and keeping in mind the spoiler thing, what did everybody else think?
Excellent post! :headbang:
I posted it at the OB as well. Lets see if Arlo remains a hypocrite and continues to not comment on any of my Firefly related posts, but continues to comment on my posts in the poli threads.
Quote from: Spooky on June 08, 2010, 10:58:21 AM
I posted it at the OB as well. Lets see if Arlo remains a hypocrite and continues to not comment on any of my Firefly related posts, but continues to comment on my posts in the poli threads.
Tardo will probably not notice, but if he does, something along the lines of "Well, that's something!" and then that symbol that means "I'm a douchebag".
"Don't spoil anything big." He did give away that Dobson gets shot by Mal... :rofl:
I like the assessment, but I'm not bugged at all by Mal's opinion of Inara's profession. It just means he likes her, come on!
And as for saying Sean couldn't go toe-to-toe with Nathan...I'm biased. I'd have to watch it again, but if it looks like he was "beneath" Nathan, I think the newness of Simon being on the ship worked in Sean's favor. Everybody kicked ass with acting on that show: one of the reasons why it was so perfect. They all brought the best out of each other.
Quote from: TinkTanker on June 08, 2010, 11:16:18 AM
Quote from: Spooky on June 08, 2010, 10:58:21 AM
I posted it at the OB as well. Lets see if Arlo remains a hypocrite and continues to not comment on any of my Firefly related posts, but continues to comment on my posts in the poli threads.
Tardo will probably not notice, but if he does, something along the lines of "Well, that's something!" and then that symbol that means "I'm a douchebag".
:O)
Tardo will probably not notice, but if he does, something along the lines of "Well, that's something!" and then that symbol that means "I'm a douchebag".
:bearsbears:
'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 2: 'The Train Job'
By sepinwall
Tuesday, Jun 15, 2010
Once again, we're spending Tuesdays this summer revisiting episodes of Joss Whedon's "Firefly." (You can find last week's review here.) This week, it's time for "The Train Job," with spoilers coming up just as soon as my story has an odor to it...
"Time for some thrilling heroics." -Jayne
There's a school of thought in the TV business - and Joss Whedon says in the DVD commentary for this episode that he belongs to it - that after you make your pilot episode, you do variations on it five or six times in a row to get people used to your show, and to create an easier entry point for anyone who might have missed your premiere and checked in later. I'm not a fan of that philosophy, as it tends to lead to a bunch of really boring episodes that often scare away the people who were watching from the beginning before the show ever gets out of repetition mode and gets to the good stuff.
"The Train Job," though, is an unusual case of this. As discussed last week, Fox executives decided they didn't want to lead off with "Serenity," and they gave Whedon and Tim Minear a two-day weekend to write an entirely new script for an episode that could function as the series debut.
Hence, "The Train Job," in which every major character beat and piece of backstory has to be replayed or explained in exhausting detail.
So we open with Mal, Zoe and Jayne at a bar to again explain about the civil war with the Alliance, and to try to again establish the show's mix of Western, Eastern and sci-fi. We get another scene of Inara complaining that Mal enters her shuttle unannounced, as well as more awkward flirting between Kaylee and Simon. And we get exposition ladled on top of exposition ladled on top of exposition, so that viewers would understand why this outlaw ship is also home to a hooker, a preacher, a doctor and his crazy but brilliant sister. Etc.
And on top of all that, Whedon and Minear's script has to actually tell a story, as we see the crew of the Serenity tackle an old Western trope (the train heist) in a sci-fi manner (flying the ship overhead to steal the cargo).
It's kind of a no-win scenario. I had already seen most of "Serenity" before I watched this, and I know some of you first watched the series in the DVD order, so all the exposition and repetition sticks out like a sore thumb. And for those who came to "The Train Job" first back in the fall of '02, the backstory of, say, Simon and River isn't nearly as emotionally compelling as recounted by Shepherd Book as it was when we saw Simon take River out of the box in "Serenity."
Short of pretending "Serenity" didn't exist and starting from scratch - which may not have been a possibility (that pilot was a very expensive sunk cost that Fox intended to air at some point) - I don't know what else Whedon and Minear could have done. But the parts of "The Train Job" that are good - and there are a bunch of those parts - come whenever the episode gets away from having to make lemonade out of lemons and can just tell the story of Mal, Niska, Crow, Sheriff Bourne and a planet full of sick people.
Michael Fairman is marvelously creepy as Niska, playing him like a Jewish immigrant movie studio chief like Jack Warner, only if Warner were really a sadistic gangster. The introductory scene with Niska and Crow nicely establishes the jeopardy Mal is risking by going to work for the man, as well as the desperate state of the Serenity that he would find it necessary. Mal and Zoe's arrest creates some good conflict among the rest of the crew about who runs things when mom and dad are away (and lets Adam Baldwin do a great stoned pratfall as Jayne), and when the cargo turns out to be badly-needed medicine, we see that even our thief has some lines he won't cross.
That's all fun stuff, highlighted by the actual heist sequence, with Jayne and his silly earflap hat hanging down from the ship to grab the goods(*), and then by the hilarious, macabre punchline to Crow's threat to hunt down and kill Mal. In your run-of-the-mill TV adventure series, that threat is followed by our hero boasting that the bad guy is certainly welcome to try. On this show, in this world, with this man, it's followed instead by a good swift kick into Serenity's engine, followed immediately (and even more hilariously) by Mal making the same offer to the next goon, who understandably agrees to shut up and take the money back to Niska.
(*) It's so well-put-together that even chatterboxes Whedon and Minear essentially shut up during that portion of the commentary so they can just watch it.
With the extra burden of having to explain a pilot nobody saw out of the way, later episodes will be able to spend more time on the missions, and on seeing the interactions deepen among the crew and passengers. Still, given the absurd limitations "The Train Job" had to work with, it's not a bad start.
Some other thoughts:
Shepherd Book seems to bear a particularly heavy load of the exposition, and I don't know whether that's because Ron Glass is a good talker, or because (as even he admits with the "I do feel awfully useless line) he's the character without an obvious plot function. (The crew members have their respective jobs, Simon patches up the wounded, Inara smooths over certain diplomatic issues, and River is leading the Alliance to chase Serenity.) But we do get yet another hint that Book wasn't always a preacher, as he's heard of Niska before and has some sense of how the man's mind works.
Whedon and Minear were also under pressure to make Mal and the show a bit more jovial than in "Serenity" (though Mal kicking Crow into the engine is just as dark in its comedy as Mal shooting Dobson in the face), and so there's even more Whedon-brand banter than before. Most of it's of the quality you'd expect from these guys, but I always cringe at Mal's "I'm thinking we'll rise again" joke right before Serenity rises (get it!) up from below the ridge. Too corny and on-the-nose.
On the other hand, Zoe's, "Sir, I think you have a problem with your brain being missing" is perfect in every way, from the word choice and order to Gina Torres' dry delivery of it.
"Two by two, hands of blue." So River not only know everything (like the make and model of Serenity), but has some kind of psychic abilities as well. Hmmm...
Up next: More fun and excitement with the Reavers in "Bushwhacked."
What did everybody else think?
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-2-the-train-job (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-2-the-train-job)
Firefly Rewind made the News blurbs on IMDb today!
'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 3: 'Bushwhacked'
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-3-bushwhacked (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-3-bushwhacked)
By sepinwall
Tuesday, Jun 22, 2010
We're continuing our summer tour back through Joss Whedon's "Firefly" (at the end of this review I'll have links to the previous ones), this week with episode three, "Bushwhacked." A review coming up just as soon as I remind you of the story of the Good Samaritan...
"It's impressive what nothing can do to a man." -Jayne
"Firefly" is a Western in space, and few episodes combine the two elements as effectively, or disturbingly, as "Bushwhacked." It's essentially the "Firefly" version of those Western stories where the heroic cowboys come across the aftermath of an Indian massacre - with the Reavers standing in for the early pop culture conception of Native Americans as alien savages - but it's also about how the vast emptiness of space can dramatically, horribly change a person's personality.
Now, this latter point was also an element of Westerns themselves. In the 19th century, the wide open spaces west of the Mississippi brought the promise of new fortunes and reinventions, but there were often cowboy stories about men driven mad by the isolation and emptiness of the plains. Still, Tim Minear's script and direction make excellent use of the enormity and terror of outer space through Simon's fear of spacewalking. We're told that the Reavers were once men, and all sorts of things might have made them the way they are(*), but when Simon turns away from Serenity to look at what awaits him if he lets go of the handrail, it's pretty easy to imagine that view exploding the minds of some of the men looking at it.
(*) And I will remind you here, early on in the review, that we're trying to be friendly to people who are watching the series for the first time, and will therefore be vague at the absolute most about future stories about the Reavers, okay?
Doug Savant (in that fallow career period in between "Melrose Place" and "Desperate Housewives") was a good casting choice as the greenhorn Alliance commander, as his usual blandness quickly conveyed a man not used to life out on the frontier, where rules are less important than survival, and where the only rational response to a survivor-turned-Reaver is to snap the poor bastard's neck.(**)
(**) And we're now three-for-three on episodes that climax with Mal not messing around and choosing to quickly kill an opponent. Been a while since I went through the series, and I'm going to be curious to see how long the streak lasts, or if we get an episode soon where Mal doesn't add to his bodycount. (And remember the above note about spoilage here, as well.)
Minear also used the Savant character to fill in some of the backstory that was eliminated when Fox shelved the original pilot. The interrogations are in many ways even more baldly expositional than the eary scenes in "The Train Job," but interrogation scenes by design are expected to feature this kind of info-dump, and it goes down smoother here. It also offers good little comic showcases for characters like Wash (the immediate cut of him saying "her legs!" immediately after Zoe said her reasons for being with him were private) and Jayne (silently staring down the Alliance).
Minear also takes a different approach to reintroducing the Reavers than he and Whedon did with the rehashed material in "Train Job." (In fairness, he had more than a weekend to write his first draft.) Rather than try to recreate some version of Zoe's "and if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order" speech, Minear finds a simpler, more effective bit of shorthand and shows us that Jayne is terrified of the Reavers. If the big muscle man is afraid of these guys, they're bad news, right?
For that matter, the only Reaver we actually see is the farmer who only turned into one as a coping mechanism from witnessing the slaughter of his friends and family. But that he's able to cause so much mayhem and destruction on his own suggests there's a much nastier danger out there on the edges than anything the Alliance can dish out. It's a place where Mal fits in much better than Doug Savant, but one where there are scarier things than even our man in the brown duster.
But getting back to that big black expanse of nothing for a second, it's interesting to see how differently the Tam siblings respond to it. Where Simon is terrified by it, River (given more of a showcase than the previous two episodes combined) absolutely delights at the sight, and wants to go out and do another spacewalk immediately after they go inside. Of course, from what we've seen so far of River, whatever the Alliance did to her has left her as cracked in her own way as the Reavers. Maybe the only sane response to the blackness is Simon's, where River's smile, while charming, is just another reminder of what's been done to her mind.
Some other thoughts:
* This episode begins the show's Tarantino-esque obsession with Summer Glau's feet, which (commentary spoiler!) Joss will go on at length about in an audio track for an upcoming episode. Glau's a ballerina, so she's more used to expressing herself with her toes than some people are with their fingers, I guess.
* One other pilot element slyly reintroduced: Jayne punks Simon by telling him to suit up on his way over to the other ship, when neither he nor the spacesuit are needed. It's not nearly as nasty as Mal telling Simon that Kaylee died, but if you look up "gullible" in a 26th century dictionary, you'd find a picture of Sean Maher.
* In addition to the interrogation, Alan Tudyk gets some more comedy to play in the opening scene where Wash pretends to be horrified at the realization that nobody's driving the ship.
* I like that Kaylee even finds an optimistic way to look at her attempt to defuse the booby-trap: "If I mess up, it's not like you'll be able to yell at me." She's tough, our little mechanic.
Coming up next week: "Shindig," in which the Mal/Inara sexual tension gets in the way of a job.
What did everybody else think?
This was a decent episode .
Firmly in the middle .
What's Arlo's take on this series of reviews ?
Wait , he's probably too busy trollin' .
Quote from: AdmiralDigby on June 22, 2010, 02:14:10 PM
What's Arlo's take on this series of reviews ?
Wait , he's probably too busy trollin' .
Adult language warning:
(http://i383.photobucket.com/albums/oo272/eforhan/215499488_8pSZr-L-2.jpg)
Arlo is normal?
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-4-shindig (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-4-shindig)
'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 4: 'Shindig'
By sepinwall
Tuesday, Jun 29, 2010
We're continuing our summer trip back through Joss Whedon's "Firefly" (at the end of this review, I'll have links to the previous ones) with the fourth episode, "Shindig." A review coming up just as soon as I have money for a slinky dress...
"You think you're better than other people." -Badger
"Just the ones I'm better than." -Mal
In my review of the "Firefly" pilot, I wrote that two of my biggest complaints with the series had to do with the show's depiction of companion culture, and related to that, the ugly tint it gave to the Mal/Inara Unresolved Sexual Tension. "Shindig" is, of course, about both of those issues(*), and while it deals with them in a more interesting way than we got in the pilot, it's still not one of my favorite episodes of the series.
(*) And, as an added bonus, it puts Mal and Kaylee into 19th century formalwear, so it hits the trifecta for my key "Firefly" problems.
There's a scene late in "Shindig" where Inara accuses Mal of hypocrisy for punching her client for implying she's a whore when Mal himself uses the word often in her presence. Mal makes the distinction that he doesn't respect her job, but that he respects her. That distinction makes Mal feel better about himself, and I think Jane Espenson wants it to make us think more kindly on his behavior with her, but it never flies with me. He can have that attitude, and could get away with frequent suggestions that what Inara does for a living is beneath her. Certainly, I've had friends and loved ones with jobs I didn't approve of in one way or another, and we've discussed that and moved past it. It happens. What Mal does, on the other hand, is to be as cruel and nasty as possible in any dealings with Inara that have to do with her profession, and that overrides any notion that he respects her as a person. If he really did, he wouldn't be this consistent an ass to her.
And I'd be fine if we were meant to keep on viewing Mal as a hypocrite, and to acknowledge that even our heroic Captain Tightpants(**) has his flaws. He has a superiority complex, established throughout the pilot and reaffirmed in the scene with Badger I quoted above, and his attitude towards Inara could fit into that iffy character trait easily. But the fencing practice scene, and the Mal/Inara moments that follow in the duel and then on the cargo hold balcony, suggest otherwise; suggest that we're supposed to, like Inara, forgive Mal his cruelty because he does ultmately care about her, and I just ain't having it.
(**) A nickname I've used often in regards to the character, but one whose origin I had forgotten until I re-watched this episode.
One of last summer's DVD projects, "Sports Night," also had a UST set-up with a bitter undercurrent that the show only occasionally wanted to deal with, preferring to keep things on the level of light banter and unexpected flirtation. Nathan Fillion banters as well as anyone in the business, and he and Morena Baccarin had fine chemistry back in the day, but just as I was mainly revisiting "Sports Night" in spite of Dana and Casey rather than for them, I'm glad that Mal/Inara is far from the main subject of "Firefly," even if it is of this episode.
As to companion culture in general, when I objected to it in my pilot review, several of you brought up the historical precedent of geishas (which, given the show's Asian influences, is probably a better analogy than mine to Renaissance courtesans), while others suggested that companions are viewed differently in the sophisticated Alliance planets than they are in the moons out on the rim where Mal and company largely dwell. But Atherton Wing's boorish behavior is the second time in four episodes where we've seen that even Inara's high-class clients view her job exactly the way Mal does. And that's also something that's potentially interesting: that the need for sex and other forms of companionship in post-Earth society became so great that the prostitutes finally wised up and used that need to empower themselves, but that people have certain innate feelings about those who have sex for money that can only be hidden for so long behind all the courtly mannerisms and euphemisms. The problem is that Inara herself always seems surprised when this happens to her. And that's disappointing considering what a smart, tough cookie she's supposed to be.
Given my issues with the larger parts of "Shindig," it's no surprise that my favorite part of the episode was, is and will continue to be Kaylee. It's not exactly an Eliza Doolittle gag - even in baggy coveralls and with engine grease on her nose, Jewel Staite is adorable - but it's still nice to see our resident optimist get to be the belle of the ball, and to do so by being herself. She briefly tries to fit in with the snotty girls, but instead becomes the center of (male) attention from dropping any pretensions and simply talking about engines - while still getting to enjoy the food, drink and how nice she looks in the poofy dress.
"Firefly" unfortunately didn't run long enough to give Kaylee a proper spotlight episode, but at least she gets that moment under the hovering chandelier.
Some other thoughts on "Shindig":
We're still at the point where the show is figuring out how to reintroduce material from the unaired pilot. Badger and Mal allude to their previous standoff in Badger's office (and enough is said, and conveyed by Mark Sheppard's performance, that viewers could easily fill in the blanks), and Kaylee again goes crazy for a strawberry.
The story of the ball and the duel are thin enough that there's time to just hang out a bit on Serenity to see Wash and Zoe enjoy some marital bliss, to see the guys play cards (and to see Jayne, naturally, cheat when the others aren't looking) and to see the two extremes of River's behavior, when she freaks out over the can labels in the pantry and then turns herself into a perfect cockney mirror of Badger when everyone is afraid she might somehow give up her true identity to a man who'd have no problem turning her and her brother in for a reward.
I have a hard time watching elaborately-choreographed formal dance routines like the one Mal and Inara participate in without thinking of this scene from "Top Secret!" (the underrated middle film from the "Airplane!"/"Naked Gun" team).
Inara takes the high road with Mal about him being a thief, but note that she has a fancy gizmo that allows her to break into locked rooms. (I imagine, given her profession, the value might be more in the idea of being about to get out of such a room in the event of sudden client trouble.)
While the crew are all horrified by the notion of Jayne disrobing, I suspect there was a Browncoat or 12 throwing things at the TV when that plan was shot down.
What did everybody else think?
Now that the reviewer mentions it , Mal is the biggest jackass in the outer rim .
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-5-safe (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-5-safe)
Once again, we're spending Tuesdays this summer going back through Joss Whedon's sci-fi/Western mash-up "Firefly." A review of episode five, "Safe," coming up just as soon as I tip you off to my cunningly-concealed herd of cows...
"This isn't our home." -Simon
"If it isn't here, where is it?" -Doralee
The "Firefly" pilot set up Mal and Simon as spiritual opposites: the outlaw vs. the city slicker, the fighter vs. the healer, the cynical wisecracker vs. the earnest straight man, etc. But what we learn in "Safe" is that, for all their surface differences, they share perhaps the most important thing in common: they have lost everything in the universe they care about except the people on that ship.
"Safe" is a fine example of the value of showing over telling. In both "Serenity" and "The Train Job," there was a lot of talk about all Simon had sacrificed to save River from The Academy, but the flashbacks of "Safe" allow us to see it for ourselves. Young Simon(*) had an adoring sister/playmate, a doting mother and father, all of his needs attended to and a place in society's elite. Now he's a fugitive, stuck on a ship full of dirty pirates who don't much like him, traveling to one backwards, superstitious, dangerous world after another, and all for what? To save the sister who's just barely sane enough to recognize how crazy and "broken" she's become.
(*) Played in the first flashback by, of all people, young Zac Efron, doing a fine impression of Sean Maher.
But as frustrated and miserable as Simon is on Serenity, or during his kidnapping misadventure, you also see that he has no regrets - that his love for River, even this version of River, is so strong that he would do it all over again.
Yet at the same time, that love for his sister is all he has left, so when it becomes clear that she's going to be burned at the stake as a witch (and for knowing a little too much about how the community's current leader came to be in charge), he gets up on the platform with her. At first it's an attempt to save her, but when it becomes clear that he can't, he stays. He's her big brother, and he can't let her die alone like that, and he also has nothing worth living for if she's gone. It's a really powerful moment, and well-played by Sean Maher.
In the end, though, Mal comes back in the nick of time to save the day, and he explains in simple, unsentimental language why he did it: "You're on my crew." He and Mal may not like each other, Jayne may be a shaved ape who steals his stuff when it looks like he's not coming back alive, River may be a few sandwiches shy of a picnic and life may always be dangerous, but to the surprise of both Mal and Simon, he really is part of the crew now, which makes Serenity his home, and the rest of the crew his family. It's nothing like the home and family he gave up for River's sake, but it's a start.
Some other thoughts on "Safe":
- River and Simon wind up in the hands of their kidnappers longer than expected because of the shooting of Shepherd Book, which reveals two interesting character points. First is that Mal's hatred of the Alliance is so great that he would risk a man's life rather than take him to an Alliance facility for help. Second is that whatever Book was in life before he became a man of the cloth, it was a position that still holds a lot of sway with the Alliance.
- Ron Glass, by the way, is very good as a clearly frightened Book responds to Zoe's line about Simon not needing to hurry for such a small injury by saying, "He could... hurry a little."
- It speaks well of Simon that even while kidnapped, he recognizes the need for his services in the little mountain community and quickly gets to work in the makeshift hospital.
- Like Kaylee's "Captain Tightpants" line, Zoe's "Big damn heroes, sir" became one of the series' catchphrases that lived on among the fans long after the cancellation.
- We're getting to the point where the non-airing of "Serenity" was less of a big deal, but Kaylee does briefly reference how Book held her hand after she was shot, which Fox viewers of course had no idea about.
- Mrs. Tam is played by Isabella Hoffman, the second alum of the Judd Hirsch sitcom to have a notable role on a Whedon show. (Harry Groener, of course, played Mayor Wilkins on "Buffy.") I'm assuming this is a coincidence, but if Jere Burns gets cast on Joss's next show, look out.
- This is also two episodes in a row where Kaylee's feelings are badly hurt by a man she admires, this time with Simon both insulting the plate she thought would be a gift for him (albeit with him ignorant to that fact) and then Serenity itself. It's interesting to see the push-pull of the Kaylee/Simon relationship. Every Unresolved Sexual Tension scenario in TV needs some kind of artifical obstacle, and here it's the huge difference in class - and given the inner vs. outer planets society that the show has established, it's more plausible than a lot of excuses on other shows.
- Jayne pretending to read aloud from Simon's diary ("Today I was pompous and my sister was crazy") is one of Adam Baldwin's funnier moments so far on the series.
- The show wasn't around long enough to see if Whedon was going to take it in a more serialized direction, but it's nice to see smaller bits of ongoing storytelling, like the cows from the end of "Shindig" being a key part of the plot here.
Coming up next: "Our Mrs. Reynolds," featuring the always-marvelous Christina Hendricks as Saffron.
What did everybody else think?
Quote from: Spooky on June 08, 2010, 10:58:21 AM
I posted it at the OB as well. Lets see if Arlo remains a hypocrite and continues to not comment on any of my Firefly related posts, but continues to comment on my posts in the poli threads.
That was excellent and once again I am drawn back into the verse. God, I love this show!
Arlo can remain bitter and alone... I am firmly entrenched with the joy of Firefly :soapbox:
I liked River dancing .
Heh , "Riverdance"
:D
Quote from: AdmiralDigby on July 08, 2010, 05:07:11 PM
I liked River dancing .
Heh , "Riverdance"
:D
Miss Glau could pretty much do anything and I think I'd like it.
Quote from: Spooky on July 08, 2010, 06:48:26 PM
Quote from: AdmiralDigby on July 08, 2010, 05:07:11 PM
I liked River dancing .
Heh , "Riverdance"
:D
Miss Glau could pretty much do anything and I think I'd like it.
(http://www.moviewatchlist.com/cast_gallery/images/Summer%20Glau.jpg)
Gee , I wonder why ?
;)
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-6-our-mrs-reynolds (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-6-our-mrs-reynolds)
'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 6: 'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
By sepinwall
Tuesday, Jul 13, 2010
Once again, we're spending Tuesdays this summer revisiting Joss Whedon's space Western "Firefly," and this week brings with it a very familiar face from another show that's about to become a staple of the blog this summer. A review of "Our Mrs. Reynolds" coming up just as soon as I kill you with my pinkie...
"But she was naked! And... articulate!" -Mal
When Christina Hendricks strutted her way across the halls of Sterling Cooper in the "Mad Men" pilot, she was a revelation to most viewers. Who was this confident, sexy, hyper-competent redhead, and where had she been hiding all these years?
Anyone who came to "Mad Men" after "Firefly" was much less surprised.
Hendricks is, in a word, fantastic as Saffron, the not-so-innocent bride who's fixing to steal every inch of Serenity out from under its flustered captain and his amused crew. She's completely believable both in Saffron's pose as the shy farm girl and then her true face as a slick super-villain who's every bit as talented and versatile as Joan Holloway, and her presence allows Joss Whedon and director Vondie Curtis-Hall to push the show into its most overtly comic direction yet.
"Our Mrs. Reynolds" is just a hilarious episode, from start (a cross-dressing Mal bickering with Jayne) to finish (the priceless look on Inara's face when she realizes how completely Mal misunderstood how she got the poison on her lips), and all the way in between (Book's repeated warnings about "the very special Hell" remain my favorite). Nathan Fillion gets ample opportunity to play flustered - dig his reaction to hearing this woman say "I swell to think of you in me" - and once Hendricks gets to play the switch from Saffron's acting job to her real personality (or as close as she lets anyone get), she has a number of wonderful comic moments, like her frustration at realizing that Wash, like Mal, isn't going to try to have sex with her and she'll have to resort to Plan B.
I had wondered if the episode wouldn't play as well going in knowing about the short con Saffron's running, but in some ways, it's even more fun to see how she twists Mal, Wash and Jayne into knots, knowing that it's deliberate. And her presence exposes sides of several major characters we hadn't quite seen before. Mal discloses details of his past he wouldn't have told anyone else, and in his reluctance to accept this beautiful gift he's been given, we see another of those lines that this unapologetic thief won't cross. Though we knew Zoe was the dominant partner in her marriage to Wash, her frustration with his reaction to Saffron gives us a better sense of their dynamics (and another impeccably-phrased line for Gina Torres to deliver in "You know that sex we were planning to have, ever again?"). Book takes on more of a paternal role among the crew, and Inara's love for Mal becomes even more overt (and funnier) as she becomes jealous of Saffron, and then(*) grateful when Mal turns out not to be dead.
(*) And in between, she pretends to be falling for Saffron's seduction attempt in a fine piece of fan service.
On the other hand, Jayne? Jayne just wants the pretty redhead, and will trade his best gun Vera for her. And Vera comes into play for one of the show's cooler action beats, as he has to take out the control hub of the web-ship while shooting through a space suit so Vera will have the necessary oxygen to fire. I don't know if that's scientifically-accurate (paging "MythBusters"...), but the visual is great - like a deadly ventriliquist's dummy.
After Serenity is saved, Mal tracks down Saffron to retrieve the stolen shuttle, and in the process gets her to reveal something of herself. She doesn't give up her real name, but when he asks why she would go to such convoluted lengths to make cash, she replies, "You're assuming the payoff is the point." Most people who wind up in a frontier, be it the Old West, or the outer planets and moons of the post-Earth 'verse, are there because they have no better options available to them. But there are some there for the adventure and freedom the frontier provides. Saffron had companion training, but instead wound up as a con woman and thief (a kind of blurring of the lines between Mal and Inara), and whether she was forced into that life initially or not, she clearly relishes the game more than the prize, and that makes her very dangerous, and very memorable.
Saffron returns in a later episode (and that's as much as we'll say on that score for the sake of any newcomers), and it's easy to imagine a different timeline where "Firefly" ran longer and she appeared more and more frequently as a hindrance to the Serenity crew. Alas, we never got that timeline, but Hendricks eventually did find another role that fit her as well as this one.
Some other thoughts:
* Interesting to see Mal and Jayne enjoying each other's company at the post-mission shindig. It helps that booze was involved, but generally these are two who barely tolerate each other.
* In going back over my notes, I didn't make a single mention of River, though she does appear in a priceless deleted scene where she demands that Book marry her and Simon. Is Summer Glau in the final cut at all, even in the background?
* As one of Saffron's partners with the net, Benito Martinez doesn't fare much better than Glau, getting a couple of lines of dialogue before he and his partner are blown out into the vacuum of space by Jayne and Vera.
* With Book's knowledge of how the space-net works, we get another hint about his mysterious past
Up next: "Jaynestown," a spotlight episode for everyone's favorite crude, hair gun-namer, known to some as "the hero of Canton."
Great ep .
My first one , and only the last ten minutes at that .
And I was hooked 100% .
It aired an hour later from a more western feed so I was able to catch the whole thing .
Next day I started telling anyone who'd listen to watch next Friday .
I was also able to get the previous eps from a friend of mine who'd been pimping Joss at me for years but I was very resistant .
Space cowboys ?
A gay vampire ?
A cheerleader who stabs him ?
Who the fark watches that crap ?
But I relented and now here I am .
All the better for it because of the friends I've made due to a failed tv show .
:)
All the better for it because of the friends I've made due to a failed tv show .
QFE, as the big guy might say.
Quote from: TinkTanker on July 15, 2010, 12:35:09 PM
All the better for it because of the friends I've made due to a failed tv show .
QFE, as the big guy might say.
Now you're making me cry ...
The joy that the show has brought me pales in comparison to the friends I've gained from Firefly.
Quote from: TinkTanker on July 16, 2010, 06:39:55 AM
The joy that the show has brought me pales in comparison to the friends I've gained from Firefly.
True dat
Oh , so very true .
Imaginary friends pale when set against the true ones .
( Morena notwithstanding )
First of all, I think this is Sepinwall's best review. All Christina Hendricks needed was a big break. I think she got it with Saffron, but she is really smoldering in Mad Men (which I don't watch anymore cause I just don't like watching a show with retards, her excluded). OMR is practically perfect for plot twist and comedy, and it became my favorite episode for a while. (We haven't even gotten to the brilliant Minear-penned OOG yet!)
FF was the one Joss show I could not get pimped on. I was a huge Buffy & Angel fan, but Fox made FF look so stupid. I don't regret it: I got to watch the eps the way they were meant to be seen, I got in the fandom right when the movie was being made. The timing was perfect. I've gained kindred friends...and I gained a husband! How did THAT happen?!
I think she got it with Saffron, but she is really smoldering in Mad Men (which I don't watch anymore cause I just don't like watching a show with retards).
Then maybe you find some other people to watch it with. :neener:
Quote from: TinkTanker on July 16, 2010, 09:19:28 AM
Then maybe you find some other people to watch it with. :neener:
(http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs504.snc3/26508_319500964169_319499284169_3340554_8133232_n.jpg)
Oheywaitaminute ...
Quote from: TinkTanker on July 16, 2010, 09:19:28 AM
I think she got it with Saffron, but she is really smoldering in Mad Men (which I don't watch anymore cause I just don't like watching a show with retards).
Then maybe you find some other people to watch it with. :neener:
Hey, man!
Watching a broken marriage is not my idea of a good time. It's just a downer. Same with Breaking Bad. Watching a guy turn to a life of crime is not my idea of a good time. I've heard there's humor, but whatever. I can conjure up enough depression on my own. I stopped watching FX shows a couple years ago because they are just
depressing. I used to watch nip/tuck and Rescue Me weekly and I just got bored. I didn't even watch the last nip/tuck. Then again I watch Dexter and True Blood so what the hell do I know! :haha:
Check out Justified on FX. It's pretty awesome.
I don't watch Mad Men and I've seen two episodes of Breaking Bad. I did just get through tearing through all seven seasons of The Shield. In the beginning it was like "These are the good guys? How much longer can they get away with this gao se before they get caught?" and about the fifth season you realized they weren't getting away with it, it was all going to end badly, just how badly was the only question. Great show, very dark, but a very. very great show.
I'm just wondering who Pearl's been watching Mad Men with, since I've never seen an episode. :haha:
I only caught the first episode (or two?) of Justified, but enjoyed it quite a bit. I just keep forgetting to watch.
I did watch a few episodes of Justified, but it didn't hold my interest, and I am a fan of Olyphant's work. I watched a few of The Shield. I did like the first preview where Michael Chiklis says to the perp in the interrogation room that "good cop's gone for the day." Then he throws a phone book at him. "You're the police!" I had to check out of there though. It got too heavy. Deadwood and Dexter, not so much, and that's some heavy drama. What gives? I think I just like the characters too much.
But we digress...
Quote from: Eric on July 16, 2010, 11:34:16 AM
I'm just wondering who Pearl's been watching Mad Men with, since I've never seen an episode. :haha:
While you were fighting demons and completing quests, hello? :ninja:
Quote from: Pearl@32 on July 16, 2010, 11:40:23 AM
Quote from: Eric on July 16, 2010, 11:34:16 AM
I'm just wondering who Pearl's been watching Mad Men with, since I've never seen an episode. :haha:
While you were fighting demons and completing quests, hello? :ninja:
E is a Rouge Demon Hunter?
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-7-jaynestown (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-7-jaynestown)
'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 7: 'Jaynestown'
By sepinwall
Tuesday, Jul 20, 2010
Once again, we're spending Tuesdays this summer revisiting Joss Whedon's space Western "Firefly." A review of "Jaynestown" coming up just as soon as I stop describing you...
"Well there ain't people like that. There's just people like me." -Jayne
I'm always a sucker for stories that reveal the hidden depth of characters previously used only for comic relief, so "Jaynestown" was right up my alley.
To this point in the series, Jayne has been a clown - a very big, scary clown, but a clown nonetheless. (Or, if you prefer Simon's description, "a trained ape without the training.") He's good with a gun in his hands (or simply with his hands), but no one on the crew can stand him (and vice versa), and to call him stupid would be, as Wanda Gershwitz once said, an insult to stupid people. His function on the show thus far has been to be occasionally useful in the action sequences (like using Vera to save the day last week), but mainly to provide laughs.
And for a long stretch of "Jaynestown," that's what he continues to do. He left the factory settlement of Canton believing the people there saw him the way everyone else (rightly) does: as a villain. Instead, his desperate attempt to escape capture has been misinterpreted so that he's the Robin Hood-esque hero of the mudders, and after some initial confusion (shared by the rest of the crew(*)), Jayne quickly learns to embrace the spoils of hero worship: free booze (and not the horrible "mudders' milk" everyone else drinks), eager women and adulation everywhere he goes.
(*) This is a very funny episode for Sean Maher as Simon struggles to accept that the trained ape is celebrated and adored, while the best he ever got from his medical work was a hamster named after him.
Adam Baldwin milks Jayne's delight at the unlikely turn of events for every laugh that it's worth. But there comes a moment, around the point where he hears about the riot the mudders had to prevent Magistrate Higgins from tearing down the statue, where the joke starts to turn ever so serious - when we realize just how badly Jayne wants to be the hero for once, and also how everyone's kind sentiments seems to be rekindling feelings and morality that were dormant inside Jayne Cobb for a very, very long time.
And when the Jayne Day celebration is interrupted by the return of Jayne's ex-partner Stitch, who tells the good people of Canton what really went down during that heist, an unexpected emotion crosses Jayne's face: shame. He wants this adulation, and it hurts him to have the townsfolk find out who he really is. And it hurts even worse when one of mudders - even after hearing the true story, and hearing Jayne acknowledge that truth - takes a bullet Stitch meant for Jayne, because believing in the hero of Canton had become more important than the facts.
As Mal tells a confused and guilt-ridden Jayne back on Serenity, there came a point where the story ceased to be about him and became about the downtrodden mudders' need to have something to inspire them through an existence that Jayne aptly describes as "the shortest end of the stick ever been offered a soul in this crap universe." They say that history is written by the winners, but in this case, the losers get to tell the tale, and in their version of history, there's a man out there in the stars who showed them a kindness no one else ever had and stood up to their oppressors in a way they can't.
Jayne can't understand that, but Mal can, because he's a loser himself (and, unlike Jayne, self-aware enough to acknowledge this). So is Shepherd Book, who's clearly running from something bad, and who tells River that faith isn't about logical consistency; "It's about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life." The mudders used their belief in Jayne to make their existence slightly more palatable, and, as a wise man would put it, I guess that's something.
"Firefly" is in many ways a celebration of losers who try to make the best of horrible circumstances, and in moving that subtext to the forefront, "Jaynestown" becomes one of the series' most memorable, entertaining and surprisingly moving episodes.
Some other thoughts:
The non-Jayne subplots in this one are a mixed bag. Kaylee and Simon's flirting and misunderstanding remains charming, though it's starting to get repetitive at this point. Inara's story with the magistrate's son is a reminder that sex is only one part of the service a companion offers, but it's mainly a plot device to let the ship escape (and to give the magistrate face time before he hears that Jayne's back). Book and River's interaction back on the ship is amusing (particularly her understandable reaction to his wild hair) and an interesting contrast between what society considers insanity (Rivers' illogical behavior) and what it doesn't (the inconsistencies of the Bible, which even Book will acknowledge even as he defends his faith in it). And I love Summer Glau's delivery of "Just keep walking, preacher-man."
A few notable guest stars in this one. Gregory Itzin (Magistrate Higgins) is of course best known for playing President Logan on "24," while Kevin Gage (Stitch) was the unsettling Waingro in "Heat."
Among "Firefly" fandom, one of the most enduring parts of the episode is "The Ballad of Jayne" itself, and I like how the score features a subdued instrumental version of it during Mal and Jayne's talk on the catwalk.
It seems somewhat random that Zoe would stay with the ship while Wash joined the expedition into town, but it does give Alan Tudyk something to do, including the wonderful line, "We gotta go to the crappy town where I'm a hero!"
Coming up next: "Out of Gas," probably my favorite episode of the series. Next Tuesday will be the first day of the TV critics' press tour, and I'm hoping that event (and Comic-Con before it) won't disrupt regularly-scheduled summer programming like this, but there's a chance the "Firefly" schedule may become a bit irregular for a few weeks until I'm back home. I'll do what I can, when I can.
What did everybody else think?
@ Spooky: Wesley Wyndham Price: what a character arc. Over TWO shows, too! It was the best job he ever had, he got the girl (Alyson).
"Well there ain't people like that. There's just people like me." -Jayne :'(
Jaynestown: a gem of writing from Ben Edlund.
(http://talkpsoriasis.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=20634&stc=1&d=1213984688)
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-8-out-of-gas (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-8-out-of-gas)
'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 8: 'Out of Gas'
By sepinwall
Tuesday, Jul 27, 2010
Once again, we're spending Tuesdays this summer revisiting Joss Whedon's sci-fi Western "Firefly," and even though I'm burnt out from Comic-Con and swamped with TV critics press tour prep, I couldn't push the schedule since this week's episode is my favorite of the series, "Out of Gas." A review coming up just as soon as I give you all my caveats and addendums...
"Mal, you don't have to die alone." -Inara
"Everybody dies alone." -Mal
Fox, for reasons still passing understanding, shelved the original "Firefly" pilot and therefore deprived Joss Whedon, Tim Minear and company the chance to start the series showing how Simon, River and Shepherd Book came to be traveling on Serenity. So while waiting for the network to finally get around to airing "Serenity," Minear decided to go further back in time to give us an origin story for how the other characters came together aboard this beautiful but unreliable little ship. And in the process of providing all this backstory, he put together an hour that captures everything that's great about the series, starting with the old-fashioned machismo of Mr. Nathan Fillion.
I'm happy that Fillion has found success with "Castle." It's a fun show and he's certainly fantastic with the banter and Unresolved Sexual Tension and mixture of charm and obnoxious behavior. But I watch an episode like this and it makes me realize how much more Fillion has to show that "Castle" doesn't take advantage of, and that the role of Mal Reynolds absolutely did.
As we've talked about before, Mal Reynolds is a hard man making his living in a very hard place. He's fast with the quips and will play the buffoon for Zoe or Inara, but he knows well how tough he has to be to survive out on the rim. And Fillion captures that toughness and resolution perfectly, spending a large chunk of the episode staggering around Serenity, bleeding from a bullet to the gut, trapped in an empty, dying ship with no recourse but to keep moving, lest he doom himself and, probably, his absent crew.
Watching Fillion do so much solo work in this episode, working with props, injecting himself with adrenaline, and even taking on the bandit crew of the other ship on his own, actually reminded me of Steve McQueen, who in many ways is the gold standard for Hollywood tough guys. McQueen wasn't nearly as big as Fillion is(*), but the way he carried himself, and how effective he was in silence and/or working alone (for instance, all his time in the cooler in "The Great Escape") always made it clear that he was the most rugged, dangerous man in any room. There's a belief in this business that America simply doesn't produce actors like McQueen anymore, which is why we so often have to reach out to Australia for tough guy leading men, but Fillion (UPDATE: who, as a reader reminded me, is Canadian) is McQueen-style tough, and that's about the highest compliment I can pay to an actor on a show like this.
(*) At a Comic-Con party, Adam Baldwin briefly introduced me to Fillion, and standing between those two guys was one of the few times that weekend I felt short.
But if Fillion spends the spine of "Out of Gas" working alone, the rest of the episode is all about showing how lucky Mal is to have this surrogate family traveling the rim with him, watching his back (and vice versa) and making sure this hard, solitary man is never quite as alone as he believes himself to be.
The three-timelines structure could be needlessly convoluted, but Minear's script, David Solomon's direction and the editing and camerawork flow seamlessly between them, as if Mal were moving through time while also moving through Serenity. He enters a room in the present, and the camera moves to show us that same room in the distant past, or even hours earlier. He raises his hands in surrender in the present and suddenly we see him and Zoe making the same gesture to Jayne on their first meeting. It's all one fluid story, feeling very much like the memories of a man convinced (with reasonable justification) that he's about to die alone and trying very hard not to.
The flashbacks to the formation of the crew show us different sides to the gang, and in some cases different looks. Wash has a mustache and a loud Hawaiian shirt, while Inara's wardrobe in the past is more Middle East than Far East. We also see relationships in a different state than now. Wash bothers Zoe, but that's just, I assume, her brain taking a while to realize how much she's attracted to him. Jayne is show to be more talented than he sometimes comes across as while working alongside Mal and Zoe, and Inara sets a series of groundrules that we've seen Mal repeatedly violate. And Kaylee's introduction - as the "prairie harpie" having sex in the engine room with Bester, then proving to be a better mechanic than him - completely reshaped my view of her interactions with Simon. It's not that she's this shy, fragile virgin who's afraid to talk to the cute boy; it's just that she's intimidated by the massive class difference.
And the more recent flashbacks to how Serenity came to be in this predicament(**) show how close the original crew, and the new passengers have become - hell, even Jayne is enjoying himself at Simon's impromptu birthday celebration - and therefore how much more Mal has to lose here. It's not just about this ship, or his own life, but the people he's chosen to spend it with, and who will likely die once the air on their short-range shuttles runs out. Mal has something to fight for besides himself, and that purpose helps drive him, and in turn drives the two shuttles to eventually turn around to save Mal once he's no longer in a condition to save himself.
(**) Via the breakdown of a part that Kaylee complained about in the pilot.
Just a fantastic episode, from beginning to end (including the series' strongest musical score), and one I could watch over and over and over again.
A few other thoughts:
River and Book have the least plot utility both weeks, which means one or both are usually marginalized in any given episode, but this is the second ep in a row with a pricless exchange between them, here with River trying to reassure Book: "You're afraid that we're going to run out of air. That we'll die gasping. But we won't. That's not going to happen... We'll freeze to death first."
Speaking of hilarity, I love how Wash and Mal's argument on the bridge has such momentum that Wash has to keep yelling at Mal even after he realizes Mal is right. It's a nice comic counterpoint to the earlier scene where Mal hurls Wash against the wall of the infirmary, which is itself a nice illustration of this rough world they live in where Mal has to be strong and do ugly things to survive.
Up next: The caper-style "Ariel," another series highlight. I hope press tour allows me a window to get that one done on time, but we shall see.
What did everybody else think?
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'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 9: 'Ariel'
By Alan Sepinwall
Tuesday, Aug 3, 2010
Once again, we're spending Tuesdays this summer revisiting Joss Whedon's outer space Western "Firefly." A review of "Ariel" coming up just as soon as I meditate on the wonders of my rock garden...
"Just once, I want things to go according to the gorram plan." -Mal
Though the plan goes awry as always, "Ariel" is actually a fairly simple episode of "Firefly"(*) - just a wonderfully-executed one. It's a straight-up caper episode, with a bit of "The A-Team"(**), disguises and rehearsal, and the gorram plan going awry when a member of the team (Jayne, of course) decides he wants more than his cut of the job.
(*) Which makes it fortuitous timing that we're covering it in a week when I'm too slammed by press tour to go more in-depth.
(**) Seriously, if you were the right age in the early '80s, there was no greater highlight to your TV week than the regular "A-Team" sequence where Hannibal would come up with a plan that required BA to go to a junkyard and weld, say, a bathtub and a Gatling gun together for some reason. I am therefore, to this day, a sucker for a sequence like Kaylee and Wash's trip to the junkyard and ensuing construction of a fake ambulance.
It's nice to see the show display the kind of versatility that would allow it to do "Out of Gas" and "Ariel" back-to-back, as well as shifting characters into different roles. Until the crew returns to Serenity at the end of the job, Simon essentially usurps Mal as both leaders of the crew and central character on the show. (Mal then reclaims both roles with authority with the way he deals with Jayne's obvious betrayal.) It's a good showcase for Sean Maher, a nice shakeup of the by-now familiar crew relationships, and also a reminder that Jayne isn't entirely to be trusted and therefore has the potential to throw a monkeywrench into any story at any time.
Simon gets to play hero for his sister, not only diagnosing what the Alliance did to her brain, but saving the random patient even at the risk of blowing his cover. Jayne becomes the villain, and then a hero himself with how he takes on two Alliance soldiers with both hands literally cuffed behind his back. (It helps, of course, that he has Simon and his knowledge of human anatomy to help out, but it's still a pretty bad-ass display by The Hero of Canton, The Man They Call Jayne.)
Though it's largely a Simon-centric episode, Adam Baldwin gets some of the choicest moments, including the long montage of Jayne rehearsing his one line of paramedic dialogue, beautifully paid off when the hospital nurse doesn't need to hear anything and Jayne blurts out his line reflexively. And of course there's arguably the episode's most memorable scene, in which Mal puts Jayne in his place. It's another sign of what we saw last week: that Mal Reynolds is a hard man who will take no half-measures to protect his crew, even if that means murdering one crewmember who threatened two others. And I truly believe Mal would have let Jayne get sucked out into the vacuum of space if Jayne hadn't said what he did about wanting Mal to make up a story for the crew. Yes, Jayne's low-down and ruthless enough to sell out Simon and River - and dumb enough to not predict an Alliance double-cross - but the events of "Jaynestown" have clearly had an effect on him. He's starting to care about how other people see him - in part because he's starting to care about other people, period. He doesn't consider River and Simon to be true members of the crew, but we know he has affection for Kaylee, and he respects Zoe and Mal (and, yes, fears Mal, too), and he feels shamed when Simon praises him for saving the day in the security substation. If Jayne's concern switches from survival to how the crew remembers him, then perhaps there's hope for him yet; hence Mal letting him off with a warning in the end.
The men with the blue gloves return, and we find out the lengths that the Alliance is willing to go to not only get River back, but to erase any human contact she had during her time on the run. Clearly, they're afraid of something in her head, and now that Simon has started to figure out how to make that head think more clearly, she's about to become even more of a threat to the Alliance, and vice versa.
A few other thoughts on "Ariel":
- Ron Glass does not appear, as Shepherd Book is off meditating. I don't know if "Firefly" was an early show in the recent trend of not contracting every actor for every episode, or if Glass simply had a scheduling conflict and production realized they didn't need him for a week.
- As Simon goes to save the crashing patient, it's nice to see that some hospital show cliches will survive 500 years into the future.
Simon moving the holographic scans around with his hands was very reminiscent of "Minority Report," which came out the summer before "Firefly" debuted.
-Jewel Staite has several very Kaylee moments in the episode, but my favorite is when Inara returns from her physical and Kaylee quickly runs down all that's happened while she was gone like it's no big deal.
Up next: "War Stories," in which Wash starts to get a wee-bit jealous of his wife's close bond with the captain. I'll be recuperating from press tour in the early part of next week, so if I can't carve out time to get this done before I fly home, it may be late.
What did everybody else think?
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'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 10: 'War Stories'
By Alan Sepinwall
Tuesday, Aug 10, 2010
It's time for another review of Joss Whedon's outer space Western "Firefly." My thoughts on "War Stories" coming up just as soon as I'm fired from a fry cook opportunity...
"What this marriage needs is one more shouting match." -Zoe
"No, what this marriage needs is one less husband." -Wash
Joss Whedon shows often deal with the tension between alpha males and beta males, between the guys who want the heroines vs. the guys the heroines want. (Think Xander/Buffy/Angel in the early days of that show.) "Firefly" offers a twist on that arrangement. There's a tough heroine in Zoe, and a strapping alpha Mal and a goofy beta Wash, but Zoe's with Wash, not Mal. Her love of the captain has always been platonic/professional in nature, and her heart belongs to the semi-muscular man in the loud shirts. But because their marriage exists on a ship where Mal is in charge, and where Wash is daily exposed to his wife having an intimate bond with a man who intimidates him, the tension still exists, and "War Stories" confronts it head on.
Alan Tudyk has to this point been largely asked to play comic relief. There's still a lot of that in this one as Wash makes a nuisance of himself on the mission to unload the last of the medical supplies. But Tudyk finally gets to do some very strong dramatic work as Wash loses his patience with Zoe and Mal, and particularly as Wash comes to recognize during his shared ordeal of torture just what it is that his wife worships in the captain. He recognizes that Mal was being strong enough for the both of them, trying to distract Wash from the electro-shocks by taunting him with hints about a wartime affair with Zoe. And having started the episode so eager to get his wife away from Captain Tightpants, Wash becomes determined to risk his life to save Mal's. Zoe and Jayne are still the ones who do the bulk of the killing, but Wash finds his inner alpha male for the day, and the Serenity crew lives to fly another day.
Michael Fairman makes a welcome return as Niska, here even more obsessed with torture, to the point where he begins to resemble Christopher Guest's Count Rugen from "The Princess Bride." (And as we learned in "Out of Gas," Mal is one tough hombre, so it's cool but not surprising to see him capable of standing and fighting even after being the victim of Niska's special machine.) Niska escapes through means that aren't entirely clear in the editing, and had the show lasted longer, he would have made an excellent recurring villain. At least "Firefly" was around long enough to give him an encore, in a much stronger overall episode than "The Train Job."
And Niska is at the center of another of those wonderful "Firefly" moments where Joss and company are determined to subvert the cliches of action movies and thrillers. Mal is a man who will shoot someone in the head rather than waste time negotiating, and Zoe is a woman who will not hesitate in choosing her husband over her captain, rather than agonize over the decision the way Niska (and the audience) might expect her to.
(There's a similar, very funny beat in the climax, when Zoe assumes it's important to Mal that he kill the torturer himself, only for Mal to call out, "No it's not!" so that Zoe, Jayne and Wash can all take the guy out.)
The episode ends with everything mended in the Zoe/Wash marriage, but not before Mal and Zoe share a hilariously wooden embrace as Mal teases Wash about his suggestion that their problems would be solved if the captain and his first mate had sex already.
"War Stories" is the last of a four-episode run that's the creative peak of "Firefly." There will be plenty of goodness to come, but these four, together, showed just how great the series was capable of being, and made the inevitable cancellation sting that much more.
Some other thoughts:
- Simon and Book open the episode wondering what the Alliance was doing to River, and we get a big clue in the climax, when River picks up the gun dropped by a terrified Kaylee and, with her eyes closed, shoots three of Niska's men dead. At the start of the episode, Kaylee and River are playfully chasing each other like sisters - with Mal as the dad warning the kids to cool it with the rough-housing - but at the end, Kaylee's clearly spooked to be around her.
- And I also thought it was a good character moment for Kaylee that she simply couldn't participate in the gunfight, much as she wanted to. Not everyone in the 'verse is going to be a willing and capable fighter - least of all a sunny, optimistic mechanic - and the show has enough other strong women that I have no problem showing Kaylee as someone who doesn't have it in her. (It's not like Simon was much more helpful, anyway.)
- Shepherd Book, meanwhile, shows off more non-priestly skills as he breaks down the murder scene like a trained CSI, then proves an expert marksman in kneecapping Niska's men during the space station raid. He may be a preacher now, but clearly there was so much more there.
- Note that Jayne is still feeling guilty about his "Ariel" shenanigans. He buys apples for the crew with his share, and though he criticizes Wash's plan as a suicide mission, he goes along to help and takes a bullet for his trouble. (And is later rewarded with Wash's abandoned soup because he's still capable of moving faster than Mal.)
- Jayne still ain't all that smart, though, and gets the line of the episode when he studies Mal's severed ear and asks, "What are we gonna do? Clone him?"
- After Inara briefly pretended to be open to Saffron's charms back in "Our Mrs. Reynolds," the show gives her the first female client that we've seen. The story doesn't add much other than a scene where Morena Baccarin gives a hot oil massage to an attractive blonde and then makes out with her, and while I'm sure certain segments of the audience would say "That's more than enough!," it does come across as a fairly transparent ratings ploy (albeit one that didn't work).
Coming up next: "Trash," featuring the return of another old frenemy.
What did everybody else think?
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'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 11: 'Trash'
By Alan Sepinwall
Tuesday, Aug 17, 2010
Once again, we're spending Tuesdays this summer revisiting Joss Whedon's outer space Western "Firefly." A review of "Trash coming up just as soon as I have another exciting adventure in sitting...
"It ain't a hand of cards. It's called a life." -Mal
I don't remember this episode.
I mean, I remember Mal sitting naked on the rock, and I had some vague recollection that Saffron came back a second time, but the rest of it? Nada.
Now, "Trash" was one of three episodes that didn't air during the original Fox run (which jumped from "War Stories" to "Objects in Space" to the belated airing of the pilot), but I know I watched the other two unaired eps ("The Message" and "Heart of Gold") when I got the DVD set, and I know I've seen the naked rock scene, so... it's a mystery. Even if that scene wound up in a DVD special feature I saw at one point, I have no idea why I would have skipped the episode itself at the time I was marathoning the rest of the series.
But it's also a very pleasant surprise. As happened with the "Undeclared" rewatch Fienberg and I did for the podcast (where I realized I had never seen "God Visits" before), I discovered years after the fact that there was still original content for me to enjoy. And for that reason alone, I'm glad I made this show one of the summer DVD rewinds, because who knows when else I would've had the excuse to dive back into that old boxed set and make this discovery? (Even if I had a few spare hours and the inclination, I likely would have just cherrypicked my favorite episodes like "Out of Gas.")
So where I went into my "Our Mrs. Reynolds" rewatch knowing that Saffron was up to no good, and that the crew would escape her trap with a well-aimed shot by Vera, I honestly had no idea where this one was going - other than the inevitable betrayal by "YoSaffBridge" - and therefore got to enjoy the surprise of Saffron getting played by Mal and Inara, and of the gorram plan actually working out with minimal difficulty for once. Mal loses his clothes, sure, but he doesn't seem to mind being naked around the crew (nor would I if I were built like Nathan Fillion), and they get the loot with far fewer wrinkles than the medicine heist in "Ariel."
"Trash" is more straightforward caper story than comedy - though it does have some very funny moments, like Wash's confusion (which later turns out to have been staged) over why they're talking to Saffron, or the River/Jayne interactions - and probably not as fun an episode overall as "Our Mrs. Reynolds." But Christina Hendricks is still a delight as Saffron, and Mal's flustered response to his naive bombshell of a bride is effectively replaced by the gamesmanship between the two now that Mal knows what she really is. I particularly like that Saffron is able to more than hold her own in a brawl with Mal, showing that she can be just as dangerous fighting as flirting.
And after Simon masterminded the heist in "Ariel" and Book became a key member of the rescue team in "War Stories," it was nice to see Inara play an integral role in this job as the failsafe. And in hindsight, the scene where Saffron breaks away from Mal to eavesdrop on Zoe and Inara turns out to have been part of the sting, on both Saffron and us. We know Inara and Mal have issues - their argument in her shuttle is not staged (since Saffron's still in a crate), and feels reminiscent of past tensions between the two - and we know that as a law-abiding Companion, she's the one who holds the biggest grudge against a rogue Companion like Saffron. So it's completely plausible that she would distance herself as much as possible from the job, and therefore be a complete surprise as the last person standing between Saffron and the priceless pistol.
As I said of Niska last week, one of the many things that's a shame about the series' swift cancellation is that we didn't get many more years of Saffron turning up to cause trouble for Mal and the gang, sometimes winning and sometimes losing - sometimes seeming sincere, and mostly ruthless. Still, things turned out okay for Hendricks in the end, didn't they?
Some other thoughts:
Because I had never seen (or had forgotten) most of the episode, perhaps the most surprising part was Simon coming to realize, with River's help, what Jayne was really up to during the "Ariel" heist. A nice scene, illustrating the fundamental difference between Mal (who shows Jayne the closed fist of a death threat) and Simon (who tries to win him over with the open hand of a promise to do no harm), and with a good punchline courtesy of River.
Jayne's ear-flap hat makes another appearance. Always a pleasure to see that ugly thing.
Because of the floating city, and the maneuver Wash, Kaylee and Jayne have to do to swap the garbage drone's chip, this episode felt more FX-heavy than most of the previous ones. Which makes this as good an episode as any to ask what people think of the show's FX-style, which doesn't look quite like any other spaceship series or movie I can think of.
One thing I neglected to comment on in the "War Stories" review is that the episode cleverly managed to divest the crew of most of their "Ariel" loot. That way, the status quo of a desperate crew living job-to-job wouldn't change. There's a brief reference in "The Message" to Mal having trouble fencing the Lassiter pistol, but I think that's the only mention of it in the final episodes, meaning the writers didn't have to contrive another reason to keep the crew from being fat and happy for a while. And speaking of "The Message"...
Up next: "The Message," in which Mal and Zoe get a shocking reminder of their time together in the war.
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'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 12: 'The Message'
By Alan Sepinwall
Tuesday, Aug 24, 2010
We're in the home stretch now on our summer run through Joss Whedon's outer space Western "Firefly." (My hope is that my schedule allows me to do a post on the "Serenity" movie when we're done, but we'll have to see where things stand in a few weeks.) A review of "The Message" coming up just as soon as someone steals my mustache...
"When you can't run, you crawl. And when you can't crawl... when you can't do that..." -Tracey
"You find someone to carry you." -Zoe
After the complicated con games of "Trash," Whedon and Tim Minear teamed up to write "The Message," which starts out seeming just as complicated with its not-quite-dead corpses and crooked Alliance cops, but ultimately turns out to be a fairly simple story of comrades-in-arms struggling to build lives for themselves after the war ends.
Mal and Zoe have done okay for themselves. Zoe has a husband, and Mal has created this surrogate family in the Serenity crew, but what helps keep them going forward is that bond that so troubled Wash back in "War Stories." Mal and Zoe have other people, but more importantly, they have each other. They're always with someone who fought with the browncoats, who know about the exploding apples and the lieutenant's arms and all these other things that you can't entirely explain to people who weren't there. And that helps keep them sane.
Tracey doesn't seem to have had that. He drifted through post-war life, bouncing from job to job until he got the crazy idea of becoming part of an artificially-grown organ smuggling ring - and then the crazier idea of double-crossing his partners to make the score bigger. So he winds up seemingly dead aboard Serenity, and then roping Mal and Zoe and the rest into his trouble with Lt. Womack. And because he hasn't been with Mal and Zoe for years, nor with the crew they've surrounded themselves with, he's out of sync with the way they operate and makes the fatal mistake of assuming Mal is going to turn him in, when what we've seen of Malcolm Reynolds over these dozen episodes is that he would rather die than hand over a friend in trouble to the Alliance.
"The Message" was the last episode of the series to be produced, and the sense of melancholy that Whedon, Minear and company must have had making it fits nicely with the funereal tone of the story. Early in the episode, Mal and Zoe think they're taking an old friend home for a burial, and though he turns out to still be alive, that condition is sadly temporary, and the journey concludes as they originally planned it to. It's not an elaborate story, but it's a very effective one, and Gina Torres and Nathan Fillion show you just how much pain these two still carry from the war, and how much it hurts to have to put down a fellow veteran - even if, as Mal so eloquently puts it, "You murdered yourself. I just carried the bullet a while."
Some other thoughts:
Richard Burgi makes an effectively eeeevil villain as Lt. Womack, and I like how the chase scene between his ship and Serenity takes on the feel of a submarine thriller, with Serenity trying to hide from the depth charges Womack keeps tossing. Westerns were the obvious storytelling model for the series, but at various points it took on the trappings of a caper movie, or various kinds of war films. Joss is versatile, apparently.
I complained in some of the early reviews about my dislike of the Mal/Inara relationship, but it's thus far gotten less play than I had remembered. (That will, of course, change with next week's Inara-centric episode.) On the other hand, I had forgotten just how repetitive the Simon/Kaylee relationship got. Simon and Kaylee flirt nervously, all is going well, and then Simon says something that inadvertently hurts Kaylee's feelings, lather, rinse, repeat. Here it's used to set up Kaylee's attraction to Tracey - and then to turn her into his hostage when he misunderstands what Mal is up to - but had the series gone on much longer, I would hope that Whedon would have started doing something different with the two of them.
One of Joss' rules that separated "Firefly" from most other space series that had come before is that there were no aliens. Everyone was a human, descended from the people who emigrated from the Earth that was. Which then allowed for the joke about the carnival barker on the space station showing off an alleged alien fetus that, as Simon helpfully explained, was really just a cow fetus.
Jayne's acceptance of the crew, and vice versa, that began with the lessons he learned in "Jaynestown," continues apace here with the crew being (mostly) kind about the ugly knit earflap hat his mom sends him (which Lt. Womack later insults to save face after Mal and Book outwit him), then with Jayne bonding with Shepherd Book about his mortality.
Because the show filmed in and around Los Angeles, and because it fit the Western motif, all of the outer planets and moons we've seen so far have been arid, dusty places, so it's almost shocking to see snow falling on the moon where Tracey's family lives.
Coming up next: The last of the unaired episodes, "Heart of Gold," in which Inara recruits Mal and company to help out an old friend.
What did everybody else think?
"Out of Gas" is by far and away one of the best hours on television EVER. EV-ER.
If you were not totally in love with this show already, you fell in love with it all over again.
Uses the lines "Hi-larious" and "Not so much."
While I miss Firefly, I'm glad that Nathan doesn't have to be all tortured all the time anymore like his old job. ;)
Fave moments:
"He bothers me."
"What's that, sir?" "Freedom, that's what." "No, I meant, what's that?"
<Jayne shooting the guy's leg while not looking>
"So there is kissing?" <smile>
"That's the last time you get to call me 'whore.'"
<Jayne's beat before leaving Mal for one of the shuttles>
"We'll be here."
"Wanna?" <---squee moment
re: "War Stories"
What, no mention of the Councilor? >:D Or the infamous line that sparked the Bunkmates? :doh:
"War Stories" has one of the most awesome commentaries.
"This next part is brought to you by black, the color of night." ~ Nathan, referring to the "fade to black" after the opening credits
Quote from: Pearl@32 on August 26, 2010, 12:57:57 PM
"Out of Gas" is by far and away one of the best hours on television EVER. EV-ER.
If you were not totally in love with this show already, you fell in love with it all over again.
Uses the lines "Hi-larious" and "Not so much."
While I miss Firefly, I'm glad that Nathan doesn't have to be all tortured all the time anymore like his old job. ;)
Fave moments:
"He bothers me."
"What's that, sir?" "Freedom, that's what." "No, I meant, what's that?"
<Jayne shooting the guy's leg while not looking>
"So there is kissing?" <smile>
"That's the last time you get to call me 'ji nu.'"
<Jayne's beat before leaving Mal for one of the shuttles>
"We'll be here."
"Wanna?" <---squee moment
O0
Best episode .
http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-13-heart-of-gold (http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-13-heart-of-gold)
'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 13: 'Heart of Gold'
By Alan Sepinwall
Tuesday, Aug 31, 2010
Almost done with our summer trip through Joss Whedon's outer space Western "Firefly" (which will definitely extend an extra week, since I watched the "Serenity" film yesterday with a friend), with a review of "Heart of Gold" coming up just as soon as I sneak up on a fellow while he's handling his weapon...
"Well, lady, I must say: you're my kind of stupid." -Mal
"Heart of Gold," like "Shindig" before it, is heavy on both the Mal/Inara sexual tension and Old West imagery. (In fact, it's the first episode with unmistakably Western trappings since the opening scenes of "Our Mrs. Reynolds.") Yet where both those aspects bothered me in "Shindig," I quite like "Heart of Gold."
What's the difference? A couple of things. First, on the Mal/Inara front, "Heart of Gold" isn't full of the banter between the two of them that's meant to be cute and charming but comes out mean and ugly. It takes the characters' repressed feelings for each other seriously, and in showing Inara's grief-stricken response to the knowledge that Mal slept with her friend Nandi(*), it makes clear just how deep those feelings flow from her side. This isn't an episode trying to tell me two people are in love when I don't really want to see them together; it's showing me how messy their emotions are and how hard it is to have them in the arrangement they have.
(*) Melinda Clarke, in between Lady Heather from "CSI" and Julie Cooper from "The O.C."
Second, by explaining that Rance Burgess(**) is a rich man who's moved out to the rim so he can live out his cowboy fantasies, it helps justify doing an episodic riff on the defending-the-fort Western archetype.(***) I still think the Western stuff works better as metaphor than as a literal translation on the show, but if part of the idea is that the rim is filled with spoiled rich men like Burgess who have taken the exodus from Earth as an excuse to role play, then it doesn't seem quite as ridiculous.
(**) Fredric Lane, shortly before he played Marshal Mars on "Lost."
(***) The best of these is Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo," with John Wayne, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson. It was so good, in fact, that Hawks and Wayne essentially remade it twice (as "El Dorado" and then "Rio Lobo") and no one much minded.
The Western trappings, and the focus on whores who, as Inara is quick to point out, are not Companions (even if Nandi was trained as one) also allows Joss and company to revisit one of his pet themes: the way women are treated in traditionally patriarchal societies. We've seen that the future of "Firefly" has balance in some areas: on the Alliance planets, the Companions have more power and prestige than most of their clients, while no one at any point comments on Zoe's gender when it comes to her skills as a soldier. One of the downsides of the freedom from civilization that Mal seeks is being in places like this where men can get away with viewing women as property, where Burgess can give a speech about how he intends to remind everyone "What a woman is to a man" right before he orders Shari the traitorous whore to perform oral sex on him in front of a frenzied crowd of mercenaries.
But the whores, with some help from Mal and the crew, turn out to be much tougher and more resourceful than Burgess took them for, and though Nandi dies, it's clear from Petaline's actions and attitude in killing Burgess that she's going to help carry on Nandi's tradition of strength and independence for the other ladies of the house.
Mal, meanwhile, finally has sex (remarkably deep into the series for a character nicknamed Captain Tightpants), then has to grieve Nandi's death along with Inara. And he has to see that his night with Nandi has pushed his complicated relationship with Inara past the breaking point, to where she decides it's time to leave.
Her desire to do so is something the series wouldn't have to deal with long-term, what with the cancellation and all, but it did lead to Morena Baccarin's strongest work of the run, and an hour that made me wish that I had gotten to see more of the evolution of Mal/Inara than "Serenity" could ultimately provide.
Some other thoughts:
While the movie would deal with Inara's departure from the ship, this episode hints at a storyline that we unfortunately never got to see: Zoe's desire to have a baby with Wash. There are many stories I would've loved to see if the show had kept going, but Zoe finding the balance between mother and warrior woman would have been high among them.
Some good Kaylee-related humor in this one, including her opinion of the male whores ("Isn't that thoughtful?"), and her need to get Wash to compliment her - "Were I unwed, I'd take you in a manly fashion" - because she feels lonely seeing so much of the crew paired off.
Also a very good Jayne episode. Yes, he immediately starts taking out his payment in trade, but he turns out to have chosen a simpatico whore (she gets aroused by talk of loading his pistols) and is his usual capable self during the fight.
I haven't had much time to browse the deleted scenes as I watch these episodes, but was there a bit that got cut where Kaylee has to fly Serenity while Wash runs the engines? That seemed to be what was being set up by their fight on the ship, with Wash locked on the wrong side of the galley, but there was never a payoff.
Back in "War Stories," Book justifies his gun-toting role in the rescue mission by noting that the Bible is fuzzy on the subject of kneecaps. I imagine it's much less fussy with his role here, where he's using a non-deadly weapon in the fire hose, but using it to set up Burgess's men to be killed by Zoe. Book's struggle to follow his faith as he got further assimiliated into the crew was yet another ongoing subplot we never got to see much of, alas.
Coming up next: the final episode of the TV show, the foot fetish-istic "Objects in Space." And, as mentioned above, the plan is to do some kind of write-up of the movie (even a brief one) on the 14th to close out these reviews.
What did everybody else think?
Heart of Gold was absolutely one of my favorites. If Inara had to lose out to a 'rival,' she could do no better than Nandi, the lovely Melinda Clarke. I'm not sure what it is about the lovely Ms. Clarke but she seems to be a charismatic actress whom I have enjoyed in other roles just as much as Nandi (or Lady Heather, rooooww!).
The "foil house," the dulcimer, and Nandi's fine rice wine. And "Zoe's desire to have a baby with Wash." After the movie, I really wanted Zoe to be pregnant.
The first episode I watched and, along with the pilot, the only two originally aired episodes I watched. It's also my favorite. I still remember getting chills when River tells Early she's Serenity. I believed her.
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'Firefly' Rewind - Episode 14: 'Objects in Space'
By Alan Sepinwall
Tuesday, Sep 7, 2010
We're at the final regular stop on our summer trip through Joss Whedon's outer space Western "Firefly," but not the last stop, period, since I'll have at least a few things to say about the movie a week from today. In the meantime, a review of the final episode of the TV show itself coming up just as soon as I rub soup in my hair...
"Permission to come aboard?" -River
"Objects in Space" wasn't the last episode of "Firefly" produced, nor the final one aired (remember, FOX decided to save "Serenity" for last), but it works well as the much-too-soon series finale in the DVD order Whedon settled on. Though the first and only season was largely telling standalone stories about the jobs Mal and the crew hired on to do, the most prominent ongoing element was River's presence on the ship and the trouble it caused. So it feels right for the series to close on an episode where the hunt for River finally extends inside the walls of Serenity, and where River is finally accepted as part of the crew, in a lovely tracking shot that connects her to all the other characters.
On Whedon's DVD commentary track for this episode - one of the few DVD commentaries I've ever listened to more than once, and one I recommend if you care about the show and somehow haven't heard it yet - he talks about how the episode's roots were born in his teenage crisis of faith and discovery of existentialism, and the idea of morality in a world without God, which he previously summed up in a line from "Angel": "If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do."
Again, I highly endorse listening to Joss monologue for 40+ minutes on that subject, on the importance of Summer Glau's feet and on Tim Minear's inability to pronounce "Boba Fett" correctly. It's an interesting, entertaining(*) glimpse into the mind of one of the most creative writers in the business, and it neatly illustrates the themes of the episode, and the bond between Summer and bounty hunter Jubal Early, and explains why (beyond the fact that she's crazy) River looks at a gun and sees a tree branch on the Serenity cargo bay floor.
(*) I used to listen to DVD commentaries far more than I do now, just due to time constraints, and one of the things that always bugged me was when the participants would just pause for long stretches to watch the movie or show. Then a couple of weeks ago, I was invited to appear on a commentary track for a "Treme" episode written by my friend, the late David Mills. Though I vowed that I would try to keep the conversation going at all times, it's a lot harder than it looks from the outside, and there were definitely spots where the actors and I weren't as talkative as we should have been. That experience only increased my appreciation for guys like Joss and Kevin Smith who can talk endlessly about the experience. And because Joss doesn't let up for almost all of it, it stands out when he finally does acknowledge that he's pausing just because he wants to enjoy the exchange Simon and Jubal Early have about the arsonist dwarf. That's a bit that amused me when I watched the episode sans commentary, but when Joss shuts up and says it's one of his favorite scenes he's ever written, I pay extra notice.
But even without the commentary, "Objects in Space" stands out as one of the most memorable, and (intentionally) weirdest, episodes of the series.
Because River's mind was cracked open and not put back together properly by the Alliance, it seems only fair that the man who should finally come for her be not all there himself. Richard Brooks, best known for being the stiffest (and least supermodel-y) of all the prosecutorial sidekicks on the original "Law & Order"(**), might have seemed an unlikely choice to play Early, but he's fantastic: so cool and creepy and dangerous and mad. Some of the latter wasn't originally on the page, but when Brooks read the "Maybe I've always been here?" line to Kaylee as if Early wasn't entirely sure himself, Whedon was inspired to have him keep pushing the performance in that direction.
(**) He was less surprising to me, since I'd already had my "Wow, Richard Brooks is a lot of fun when he gets to loosen up" epiphany when watching him on a short-lived USA series called "G Vs. E," where Brooks got to wear an afro, sing along to the Commodores and generally be awesome.
Only a madman could find River Tam, but only a madman could be distracted as long as Early was by her claim that she had become part of the ship. The episode wisely keeps Glau off-screen for the middle portion, and because we still don't entirely understand what River's powers are beyond mind-reading and blind marksmanship, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that she could have merged with Serenity. Stranger things have happened on Whedon shows, and the focus on River and Early made this feel like a bizarre enough hour where it could have happened.
Instead, River singlehandedly frees Mal, inspires Kaylee to be brave, and tricks Early into coming back out onto the hull so that Mal can punch him off into space. River becomes a full part of the crew - Nathan Fillion playing Mal's joy at greeting her after the plan works out is wonderful to behold - while Early is left tumbling endlessly in the void, saying a line that, given the cancellation, feels like a sadly appropriate farewell:
"Well... here I am."
And "Firefly" appeared destined to remain an object in space, floating forever in the minds of its fans without ever getting a chance to move forward.
The fans, though, had other ideas. About which we'll get to next week.
Some other thoughts:
-Jewel Staite never fails to give me the chills in the scene where Early warns Kaylee that he'll rape her if she gives him any trouble. As Joss puts it in the commentary, it's the sort of thing you write and then wonder about your goodness as a person, but there's no questioning how great Staite is at playing Kaylee's terror.
-Note how quickly and decisively Early chooses to take out Book, and then how he dismisses him to Simon by saying, "That ain't a shepherd." Once again, Book was much more dangerous than he let on.
-Book earns his concussion, I suppose, by stepping in on the closest Simon and Kaylee have yet come to a kiss. It's interesting, though, to see how physically close and affectionate they are earlier in the episode when he's telling her a story from his surgical days.
-Early's red pleather space-suit is bad-ass. Just sayin'.
-The scene in the galley where Kaylee tells the others about River's shooting exploits while River listens from below and Early from above (because they are the same) is like some kind of crazy The Quotable Jayne Cobb's greatest hits segment. I have a hard time picking my favorite dumb thing he says there, but it's probably the mangled, "If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak" line.
Coming up next: The franchise began with a movie-length TV episode called "Serenity." It ends with a genuine movie of the same name.
What did everybody else think?
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'Firefly' Rewind - 'Serenity' (the motion picture)
Published on Tuesday, Sep 14, 2010 7:00 AM Alan Sepinwall
Time to finish up our summer-long journey through Joss Whedon's outer space Western series "Firefly" with a look at "Serenity," the feature film that Joss and company reunited to produce a few years after Fox canceled the TV show. My review coming up just as soon as I think you're going to start a fair fight...
"People don't like to be meddled with." -River
"I believe in something greater than myself: A better world. A world without sin." -The Operative
"So no more running. I aim to misbehave." -Mal
There's a phrase widely attributed to Napoleon - and used as the title to an episode of "Deadwood," yet another TV twist on the Western, which debuted a little over a year after "Firefly" was canceled - that says that history is a lie agreed upon.
The main plot of "Serenity" deals with just such a piece of history - the lie of what happened to the people of Miranda, and how the Reavers were created as a result - but the movie itself is something of a lie agreed upon.
Basically, Joss Whedon and his fans convinced the executives at Universal of several things: 1)That the audience for "Firefly" was much larger than the Nielsen ratings showed, and that the Browncoats would therefore turn out in huge numb3rs for a feature film release, and 2)Despite the film being a spin-off of a short-lived, allegedly low-rated TV show, it would be accessible and appealing to the non-Browncoats.
Neither proved to be entirely true.
The movie was a box office disappointment, not making back its production budget until the DVDs came out. The Browncoats went to see it, but not many non-fans. The reviews were generally positive (it has an 81% score on Rotten Tomatoes), but the strongest praise tended to come, unsurprisingly, from critics who had watched the TV show. (Roger Ebert, for instance, gave it three stars but closed his review with the line "it was made by and for people who can't get enough of this stuff. You know who you are.") Clearly, it was possible to enjoy the film without knowing the backstory - Joss is too good a craftsman to not have the film work on that level - but it's so, so much better if you about Mal's history, if you've seen what Jayne was like before "Jaynestown," if you're familiar with the Zoe/Wash marriage(*), etc. It was a film made, first and foremost, for fans of the show. Those fans unfortunately weren't large enough in number to keep the show on the air (not that Fox's various scheduling decisions helped), nor were they big enough to turn the film into a hit.
(*) One of the movie's bigger failings, on the appealing-to-newbies level, is that it does such a poor job of even making it clear that Zoe and Wash are married. There's a line during the long introduction to the Serenity crew where Mal tells Zoe "talk to your husband," but if you don't know he's referring to Wash, it comes by too quickly to register. They're a bit affectionate in a later scene, but Zoe's reaction to Wash's death likely didn't hit a newcomer nearly as hard as it did those who understood.
But if "Serenity" is a lie on some level, it's a glorious, wildly entertaining lie, from first minute to last.
Joss had worked in movies before as a screenwriter, but never had control over what the director would do with his ideas. ("Buffy" the series was in a way seven years of Joss giving a middle finger to Fran Rubel Kuzui, and I remember mentioning "Alien: Resurrection" once to him and Joss wincing at what Jean-Pierre Jeunet had done to his script.) And he had directed episodes of his shows, but always on a TV schedule and (relatively low for the medium) budget. "Serenity" wasn't a budget-buster for Universal or anything, but the scale of it was vastly bigger than anything Whedon had had full control over before, and his joy at getting to play with his new toys is palpable.
The film opens with one flashy bit of storytelling after another: the Universal logo becomes an image of the exodus from the Earth that was, which then turns into a history lesson about the creation of the 'verse, which then becomes River's nightmare of her school days, which then becomes a video flashback being watched by the Operative before he makes poor Michael Hitchcock literally fall on his sword. Story on top of story on top of story, and all of it being controlled by the winners. (In the film's universe, that's the Alliance; in the real world, it's Joss for getting to make the film.) We then get the movie's logo, which becomes a part of Serenity's hull, and after a Whedon-esque bit of undercutting cliches (the heroic music is interrupted by a piece of Serenity flying off), we travel inside the ship for a tracking shot of the whole Serenity crew like we got at the end of "Objects in Space", only much, much more elaborate, as Mal walks the length of the ship chatting with all the remaining members of the crew. (Book and Inara are gone, though they of course turn up later in their new homes.)
And the movie climaxes with one great action set piece after another: Mal wiping the smugness off the Operative's face by siccing the entire Reaver fleet on him, Wash being a leaf on the wind, the crew making a final stand to buy Mal time, River finally taking control of her gifts and becoming a prototypical Whedon heroine, and Mal and the Operative fighting while dangling from chains in the bottomless shaft that must exist at the center of every sci-fi space station (see also Niska's space station, Cloud City on Bespin, etc.).
What makes those action sequences special isn't just that they look cool, but that all the moments are tied to character in some way: Mal is using the Alliance's deep dark secret against it by luring the Reavers to fight the Operative. Zoe is simultaneously grieving and being her amazing warrior woman self as she goes after the Reavers. River, having shared the secret of Miranda with others, starts to feel whole, and then the transformation is complete when she realizes how much Simon needs her. Etc. It's not just wicked explosions and kung fu(**); the moments go much deeper than that, and are paying off everything we've seen over 14 episodes of television and an hour-plus of the movie.
(**) In fact, the character stuff is strong enough to compensate for some lesser action moments. Mal's fight with with the Operative at the Companion training house looks fairly slow and awkward, like the two actors are trying really hard to remember fight choreography they learned five minutes before, yet it's still a good scene because of how the two characters play off of each other, and because Inara is hanging on the sidelines heckling Mal like usual (and then saving the day).
As the series mostly was, the film is Mal and River's story. Whedon tries to give everyone else a good moment or two, like Book's nighttime chat with Mal on Haven, or Jayne offending Mal and Zoe by bringing up the Battle of Serenity Valley, but essentially everyone is there to help illustrate aspects of the cold, hard captain and the damaged, dangerous girl traveling aboard his ship. Given how well we got to know the whole crew, it's disappointing - particularly that Wash dies one of those trademark Whedon sudden deaths in the climax of a movie in which he's had so little to do(***) - but understandable. If Whedon had set the story aside so he could service all the characters equally, "Serenity" would have been 100% fan service, rather than the 50/50 or so ratio that the film ultimately achieves.
(***) Wash's death, far more than Book's, has always seemed to rankle fans. And I get that, to a degree. Alan Tudyk was so likable and funny on the show, Joss has this history of using death to break up happy couples, Book was the show's most marginal character during its brief run, etc. But the stakes are impossibly high here, and it would feel like a cheat if every one of the regular characters from the show had survived both the Alliance and the Reavers. If the only casualties involved ancillary characters like Mr. Universe or the twins, then the threat Mal and company faced isn't as real, and the risks they took to get the message out there don't mean as much. Somebody had to die - more than one person, preferably - and then it comes down to picking favorites. Like, I never developed much of an attachment for Simon and wouldn't have cared if he died, but I know he had his fans, and I know that it would have been a much darker ending for Kaylee and River if he had. Or could you imagine the revolt if Jayne had been the one to fall? Somebody was going to be unhappy no matter what if Joss was telling the story honestly, and at least Wash got a triumphant moment in guiding Serenity down through that maelstrom before he died in mid-sentence. And the death is only really bad from a narrative standpoint if you assume there were going to be more movies after this one, which the box office numb3rs made moot.
Fans of lots of canceled shows hold out hope that some other network will rescue their favorite show - or even, wonder of wonders, that there might be a movie made. "Firefly" is one of the rare shows to pull off the latter trick ("Police Squad!," which begat "The Naked Gun," is another, and of course there's "Star Trek"), and the existence of "Serenity" is as much a miracle as what Mal and the Serenity crew pull off over the course of the film. These people have no business surviving what happens, let alone winning, and yet most of them do.
And even though the movie wasn't a hit (and is likely used as a cautionary tale when movie execs consider an "Arrested Development" or "Veronica Mars" film), it exists, and it's great. And that, as the hero of Canton once said... well I guess that's something.
Some other thoughts:
• As written by Joss and played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, the Operative may be my favorite Whedon villain other than the Mayor of Sunnydale (or Angel during "Buffy" season two). No pretense, no hypocrisy, no bluster: he knows who and what he is, and when Mal eventually proves him wrong about the people he's working for, he concedes the point and spares the crew's lives. (And recovers in record time from a blow to the Adam's apple and a broken back in order to reach his communicator and give the order to his men.)
• Another sign of the increased budget from TV to movie: the mule is transformed from an ATV into a hovership.
• That's Glenn Howerton from "Always Sunny" as the man Mal kills to spare him a worse fate at the hands of the Reavers, and of course Sarah Paulson as the woman making the Miranda recording about the Pax.
• Krumholtz! I always love David Krumholtz (I even watched a half a season of "numb3rs" for him despite not caring much for crime procedurals) and was pleased to see him as Mr. Universe, including his Jewish wedding ceremony to the Love-Bot. I've also always found the scene where the Love-Bot is cradling Mr. Universe's corpse and relaying his dying words to be weirdly tender and moving.
• Lots of good humor in the film, unsurprisingly. I'm always partial to Mal and Jayne's very different reactions to Kaylee's lament about her sex life. And she and Simon ultimately get their happy ending, as do (in a less overt way) Mal and Inara.
• I'm a bit puzzled on the timeline, in that Mal says it's only been eight months since the Tams came aboard his ship in the pilot, yet Book has clearly been at Haven for quite a while. Exactly how much time lapsed over the course of the series, and then between the series and the film?
• Lotta good Fillion in this one, particularly the one-two-three punch of Mal holding Book as he dies, Mal arguing with the Operative and then Mal ordering the crew to desecrate the ship and the bodies of their friends so they can make it through the Reaver space. Again, a lot of this show's best moments involved Malcolm Reynolds making hard, horrible choices and imposing his will on others to make sure his orders get followed.
• And my favorite part of the scene with Mal's post-Miranda speech isn't the monologue itself, but Jayne's response. For once, even Jayne Cobb realizes the selfless course of action is the only one that should be taken.
• The tiny woman who kicks ass has almost become a cliche because of Whedon's work on "Buffy," et al, but you watch Summer Glau move through the Reavers during the climactic fight and she carries herself in a way that really does make it seem believable. Makes me want to see a movie about a team of ballerinas who are taught kung fu and recruited to be soldiers of fortune.
• Mal's line in the final scene about how "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down" - that's as much about the fans as it is about the crew, is it not?
So that's it for me on "Firefly." Been a fun bit of nostalgia. Hope next year's rewind selection is half as entertaining.
What did everybody else think?
QuoteThe tiny woman who kicks ass has almost become a cliche because of Whedon's work on "Buffy," et al, but you watch Summer Glau move through the Reavers during the climactic fight and she carries herself in a way that really does make it seem believable. Makes me want to see a movie about a team of ballerinas who are taught kung fu and recruited to be soldiers of fortune.
:rofl:
Makes me want to see a movie about a team of ballerinas who are taught kung fu and recruited to be soldiers of fortune.
For God's sake, don't give Whedon any ideas.
OK, that ticks me off. Why does Serenity the movie have to be "a lie agreed upon"? It's not Blade Runner or Matrix 1, but I think it will be on distinguished sci-fi movie lists till the Top 25 runs out of room and better films are made.
Serenity is a well-written story. No, it is not completely fan service. It is what it is. The themes that travel through it ~ belief, lies, doing the right thing ~ that's ultimately what the film is about. The story involves the crew; it's not about the crew. Firefly was about the crew.
If anything Serenity is the broken heart of Joss Whedon, who was compelled I think emotionally to put the captain and his crew "to bed." It will forever be sad that given the right outlet, timeslot and SUPPORT, it probably would have gone on for a few seasons. Joss was before his time on this one. [aside: Others can corroborate: but what creative achievement is Joss most happy or proud of: Buffy, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, or Dollhouse?]
I guess count me as one of those 'bitter Browncoats' who is ticked off that her show got cancelled so early. Yeah, well, HERE I AM.
Should this rant have come with a :deadhorse: warning?
Sadly, it's true. Execs misread the powah of the Internets and the idea of guerrilla marketing (implemented by fans!). They may not have known that people could vote 10, 100, 1000 times on Internet polls. They misread the "chatter", so-to-speak.
On the flip side, I have no doubt that many people discovered Firefly via Serenity, and that both have probably done pretty well in DVD sales.
That whole marketing deal of Serenity was a huge clusterfoxtrot.
(http://i.pbase.com/o4/91/577091/1/52979555.captainobvious.jpg)
Quote from: TinkTanker on September 15, 2010, 06:18:02 AM
That whole marketing deal of Serenity was a huge clusterfoxtrot.
Yeah. I think you've suggested before that they also relied way too heavily on the fans to bring in more people?
OTOH, we practically promised them too.
I'm sure Saxon can provide more details because (IIRC) she got involved with the Universal site and those silly points they came up with. It turned me off the second I got there. Convert a non-believer, get 50 points. Sell your soul to Universal, get 25 points. Name your first-born male child Joss, 35 points. Brand the Chinese character for Serenity on your forehead, 75 points. Trade in your points for 'valuable' merchandise! Bumper sticker = 200,000 points. Key chain = 500,000 points. Postcard = 2,000,000.
Most people never got their crap either from what I've heard.
Oh well, at least the crazy Universal Studios banked the project. I wonder if they made any merchandising deals.
Can you imagine discovering Firefly again for the first time? <sigh> Although, there are a lot of other shows out there to discover that are worth the time, I'm still sentimental. Finding a new show helps, which is why I love that there is such a variety, whether it's old or new. I have enjoyed King of the Hill reruns and am sad that it got cancelled. At least it got what, 11 seasons? My newest show is Avatar The Last Airbender. I was not interested in it until hubby said Aang has a lemur named Momo (the name of one of my koalas). :neener: But the show is so teachable and funny with anime outbursts (but not annoying like Dragonball Z). It reminds me of the other cartoon I fell in love with, The Secret Saturdays, which has only had half the episodes of Airbender. Nickleodeon is supposed to make an Avatar spin-off next year, but sadly I think Secret Saturdays are cancelled. I love the shows that have teachable moments and a major focus on family and friends.
Someday I will rewind with Firefly for real. I'm still a bit verklempt when it comes to the show. :happy:
Quote from: Pearl@32 on August 31, 2010, 11:57:38 AM
Heart of Gold was absolutely one of my favorites. If Inara had to lose out to a 'rival,' she could do no better than Nandi, the lovely Melinda Clarke. I'm not sure what it is about the lovely Ms. Clarke but she seems to be a charismatic actress whom I have enjoyed in other roles just as much as Nandi (or Lady Heather, rooooww!).
The "foil house," the dulcimer, and Nandi's fine rice wine. And "Zoe's desire to have a baby with Wash." After the movie, I really wanted Zoe to be pregnant.
(http://savetheoc.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/090805_fox_melinda_clark300.jpg)
I lurves me some Ms Clark .
O0
Hmmm, how old is that picture? She looks much slimmer there then she did on Firefly. Her eyes are
spectacular and is what set her apart for me. Yeah, I know you guys go for the figure but there are
a lot of great figures in Hollywood. Her eyes are different and very beautiful.
Her eyes are different and very beautiful.
Indeed .
That's her most attractive quality imo .
( yes the beautiful face and sexy body do go a long way - but the eyes are what puts her ahead of her peers )
As for the date , it says 2008 in the image info but I think it's a little older .
Perhaps a shot from the OC ?
( and the heck with the hawt young starlets on that show - Ms Clark was my biggest reason to watch . Although Ms Bilson is herownself quite the cutie )
a little Live Journal entry about 9 reasons to re-watch Firefly, from 2009, but wth, it fits with the thread.
I love the "& a few more favorite moments" at the end ~ especially the last pic of Book (when the camera pans back to him to repeat "the special hell")
So many great moments.
http://visualthinker11.livejournal.com/16643.html#cutid1 (http://visualthinker11.livejournal.com/16643.html#cutid1)
I haven't watched it in so long, I'm due for a marathon. Everyone was so good acting wise in the show.
Joss and Co. really brought out the best in everyone. After seeing how shy Sean is at events and somewhat
socially inept you can really see how good an actor he is and I think Adam really shone acting wise in the
show compared to anything else he's done. The comedy timing by everyone was just wonderful and Ron
had found a part with meat for him too. Darn, dwelling on this just makes me mad but what makes me
madder is Fox knew they had blown it years ago and still someone was too stubborn to try and bring it
back when they had the opportunity to have all the cast. There is a whole other story we never heard
about with all of this. What kind of organization deliberately shoots themselves in the foot on a potential
hit show without something pretty dramatic going on in the background. Someone was really pissed at
Joss for some reason.
There is a whole other story we never heard
about with all of this. What kind of organization deliberately shoots themselves in the foot on a potential
hit show without something pretty dramatic going on in the background. Someone was really pissed at
Joss for some reason.
Hollywood types with talent like Joss are egotists , but they can usually deliver .
The suits are often talentless hacks but still have the egos .
Suits win almost every time .
And we the viewers are the losers .