'Firefly' Rewind - Episodes'

[Pearl@32]

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. 

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!

[TinkTanker]

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.

[Eric]

I'm just wondering who Pearl's been watching Mad Men with, since I've never seen an episode.

I only caught the first episode (or two?) of Justified, but enjoyed it quite a bit. I just keep forgetting to watch.

[Pearl@32]

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...

[Pearl@32]

I'm just wondering who Pearl's been watching Mad Men with, since I've never seen an episode.

While you were fighting demons and completing quests, hello?

[Spooky]

I'm just wondering who Pearl's been watching Mad Men with, since I've never seen an episode.

While you were fighting demons and completing quests, hello?

E is a Rouge Demon Hunter?

[Spooky]

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?

[Pearl@32]

@ 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.

[Spooky]

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?

[Spooky]

http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching/posts/firefly-rewind-episode-9-ariel

'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?