(Spoilers) Firefly 5: Safe

Cafe Society
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Welcome to episode five of the Firefly Film Festival.

As discussed here, we’ll be reviewing and talking about one Firefly episode each week.

In this thread, please remember the following as a warning to yourself and courtesy to other posters:

  • There will be unboxed spoilers about the current episode in this thread; you are forewarned.
  • Please use spoiler boxes if you want to bring up points from later episodes.
  • Please use spoiler warnings if you want to use info from the movie. Also be prepared for massive jealosy.
  • Label what the spoilers are about so that readers can decide whether to open the box.
  • We’ll be talking about both the episode and the DVD commentary here.

Previous episodes:

  1. Serenity
  2. The Train Job
  3. Bushwhacked
  4. Shindig

This week’s episode: Safe. (Is it bad that this episode made perfect sense to me?)

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About twenty minutes in, Jayne reads through Simon’s diary and recapitulates the basic plot:

“Dear Diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.” (Flips page) “Today we was snatched by hill folk, never to be seen again. It was the best day ever.”

Well, that doesn’t quite cover everything, as we also get an old-west-style shootout, a bit of commentary on the hardscrabble life and superstitious ignorance of settlers on the outer moons, Book becomes the latest crewmember to take a bullet, and we learn that he has something of A Secret Past.

Very well written, methinks, (well, except for one thing that I’ll mention in a minute). Despite the need to intermesh several plotlines (the job, Simon/Kaylee, saving Book, and a lot of exposition concerning Simon and River), it all hangs together in a reasonably logical arrangment.

With that said, there’s at least one big-ass plot hole that sticks out, IMO: after the gunfight the local sheriff pays no attention whatsoever to Mal, his crew, the money, a herd of cattle with off-world brands, that they are standing around next to a spaceship littered with cow droppings, and that there is a badly wounded Shepherd laying on the ground. That’s one mighty single-minded sheriff, is all I can say.

Personal favorite line of the ep: Jayne, on being advised by Mal that it would be easier to herd the cattle by leading them, sez: “I like smackin’ 'em”.

I gather the “Big Damn Heroes” line has become rather popular amongst the Browncoats as well.
Anyway, pretty good ep, if not in my personal top five.

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Dampsters (*) ate my review post!

For once I didn’t have it saved elsewhere. I’ll rewrite it later this week, I guess.

Favorite line: “See, morbid and creepifying, I got no problem with.”

**(*)**Dampsters: contraction of “damn hampsters”. Can be intensifed as “gorrampsters”.

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Simon is a bit of a idiot in the shop, isn’t he. Still, he makes up for it later - he really loves his sister, that much is clear.

this isn’t in my top 5 episodes, it’s pretty much character-establishing, and cementing the siblings Tam as crewmembers, with a little Book-teaser thrown in.

best quotes :
Zoe: Next time we smuggle stock, let’s make it something smaller.
Wash: Yeah, we should start dealing in those black-market beagles.

Hillbilly: The girl is a witch.
Mal: Yeah, but she’s our witch. So cut her the hell down.

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Did anyone catch what Mal says to Simon over the noise of the ship as he’s rescuing him? The captions simply label it ‘inaudible.’

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He says sommat like “Got to say Doctor, Your talent for alienating folks is near miraculous” where the non bolded is rendered as inaudible.

-DF

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… or Present.

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The episode where Simon joins the crew. Here we learn that his parents weren’t parents at all to him and River, and that Mal would go to parental lengths to protect River and Simon.

Look at the expression of love and pride in River’s face when Simon climbs up on the pyre. The devotion thos etwo have for each other is one of the great things in the show.

Yeah, Simon doesn’t like it on Serenity. He misses his life of sophistication and honor as a life-saving doctor (instead of patching p the mostly petty bullet wounds that the crew get their fool selves). He respects Mal, and likes Kaylee well enough, but this is never the life he would have chosen for himself. But he chose it anyway. That’s what River means to him.

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I don’t see this as a plot hole at all. (OK, the money maybe.) It’s an illustration of why Mal was in the rebellion, and why he is still, in his soul – the law generally doesn’t give a shit about justice. Bystander gets shot by police? Whatever. Medicine gets stolen out from under the Alliance’s nose? Not my problem. Cargo ship innocently takes on fugitives? Arrest them all. Etc. In the Firefly realm, the law isn’t good, it’s just the law.

–Cliffy

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The mystery that is Book deepens.

What do you know about him so far, without including spoilers from future eps?

In the first episode, Kaylee notices he’s looking more at the ships than the destinations. The ship is the destination, I guess, and he’s very familiar with ships in general, and has flown on Fireflies in the past, and it seems is particularly familiar with them.

He’s fairly capable at hand-to-hand combat. He punched out the lawman in ep one handily enough.

Great cook.

Lived in a monastery for some indeterminate time, but he’s been away from the world for awhile. “Time to get back in it.”

He’s got a very interesting ID card that seems to grant him quite a bit of privilege.

As far as paying for passage, he said he couldn’t afford to pay a fraction of the money the crew gets paid for the various “jobs” but I get the impression he’s got some dough. Apparently he’s no longer paying (at least in cash) for passage?

Anything else? Has he been officially accepted as a crew member by this episode? Seems he has, although at the moment I can’t remember when exactly he proved his worth, or whatever he did to become one of the family.

Simon is officially the ship’s medic. Inara consoled Book by telling him Serenity was where he needed to be, but has Mal come out and said, “you’re the ship’s [whatever]?”

Is it simply that he’s trustworthy, reliable, and like Inara, lends Serenity & crew a sort of credibility & respectability?

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I think Book is the conscience of the crew. It’s never stated, but at some level Mal knows that having someone on board who’s willing to tell him what’s right and what’s wrong is something he needs. Inara does provide that, but since Mal has lust in his heart for her he doesn’t trust her.

I think he’s also a bit of an indication that Mal doesn’t have as much control over his crew as he would like. Inara is close to Book, and Kaylee, and any attempt to boot him would surely cause their displeasure.

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It might be illegal to smuggle cattle off of the planet from the last episode, but not onto the planet in this episode. Could be a local jurisdictional kind of thing. Alternatively, it could be a federal/local divide in law enforcement. Previously, the Alliance didn’t give a shit about the batch of medicine that got stolen once it was planet-side. If smuggling is a breach of Alliance laws only, then it seems likely the local law enforcement types are as easger to enforce Alliance law as the Alliance is to enforce local law. Which is to say, not at all. Lastly, it’s been established that a lot of the Alliance smuggling laws are detrimental to the rim worlds. They’d rather blow up a derelict and its cargo, rather than letting the badly needed food on board go to to struggling colonies. The local cops probably are aware that Mal’s smuggling does more good for their planet than harm, and aren’t in any hurry to prosecute them.

Still, they could have thrown in a line (“Boss, what about these cows?” “I don’t care. Smugglin’s an Alliance problem, not ours.”) to clear that up.

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You left off the good bit!

Patron: The girl is a witch!
Mal: Yeah, but she’s our witch. cha-chink So cut her the hell down.

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More Bookish thoughts:

He knows the reputation of Adlai Niska, and what it means to cross him.

He never married (okay, that’s not such a big deal).

He’s actually not a very good preacher. All his offers of guidance get turned down, except for when he offers to say things over dead people, and they’re past the point of complaining about it. His faith gets tested a little bit in the first episode and it almost breaks him; he has to turn to somebody he is openly uncomfortable around for absolution.

Given that about all there is for him to do on the ship to pay his way is scut work and chores, he’s more than willing to gamble those chores away in a card game.

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Ooh, excellent addition/observation!

Why is this preacher man so familiar with a transport/smuggling class Firefly spaceship and how would he know about Niska?

Seems to know an awful lot about an awful lot of things a preacher wouldn’t.

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My current theory :

[wild_speculation]Book is either a retired cop OR criminal

My current bet is criminal-hunter cop (not nice-girl hunter cop), as that better explains the ID thing (Alliance takes care of it’s own, even if retired), but he could be an ex-mafia man with a forgery.

The man really knows guns, as we find out in War Stories - I don’t think you get that good hunting rabbits on a monastery

I don’t think he’s on Serenity by chance, though, and had something to do with River - I think there may be Alliance factions that don’t support what was done to her, and he’s there to protect her or track her. Josh is not one to make an institute like the Alliance be nothing but bad, he’s all about humanising the faceless monolithic group (Wolfram&Hart, anyone?)

[/wild_speculation]

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As ever, the guest casting is excellent. I was amazed at how much the actor playing Young Simon resembles Sean Maher (although his delivery lacked Adult Simon’s extraordinary compassion, somewhat), and the girl playing Young River did a spot-on Summer Glau impression. Of course, it helps that she gets that great line about the Independents attacking with dinosaurs. :slight_smile:

Speaking of which, I thought it was nice that the Browncoats were thought of as a monstrous enemy by the Tams. As a wealthy family living in the heart of the Core worlds, it makes perfect sense that they would be happy citizens of the Alliance.

I thought the main plot of the episode was somewhat weak, particularly once the accusations of witchcraft got started. The “last minute save” is a cliche that I could do without, although it is somewhat salvaged in this case by Mal’s ironic acknowledgement of the cliched situation, and Zoe’s great “Big Damn Heroes” comment.

Jayne got the funniest line of the episode, as usual: “Dear Diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy. Today, we were kidnapped by hill folk never to be seen again. It was the best day ever!” Also, the best delivery ever!

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My take on book is that he’s a disillusioned alliance bigwig. Maybe a soldier who saved some famous alliance guy or something. Then he saw just a little too much, retired from his job and got religion. Now he’s on a pilgrimage.

It’ll turn out he was the equivalent of special forces, or maybe an undercover agent of some kind. Maybe he’s still ‘undercover’ and the alliance doesn’t realize he’s gone native.

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My guess is that Book is an undercover cop–he got way too much respect for a pensioner–current rank, sergeant, 12th precinct, reporting to a Captain Miller.

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I like your ideas, but Book did get cold-cocked by the lawman. That makes me think he’s definitely had some adventures in his past, but he isn’t a special forces type. If he were, I don’t think he’d be so easily taken by surprise.

At some point in the past, I do think he found himself on the wrong ideological side of something important.