And regarding Wash’s poor firearms handling skills: At what point in the show were you lead to believe that Wash had any idea how to use a gun either safely or effectively? I must have missed that episode.
That’s not MacTech’s problem, but that neither Jayne nor Zoe seemed to notice how unsafe he was being. I know Jayne would’ve had a problem with Wash sweeping the muzzle past him.
I don’t understand why everyone ignores the musical. Yes, I realize some of you don’t like characters to break into song, but given that (a) Kaylee strips naked after the teaser and (b) spends most of the episode moaning about her unrequited love for Inara while (c) feeling guilty about exploiting River by having sex wtih her in the meantime, and (d) the whole thing is resolved by the Kaylee-Inara-River-Zoe freeway, I think you’d be happy anyway.
Santa Cruz, which also has a lot in common with Sunnydale, is pretty damn white. took me a while to figure out what was so weird about it the first time I visited.
River doesn’t do a damn thing for me. Zoe does only a little bit. I’ll take the Kaylee-Inara pairing though.
Another thing about the Chinese-- I know Mandarin’s a pretty tough language, but would it have been all that much more difficult to get a vocal coach in so that they could, y’know, sound like they were speaking Chinese? Or are we meant to assume the tones get dropped out of the language in the future?
Yes they did. But if I recall the commentaries correctly the actors were all pretty rubbish at it, and she all but gave up on them (all in a very light-hearted way).
The OP, though I never thought about it, is another reason why I hate Joss Whedon. It’s a stupid premise. The Chinese are going to rule the future, my ass. The country is going to collapse under the weight of its ridiculously unsustainable industry and pollute itself to death, quite likely within our lifetimes. That country is going to be a third world backwater in the future if it keeps doing what it’s doing now.
If anyone is going to be a dominant power in the future it’ll be a unified Europe, not a country that combines the worst aspects of both capitalism and communism.
Having thought about it, this is a bit over-the-top, but China becoming a dominant world power is not a “stupid premise”. You may personally doubt it, but it’s well within the realms of the possible, if not likely.
I can’t remember if it was said, but was China of the future a major world power, or a major space power once the superpowers started moving there? That seems plausible. They may have been much more successful in space, and there was even more intermixing.