Watch them. I’d like to discuss if two of them frightened the network into cancelation.
Firefly is an ensemble show, only it’s set in space and on various worlds. But like any ensemble show, it’s all about the characters and their interrelationships.
One of the reasons I have to disagree with Otto about “The Message”, which is my favorite episode of the series, is the way in which it pushes things forward. We see just why what happened with Mal in “Heart of Gold” happened at just the wrong time. I think we see a major clue about whether or not there’s a future for Kaylee and Simon. We get some Mal-and-Zoe war stories that aren’t all disaster and desperation. We learn more about Book’s other side. (And we find out how much of a man Jayne really is, but that’s really a sidebar to the main narrative.) One of the best hours of TV I’ve ever watched.
And I got sucked in because a bunch of people around here started saying good things about “Firefly”, and for once ;), they didn’t mean me. So I had to find out what it was all about, and I’m sure glad I did.
I got the feeling from listening to Joss Whedon answer fans’ questions at Comic Con that he is beyond over televisionland. And frankly, who can blame him? It’s been made abundantly clear that the kind of work he wants to will not be supported by television networks in any meaningful way. I don’t know a lot about Hollywood or t.v., but my guess is that it’s much easier for him to demand and retain creative control contractually with movie projects than it is for ongoing t.v. series, animated or otherwise. I mean, with t.v., I’m sure every time you sneeze there’s a new V.P. who’s positive s/he knows what we all really * want to watch, regardless of Whedon’s incredible track record. :rolleyes: I know! I know! Firefly Makeover*!
Don’t get me wrong. Even though I think this is the worst ep of the series it’s still light years ahead of 95% of the rest of television. Saying that it’s the worst ep is like saying that a diamond is the ugliest diamond when compared to a dump truck full of gravel.
Nah. It just didn’t fit the network’s profile for a successful TV show. Regardless of the ratings. And the fan response. And Joss’s previous successes. Plus, they put in the Friday Night Slot o’ Flaming Death.
Did their profile include
Having a prostitute shoot the father of her illegimate child, nudity and being told not to worry about God but the man hanging from the spaceship?
Great show, but I wonder if the above didn’t worry management.
Nah. It didn’t have enough teenagers.
It didn’t have enough romances.
They couldn’t guess what the plots were going to be five shows in advance.
Oh, did we mention that Jayne’s a cop killer?
They were just weirded out by the whole westerns-in-space concept, even though it goes back to Time Enough for Love, which was written, like, last century.
Actually, upon further thought, there is a television venue that would be a perfect match with Jossverse and that is HBO. I would definitely put Firefly up there with Six Feet Under (which I love). The kind of serialization which results in cult followings that he’s so good at doesn’t work well with movies, IMO. I guess HBO already has their western, though. And I don’t think BtVS or AtVS would have worked there as they stood. There’s Showtime, though… 
Well, one can hope…
There’s also FX, considering what they’re doing with Denis Leary. Joss might balk at that one, of course.
Regarding Kaylee’s sexuality:
Watching Kaylee eat the strawberry in Serenity completely establishes her as a character that whole-heartedly likes things that feel good, and doesn’t have any real hang-ups about it.
I love the fact that not only do we have three sexually well-adjusted women in Firefly, we have three women that are well-adjusted in very differnet ways: to many portrayls of “sexually liberated socities” in sci-fi seem to show asexual liberation as having a uniform effect
Well, I waded through all four pages, and all I really gotta say is thanks for the tip about the audio commentary episodes. Even though it was right on the back of the disk boxes in the episode blurbs, I never noticed it even after having watched every episode at least three times each.
While I can’t wait for the movie (but I will, I suppose), I’d much rather have Firefly as a weekly episode, although I do agree FX, HBO or Showtime would do it much better than any other network.
For those who are lurking and undecided, two bits to help convince you. First, one of my favorite snippets of dialog, from the last epsiode, Objects in Space. The crew is discussing what to do about one of their members who’s a touch odd.
Mal: “The girl knows things. Things she shouldn’t. Things she couldn’t.”
Jayne: (serious) “Are-, Are you you saying she’s a witch?”
Wash: (sarcastic) “Yes, Jayne, she’s a witch. She has had congress with the beast.”
Jayne: (serious) “She’s in Congress?”
The second: imagine a cracked western voice singing
*Take my love, take my land,
take me where I cannot stand,
I don’t care; I’m still free.
You can’t take the sky from me.
Take me out to the black,
tell ‘em I a’int comin’ back;
burn the land and boil the sea,
you can’t take the sky from me.
There’s no place I can be,
since I found Serenity,
but you can’t take the sky from me.*
That song and the opening credits alone hooked me.
Speaking of the theme…anyone else notice the singer has a lisp?
“Rescue Me” is a great show, I’ve really been enjoying it.
We got the first disc from netflix then cancelled the rest from our queue and bought the box set.
Holy hell that’s good television. Outstanding.
I think my favourite scene was actually one of the deleted scenes, where Zoe is telling Simon about the battle of Serenity, I nearly broke down crying watching it. She’s a good actress. I can’t listen to the theme lyrics the same way after that scene though.
Can’t wait for the movie - though at this point if you told me Joss Whedon was filming paint drying, I’d be queuing for tickets.
I like trying to refund the money in The Train Job.
Kick the first guy who refused into the engine intake.
Bad Guy puree comes out the back.
Mal: “This is the mon…”
2nd Bad Guy: “Sounds good to me! Works for all of us!”
That’s cool with me.
Like ExTank, I must thank those that pointed the way to the commentaries of the individual episodes. I’d noticed that when I first got the DVD set, but forgot about them along the way, between the fun of watching the series, and the lack of a natural way to trip over them. Who’d’a thunk to look for them under language??
In the commentary to the pilot, Joss Whedon says something like, “All of my shows are about created family.” The milieu of the show is sci-fi/western, but it’s about these nine people and the relationships among them.
I’ve got a few questions for the assembled fans.
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Gravity on board Serenity. The ship’s arranged in a way where if you’re inside the ship, the floors, stairs, etc. are exactly where they ought to be if you’re on the ground. But in deep space, ‘down’ is still towards those same floors, even though there’s no gravity to make that direction be the local ‘down’. Has Joss ever talked about this? For the most part, this show avoids anything relying on the physicists’ having pulled some huge rabbit out of a hat (e.g. no apparent faster-than-light travel). Seems like they just finesse this one.
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Speaking of FTL travel, or lack thereof, there’s nothing to indicate whether all the worlds on Serenity’s itinerary orbit a single star, or are in different star systems. Any info out there on which it is, or did they finesse this one, too?
On another note:
I was thinking about the fact that Inara never seems to go ‘off duty’; she’s always dressed in a way that evokes her sensuality, even for everyday life on the ship. Even alone in her shuttle, we see her lighting incense, or giving herself a sponge bath, or similar stuff. She almost never really stops being a Companion, and it evokes the sense that being a Companion is (for her, at least) a calling, something that permeates her whole life, rather than just a profession. Just like Shepherd Book never stops being a man of the cloth, because it’s his calling, Inara is a Companion from the inside out. And so (as we find out in the pilot) Book isn’t the only one on the ship who hears confessions and gives absolution, which is a pretty neat twist on things.
But the one scene I can think of where Inara really seems to let her hair down and stop being a Companion for a few minutes is probably my favorite Inara scene, even more so than her sex scenes (“I’ll be in my bunk”) and the sponge bath she gives herself in the pilot. It’s in “The Message”, and it’s another big reason why that episode’s my favorite.
Actually, it is obvious that Serenity is supposed to have artifical gravity. In the very first episode when Mal, Zoe and Jayne first come on board with the stolen MacGuffins they drift into the airlock weightless. Then Wash closes the airlock and you see the containers suddenly thump to the ground. So artificial gravity is pretty much established in the first episode.
Well, RTFirefly, at the end of The Train Job the two Blue Hands guys say “We didn’t just travel 68 million miles to find a box of Band-Aids.”
There’s your answer. 68 million miles in a bee-line away from the sun wouldn’t even get you past Earth’s orbit (93 million miles) much less out of the solar system (Pluto, average about 3.7 billion miles).
Therefore, I say, if they’re complaining about a 68 million mile trip, it’s all within one solar system.
This kind of kills me. I’m like, “Inara, sweetie, you’re days from your destination, go throw on a pair of sweats or something. No? Don’t even want to take the rhinestones off your eyelids? Okay…”
Thing I’m Most Curious About: Early saying “He’s no Shepherd”.
Question: Is there a way to find translations for the Mandarin they speak from time to time? From the commentary I’ve watched (just the first ep), it sounds like much of it is funny. From the special features: it was nice to hear that Joss asked Jewel to gain 20lbs. to play Kaylee, especially after the Skeletor Nightmares that were the Potentials in BtVS.
So I finished watching the whole thing last night (urp!), altho I’ll probably watch them again with commentaries. So when did you guys say the next season is coming out on DVD?
Remember though that she’s also setting up appointments during her “down time” so has to maintain for that.
And maybe she just likes being pretty. Nothing wrong with that.