This isn’t a spoiler, but it’s asking for a minor one. Please insert no others. 
Is the movie a rehash of the pilot, “Safe” and “Objects in Space”?
And what if there was no rescue? What if Jayne and the others had refused?
If she only gets one, Zoe has decided which one she wants. I’m pretty sure that was the point.
-Joe
No. It shares some minor similarities is all.
Not at all.
Cool.
Are you agreeing or disagreeing with my point? I can’t tell.
This is a good point, and something I hadn’t really considered. I’ve mostly been assuming a rescue was going to happen regardless.
Presuming Zoe wasn’t planning a full rescue until Wash found resolve, it still does make rational sense even setting aside the “he’s her husband” bit (which is really sufficient in itself, but I’m bored at work and feel like pontificating 
). When you get right down to it, in a small crew like that, the commander’s expendable. If Mal died, Zoe could take over command, or Wash, or even Book (I doubt Jayne would make a good captain). But if Wash is the only pilot, well. He’s far more valuable.
There’s so many reasons for choosing Wash over Mal that even had Zoe not been expecting Niska’s question, it’s no wonder she made up her mind instantly.
I classify it under “has to get back on the horse.” She’s concerned about the possibility that the torture has broken him and that if he can’t take out the guy on his own he’ll never be able to fix the damage.
I know, weak, which is why it’s usually a mistake to try to explain jokes.
It’s just a set up for a joke. A common situation met with a different action, like Mal shooting the guy who had a hostage in Safe.
Yeah. I’m usually highly forgiving of stuff that’s just there to be funny, but Firefly is generally very good about having its humor flow naturally out of the situation, not force the situation into a setup for a joke. So it nags at me that the only reason for Zoe to say what she did was to get an amusing cliche-turned-on-its-head in. It’s still hilarious, it’s just a nit I can’t avoid picking at.
I think that line was poking fun at Gina Torres’ other acting roles. She’s played a lot of warrior women roles; Hercules, etc. Plus, she’d just come off Cleopatra 2525 before doing Firefly. It was basically what her characters in other shows would have said, and then Mal was all, “no! No it’s not!” In other words, “This ain’t Hercules, shoot the bastard!”
I don’t think Jayne is really acting selflessly. Jayne is like a little kid who can’t stand to be left out of the action, especially if it’s going to involve fightin’, shootin’ & killin’. He always grumbles, bitches & moans about it being “suicide” or “not his fight” or “there ain’t no profit. Let’s see, 10% a nuthin’ is… lemme do the math…” But again, there’s no way he’d really sit out a good fight. Getting brownie points for it is just a bonus.
OTOH, Mal definitely has an effect on people. He’s a good soldier, and a good leader. Jayne is almost like a new soldier recruit. He thinks mostly of himself, and his actions are motivated by personal gain and avoidance of punishment. He rolls his eyes when Mal goes on and on about loyalty, ethics, values, responsibility, etc, etc.
In Jaynestown, I think we were seeing the beginnings of Jayne’s “growing up.” He was honestly flummoxed by that kid taking a bullet for him. “Don’t make no sense.” But he was starting to think.
In Ariel, he screwed up, but you can tell he’s actually been paying attention when he told Simon, “hey, I couldn’t leave you, you’re on my crew.” That’s exactly what Mal would say. He might not have truly believed it at the time, but he has been listening to Mal. Then Mal literally beat it into his head.
By this episode, we may be seeing a further step in Jayne’s development. All that lecturing by Mal, all those platitudes, just might be starting to sink in a bit. It’s just like with young soldiers. You lecture them a lot. At first they don’t really buy all that crap. Eventually they start to parrot some of the things you say. Then, eventually they actually start to believe in the example a good leader sets.
If the show had gone on long enough, Mal might actually have turned Jayne into a decent human being with like, values and stuff.
My take on that is Zoe was in total soldier-mode. She was making a gamble, Niska accepts the money, or not. The very moment Niska said, “the money’s not enough, I think,” Zoe knew exactly how things were going to go. Wash is unimportant. Niska is primarily concerned with his mafiya reputatsiya. He has no intention of giving up Mal, he just wants to get a few extra sadistic kicks making Zoe make an agonizing Sophie’s Choice. Ain’t gonna happen. Zoe knew there was no choice to be made. Niska ain’t giving up Mal for any monetary amount. So, grab Wash, get the hell out of there and start on plan B.
Re: Jayne getting in on the rescue. I’ve always had the impression that he’s tolerated by the rest of the crew because the Mal wants him around. Without Mal, the others, especially Zoe, would happily ditch him on the first planet they land on. While he’s not too bright, he’s smart enough to know that.
I love the difference between Mal & Wash when they are first put into the torture room. Wash keeping the flow of mindless chatter up while Mal is pacing out the room trying to get a handle on the size, layout etc.
I agree with all that, but I also think there was an element of Zoe knowing her men. Mal would be able to withstand the torture mentally; Wash would not. Mal might come back broken physically, but Wash would have given up. He even says as much when she gets him back to the shuttle.
In other words, Zoe choosing Wash was the right choice regardless of the perspective you take.
I was going to point this out if nobody else did, because it was something I didn’t really notice until the second or third time I watched the series. I mean, they talk about it at the beginning, but I didn’t really connect it to the events of the previous episode until I was watching the shows back-to-back-to-back and putting the threads together.
And I don’t think he’s trying to make up for anything. I think he’s feeling guilty, but rather than a dog’s “I done somethin’ wrong” guilt, it’s a bully’s “I done somethin’ the others think is wrong” guilt. He’s trying to act nice so nobody thinks too much about what happened on Ariel and connects it to Jayne’s jerkishness; he thinks he can short-circuit that calculus by superficially removing said jerkishness. Of course, he overcompensates, and calls attention to himself anyway.
This episode (which is probably my third favorite in the whole run, after Out of Gas and Objects in Space) contains a really great throwaway moment that encapsulates the show’s whiplash style, bouncing from laugh to horror or from horror to laugh in the space of a heartbeat. When Niska pulls off Mal’s blindfold in the torture room, and looms in Mal’s face, Mal says something in Chinese (IIRC: I didn’t re-watch the episode for the thread) as he realizes that they’re basically screwed. Beat. And this is where the typical show would cut away. But not in Firefly — instead, over Niska’s shoulder, we see Wash, still blindfolded, looking off in a random direction, barking with fear and frustration, “WHAT?”
Scary, and funny, and heartbreaking, all at the same instant. Welcome to the wonder of Firefly.
Someone else touched on this, but Wash had no idea of what constituted the bond between Mal and Zoe. He knew they had some bond, but his life experiences had never come close to the circumstances that created it. ‘Military life’ were so many meaningless syllables to him. During the torture scene, Mal keeps him going, of course. After Zoe rescues him, Wash is near the point of collapse, having gone through the most horrible thing ever to happen to him. When he tells Zoe, 'He’s crazy," he’s trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Mal not only took the same torture he did, but that Mal had the strength to help Wash survive it. He literally had his eyes opened to something he never even conceived of before: that such unspeakably bad things can happen, and that some people can be that strong. One of the strongest character development points in the entire series, IMHO.
In the first message I left on the last page, I pointed out that the really selfless thing Jayne does in this episode is give up his share of the Ariel heist, which has already been described as being enough to make them ‘rich’. Getting in on the firefight is no big deal - that’s what Jayne does. That’s why he was hired. But give up wealth? Hell, he threw his old partner out of his ship rather than give up even half of a large booty. This time, he chucked all his money onto the table when he clearly didn’t have to.
That’s the major character development for Jayne. Not the battle.
That is an important development for Jayne. He’s not thinking “this week’s profits.” He’s starting to think about the long-term benefits of being part of a team, a family, whether he likes all of them or not. He’s starting to think beyond his immediate self, and about larger issues.
Possibly summed up by Alan Tudyk’s incredibly heartwrenching delivery of the line, “Niska’s gonna kill him.” Just… wow.
I agree with Sam and levdrakon. I think Jayne starts to get a clue when he’s in the airlock at the end of Ariel and asks Mal not to tell the crew what happened. Maybe there are element of the bully, dog and other attitudes previously mentioned, but but my sense is that Jayne is also trying to understand how to be part of the crew. And the money really does make a big difference because we know that’s what he values above all but his survival.
And I don’t think there’s a single answer to this or to why Zoe picks Wash. I think you can successfully argue several angles; it’s part what makes this series a damn fine work of art.
The spoilers are driving me nuts, too!!! I wanna see the movie!!!
And, despite the gore, this is definitely one of my favorites, up there with Out of Gas.
GT
It bears repeating that Joss brought together some damn fine actors for this show. This episode was great for Alan Tudyk to show he could do more than quip and play with dinosaurs.
It would be most inappropriate for me to dance around singing ‘nanny-nanny boo boo’, wouldn’t it?