I don’t think they have a romantic or sexual history. They just seem to have a really tight bond. Tight enough that it bugs her husband. I get the impression that she would not have married him were it not for Mal, and not just in an “he introduced them” kind of way. Do you doubt that Zoe would kill for Mal or die for Mal? How would (perhaps overly) proprietary feelings be out of whack? Do I think Zoe would want Mal to live happily ever after? Sure. Doesn’t mean that any infringement on her relationship/bond with Mal would be appreciated.
However, you are no doubt working from a more complete dataset than I. And granted she doesn’t seem to have the same (or any) sort of reaction to either Inara’s line of work nor Mal and Inara’s relationship-type-thingee.
That’s exactly how I rationalize it in my head. Since the mean of the spoken Chinese can inevitably be intuited from context/ tone of voice, the inability to understand what they are saying is irrelevant. In fact, sometimes it adds charm- even us native Mandarin speakers can assign our own meanings to the gibberish!
Wait until we get to "War Stories."The hilarity of “take me, Captain, take me hard” juxtaposed with the heartbreak of “you were going to ask me to choose?” It’s Mal and Wash in the torture room, but as far as I’m concerned, this is Zoe’s episode.
So, I’ve watched it in Spanish now. I really recommend this if you’ve got any knowledge of Spanish. The writing isn’t as clever or nuanced, but I think that makes you focus on the visual details.
For example: What the heck is Book doing during the marriage ceremony scene? (Just after the part where Jayne gets the rain stick.) Looks like he’s sprinkling sand or something over…maybe the bodies of the men who were killed in the earlier scene (they’re covered in black cloth, I think)? Missed it completely the first few times in English.
Or, where Mal stomps off after Saffron and says they’re the only two who don’t think the situation is funny? Did you notice the camera focuses on Inara, who is looking distinctly unamused?
Sometimes the dialogue sounds a bit stilted. And sometimes, I think there are some actual bloopers.
I swear Mal said “infierno espacial” instead of “infierno especial.” Gotta go back and find that again. Also, at the beginning, I think that Wash says that the crew always thought Mal would marry Inara (instead of “we always hoped you kids would get together”). Maybe not exactly a blooper, but rather odd.
In Spanish, the show sounds just like a telenovela to me (that’s a Spanish-language soap opera, if you’re not familiar with the term); it’s lots more poetic in English. Not sure if I can catch enough French to understand it, but maybe I’ll try that later.
(Can you tell I’m having a week where escape is GOOD?)
I’m really excited that I can finally join in the Firefly threads, so a brief hijack first.
I never watched Firefly when it aired on Fox because the promos made it look like a very cheese sci-fi comedy and I ignored all the hype surrounding the series DVD release as well. For the past few months, the upcoming release of Serenity stirred more interest in the show, but I still wasn’t biting, but as the number of Firefly and Serenity threads in Cafe Society continued to grow, I became curious and started reading them. After seeing how much people here love the show, I became really curious, but I’d been burned pretty badly in recent blind DVD purchases and I hate renting, so I downloaded “Serenity,” the two hour premiere, and watched it the same night.
Wow. I loved the dialogue, the western/sci-fi hybrid style, the characters frequently speaking Chinese…and Kaylee. I felt my heart skip a few beats when I first saw her lounging in front of Serenity talking to Book and by the time she bit into the strawberry minutes later, I was in love. Needless to say, the next day I stopped off at Best Buy after work and bought the DVD set and have been playing catch up ever since so I could join the Firefly Film Festival threads. I’ve tried to limit myself to one episode per night to stretch them out, but I cheated once and saw “Shindig” and “Safe” back to back because I didn’t get my fix with just one episode that night.
As lucky as I feel to be enjoying the show for the first time and knowing that I only have to wait a few months to see Serenity (the movie) while the rest of you have waited for years, I can’t help but look at my DVD box and think “Only eight episodes left!” After reading on another thread her how Fox murdered the show by showing the episodes out of order (and let’s not forget the horrible promos that kept me away from the show), it’s amazing that Firefly garnered such a loyal following.
On to the episode. I really loved “Our Mrs. Reynolds” and think it’s the funniest episode of the six I’ve seen so far. The scene where a drunken Jayne hugs the guy who gave him the rain stick was hilarious, especially since later in the episode he refers to it as “that dumbass stick” when he learns what Mal’s gift was. Book warning Mal about the “special place in hell” was great also, as was the scene where Inara was still groggy from the kiss and insisting “I’m okay! I’m okay! I just fell.”
Anyway, I just wanted to use this thread to thank all you Firefly fans for writing so lovingly about the show here because if it not for my implicit trust in your impeccable taste, I’d still be missing out.
Yes I am caught up now through that episode. I am reconsidering somewhat my opinion about Zoe and Wash’s relationship. Still feel that Zoe feels damn proprietary about Mal though.
Now I have a much bigger dilemna - how to ration out the remaining episodes. If I watch two-three a night as I have since purchasing, it’ll be over too quickly. Yet I lack the willpower to cut myself off after one. (But I’ll definitely stop after this next ep.)
Absolutely! And then you’ve got the added bonus of going back and rewatching the first few episodes with later character development and revelations in mind, and some things take on new meanings, you see new stuff, and on and on. Often I’ll turn on an episode, usually Serenity or Our Mrs. Reynolds, just to have something going on in the background, and I’ll end up riveted. It doesn’t matter if I know the plot line by line, it’s still engaging and enjoyable.
A brief hijack:
Firefly joins next season’s Sci-Fi Friday lineup along with new episodes of Stargate, S:Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica. I hope the ratings are huge! site with cite
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I know we’ll never see new Firefly episodes, but maybe if we boost ratings, we can increase the hype for the movie that will rock, and therefore start a series of movies
I read somewhere (sorry, I don’t remember, so no cite–maybe Ain’t it Cool News?) that Serenity is the first in a trilogy. Screw trilogy, though, I’m thinking franchise! Let’s have a Firefly movie every 2-3 years like they used to do with Star Trek before Paramount, Berman and Braga destroyed the Trek franchise.
Well, I understand the sentiment there, but really, the problem there is the amount of aging the actors would go through to get to the point of maybe the fourth movie. There would have to be major changes; just for one example, would Kaylee still make sense as a character if she was still working the engine room at age 38, and more importantly would she still retain that delectable air of innocent hotness?
(Actually, I could conceive of a scenario somewhere down the road where Mal succumbs to one too many bullets (in suitably tear-jerking fashion), Zoe throws it all over to become a Shepherd, Jayne, ever the mercenary, becomes an enforcer for the Alliance, an older, wiser, more cynical Kaylee takes over as captain of Serenity, with River as first mate, and Inara moves in with me and washes my back. Er, did I say that last bit out loud? Anyway, maybe my previous paragraph is therefore utter bollocks.)
Seriously, though, IMO if this show was ever gonna reach it’s full flower, 1-2 full seasons of the Best Damn TV Ever would have been sufficient. I’m glad the movie’s being done and I’ll go see it, but to me it seems more a coda than the beginning of a franchise.
I myself would much prefer the movie be enough of a success that Joss could go back and give us a couple-few more good, full seasons. The show works really well as a weekly series, and I don’t want to wait 2-3 years between 2 hour episodes.
As for the Firefly universe becoming a franchise, I wouldn’t be against Joss introducing some interesting new characters and spinning them off into their own series.
It’s called character development.
On the other hand, I’ve often voiced the opinion that we are lucky the series ended ended before “Firefly, the Musical”.
I think the premise would make a great Trek series, with a group of Maquis being the good guys and the Federation the bad guys. ^ :dubious: ^
Capt./Councilman David Aceveda (Benito Martinez) from the yet to be released (at the time) show The Shield was one of the two guys on the Net that got sucked out the window Jane shot out.
[QUOTE=carnivorousplant]
On the other hand, I’ve often voiced the opinion that we are lucky the series ended ended before “Firefly, the Musical”.QUOTE]
So, you haven’t seen “Jaynestown” yet?
Hey, if anyone can pull off musical episodes, it’s Joss Whedon. Hell, “Once More, With Feeling” is the episode that convinced me to start watching Buffy.
