I worked in Canada for 4 months and since a couple of people recommended Firefly to me, I bought the DVD box and gave it as a present to my brother. He lent me the DVDs and I watched the pilot.
So far, it didn’t blow me away like Buffy or Angel. It’s funny to see the actors who played villains (Caleb, Jasmine and the link-dude to the senior partners) on those shows as the heroes. Now I’m hoping for some Buffy / Angel heroes to show up as villains on Firefly, heh.
At least one does: the wormy little demon worshipping lab tech who set Fred up at the end of the last season of Angel. He was also a vampire in one episode of Buffy, making him one of two actors to appear in all three of Joss Whedon’s TV series. (The other was the cop in the pilot of Firefly: also the demon who ran the runaway shelter in the first episode of Buffy’s third season, and… shit. I forget who he was on Angel. Possibly the guy who tries to marry Doyle’s ex-wife.)
Er, I guess neither of them are exactly what you’d call heroes…
Caleb was a hero in Firefly? Who’d he play?
I’ve never seen an episode, obviously.
He’s the captain of the ship, but he’s not really a great man. Just a good man.
I guess he’s allright.
How surreal.
d00d… I never realised it, but you’re right.
Check his Notable Guest Appearances.
Summer Glau (River) also appeared on an episode of Angel - her first TV appearance of any note.
Joss is good to his actors.
All right, I finished the first DVD. Actually I kept watching the next 2 episodes after the pilot till 3 am, so my verdict on those isn’t as bad. I guess pilots are traditionally rather weak, but the following episodes were pretty good. I particularly liked “bushwhacked” - dimly lit spaceships just make for great stories in any universe. The nudge to smuggling people Han Solo style was nice, especially since Joss added a little twist to it (as usual).
I wouldn’t call the pilot “weak” by any measure. It’s not action-packed, but I found it to be a wonderful introduction to the crew and the Universe. Go back and watch it again after you have finished the rest of the DVD’s, and see if your judgement of it hasn’t changed. 
Truth be told, I started playing Enemy Territory half-way through it, so I kinda missed what was going on… I guess I will watch it again after I am through with the rest.
In between learning for the upcoming exams, I took a little break and watched the next episode “Shindig”. It was pretty good too - the fancy ballroom stuff is something that works almost as well as the above mentioned dimly lit, creepy hulk.
I’ve got to agree - the pilot wasn’t the strongest episode. And “Train Job” definitely isn’t, either. It was basically written over a weekend when Fox insisted they come up with a one hour pilot, since they didn’t want to devote two hours to the original pilot. So give the next few discs a chance. It gets better.
Hmpf. I just saw the hospital episode and while it was overall good as well, I have two gripes with it:
Those men in black pulling out a Will-Smith-Memory-Erasing-Stick just to have the stick not erase the memory but liquify people’s brains was silly - yeah, I get it, those guys are evil. Having them constantly wear blue safety gloves already established that, did they really need to kill valuable assets?
But what’s worse is the end: If the captain knows that Jayne sold him out, why the heck does he invite him back in? I didn’t understand it when Megatron constantly forgave Starscream’s backstabbing or when Captain Hunt pardoned Tir Ana-whatever after his latest scheeme didn’t work and I don’t understand this. Apart from not wanting to ditch a perfectly good actor and / or character from the show, there’s no real reason why they’d act this way.
Jayne is much more useful to Mal - not to mention being, to some measure, a friend - than an incompetant Alliance functionary is to the Blue Hands.
I disagree: The alliance functionary captured the girl (that was the knowledge the blue glove dudes had at that moment) and they killed them for “talking” to her. Seems a bit over the top.
As for Jayne: He has proven himself to be unreliable. While Mal shouldn’t have kicked him out of the airlock, he should have set him down on the next planet and said “Well, good luck fella, but we part ways here”. Fool me once…
But in most TV shows the regular cast gets away with stuff that normally wouldn’t fly. I would have liked it better if nobody had found out that Jayne tried to sell out the doctor and the kid.
In the vein of Whedon-verse crossovers, the commander of the Alliance ship in the pilot played D’Hoffryn in Buffy (leader of the vengeance demons).
River was the subject of a clearly illegal - or at least, unpolitic - experiment. She’s loose, and may have given the Alliance officers information that would be dangerous to the Blue Hands. Why, exactly, would the BH let them live after that? They’re not useful to them - their competance is in serious doubt, and they can be easily replaced - and they might have information that can’t be allowed to get out.
As to Jayne:
Point 1) Once, over the course of 9 episodes (and that’s just what we’ve seen, specifically - he’s been with the Serenity for a lot longer than that), he goes to take the money on a bounty even Mal had been considering taking until recently - after River cut him - whereas he’s saved the crew’s - and passengers! - lives several times. He’s proven himself very much reliable - he just had to have the consequences of making the wrong choice driven home. He has a MUCH better track record than could have been expected from his origin.
Point 2) The Serenity crew are criminals. Pissing Jayne off and letting him live would be a Very Bad Idea - especially since he’s made it quite clear that he’ll take the money if it’s better than his other options. Jayne knows this. He knows that if he ever becomes more trouble than he’s worth, letting him off at the next moon would not be an option.
Point 2a) Since Mal’s not a murderer, offing Jayne is the last resort, so he’s left with two things: Giving Jayne the idea that he WILL take that last resort, and attempting to give him reason to remain loyal to the Serenity family.
Point 3) Jayne is, despite being, well, Jayne, part of the family. He doesn’t like the Tam’s much, but he’s been a friend (or exasperating brother) to the crew for a long time.
At this point, you’re probably aware that River was part of some super-secret experiment. Blue Hands evidently don’t mind people being aware that she exists but they can’t take a chance on anyone knowing what was done to her so they completely destroyed any knowledge which she and Simon may have revealed. It’s likely that technology has progressed enough that it’s possible to retrieve specific memories from a human brain.
I agree that they killed the cops because they knew too much; however, at the time, she wasn’t loose. River, Simon & Jayne hadn’t broken free yet.
To quote Mal: “If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.” I don’t believe he ever intended to space Jayne, he was just trying real hard to get his attention.
Jayne didn’t sell out Mal, at least he didn’t see it that way. Remember what he said when confronted in the airlock: "What’re you taking this so personal for? It ain’t like I ratted you out to the feds."
He then begs Mal not to tell the others about his betrayal. (I like to think that Mal was prepared to kill Jayne up to that point.) I think Jayne is loyal to Mal and his crew, he just hadn’t accepted Simon and River as part of the team/family.