Rank the Firefly episodes from best to worst [spoilers]

Cafe Society
41

I was very tempted to rate certain episodes just for particular scenes, but I forced myself to consider the whole episode.

  1. Out of Gas - nuff said
  2. War Stories - for focusing on and resolving the whole Mal/Zoey/Wash dynamic
  3. Jaynestown - best of the funny, with just enough seriousness. plus, a song!

Next favorites group in no particular order

Ariel - it was fun to highlight Simon taking charge, and temporarily resolve the Jayne/Mal/Simon dynamic
Our Mrs Reynolds / Trash - the female Sawyer vs Mal: Saffron - 1, Mal - naked
Shindig/Heart of Gold - for the Mal/Innara dynamic

Next group is still good but not as good

Serenity - A little clunky and drawn out, but it established River/Simon and Book joining the crew. There were some nice moments with Kaylee as greeter, and Mal dispensing with the bad guy at the end
Train Job - ducks I actually thought this was a stronger pilot. It managed to establish things much quicker and get on with the action adventure and anti-hero theme
Bushwhacked - Very creepy, some good reaver action, and the hints at Book’s past were interesting. But also felt a little like “we need a Halloween episode”.

Next group I didn’t particularly like

Safe - Planet of the wicker man! I liked some of the Kaylee-Simon stuff but otherwise the backwards hill billies were boring and Mal was a dick fr most of the episode
Message - The premise was touching, and Jayne’s hat was neat, but the twist didn’t do much for me and the market place annoyed me for some reason.
Objects in Space - Somehow this made everyone else’s number one! Sorry, but other than being the final episode and having a little bit of kick ass River at the end this was super boring. And the “black bounty hunter pontificating” was done a thousand times better in the movie.

42

Like I said, it’s a minor nitpick, but they were still way off the mark with the amount of time it would take to use up the air.

But just for the sake of geeking out…

Department of Homeland Security has guidelines for how long you can live in a sealed room (in case of a chemical attack and you seal up a room in your house with duct tape and plastic to protect yourself). DHS recommends that individuals allow ten square feet of floor space per person in order to provide sufficient air to prevent dangerous carbon dioxide build up for up to 5 hours assuming a normal breathing rate while resting.

That’s for a room with an 8 ft ceiling, so let’s use 80 cubic feet of air for one person for five hours before the the CO2 level would start to rise - there’d still be plenty of oxygen, but the CO2 would start getting dangerous after that. So that’s 16 cubic feet of air per person per hour.

How many cubic feet are in Serenity? The hangar deck alone, which was still pressurized, looks to be at least 30 X 70 ft, and it’s three stories high. That’s roughly 50,000 cubic feet of air, or 3,150 person/hours of air. So nine crewmembers could live for 350 hours (14 days) on just the air in the hangar deck before they’re start feeling any effects at all. When the rest left, leaving Mal behind, he could have survived for 131 days on just the air in the hangar deck. If you want to assume that the fire consumed a lot so the pressure was lower and the CO2 content already higher, maybe cut that in half.

And mind you, that the time it would take before the CO2 levels would begin to become a problem. Actual death wouldn’t occur for a much longer time.

Add in all the other spaces still open in the ship, and Mal could probably have lived for a year on the air left after the scrubbers shut down.

On Apollo 13 the temperature dropped from 72 to 40 degrees in 90 hours with almost all power off. So yeah, River was right. But it still would have taken a lot longer - and it should have been possible to gather together blankets and insulation and batteries and whatnot and keep a space warm inside the ship for some time. Even so, they would have frozen to death long before the air ran out. But notice Mal was already quite hypoxic long before it was terribly cold. They got that wrong.

Anyway, a small nitpick turned into a colossal waste of time… It’s still a great episode.

43

I put Shindig a little higher for the production value of the pool table at the beginning. It was so brilliant to my mind of playing normal pool, then adding sound effects and a flutter of merging an empty table image with the real one. I can practically do that on my home pc and yet, together it really sets a future-type stage. (similar to the energy-window at the beginning of The Train Job.)

Those were the kind of things that made me love this show.

Jayne: Damn yokels can’t even tell a transport ship ain’t got no guns on it.
(chuckling) “Blow a new crater in this moon…”

Inara: As with other situations, the key seems to be giving Jayne a heavy stick and standing back.

44

Why in half–why not cut it by 98%? Or why not assume that the fire created a tremendous quantity of CO2?

As for the temperature drop, I’m not sure I buy a comparison to Apollo 13, since they didn’t suffer a drastic loss of atmosphere; wouldn’t a lot of heat be lost as the heated atmosphere was vented?

45

Well, because if they lost 98% of their air pressure, they’d be dead. And clearly they sealed off large portions of the ship from the fire, and after they closed the airlock to the hangar bay it was re-pressurized with new air.

As for there already being a tremendous amount of CO2 - The effects of CO2 poisoning start to show at about 1/5 of the fatal concentration. By the time it’s even half of the fatal concentration people are breathing at least twice as fast as normal, for example. So if after the fire the crew had been gasping like fish, you could say that they only have half the time that I calculated.

Like I said, it was a tiny nitpick. But there’s no combination of air loss and CO2 buildup that could have the characters feeling fine talking about their options and having someone near death from oxygen starvation or CO2 poisoning within a few hours.

The temperature loss issue is much more iffy. If they were way out in the system where the sun wasn’t adding any warmth, and the temperature had already dropped due to adiabitic expansion when the air was vented and all that, it could have gotten pretty chilly pretty fast. At least on a scale of tens of hours, and not weeks.

46

My top three were much like everyone else’s: OIS, OOG, Janestown. The worst Firefly ep is 1000x better than the best of anything else out there and really, those 3 are equally as good I’d say. For different reasons. Janestown brings the funny and character development, whereas the other two are just fucking amazingly well done in every respect. (Jubal Early annoyed me too though!)

I have such a soft spot for The Message, because it was filmed last. That scene in the snow when they’re bringing Tracey’s body home, with the voiceover and the music… I tear up just thinking about it. So poignant. Plus, I love seeing Tracey as a “good guy” after seeing him on Buffy. :slight_smile:

47

Anyone who points a gun at Kaylee is, by definition, not a good guy.

48

This poll is going about where I expected. Out of Gas is the clear winner, a good bit ahead of Objects in Space. I think one of the most striking things is that Ariel is underrated. It’s a very good episode - funny with the memorization stuff, good caper with the hospital robbery, interesting reveal with the river brain scan, and amazing character moments with Mal and Jayne. It should be in most people’s top 3 and barely missed mine.

Safe is the only episode with 0 votes. Surprised to see Heart of Gold with 6. Serenity is underrated - I think people tend to dismiss it a bit because it was the pilot, but maybe not. Jaynestown is a little overrated, being sort of a gimmick episode.

49

  1. Out of Gas.

  2. Objects in Space.

Both for the exact reasons listed in the OP.

  1. The Message. I see that this is one of the less popular choices, but it struck a chord in me, being a veteran who’s made some screwy life choices after leaving the military (they seemed like good ideas at the time). I never got as screwed up as Tracey, but damned if I wasn’t much more than a one-count from down-and-out at one point.

Plus, the funeral scene at the end is especially poignant as the cast knew that the show was cancelled at that point. Wasn’t much acting going on there, but it worked.
ETA: since we only had three choices in the poll, I thought we were just rating our top three (and no, I didn’t read the entire thread, just the OP, in which I thought SenorBeef had just recapped the eps. for everyone’s convenience.)

50

I liked Ariel, but it had a few flaws that kept it out of the top 3 for me. For one, the notion that two people could convert a beat-up shell of an aircraft into a new looking, flyable craft in a few hours wasn’t believable. And if they had that ability, they could make more money refurbishing aircraft than smuggling cows.

Also, Jayne isn’t stupid enough to trust the cops in a corrupt society. He’s got better survival instincts than that. Granted, he did admit that he ‘got stupid’.

That said, the show has some amazing moments and great dialog. It’s one of the better episodes. It’s just not quite up to the level of the top three in my opinion.

51

I am curious as to thoughts on whom NisKe’s wife is? He has a wedding ring on in this episode, maybe if it was picked up as a series(as it should have been) we would find out?

52

Probably. That’s the kind of detail Joss is so good at. Probably in Season Three, as a sub-plot in a two-parter. Something to ramp up the tension in the series after the resolution of Inara’s sickness.

53

I have only watched the series through once, and quite recently - I am ashamed to say that nothing ever distinguished this obsessed-fan series from the many others I sampled and had to barf up. We smply ran out of other things to watch and decided to give it a try… oh, my.

Not having more than a shaky grasp of the series as a whole, I can say at this point that I understand the worship and sense of loss: the premature cancellation of this series is one of the greatest failures of TV’s potential I can think of - I put it above the truncation of Carnivale, my all-time leader for wishing they’d finished the run.

As a 1-time newb, I agree with most of what I’ve read so far, and I may be in a minority, but the ending of the film struck me as Joss Whedon in complete control of his universe:

Serenity destroyed; oh, I bet they get a new ship.
Serenity laboriously rebuilt: cool.
Soaring, orchestral-score visuals as they sail back out into the black: nice. expected. meh.
“What was that?” - fucking genius.

I look forward to many watch-throughs to come, and join those who hope Whedon finds a way to pick up the story for a little longer.

54

My ranking:

  1. Out of Gas
  2. Ariel
  3. Serenity
  4. Our Mrs. Reynolds
  5. Objects in Space
  6. War Stories
  7. Safe
  8. Trash
  9. Train Job
  10. Jaynestown
  11. Bushwacked
  12. Shindig
  13. Heart of Gold
  14. The Message
55

Wait, there was a Firefly poll and I didn’t get to vote? That’s not gorram right!
1. Objects in Space - Some of the best made-for-TV material ever. Ever.
2. Out of Gas - Not far behind. “Ship like this, be with you 'til the day you die.”
3. War Stories - Nischka gets an ear, for a little while, Wash regales us with the story of the time in flight school when he was laconic.
4. Serenity - the real pilot. Strawberry. Grandpa. “I was gonna get me an ear, too!”
5. Ariel - Heist movie. Jayne’s sudden but inevitable betrayal. His realization that the crew, and what they thought of him, mattered to him.
6. Bushwacked - Sudden dead people, scary booby-trap. Mal has an outrageous psychological theory that turns out to be right.
7. Trash - Monty’s patience. Monty’s mustache. Mal and the crew get screwed over - or did they? Inara gets to hold Yosaffbridge at gunpoint.
8. Heart of Gold - Melinda Clarke, you neanderthals! Melinda Clarke!
9. Shindig - Dolled-up Kaylee, you neanderthals! Snarky old man tells off stuck up young women, and a smarmy, self-important bastard who spends his spare time poking people with rapiers, gets poked with a rapier.
10. The Train Job - “Darn.”
11. Our Mrs. Reynolds - “I call her Vera.”
12. The Message - Worked better for me the second time I saw it.

Big drop off here.

13. Safe - The story on the planet was ass. Only the parts involving Book and, “Big Damn Heroes.” (must be capitalized) give any value to this episode.
14. Jaynestown - a one-joke episode. Jayne’s old partner is a cartoon character, “The Ballad of Jayne” is irritating, and the kid that sacrificed himself for Jayne flew in front of him in a Superman-flying pose that didn’t seem workable, realistic, or not stupid-looking. I’ve seen this episode twice, probably will never see it again.

56

I don’t think I could really rank them 1-14, but I can break them up into tiers (in no particular order within each tier). Of course, even the bottom tier of Firefly episodes are better than a lot of shows on tv right now.

Top:
Out of Gas
Objects in Space
Our Mrs. Reynolds

Middle:
Train Job
Serenity
Shindig
War Stories
Jaynestown
Ariel
Bushwacked

Bottom:
Trash
Safe
The Message
Heart of Gold

I think Jayne’s ballad is a little irritating, but I love the scene where the crowd in the bar starts singing it just to see the reactions of the cast to hearing it. Priceless.

And the episode has some great lines in it.

I especially like River’s take on the Bible:

57

OK, I’ll give you the River-Book interaction. Those are a couple great scenes, and I’d forgotten that was in Jaynestown. Mal’s quote about the statue is a good one as well - not just in terms of the plot, but thought-provoking in general. Even in the episode of Firefly I largely loathe, there are parts that aren’t just good, but world’s better than much of what’s still on TV today.

58

YoSaffBridge, of course.

59

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH! You bastards!

This thread inspired me to re-watch it again. You bastards! “Jaynestown” isn’t quite as bad as I remember it, and as mentioned above, has some rather good moments. “Safe” still sucks.

I’m starting “Objects in Space” now, and River is walking around the ship, watching the others interact. She’s reading minds.

Simon says, “I would be there right now.” as he talks to Kaylee about graduating. Jayne says, “I got stupid. The money was too good.” Both lines are pretty straightforward. She sees Wash & Zoe making out, and seems affected, as though she were participating. Inara says, “I’m a big girl. Just tell me.” as she’s talking to Mal. Also seems easy to understand - she wants Mal to say how he feels.

Mal’s was a little harder to get. He said, “None of it means a damn thing.” I wonder what that meant .

Book’s was cryptic in the extreme. He says (fairly menacingly), “I don’t give half a hump if you’re innocent or not. So where does that put you?” I’m DAMN curious as to the meaning of this.

I’m gonna throw out another, “You bastards!” in anticipation of the end of this episode, and the series. People thing we’re nuts that we still love this failed show 10 years later. The crazy thing is that it was a failed series. There was so much RIGHT in this show.

“Might have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.”

You bastards!

60

I’m going for:

Serenity - because I love the scene with Wash and the toy dinosaurs. The day after I saw this I went out and bought toy dinosaurs for my desk at work.

Our Mrs Reynolds - funny opening scene, funny episode in general and (although I kick myself for missing it now), Saffron’s sudden transformation into predatory scammer took me completely by surprise.

War Stories - ribcages, sweet revenge and generally kickass action throughout.