It wasn’t lack of viewership that killed it; it was doing about as well as any new show in its first season that was televised out of order and in randomly-shifting timeslots. Fox killed it, plain and simple.
While it’s certainly true that a show can outgrow its concept, I still think it’s hard to justify Firefly’s early demise that way. At the very least, it could have gone two or three full seasons just on what they had already, plus more if they introduced new material well enough. Heck, the events of Serenity could have been expanded out to a full season by themselves.
Despite what Chronos said… I’m sorry. For me, it was a timing issue, not just that there was other stuff I wanted to watch on Friday nights that year, (can’t even remember what they were,) but that I was somewhat on a Joss-y goodness overload at that point.
I went off to check it out a little while after Angel went off the air - a little treasure trove of JW on DVD, each episode to be unwrapped and savored carefully.
I’ll post now before I either let my mood slip into angry melancholy or manage to erase this text.
Firefly has some pretty good commentary tracks also, unlike most shows in which the commentary tracks are idiotic and annoying as hell. But the best commentary track I’ve ever listened to was on “Objects in Space.” It’s a freakin’ philosophical treatise, totally fascinating.
Am I the only one that thought the actor playing Simon had a difficult time portraying a heterosexual? I always thought Simon was about as gay as it gets.
I don’t think Simon is gay. I think he’s a little repressed, and a little class-conscious, but not gay. I also think he’s intelligent and thoughtful enough to consider what would happen if he bedded Kaylee and it didn’t work out.
wait, do you mean the actor who plays Simon is gay? Damn. Why is it all the actors I want are gay? First Richard Chamberlian and now Sean Maher. Really?
I’m just talking about his mannerisms - it just pings my gaydar. Looking at Sean Maher’s wiki page I do see his most recent role was John Stamos’ boyfriend…
Oh wow I love Firefly. It was just something about the dialouge that was so…so…so right. You know that quote, I think it was an un-aired episode, maybe from “the message”? It goes: “When you can’t run, you walk. When you can’t walk, you crawl. And when you can’t crawl, you find someone to carry you for a spell.” Well, I speak at AA meetings in New England and once in a great while I’ll pull this quote out. It feels pretty neat to speak Firefly from a podium
Gotta love the Firefly! I have trouble even picking out two or three favorite episodes, they were all so good. And I loved Serenity so much I actually saw it 5 times in the theater, most I’ve ever gone to a theater for.
Well there are some stand alone comics collected as trade paperbacks. One of them leads into the movie so you might want to at least check that one out. As far as I know though there’s no “the next season” comics like there are for Buffy and Angel.
It was Fox! I’m a Whedon fan and even I had trouble following it when it was still airing.
He’s just… British. Or metrosexual. One of those things. There is a lot of Simon/Jayne slash out there, so I’ve heard…
Another latecomer to Firefly here. I’d seen Serenity before I’d bought the DVDs of the TV series so knew who the characters were, but the series was definitely a whole different kettle of fish. Knowing that it had been cancelled and that I only had the one set of episodes to watch, I paced them out very carefully, only watching one episode every weekend.
And then I watched ‘Objects in Space’.
And then I realized - there were no more.
And lo, there was a great void in my life.
Very mild spoiler for those who haven’t seen ‘The Message:’ (or just Hal, maybe.)
Yes, I love that line, and the way Joss reinforces it by having it incomplete at least once: “When you can’t run anymore, you crawl, and when you can’t do that… well, you know the rest.” Really reinforces it when the complete version finally comes along at the end, and the last scene.
I think the cancellation of Firefly may be the only event in television that is making me properly upset. It is up against The Wire as the best television show ever. And look at all that other crap they show. Aaaarrgh!
(I don’t even particularly like the other Whedon shows btw.)
I think what I really like about the show is how real it feels. It draws me into the brutal reality of the outer rim, and of the characters, who are a beacon of light in the dark world, while always behaving in a way that makes sense, and not cartoonishly moral. Even the noble hero, the captain, is not above throwing the thug into the engine, or stealing hospital supplies. The only one event in the series that didn’t feel realistic to me was when Mal refused to escape from the swordfight, and go to his almost certain death.
Also, it has some of the best and most lovable characters, which is an important point to me. For instance, The Sopranos is a pretty good series, but it suffers from the problem of having solely dislikable characters.
In order of favorite to least favorite:
Jayne. Brilliant character. Incredible how he can fully betray the others, and still be lovable because he stumbles through his hard-learned medical jargon. (Didn’t he still make a mistake though? Maybe that wasn’t on purpose for the scene.)
The Doctor. Provides excellent interaction with the other characters.
River. “My food is problematic”
Wash. Has some good lines, and I always like joking in face of serious situations. However, something about his way of delivery seems a little odd to me.
The rest. Inara is stunning, but I think her acting could be better.
The movie was a big disappointment to me, though. If that was what they were gonna do with the second season
My take on Serenity has always been that that’s what they would have done over the course of their final season, had the show been allowed to live a normal life span.
No cite, but I remember reading that Serenity was the last half of season one, plus at least season two, and maybe part or all of season three crammed into ninety minutes.
And even that can be explained by a few reasons stemming from the respect and attraction Mal feels for Inara:
He feels like he has something to prove to her, that he can play in her world just as well as she can play in his.
He’s jealous of Wing. So far as we know, Wing’s the only client of Inara’s Mal’s ever met up to that point, and he’s a dislikable prick to boot. So it’s not right that Inara should be on his arm, even if she’s not on Mal’s.
He wants to protect her, for the same reason as above.
Even though Inara tells him he never has any problems running from fights, so it’s baffling why he won’t run from this one, most fights don’t involve Inara. She has no investment in him running away from a smuggling job that turned ugly, but when she’s involved, it basically becomes fighting over her. If he’d rather run than fight for her, how can she respect him or be attracted to him? Sort of like a girlfriend might forgive a pacifistic boyfriend for not starting trouble when someone cuts in line in front of him or otherwise takes advantage of him, but won’t stand for it if he doesn’t defend her.
All this is in Mal’s head, specifically his subconscious, and probably has no bearing on Inara herself. He probably didn’t even consciously know why he was doing it, but if you take the hidden attraction as a given, it becomes a lot more understandable.
