Not to mention that they’re more examples of Joss Whedon taking the wiewer’s expectations and tossing them out the (forcefield) window.
Jayne: I say Zoe gets nekkid.
Wash: No.
Jayne: I could get nekkid.
Everybody: NO!
Dangit Tarrsk, here I am all ready to talk about my fav lines of the episode, and you’ve brought them all up!!
::sigh::
This is without question one of my favorite episodes, because of all the fun dialogue, the crew interaction (Jayne cheating at cards), and the presence of Badger, who is my second-favorite recurring character. I love his bowler hat.
Cap’n Tightpants: Mal seems to shop at the Space Cowboy Trouser Emporium (Proprieter: Han Solo).
I am deeply grieved that we are denied the opportunity to see Jayne nekkid.
That’s one thing that bugged me. Why did Mal, an excellent “street fighter”, choose to fight a master fencer on the others’ terms? If I were him, I’d throw my sword in his face right at the beginning of the duel, tackle him to the ground and pummel him unconscious. After all, a three-foot rapier is useless at grappling range (which is one reason 17th-century fighters carried daggers).
There’s a widespread belief in American popular culture that junior officers have no personal combat skills, or leadership skills for that matter (see: Platoon or Aliens). I don’t know how accurate that is, but I know that “sergeant” is code for “tough”.
My favorite quote (that hasn’t been mentioned yet), is when Mal’s introducing himself to Harrow, and has to admit that he’s working through Badger:
HARROW: Whom is it you represent?
MAL: “Represent” isn’t exactly -
HARROW: Don’t waste my time.
MAL: “Fellow called Badger.”
HARROW: “I know him. And I think he’s a psychotic lowlife.”
MAL: “And I think calling him that is an insult to the psychotic lowlife community.”
Badger’s awesome. I’m quite relieved that Joss decided not to play Badger himself, because the actor they cast is absolutely perfect for the part.
Just out of curiosity, who’s your favorite recurring character? 
Love Badger…love River’s putdown of him even more.
Really loved the end scene :
Mal: still, it’s good to have a cargo.
[pan down to cows]
Moo
(I’m not sure if there was an actual moo, probably just a mental moo on my part.)
Oh, and this is the ep. that sealed Inara’s hotness for me…women with swords 
Oh, Niska. The darling little gnomish grampa. Who is so utterly, spine-chillingly, twisted and evil. He’s Hermey the Christmas Elf meets Hannibal Lecter.
But Badger’s right up there. The hat gives him extra points.
Mrs. Reynolds! She’s even sexier tha the regular female crew members, and the episodes with her are so much fun.
I don’t think that’s the problem here. Mal is definitely tough and has great leadership and peronal combat skills in part because of his expierence as a sergeant, but fancy swordfighting just isn’t something a sergeant would need. I’m sure he wouldn’t have a poblem with officer types like Ath in any other form of combat.
Too risky, it involves him A) Disposing of his only weapon and B) Running headlong towards a guy brandishing a sharp pointy object. Assuming that Atherton is as skilled with the blade as everyone thinks he is, it would be relatively minor for him to time a swing to catch Mal as he gets within reach of the sword. Also, stepping to the side would do much to mess up Mal’s bowling ball attack.
Actually, Alessan, we don’t even have to guess; we see Mal running at Atherton, who has his sword hidden behind his back, and turns quickly to stick Mal with it.
Those last three feet before you get into grappling range are pretty rough, though.
I love the dialog between Mal and Inara during the sword lesson. Especially:
Mal: “I don’t respect your job, he doesn’t respect you.”
About as close to “I love you” that he’s gonna get.
I have a few thoughts on using the “Old West” culture for the frontier.
The “Old West” is, in itself, an amalgam of older cultures and technologies. As the western lands of the US were being settled, people took tried and true physical technologies with them; many of them actually dating from medieval Europe. The metalworking, woodworking, and other tools they had needed to be easy to make where they were, easy to use, and take a minimum of hard to find materials, due to difficult and infrequent supply. On the other hand, the settlers had their pick of tried-and-true methods for doing things like building, smithing, and so forth, that had been established to work for hundreds of years.
This is a position put forth by some historians, like Lynn White. If you think about it in those terms, then the settlers on the frontier planets and moons in Firefly have the same parameters - they can choose from any age of technology, but they need to be self-sufficient, and it needs to be easy to use and replace where they are, with infrequent resupply.
Hence, the “Old West” look.
No, I get all that. I even mentioned that before - Conestoga wagons are actually a very efficient transportation method, given that you don’t have access to high technology. I’m down with that. What I mean are the direct copies of unique old west speech and habits and such. The one that stuck out for me was the force-field ‘window’ that people could be thrown through. What, did some inventor sit around one day and say, “What the world needs is a force field that you can throw human through”? Does that force field keep out wind and bugs and birds? It really makes no sense, unless the only reason for it to exist is to have an ‘old west’ anachronism that allows you to do an homage bar-fight - with a spacey twist!
Same goes for the pool table. First, we’ve seen no evidence anywhere else of the holographic (or whatever it is) technology that allows you to create perfect simulacrums of physical things. Second, if you did have such a technology, would you use it to make a dingy-looking pool table with stains on the cloth and worn felt?
I know these are nitpicks, and the show is great despite the odd clunker, but it would have been better without them, and most especially it would have taken away some of the ammo from the people who claim Firefly is just ‘a stupid western in space’.
I could see the pool table; it may not be efficient to ship the heavy balls (or maybe even possible to come by the raw materials), and they may not have the tools to polish them there, but the tech could be very small. (And obviously isn’t in good condition, from the episode.)
I’m with you on the window, though. Consider: a window should keep out the weather, insects, and provide security. This one, however, obviously lets people in.
“Hey, Butch, let’s say we rob this place!”
“How we gonna’ get in, Sundance?”
“Easy as pie. Just take a runnin’ start at the winder, and it’ll let us rat in!”
It’s probably the same tech that would let Simon and River hide under a plate.
I agree with you about the speech, but I still like it. For one thing, it just sounds neat. I hate sci-fi shows that try to invent future slang or jargon. It always sounds incredibly forced, and lame. Remember the original Battlestar Galactica? It also sets the tone of the show right from the outset, just like the clothes. The Old West is familiar to most viewers. It’s familiar, and doesn’t turn off people by being impenetrable. It uses settings, speech, and objects that are already familiar to people, yet unique to the Firefly universe. And, again, it’s just cool.
The one that stuck out for me was the force-field ‘window’ that people could be thrown through. What, did some inventor sit around one day and say, “What the world needs is a force field that you can throw human through”? Does that force field keep out wind and bugs and birds? It really makes no sense, unless the only reason for it to exist is to have an ‘old west’ anachronism that allows you to do an homage bar-fight - with a spacey twist!
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I have no doubt at all that the only reason that it showed up in the show was for the spacey twist bar-fight, but it’s still not at all hard to rationalize why the bar would have a window like that. Just put aside the assumption that the forcefield was designed to substitute as a window. I can think of all sorts of industrial applications for a force-field, especially on a spaceship. Like the one that brought the colonists to that moon. Colony ships are usually one way trips, in most sf. Figure the same holds true here: a ship takes all these colonists to a planet, loaded with supplies. Once it arrives, it’s canabalized for parts. They don’t have a use for a low-strength forcefield of that size anywhere else, so the guy building the bar gets it and uses it as a window. It’s strong enough to keep out the window and small animals, but not to stop barstools or bodies. Plus, it’s way more durable than a sheet of glass, which is probably not even available anywhere on the planet except at exhorbitant import prices.
Is that any more ridiculous than playing, say, solitaire on a desktop PC? Any time a new technology comes along, the first two questions humans seem to ask are, “How can I have fun with this?” and “How can I kill someone with this?” (Often, this is the same question.) A holographic pool table sounds like the sort of thing you’d buy at a Sharper Image store of the future. Dumb, gimicky high tech on a core world, maybe, but an almost unique item out on the edge. I can easily see some would-be barkeep-cum-colonist packing one of those onto the ship thinking it would be a big draw for his establishment on the new world. Especially since the colony’s nascent timber industry is going to be far too busy making new homes to bother with pool tables and billiard balls for the first couple decades. Of course, the thing looks stained and dingy now, because it’s probably thirty years old by now, and has been hard used. That’s why the holographic balls fritz out like that.
Also, I believe we saw holographic technology employed at the hospital Simon takes River to in “Ariel,” when he scans her to see what the Alliance did to her.
See, I wouldn’t want to lose any of that because the “Western in space” angle is what makes it so great. To me, that’s like saying Star Wars should have ditched the Force because that gave ammunition to the people who claimed it was just “a stupid fantasy story in space.”
How is that functionally different from a glass window?
I like the window. ::dons fanboy hat::
To me, it’s not a force field so much as a holographic thingie that doubles as a neon sign. Maybe it also has some sort of low-level electric field that repels bugs. It doesn’t seem like it rains often on that moon, you don’t really want to constantly replace a window people frequently get thrown through, and at night when the bar is closed, they probably have hard shutters that close over it.
As for the pool table, just like the window glass, it’d be tough constantly replacing pool balls and in a place like that. I doubt there’s a billiard supply company on that moon, nor is there any kind of affordable, reliable galactic UPS or Fedex.
(Mental note: Rewatch episode. Look for shutters.)