Well, Californians, did they show it all?
11:30 my time, saw the whole thing. Eh.
I liked it; and it’s nice to see Ron Glass working. Some nice touches, such as that being a registered “Companion” is a respected profession.
I liked it. Not the greatest thing I’ve ever seen…but then, neither was the first episode of Buffy…
All I could think while I watched it was Cowboy BeBop. I’ll give it another try next week, even though I didn’t immediately love it.
It reminded me of Cowboy Bebop too! Except none of the characters are as cool as Spike.
I thought it was decent (another big laugh for the villain). I’ll give it another watch next week.
Somebody buy the cameraman a tripod, huh? Watching a bar fight shouldn’t make me start feeling seasick.
It vaguely disappointed me, the whole train heist with a starship thing was pretty cool though. It could be a bit grittier for my tastes. Reminded me of Andromeda in some ways… the only thing I can think of regarding that traumatised girl is “Ms. Ender”. Maybe given some time and good writing it will mature into something great… oh yeah, this is Fox. Nevermind. ;>
Good call; that’s all I could think of, too. Except that Bebop’s got more depth and characters that are genuinely interesting instead of just seeming like they’re trying to be interesting. But then again, it took me a few episodes to really get into Bebop. Still, IMO it was perfectly acceptable entertainment product. Somewhere between those syndicated sci-fi shows and one of the “Star Trek” series.
I think one of the things that bugged me was the dialogue in every Joss Whedon-involved project I’ve seen is all the same. That works fine for “Buffy,” because they’re teenagers and are allowed to be self-obsessed and annoying and overly artificial in their speech. When grown-ups deliver the same lines, you just want to slap them. (Or, yes, stick a fork in their eye.) It didn’t really bug me for anybody except the captain guy. And it sure as hell isn’t as annoying as it is on “Angel”.
It’s good it was followed by “John Doe,” because it made “Firefly” look so much better by comparison.
I liked it and will be tuning in for a while. It was a little shaky and uneven, but then again, so was the first season of Buffy. I like the western elements, and I really liked the Joss-esque moment at the end involving the tattooed guy.
It did, indeed, air in it’s entirety out West here, although twenty minutes late. Guess my murderous rampage will have to wait until they run out of Futurama episodes.
Anyway, I thought it was really good. I liked the Western aspect. I liked the characters, and look forward to seeing more of them. I loved the ending, which is easily one of the Ten Coolest Things Ever on Television. I wish they had shown the two-hour pilot, though, as I think I would have been confused by how all these characters are related to each other if I hadn’t spent the last two months pouring over spoilers for the show. But, yeah, I liked it and I’m going to watch it until Fox inevitably kills it through under-advertising/time-slot jumping/sheer malice.
The good news is FOX might nurse this along so it can build a following. The X-Files is over, so they need a cult-y show. (But then again, it IS FOX, so who knows?)
I liked the Joss-ian touches: the force-field window Mal got thrown out of in the barfight, the end of Tattoo-guy, stuff like that. It worked for me.
For my part, I thought it was great.
A pilot isn’t supposed to be like a movie. It isn’t supposed to resolve anything. It’s supposed to introduce characters, establish a world, and set a tone. It lays out a storytelling quality that’s supposed to be the groundwork for the next hundred hours of tale-spinning. It’s not supposed to be dramatically satisfying in and of itself, though that helps.
And from that perspective, I thought Firefly’s pilot – even though it isn’t the “real” pilot Whedon originally produced – got the job done, in a big way. The handmade special effects were wonderful. The scifi/western blend was pretty unique (I’m not a viewer of “Cowboy Bebop,” so that might be a blind spot; in any event, there’s nothing else like it in live-action). The characters were set out as broad archetypes, so we know what to expect from them in the short term, with plenty of room for later exploration, Buffy-style.
In a weird way, the show this most reminded me of was that blink-and-you-miss-it Briscoe County Jr. from a few years back. Tongue only partly in cheek, good visuals, fun cast. And what’s more, did anybody really think from the first season of Buffy that that show would ever reach the heights it has? If Fox can keep their meddlin’ hands off the program, Whedon should be able to take it all sorts of places. That is the measure of a good pilot.
I’ll definitely be tuning in for the rest of the first season, at least until the show tells me to give up. I stuck through the mediocre first season of Enterprise because of the sense of potential; the second-season premiere didn’t show a lot of improvement, so I may be dumping the adventures of Captain Archer in a few weeks. I cannot but give Firefly the same shot.