I never thought they’d saved the universe, just given a big two fingers up to The Man, which is what Mal seemed to want all along.
Translation: I’m losing! I takin’ my ball away and goin’ home!
You’re the one who kept insisting on using a definition for the word “slave” that lies well outside of any dictionary definition or common usage, solely because of the involvement of sex.
You’ve been debunked, and deservedly so. Accept it like a man.
does a tap dance to distract everyone from the slave debate and move them back to the OP
have I mentioned Beer foamy? 
I did not realize I had not seen Firefly. I have never watched Buffy. I did watch Dollhouse for a while, during the first season, haven’t seen season 2.
I just spent the last two days watching Firefly. I was hooked from the first episode. I can’t even explain why, except that it just grabbed me. I don’t think I was done with the 2nd episode before I looked at my husband and said “You know I am going to hate you, showing me this and knowing it is only for a single season.”
While watching it, I kept laughing because I couldn’t figure out who he was trying to give the most eye-candy to, men or women, all I know it is rather nice to have someone on a show for the womens’ prurient interests. Not to mention that the women characters on the show were so very different, and yet so appealing. Zoe was awesome. Kaylee was adorable, Inara was fantastic. All three women lived lives on their own terms and were free to do so. Kaylee could be the annoying, happy, cutesy girl and still fit in.
I think that Firefly did a better job of creating a family among the characters than most family shows I’ve ever seen. How very different they all were and yet, they were all part of the crew.
I also very much enjoyed the love for the ship Serenity.
And I am extraordinarily pissed it is over.
Oh, and woohoo! Handsome,MALE nudity!
One of us. One of us. One of us.
SHINY!
Creating a family from the people around you (rather than the people you’re born/ stuck with) is a recurring theme in Whedon’s work.
Oh please. How many specific episodes involved that? Three or four? Over a 12 year span that hardly rises to the level of recurring theme.
(heh. That came across as intended, clearly tongue in cheek, right? It’s not totally a joke, but not intended to be a vicious attack either.)
Yeah - y’know, there was first the Scooby gang. And since Giles wouldn’t let Wes or Angel play daddy, then came the LA crew - with Wes & Giles being daddies together . . .
Course Mal and Zoe made for a cozy family (with Book as kinda the grandpappy?)
As for the Dollhouse - can’t give you one there . . . I only watched the first 6 episodes because it came on right before Battlestar Galactica season 4.5. (on a different channel, but still)
Once BSG ended, I didn’t have a must-see Friday anymore.
Now what do I do? I’m almost considering fanfic. I can’t rewatch it so soon, can I?
This is why I hate TV. If I like it, it is doomed, even if I don’t yet know it exists. (See “Sports Night”) If it is my favorite character, they will die/get voted off/lose. ARGH! Want. More. Firefly.
And why didn’t anyone tell me the whole “I’ll be in my bunk.” came from Firefly??
It’s okay - we’ve all been there. First - there are more of us. We usually hang out in yahoo Browncoat groups. We attend Can’t Stop the Serenity events. We go to shindigs.
We watch Castle, because Nathan Fillion does a lot of firefly nudge-wink lines.
We watch the fan-made sequel, Browncoat: Redemption.
And we attend conventions like Dragon*Con so we can relive it all over again with the cast & crew.
You just won the thread.
Can I just say, as a Southerner and a Firefly fan, that the Serenity crew were* not * carpetbaggers. The very idea. 
Can I just say, that this is the first time I’ve seen your screen name, and I immediately teared up because it’s so sweet?
Dang you, Jimmy Stewart. Zuzu will always make me tear up fondly.
Seconding the carpetbaggery no go.
The writers are very clearly inspired by Whedon, too, given the strong female characters and sharp dialogue. The only difference is I don’t think Whedon would ever bother with a detective show set in the modern day.
Angel?
I think it would be a big mistake to assume that the responses you’ve been getting in this thread are down to nothing more than internet fan rage. That’s certainly true for a portion of the posts here, but not, I think, the majority of them. Your misuse of the term “sex slave” would be offensive under any circumstances, and not just because it’s faintly uncomplimentary to a particular television producer.
For a sex slave, Inara had considerable more power than many of the characters. The only regular cast that could compete would be Shepard, you know, the god slave.
There have been precious few ways for women to become independent. Prostitution is called the “second oldest profession” for a reason. If you would note, in Firefly, they made a clear distinction between what Inara was doing versus regular prostitutes. It was also made clear that she made her own road, chose her own clients, her own shuttle, her own way of conducting her business. Her only restriction was an annual check up. I definitely see the companions as being more geisha than hooker.
I am a professionally trained poker dealer. Yes, you can toss cards around the table, but the quality is apparent from the moment I touch a deck. Though the field (sex) is different, the standards of practice are rather similar. Referring to the Companions as sex slaves, I would think, would be offensive to them. In the show, when Inara is referred to as a whore, it is not received well. It is a safe extrapolation that the phrase “sex slave” would probably have the same effect.
Besides, Saffron would make a much better sex slave. Or am I projecting?
Inara thought Saffron might have had some Companion training. And then dropped out. (Or flunked?) But she appeared to be quite on top of the sex thing. She’d married a couple of her marks before going on her way. And the scam we saw in “Our Mrs Reynolds” didn’t require her to give more than a kiss. (Saffron would have made a great recurring villain in the series we never got.)
Another episode involved a whorehouse, run by an ex-Companion friend of Inara’s. The plot showed the girls (& boys that I don’t remember seeing) of the house winning independence from the local strong man. (Well, shooting him.) Not Companion-level status, but not bad for a flyblown frontier world.
The issue of slavery was mentioned in Firefly; Mal hated it. (Which made the Defeated Rebel image easier to take.) Did the Alliance’s tolerance of the institution motivate some of the rebels–who wanted no slave trading on their miserable little worlds? We saw full-blown slavery existing on the world where Mal fought for Inara’s honor–it was a fairly provincial worldlet, even if richer than some. The mudders who idolized Jayne were not really slaves–but were trapped in a pretty hopeless indentured system. Even on the central planet of Ariel, Jayne was able to obtain fake ID; not everybody was happy on one of the “wonderful” worlds. Interesting topics for further development–that we never got to see.