Firefly - Episode 1: 'Serenity'
Without commercials, the first episode of Firefly runs an hour and a half. It also makes a daring decision to start things off with a battle that's muddled in uninteresting dialogue and visual muddiness. Trying to make out the action, in conjunction with the dread of a lengthy episode, had me dropping the series for nearly a decade.
Over the last year and a half, I watched through Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff series, by the same creator. The quality of them were so thorough that I felt I owed it to myself to find out why people were so upset about Firefly. Prepare for lots of references to Buffy, because I can only interpret things by comparison and that's my most recent measuring stick!
Recap: Mal Reynolds is on the losing side of a war, but he sees his squad through the battle. Six years later, he runs an old junker ship named Serenity, doing odd jobs for sustenance and avoiding the Federation that won the war. His crew consists of his right-hand woman soldier named Zoe, Zoe's husband and pilot Wash, a courtesan/'companion' whose name I completely missed, Mal's wife and mechanic Kaylee, and the muscle - Jayne, a really young Adam Baldwin. While trying to sell some contraband, Serenity picks up a preacher (here known as a 'Shepherd') a doctor on the run for smuggling his sister (who's a genius human asset to the feds), and an undercover federal cop.
One of the most notable feelings about my experience watching Episode 1: it has a rough time getting started. Watching the opening battle now isn't any more interesting than it was way back when, and I still get practically nothing out of it - that is, until we find out that Mal's side of the battle is already lost. The image of the conquering spaceships' descent is incredible - and I'm going to remember it as the first positive moment of the series, and it's completely without dialogue.
We move quickly into a setting that should be familiar to anyone who's watched Cowboy Bebop: a western in space, featuring bounty hunters who do questionably legal activities to feed themselves and their ship. Not knowing the characters yet, it's a rough-around-the-edges first twenty minutes, as characters quickly establish their relationships and Mal is generally a prick to his wife - ordering her around very curtly - and creeping in on conversations between Zoe and her husband. This part does establish the relationships pretty clearly: Zoe is entirely subservient to Mal; Jayne is coarse; Wash and Zoe have a somewhat reversed gender dynamic; and Kaylee's purpose in Mal's life appears more to balance his cynical stolidness with doe-eyed innocence and joy, rather than to fire up his libido.
The dialogue of the show isn't particularly sharp at this point. Mal's credentials-establishment is done via one of those 'Let me diagnose the situation really competently!' to Badger. The Shepherd gets an awkward catchphrase of 'I never married' (?). And the fatigued dialogue is especially noticeable when it comes to Inara's stiff and refined style, so this feels mostly like gruntwork. (Indeed, Inara's work is particularly 'grunt'-worthy, and the show seems to feel the same way - it cuts very sharply between the three phases of her client - the sex; the post-coital talk; and - in mid-dialogue! - a jump to the parting.)
The show really takes off after the first 25% or so, though. Doctor Simon is played up incredibly suspiciously, practically confirming that he's not actually the mole. Instead, the fed - nominally a good guy, but clearly antagonistic - is the dude with the mop top that apparently inspired Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. It's kind of a cliche that pulling out a gun immediately ups the level of drama, but it's cliche for a reason - paragon of innocence Kaylee getting shot is the show's way of telling us that SHIT JUST GOT REAL - and Simon's smart to leverage that. From there, the discovery of the cargo, the guns-ablaze mission on the Wild West Whitefall, and the encounter with the Reavers (will we get to see them in these very few episode?) provide one exciting beat after another.
Interestingly, it's only with dramatic stakes that the characters can finally develop a sense of humor. The joke that Mal plays on Simon - 'Kaylee's dead' - is way darker than you'd expect, and the cut to the uproarious laughter of the crew is a shockingly feel-good moment in a show that's been tonally dismal to that point. And it keeps going - Jayne finally appears to be having fun during that shoot-out. We as viewers get to feast on Mal's deadpan dispatch of the federal marshal as he attempts to hold River hostage - 'I'm not playing anymore. Anybody makes so m -' BANG. Mal has just murdered a cop, and we're cheering, because by god that just feels great. Fiction is awesome like that. And everyone gets in on the fun during the escape sequence that shows us why Serenity is called a 'Firefly.' Zoe and Wash get to enjoy themselves in the bedroom after an episode fraught with jealousy and concern, and Simon finally has a future.
The world-building is really great, too. Maybe it's just in the visuals, but the Wild West/space setting is fantastic. (The first episode of Firefly, from 2002 on a network TV budget, is far more visually striking to me for example than HBO's Westworld.) Both Persephone and Whitefall are desert-like, but the former is a bustling trading port reminiscent of Mos Eisley featuring brown people and dogs for food (a bit of racial exoticism that achieves its aims), while the latter is a setting for the Cowboys and Indians shootout that it becomes. Serenity feels alive - during Simon's desperate run to the stairs, he passes through a gym otherwise not mentioned; Mal has both a foldout toilet and a foldout sink; I'm insanely jealous. But to me, the most single interesting detail about the world is the scarcity. The contraband that Mal's so paranoid about shipping, that he's going to sell for fuel for the ship?
It's just food. It's incredibly instructive that something as simple as food can be treated with such high regard and traded for such a large amount of money - tells you a lot about the world these characters inhabit. Based on this, I'm that much more excited for the only future episode whose name I know by cultural osmosis.
Let's roll!
---
* Mark Sheppard, more famous to me for his role on Supernatural, is excellent here as Badger, a buyer who decides 'Eh, no thanks, too much risk.' Between his height and demanding mannerisms, guy is just a master of playing the Napoleon-complex dude who desperately wants authority.
* I'd heard about the use of Chinese. It's entertaining.
* 'Can we maybe vote on the whole murdering people issue?' Mal's answer is no. And in the end, he doesn't take anyone's vote before offing the marshal.
* 'They'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skin into clothing.' Okay, man. Whatever. 'And if we're lucky, they'll do it in that order.' Sometimes, the punchline comes later than you expect.
* Along those lines, the Reavers' heart-pounding leitmotif is great.
* Did Inara and Kaylee ever have a relationship? Inara gives off the vibe of having romantic feelings for Kaylee.
* Love Jayne crouching and watching through the side window as Kaylee undergoes surgery.
* I want to call out Jayne finding the sniper so quickly as being ridiculous - but the resulting shootout is so great that the ends easily justify the sketchy details.
* The coolest seed sowed - which I'm 100% sure can't pay off in a 14-episode series that was destined for bigger things - is the hint that Jayne may betray Mal for the right reason. Money isn't enough, claims Jayne. But what is the right thing?
Over the last year and a half, I watched through Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff series, by the same creator. The quality of them were so thorough that I felt I owed it to myself to find out why people were so upset about Firefly. Prepare for lots of references to Buffy, because I can only interpret things by comparison and that's my most recent measuring stick!
Recap: Mal Reynolds is on the losing side of a war, but he sees his squad through the battle. Six years later, he runs an old junker ship named Serenity, doing odd jobs for sustenance and avoiding the Federation that won the war. His crew consists of his right-hand woman soldier named Zoe, Zoe's husband and pilot Wash, a courtesan/'companion' whose name I completely missed, Mal's wife and mechanic Kaylee, and the muscle - Jayne, a really young Adam Baldwin. While trying to sell some contraband, Serenity picks up a preacher (here known as a 'Shepherd') a doctor on the run for smuggling his sister (who's a genius human asset to the feds), and an undercover federal cop.
One of the most notable feelings about my experience watching Episode 1: it has a rough time getting started. Watching the opening battle now isn't any more interesting than it was way back when, and I still get practically nothing out of it - that is, until we find out that Mal's side of the battle is already lost. The image of the conquering spaceships' descent is incredible - and I'm going to remember it as the first positive moment of the series, and it's completely without dialogue.
We move quickly into a setting that should be familiar to anyone who's watched Cowboy Bebop: a western in space, featuring bounty hunters who do questionably legal activities to feed themselves and their ship. Not knowing the characters yet, it's a rough-around-the-edges first twenty minutes, as characters quickly establish their relationships and Mal is generally a prick to his wife - ordering her around very curtly - and creeping in on conversations between Zoe and her husband. This part does establish the relationships pretty clearly: Zoe is entirely subservient to Mal; Jayne is coarse; Wash and Zoe have a somewhat reversed gender dynamic; and Kaylee's purpose in Mal's life appears more to balance his cynical stolidness with doe-eyed innocence and joy, rather than to fire up his libido.
The dialogue of the show isn't particularly sharp at this point. Mal's credentials-establishment is done via one of those 'Let me diagnose the situation really competently!' to Badger. The Shepherd gets an awkward catchphrase of 'I never married' (?). And the fatigued dialogue is especially noticeable when it comes to Inara's stiff and refined style, so this feels mostly like gruntwork. (Indeed, Inara's work is particularly 'grunt'-worthy, and the show seems to feel the same way - it cuts very sharply between the three phases of her client - the sex; the post-coital talk; and - in mid-dialogue! - a jump to the parting.)
The show really takes off after the first 25% or so, though. Doctor Simon is played up incredibly suspiciously, practically confirming that he's not actually the mole. Instead, the fed - nominally a good guy, but clearly antagonistic - is the dude with the mop top that apparently inspired Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. It's kind of a cliche that pulling out a gun immediately ups the level of drama, but it's cliche for a reason - paragon of innocence Kaylee getting shot is the show's way of telling us that SHIT JUST GOT REAL - and Simon's smart to leverage that. From there, the discovery of the cargo, the guns-ablaze mission on the Wild West Whitefall, and the encounter with the Reavers (will we get to see them in these very few episode?) provide one exciting beat after another.
Interestingly, it's only with dramatic stakes that the characters can finally develop a sense of humor. The joke that Mal plays on Simon - 'Kaylee's dead' - is way darker than you'd expect, and the cut to the uproarious laughter of the crew is a shockingly feel-good moment in a show that's been tonally dismal to that point. And it keeps going - Jayne finally appears to be having fun during that shoot-out. We as viewers get to feast on Mal's deadpan dispatch of the federal marshal as he attempts to hold River hostage - 'I'm not playing anymore. Anybody makes so m -' BANG. Mal has just murdered a cop, and we're cheering, because by god that just feels great. Fiction is awesome like that. And everyone gets in on the fun during the escape sequence that shows us why Serenity is called a 'Firefly.' Zoe and Wash get to enjoy themselves in the bedroom after an episode fraught with jealousy and concern, and Simon finally has a future.
The world-building is really great, too. Maybe it's just in the visuals, but the Wild West/space setting is fantastic. (The first episode of Firefly, from 2002 on a network TV budget, is far more visually striking to me for example than HBO's Westworld.) Both Persephone and Whitefall are desert-like, but the former is a bustling trading port reminiscent of Mos Eisley featuring brown people and dogs for food (a bit of racial exoticism that achieves its aims), while the latter is a setting for the Cowboys and Indians shootout that it becomes. Serenity feels alive - during Simon's desperate run to the stairs, he passes through a gym otherwise not mentioned; Mal has both a foldout toilet and a foldout sink; I'm insanely jealous. But to me, the most single interesting detail about the world is the scarcity. The contraband that Mal's so paranoid about shipping, that he's going to sell for fuel for the ship?
It's just food. It's incredibly instructive that something as simple as food can be treated with such high regard and traded for such a large amount of money - tells you a lot about the world these characters inhabit. Based on this, I'm that much more excited for the only future episode whose name I know by cultural osmosis.
Let's roll!
---
* Mark Sheppard, more famous to me for his role on Supernatural, is excellent here as Badger, a buyer who decides 'Eh, no thanks, too much risk.' Between his height and demanding mannerisms, guy is just a master of playing the Napoleon-complex dude who desperately wants authority.
* I'd heard about the use of Chinese. It's entertaining.
* 'Can we maybe vote on the whole murdering people issue?' Mal's answer is no. And in the end, he doesn't take anyone's vote before offing the marshal.
* 'They'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skin into clothing.' Okay, man. Whatever. 'And if we're lucky, they'll do it in that order.' Sometimes, the punchline comes later than you expect.
* Along those lines, the Reavers' heart-pounding leitmotif is great.
* Did Inara and Kaylee ever have a relationship? Inara gives off the vibe of having romantic feelings for Kaylee.
* Love Jayne crouching and watching through the side window as Kaylee undergoes surgery.
* I want to call out Jayne finding the sniper so quickly as being ridiculous - but the resulting shootout is so great that the ends easily justify the sketchy details.
* The coolest seed sowed - which I'm 100% sure can't pay off in a 14-episode series that was destined for bigger things - is the hint that Jayne may betray Mal for the right reason. Money isn't enough, claims Jayne. But what is the right thing?
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