Firefly

The Serenity Trailer is up. My one complaint are the lines about Joss, they might alienate more people than they attract.

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*not an actual doctor

You have, I'm just sayin'... I don't see it. Hells, no. This isn't my first conversation with you on this forum, guy. If I come across the show, my reaction'll probably be something like, "Oh, Crash said this was good, I should check it out." I wasn't. I found myself thinking, "Mal, you fucking asshole. I totally get where you're coming from... shit, I'd probably do the same thing. Shit." See, I got the same thing off Mal and Inara that I got off Buffy and Spike... namely, "God DAMN, I want these characters to get together. And... shit, there is absolutely no way this will end happily."I always liked that about Whedon shows... that by and large, there isn't always a "Oh, if you only did this, you'd be happy together!" It's more of a "damn, sucks to be them."

"Probably inbreeding. I've heard stories about these Missouri types."Gah. We're from Minnesota and Wisconsin. When I was in high school I thought it was terrible to be from Wisconsin, but then I moved to Missouri.Now on topic...I really don't think Kaylee is as open and carefree as she is stupid. Ok, maybe she's more like an idiot-savant. She can fix the ship, but when it comes to anything else she's like a semi-retarded 13 year old.-Mrs. Crashfrog

Well, fair enough. I will say that even though I didn't like it as much as other series, I did pretty much slam all the DVD's at once (or, at least, discs 1, 2, and 4 - my video place doesn't seem to have 3) and was greatly entertained. It was a fair sight better than other crap I've seen on TV.Hey, speaking of sci-fi that didn't fare so well, Firefly dredged up from my childhood a memory of a show that ran on CBS for all of 6 eps, I think. It was "Space Rangers":Gotta find some of that action, cuz I really loved it at the time. Think I was all of about 9 or so, though. Anybody else got a handle on some great sci-fi goodness?

I used to watch "Seaquest" back when that Jonathan Brandis kid was hot shit. Mainly I watched that show because it came on right before something called "Earth 2", if I'm remembering the name correctly. I don't think it aired long, however.

[qs]Weren't we just talking about what an asshole he is to Inara?[/quote]

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Aren't we, as the audience, rooting for him to say what he says?

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Um, no. Not me, anyway. I always want him to be nice to her, because he is clearly in love with her.

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To urge her to leave the prostitute's lifestyle so that she can settle down with him?

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The thing is, Inara would never do that. She's far too good at what she does, and enjoys her work, and likes the lifestyle it affords her. She likes high society and is an independent person. She is uninterested in a relationship but keeps being drawn to Mal anyway.

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Isn't that rather the point of the unresolved sexual tension between them? To say "look, if she didn't insist on being a prostitute, she could settle down with this nice guy." Like I've said I find it a bit preachy.

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Mal isn't a "nice guy", and exactly where are they going to "settle down" to? He's a pirate, remember. She's the one with the legitimate, lucrative profession. She would have to support him if they "settled down".This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-26-2005 06:38 PM

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Now on topic...I really don't think Kaylee is as open and carefree as she is stupid. Ok, maybe she's more like an idiot-savant. She can fix the ship, but when it comes to anything else she's like a semi-retarded 13 year old.

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No, I think she's more akin to a girl from an extremely small, poor, rural community without TV.Remember, the communities on some of these planets are basically subsistence farming villages. The area Kaylee came from is not quite as primitive as the community in the episode "Safe", but you get the idea. Don't expect her to be as sophisticated as any modern 13 year old.She is certainly naive and inexperienced and lacking in education, but not stupid.

YOU DIDN'T WATCH DISC THREE???Ariel, Out of Gas, and War Stories are, hands down, three out of the four best episodes of the whole series, with Objects in Space being the fourth.

They didn't have it. That's something else I didn't really like about the series, that I like in BG - no overarching continuity. Just about everything is solved in the 40 minutes. I had absolutely no indication that I had missed anything at all aside from one episode where they refer to the demise of a certain villian, and some scenes in the "Making Of" featurette that I totally didn't recognize.I'll get to it. Maybe those four eps will totally change my opinion of the series. But I'll totally watch them. I love sci-fi and I certainly was entertained. I totally was not in tune with that episode. What was with the bounty hunter? He's asked "are you Alliance?" and he's all like "am I a lion? Hrm, never thought of myself as a lion, but I suppose you could..."Much like the doctor guy, my reaction to that scene was "WTF? Is this supposed to pass as comedy? Or what?" Like, what was up with that episode? It just didn't work for me, or I wasn't on the same level or whatever.I'd love to hear your impression of that ep, though. Clearly it made a lot more sense to you.

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That's something else I didn't really like about the series, that I like in BG - no overarching continuity. Just about everything is solved in the 40 minutes. I had absolutely no indication that I had missed anything at all aside from one episode where they refer to the demise of a certain villian, and some scenes in the "Making Of" featurette that I totally didn't recognize.

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I find it amazing that you think this, but then again, if you have never watched a Whedon show faithfully for more than the first couple of seasons, I can understand why you might think this.Whedon is totally "Mr. Arc" in all of his TV series. He was constantly fighting with Fox TV about the fact that all of his episodes didn't "explain everything". The thing with Firefly is that it's 14 episodes of a show with 9 characters. There's only so much Arc that can be done, especially the teasing, little by littel way that Whedon likes to reveal them. Like I said, Whedon's shows generally get really great in the third and fourth seasons, when you've got a good handle on what's going on with everybody and the characters have had a chance to develop.If you haven't seen Ariel yet, then I won't spoil it for you, but that is a major Arc-revealing show.

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What was with the bounty hunter? He's asked "are you Alliance?" and he's all like "am I a lion? Hrm, never thought of myself as a lion, but I suppose you could..."

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He was crazy. I kind of figured he was a sociopath and a sadist, who liked fucking with people. I also figured that he had been flying around all by himself for a very long time and therefore had gone rather psychotic. Kind of like Tom Hanks' character in Cast Away, except bad. Like he has been inside his own head, by himself, for so long, he's not sure what is reality and what is his own internal dialogue or construction when he actually interacts with real people. That's why he goes off on those stream of consciousness, philosophical rambles; this is what he does most of the time, by himself on his ship, in his head.

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Much like the doctor guy, my reaction to that scene was "WTF?

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Well, right. I thought he was just supposed to be really odd, but also super intelligent. I've known some super intelligent people who were also extremely strange.

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Is this supposed to pass as comedy? Or what?"

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Oh, not really, because Jubel is so frigging menacing and stone cold.

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Like, what was up with that episode? It just didn't work for me, or I wasn't on the same level or whatever.

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I needed to watch it a couple of times, and watching the commentary helped some, too.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-26-2005 10:04 PM

Granted. But I guess what I meant is that, unlike BG, you can pretty much watch the episodes of Firefly in any order and the episodes make sense, it doesn't really matter, etc. Except for the pilot it's a series of 13 mostly standalone episodes, like Star Trek TNG was, like most shows are. There's an arc to the series, of course, but mostly, there's very little that carries over to the next episode. By the end of the episode, they're back on the ship again, blasting off to the next adventure, and nobody's really any different. Evidence for this assessment would be the fact that, originally, Firefly was aired out of sequence.Compare that to BG, which is more like a 13-hour movie in several parts. Watch the episodes on "shuffle" or whatever, and you'll get confused. Watch a random episode, or two or three, and you'll definately need to place them in chronological sequence for them to make sense. "Wait, so Helo knows that Boomer is a Cylon, or doesn't he? Are we before or after the last episode we just watched?" Sex and the City is a lot like that, as is The Sopranos. Things happen in episodes that carry over to the subsequent episodes, and that happens a lot. I didn't see that happen a lot in Firefly, which I realize is a concession to people who tune in in the middle of a series.I like episodic drama, like Carnivale. Series that bookend each episode the same way so that they fit together no matter the order just feel contrived to me. Understood, but that didn't communicate "I'm unhinged, liable-to-do-anything dangerous crazy" to me. That scene communicated "I'm harmless, funny, schitzo-homeless 'chip-in-my-head' crazy." Yeah, he didn't really sell "menacing and stone cold" to me.

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Yeah, he didn't really sell "menacing and stone cold" to me.

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You didn't get that from his very first interaction with a crew member? Don't you remember the scene with Kaylee?

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Except for the pilot it's a series of 13 mostly standalone episodes, like Star Trek TNG was, like most shows are.

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Except that you haven't seen Ariel yet, and you've only seen 10 out of the 14 episodes! That means you have yet to see almost a quarter of them.Did I mention that Whedon typically reveales his Arcs very, very slowly?Knowing this, I wouldn't expect to get more than 5% of the "big" plot Arc in the first season. That's what Ariel is. Like I keep repeating, Whedon's shows need about 3-4 seasons to really get going. That's like 40 episodes.Also remember that the Arcs in Firefly were mostly character Arcs instead of plot arks, but that doesn't make them any less engaging and important.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-27-2005 07:25 AM

Where's that coming from? I mean... she's not a genius at anything else, but it's not like there's anywhere in the series that she does something outrageously moronic.

They might well. And I'll push Trash, the episode Schraf left off her list of awesome episodes. It's the one where Saffron shows up again.

To a point. Once he actually gets to them, he doesn't dick around. Take Buffy, for instance. For the first half of first season, there's all this mystery around Angel. Then, boom. One episode, the deal with Angel is explained to us. Then at the start of season 2, they start slowly introducing all this mysterious stuff about Angel's past. Then, Spike and Drusilla show up, and boom. The important gist of Angel's backstory is filled in.Whedon's very good at not falling into what I like to call the Wolverine-trap with characters. Basically, "keeping this character a mystery is more fun, so we're never actually gonna tell you everything. In fact, what we do tell you might not actually be in continuity. In fact, fuck off, the character's been around 20 years and all you really know is that he has claws and used to live in Canada. Ha ha, eat it, fanboy."