Firefly – The Train Job

This is the first episode many people saw of Firefly, and it provides a great introduction to the show, perhaps even a better one than the lengthy, morally ambiguous pilot. The narrative opening gives viewers a concise overview of the setting, and only one conversation (Book talking to Mal) sticks out as thinly veiled exposition.

The bar fight encapsulates many of the elements that comprise the show – the Western motif, the hint of Chinese influence, futurist technology, and a lost war. In fact, that scene provides a much clearer emotional picture of the war’s effects on Mal and Zoe than the long war scene in the pilot does.

I absolutely love Jayne in this episode. From declining to join in the brawl (but eventually doing so) to grousing about jumping onto a moving train, to his reactions to Simon doping him – all of it’s priceless.

Niska emerges as a very creepy villain, and you just know that not completing his job is going to going to come back to haunt the crew. And the “two by two, hands of blue” make their first appearance.

Zoë: Sir, is there some information, we might maybe be lacking, as to why there’s an entire fedsquad sitting on this train?
Mal: It doesn’t concern us.
Zoë: It kinda concerns me.
Mal: I mean they’re not protecting the goods. If they were, they wouldn’t be letting people past ’em.
Zoë: You don’t think that changes the situation a bit?
Mal: I surely do. Makes it more fun.
Zoë: Sir, I think you have a problem with your brain being missing.
Mal: Come on. We stick to the plan, we get the goods, we’re back on Serenity before the train even reaches Paradiso, only now we do it under the noses of twenty trained Alliance feds and that makes them look all manner of stupid. Hell, this job, I would pull for free.
Zoë: Then can I have your share?
Mal: No.
Zoë: If you die can I have your share?
Mal: Yes.

Mal comes across as far more humorous than dark in this episode. He also is more clearly a thief with a heart of gold, in line with shows like Leverage. Far more likable that his character in the pilot. In the pilot, other characters make reference to what sort of man Mal is, but it this episode, we get to see the man he is.

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Firefly – Serenity

Other than watching “Jaynestown” a few months ago (as part of an effort to show Netflix that this was the type of show they should aim toward in developing original content), it had probably been at least a year since I’d watched any Firefly. My friend Anna had never seen it, so Sunday afternoon we turned on the pilot episode, “Serenity.”

Unlike those who watched the show when it first aired, “Serenity” was my first introduction to Firefly (not to be confused with Serenity, the movie, which I watched in its proper place after finishing the show). I think I fell in love with the show as soon as I saw Wash and his toy dinosaurs:

This is a fertile land and we will thrive. We will rule over all this land and we will call it… This Land.

Some people I’ve introduced the show to since then haven’t been drawn in quite as quickly, and while rewatching this episode I began to see why. Because the characters are so varied and complex, it’s hard to like most of them right away. In addition, there’s nine of them to get to know, and at first it’s hard to tell who are the bad guys and who are the good guys (especially with the good guys acting like bad guys quite often). Mal, in particular, doesn’t come off as someone you should be rooting for at first, stealing and calling Inara a whore and threatening to dump Simon and River off the ship.

I love how the show uses the dinner table as the place where the characters connect and feel like family. It also sets the stage for fun conversations like this:

Mal: Jayne, you will keep a civil tongue in that mouth, or I will sew it shut. Is there an understanding between us?
Jayne: You don’t pay me to talk pretty. Just because Kaylee gets lubed up over some big-city dandy doesn’t mean…
Mal: Walk away from this table. Right now.
Simon: What *do* you pay him for?
Mal: What?
Simon: I was just wondering what his job is – on the ship.
Mal: Public relations.

But that’s another way Firefly can be more of an acquired taste – many lines become more hilarious the more times you watch the show. Though some are great right from the start:

Mal: Can’t get paid if you’re dead.
Jayne: Can’t get paid if you crawl away like a bitty little bug neither. I got a share of this job. Ten percent of nothin’ is, let me do the math here… nothin’ and a nothin’, carry the nothin’…

The pilot manages to pack in a ton about the ‘Verse in just over 80 minutes – the Alliance, Reavers, border planets, backstabbing thieves, companions, shepherds, and real food being a luxury. But the story itself is only just beginning, so in a way this is more of a prequel. The best is yet to come.

 

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