Ah! Curse your sudden, but inevitable betrayal!
Aiyah! I should have known better than to download Joss Whedon's recent foray in television, I forgot how brilliantly he executes dialogue and creates lovable but complex characters.
One episode and I'm hooked, I'm his willing slave open to his suggestions because who could not love a scarred but sarcastically witty Mal Reynolds?
I tell you it's hard not to be a fan.
Who can resist plot? A story that really matters about a bunch of normal people, who make history.
Firefly starts out in thousands of years in the future during a civil war, in Serenity valley where Sgt. Mal Reynolds is trying to hold the ground against the Alliance, he's an idealist, a religous man and fighting for a cause he truly believes in. He's keeping it together despite losing men left and right.
But the reinforcements he was counting on didn't come. Command would not let them come. They were alone in the valley with orders to surrender. Disbelief and shock runs across Mals face and he stands-up, looks across the valley, the dead men, the shattered land and sees the enemy ships landing.
He is frozen, a man witness to his own losses and betrayed by his faith.
It's enough for any man to lose faith in everything he believes in, and he does, six years own, the captain of his own ship. He assembles his crew, an ordinary man out to earn a living. He'll take any job as long as he can keep flying.
**"When I pitched the show, I said it was about nine people living in the blackness of space and seeing nine different things. That's what I'm fascinated by, how they all react. They must make decisions that are horrific to people who aren't fighting for their lives every day. It's about a group of people who are living hand-to-mouth, and are heroes, day-to-day." - Joss Whedon
I get the sense that Joss is tired writing about teenagers, and it shows in his lack of interest (well, not really lack but the love ain't there anymore) he has for
Buffy the Vampire Slayer as compared to how lovingly crafts Firefly's world.
These are about grown-up issues, issues that they could not craft as well in
BtVS because, primarily,
BtVS is a metaphor for highschool and when they left that scenario they started floundering because the central theme of
Btvs is
not about being grim and growing-up, it's more about hope and laughter against seemingly impossible odds.
Firefly on the otherhand, if one follows Joss Whedon's line-up rather than stupid Fox's meddling, begins with the loss of hope, breaking Mal Reynolds away from his boyish idealism and forcing in the cold hard truth that life is not fair.
We're all lost in the woods, even the captain
It's said the most bitter cynic was once a great romantic, it's true no matter what facade a cynical person wears they are at heart really idealist and romantics.
Mal was once believed in God but the War and the brutal defeat in Serenity valley erased all traces of the gentle, idealistic Mal. Or, so it would seem to himself his crew knows otherwise.
He acts ornery, tetchy and proclaims that he's a bad man, no doubt he's capable of anything to protect his crew but his denials that he's not a good man only serve to emphasize his actions better.
He's certainly no Angel (pun intended) and he's no Slayer.
Despite sharing the same creator Buffy and Angel's universe is truly different from Firefly 'verse, not only in the case of demons but in philosophy. Buffy can never understand the necessity of the things Mal and his crew has to do to survive, but given the situation she might be able to understand but with severe repurcussions to her belief system because she never believed in killing another human.
Angel might understand better the necessities of survival but he won't stand for it until the last possible moments. Possibly those who can understand this necessity are Giles and Wesley. They know how a war works, the things that can happen to a man that can darken a soul.
Mal and Zoe lived through it, they can do it again if they have to, Simon's definetly(sp?) tapping his dark side in order to protect his sister, River is obviously capable of anything, Book is not just a Shepard he has a darkside and he's not telling. The only two innocents are Kaylee and Wash.
Wash just wants to love his wife, fly his plane and earn his keep, Kaylee can live her life in the engine room though she's deathly afraid of violence it won't stop her from helping and Inara can very well kick ass and still look good in a mature not Buffy way.
Tell me, how can anyone
not love this show?
Answer: Morons like Fox executives.
**From
Firefly.net
