Firefly

Sat down with the DVD's and watched the whole thing. I realize that I'm about to burn Schraf's good opinion of me. I'll come right out and say it - I didn't really like it. It was fun, but to my mind, artistically inferior to the similar Battlestar Galactica (the new one), and less fun than the Stargate shows.I had some basic criticisms. For one thing, the "space western" fusion seems a lot less of an attempt to craft a compelling, unique backdrop (ala Cowboy Bebop) and a lot more of an attempt to allow the writers to draw TV show cliches from not one, but two genres. The obsession with prostitution wore a little thin. I felt the characters were charactures, archetypes, instead of real breathing people. I mean, over here, we have Captain Hardass and his sidekick Chuckles McLaughtrack. Over there it's two varieties of genius ingenoue, and to round out the cast, it's the only two black characters allowed on TV - a sassy woman and a spiritual man with a shady past. Oh, and can't forget the Hooker with the Heart of Gold. Hell, if you did forget, don't worry - there's a whole episode full of hookers with hearts of gold. The title of the episode? "Heart of Gold." Think they were trying to tell us something?And the tech. What the hell? We see a man load a revolver, it obviously holds only six shells - you see him drop 'em in - and then in the next scene, he's firing the thing like it's fully automatic, in bursts of like 20 rounds at a time. The guns make a fancy sci-fi "zip" sound, but they're obviously brass cartrdges using gunpowder to propel lead slugs, as we see in the obligatory "sawbones pullin' the bullets out of folks" scenes. I mean, sci-fi guns that suggested western-style Peacemakers would have been cool, but they didn't even try. What we got were completely traditional cowboy guns with sci-fi sound effects.And the ship looked stupid.If this and Buffy is Joss Whedon's contribution to TV sci-fi/fantasy, he's getting his ass beat with a rubber hose by Ron D. Moore's new Battlestar Galactica. What was with the writing? It was like they couldn't figure out if they were writing for Gunsmoke, Star Trek, or Hee-Haw. It was really hit-or-miss and honestly, more painful than funny.Really. I don't see what the big deal is with Joss Whedon. I've never been all that impressed with Buffy, and Firefly just fell flat with me. Do yourselves a favor and enjoy the much superior Battlestar Galactica, or the always-entertaining Stargate: Atlantis. In the former, you're going to get authentic characterization and a sense that things aren't going to quite wrap up with a bow at the end; in the latter you're going to get high adventure and the standard sci-fi plots with a twist.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 04-13-2005 11:21 PM

Right. Like every single hooker in the Firefly universe, bar one, hit turns out he has a heart of gold. Women like men who can make them laugh. (I hope!) Yeah, but only because she's kind of immature. Her character is presented as very childlike, not very adult. (For that matter, when does she actually put those ideas into practice? Does she ever have sex in the series?) When the adults try to have unashamed, purely-for-pleasure sex, they can't keep their hands clean - the show clearly comes down against the idea of sex outside of relationships. I would have been refreshed without the "I've got to redeem the ship's hooker" plotline that so informed the entire series. It didn't look like it could fly, certainly not in an atmosphere. I understand that its a cargo vessel but it doesn't have nearly enough room devoted to cargo. And why does a landing-capable ship need two shuttles? Ridiculous.Ugly frickin' ship. Spaceflight is exhilarating. Spaceflight is glorious, making angels gods of the men and women who do it. Their spaceship should be their chariot, and even a "broken down" bottom-of-the-heap junkpile should look like a spaceship. Are you joking? Well, I'll point this out - not only has BG's entire first season been aired (in the right order, natch'), it's coming back for a second season, too. And probably more. I found Firefly in the bargain DVD's bin. I do know those things; in fact I know enough to tell the difference between characters that are real and complex and developed and writers who only pretend to develop real complex characters and wind up with the same-old stereotypes. That's why I'm over here watching Battlestar Galactica, and you should watch it too.Whedon's problem is Firefly is that he never has the characters do anything we might not indentify with; he never allows us to maybe, just maybe, not like the characters. He's obsessed with his characters being likable and as a result, they never become real. They're paper cut-outs.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 04-26-2005 10:46 AM

I do. That's why I'm watching Battlestar Galactica.

Like our lord and savior Jesus Haploid Christ, I'm in Missouri, but not of it. For me, barbeque will always be something you do, not something you go out for.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 04-26-2005 02:05 PM

Well, yeah, I felt that way too. But the show seems to reinforce their feelings, not ours. It felt preachy to me, like "See what happens, people, when you have sex outside of a loving relationship?"Contrast that to Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck. She has sex with Baltar and it's no big deal to her - but it is to Baltar, who's shattered to realize that there might be a woman who could play him as he plays women; it's a big deal to Apollo who has feelings for her. And she for him. Is she remorseful about hurting him that way? Not in the least. She is who she is and if Apollo doesn't like it, or if anybody doesn't like it, fuck 'em.That's sexual independance. Not the juvenile whore/virgin dichotomy of Firefly. No frickin' way. Those ships look like toys.I mean, the Millenium Falcon has it's guts hangin' out, panels blown off, etc. It looks like a flying jalopy hotrod. You almost expect it to honk "la cucaracha" when it tears out of Mos Eisly. But even so it looks like it could fly. It looks like it could handle the rigors of flying from planet to planet. The Serenity looks like it would break apart in an atmosphere, and it looks like it doesn't have nearly enough room for cargo. And two shuttles? WTF? Everybody does. That's what I'm saying. I identified with him, too. He never does anything that might, even briefly, alienate the viewers. Contrast that to Edward James Olmos's Captain Adama, who acts true to character, he does what he believes needs to be done, and sometimes, that's not the right thing. In the last episode of the first season, when he deposes the President, that action is alienating, escalating, completely wrong-headed - and totally in character.That's a real character. Not like Mal, the archetypical cowboy in a black-and-white moral universe. The entire show is set up so that he never has to do anything but the right thing, the thing we're all rooting for. Sure, he's got a big, in-depth backstory. Well, who cares? Anyone can write a backstory. A big ol' backstory should not be confused for real characterization.

Well, somehow my wife saw it too, so I don't think I'm making that up, but your milage may vary. Oh, well. I think I've made my views clear, I hope. I hope you'll check it out, you and Schraf both. I've been catching it via bittorrent, but presumably it'll be out on DVD soon enough. And I hope you won't watch it with the aim of proving me wrong; my hope is that you'll watch it because its good, well-written, engaging, character-driven sci-fi drama. Aren't we, as the audience, rooting for him to say what he says? To urge her to leave the prostitute's lifestyle so that she can settle down with him? 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.

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?

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.

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.

Got the missing disc today. Rectified the "haven't seen all the eps" situation.Really liked "Trash", but I'm a sucker for capers. (I love Elmore Leonard novels.) "Ariel" was cool - guess they saved the story behind the spooky guys that can make your brain bleed for the second season - but, like a lot of the other episodes, there's these little science gaffs that make me think Joss isn't taking the science-fiction aspect seriously. (That and the fact that we still don't have any idea where they are. Every show they stop at some random planet, with no indication of the spacial relationship to the last one, and every planet looks like someplace in northen California.)Also, can we all stop pretending that we don't already know River's little "secret"? I was onto it in the first episode. They were making psychic ninja assassins for the government. Duh! The only "mystery" is why Joss thinks we're so stupid that he's going to be able to string us along with this until the second or third season without us figuring it out. It's all so predictable and trite that there's no sense of revelation whatsoever when Joss finally deigns to throw us a bone. (As opposed to shows like Carnivale where the revelations do seem, well, revelatory.) No offense but maybe that's why it was canceled so quickly. He needs to be a lot less stingy with the plot. The way he does it, it's obviously a cynical technique to get the studios to sign for subesquent seasons.I think Joss underestimates his audience. We can handle a lot of plot, a lot of things happening per episode. We're intelligent people.

Core of what? Rim of what? Ha ha! Conveinient, that. Much like the invisible, omnipresent "universal translators" of Star Trek et al. Oh, well. I'm hardly in a position to complain about the reality of making TV shows. Nonetheless it's things like this that I think the fans ignore or conveiniently forget when they breathlessly exclaim that Firefly is some kind of revolution in TV sci-fi. It's just more of the same, to me.I was certainly entertained, though. It was well worth the rental fee, and I'll probably catch the movie.Oh, btw, sorry that it took me so long to get to this. There was a big fire at my apartment building and the wife and I are temprarily homeless. Luckily we're well-insured so we should be fine. Probably not going to be posting here much for a week or two. Take it easy! (And get renters insurance if you rent and don't have it. It only takes one douchebag messing around with a candle to burn out your apartment.)