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gwynWhat a fabulous fannishly non-fannish weekend. J & C went Christmas tree shopping with me on Friday night, and J put my lights on the tree because I can’t do it without a great deal of screaming and throwing of things and she has infinite Christmas patience, we ate pizza and shared potential vid songs and watched my latest vid, then the Two Towers special I’d missed last week. On Saturday I watched Firefly (twice! more on that later, too) while I decorated, and got a new ep of Robbery Homicide Division (which is a very cool show I should write about).
Then yesterday M & T drove with me up to Vancouver to meet up with Keiko Kirin while she was there, an old fan friend whose wonderful stories I hosted for a long time on my web site, and whose Stargate stories have just about converted me to the fandom. We shopped (cleaned out the Roots store, bought the one set of Due South season one DVDs that seemed to exist in the shopping district), ate fabulous sushi and drank lots of coffee and chai, and stopped at the patisserie/bar I love and was so happily surprised to see still existed. They even stopped their Stargate conversations occasionally to humor me with talk of Buffy and Spike, and Firefly, and we bonded over our adoration of everyone on Firefly. Outside of the fact of the pilot not being included on the DS discs, it was the most perfect day -- incredible weather, incredible exchange rate, just like summer only cold, incredible food to die for -- and we stayed way too long because we were having so much fun.
On to Friday’s Firefly with spoilers
I hadn’t seen the writer of this episode’s name before in any of the Joss-factory shows, but I already love her. She took a fairly trite plot and injected humor, wit, and action into it and made it wonderfully her own. We’ve seen it before: Partner gets jealous of Significant Other’s association or work with other person, has row with SO over it and kicks up fuss until Partner can take over SO’s spot, Learns Valuable Lesson when stuck in untenable situation, changes opinion about SO and SO’s relationship with associate. But this had a nice kick to it that made it feel fresh and interesting, and it shone a nice spotlight on Wash.
What I’ve loved about Wash and Zoe’s marriage is that he’s happy to let her lead, and he loves and admires that quality in her. She knows he does, and she appreciates him for that. So it would of course be surprising and disappointing to her to see how jealous and rejected Wash feels because of her past (and because he realizes that others see things about Zoe and Mal that he doesn’t), and their natural reaction would be to fight. So not only do they learn some new things about each other, but Mal also learns a few things about both of them he didn’t know before; he has to change how he relates to Wash, especially, and it affects his relationship not just with them, but the rest of the crew.
One of the things I love most about Mal is that he’s very aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his crew, but he’s often completely oblivious to their feelings and what makes them tick. Being forced into this situation with Wash, he was confronted with that obliviousness and he had to figure out how to make what he was learning about Wash and Zoe work to his advantage and keep them both alive, while at the same time, he’s not above getting in childish, cheap little digs at Wash in the midst of their torture. It’s what I find so attractive about him -- that he admits his foibles, but he’s not always willing to change them for the better. When Inara told him he often backed down from fights, he admitted it was true, and here, when Zoe says, "This is something the captain has to do for himself", he immediately hollers, "No, it’s not!" He doesn’t stand on ceremonies of manliness, and I love him for that.
There was some more fascinating development of the mystery of who Book is (Shepherd, Preacher, whatever!), and I’m extremely curious to see just what his past is and why he’s such an excellent shot, and knows so much about torture. It felt like, as well, the mystery of River was not only deepened, but also we started to get our first clues of what’s happening/happened to her. Her glimpses of the past, and then her expert killing of the guards, created a really scary, tragic, and intriguing quality that I think finally will knock people off the fence about her character. She’s the one most people seemed either uninterested in or disliked, and I think the picture of her that’s being painted now is showing us a more viable character. Kaylee’s fear of and discomfort with River mirrors the audience’s own now, and whatever happens to her will affect everyone on the crew for the rest of the season -- she’s the crux of the story, and we’ll see more of what’s going on when she does.
Even the surface stuff here was just all good -- it was packed with potential .sig lines, full of witty asides and character bits (for some reason "wife soup" and "stories with ribcages in them" stick in my mind most), torture (that device that sent the tentacle-like thing along Mal’s very nice chest was especially cool) and maiming (and what a great character bit there -- it’s Wash who turns away, Wash who can’t handle it, and Zoe instead who takes the ear expressionlessly, who knows this world and how to act in it), all kinds of cool shot-em-up action, and of course the girl-girl action (with Kaylee and Jayne’s equally nonplussed reactions for different reasons). It’s so wonderful to see them casually incorporate the notion that in the future, gee golly whiz, there will still be people having same-sex relationships, that a woman would be just as likely to hire a companion as a man, and that even 500 years from now, jerky guys like Jayne will still get off on the idea of girl-girl sex.
I simply adore Firefly, and am so distressed by the news that Fox is putting it on hiatus in January, and not giving any indication if/when/how it will come back. Talking about it yesterday with friends, I realized that I am not alone in simply adoring this show and these characters, and the staff writers who are coming up with such fresh takes on standard stories. There are a lot of us out there, and I hate the thought that we could lose it. I’d say that I just want one full season, if we could get that I’d be happy, but I know it’s not true -- I want it around for a very long time.
Then yesterday M & T drove with me up to Vancouver to meet up with Keiko Kirin while she was there, an old fan friend whose wonderful stories I hosted for a long time on my web site, and whose Stargate stories have just about converted me to the fandom. We shopped (cleaned out the Roots store, bought the one set of Due South season one DVDs that seemed to exist in the shopping district), ate fabulous sushi and drank lots of coffee and chai, and stopped at the patisserie/bar I love and was so happily surprised to see still existed. They even stopped their Stargate conversations occasionally to humor me with talk of Buffy and Spike, and Firefly, and we bonded over our adoration of everyone on Firefly. Outside of the fact of the pilot not being included on the DS discs, it was the most perfect day -- incredible weather, incredible exchange rate, just like summer only cold, incredible food to die for -- and we stayed way too long because we were having so much fun.
On to Friday’s Firefly with spoilers
I hadn’t seen the writer of this episode’s name before in any of the Joss-factory shows, but I already love her. She took a fairly trite plot and injected humor, wit, and action into it and made it wonderfully her own. We’ve seen it before: Partner gets jealous of Significant Other’s association or work with other person, has row with SO over it and kicks up fuss until Partner can take over SO’s spot, Learns Valuable Lesson when stuck in untenable situation, changes opinion about SO and SO’s relationship with associate. But this had a nice kick to it that made it feel fresh and interesting, and it shone a nice spotlight on Wash.
What I’ve loved about Wash and Zoe’s marriage is that he’s happy to let her lead, and he loves and admires that quality in her. She knows he does, and she appreciates him for that. So it would of course be surprising and disappointing to her to see how jealous and rejected Wash feels because of her past (and because he realizes that others see things about Zoe and Mal that he doesn’t), and their natural reaction would be to fight. So not only do they learn some new things about each other, but Mal also learns a few things about both of them he didn’t know before; he has to change how he relates to Wash, especially, and it affects his relationship not just with them, but the rest of the crew.
One of the things I love most about Mal is that he’s very aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his crew, but he’s often completely oblivious to their feelings and what makes them tick. Being forced into this situation with Wash, he was confronted with that obliviousness and he had to figure out how to make what he was learning about Wash and Zoe work to his advantage and keep them both alive, while at the same time, he’s not above getting in childish, cheap little digs at Wash in the midst of their torture. It’s what I find so attractive about him -- that he admits his foibles, but he’s not always willing to change them for the better. When Inara told him he often backed down from fights, he admitted it was true, and here, when Zoe says, "This is something the captain has to do for himself", he immediately hollers, "No, it’s not!" He doesn’t stand on ceremonies of manliness, and I love him for that.
There was some more fascinating development of the mystery of who Book is (Shepherd, Preacher, whatever!), and I’m extremely curious to see just what his past is and why he’s such an excellent shot, and knows so much about torture. It felt like, as well, the mystery of River was not only deepened, but also we started to get our first clues of what’s happening/happened to her. Her glimpses of the past, and then her expert killing of the guards, created a really scary, tragic, and intriguing quality that I think finally will knock people off the fence about her character. She’s the one most people seemed either uninterested in or disliked, and I think the picture of her that’s being painted now is showing us a more viable character. Kaylee’s fear of and discomfort with River mirrors the audience’s own now, and whatever happens to her will affect everyone on the crew for the rest of the season -- she’s the crux of the story, and we’ll see more of what’s going on when she does.
Even the surface stuff here was just all good -- it was packed with potential .sig lines, full of witty asides and character bits (for some reason "wife soup" and "stories with ribcages in them" stick in my mind most), torture (that device that sent the tentacle-like thing along Mal’s very nice chest was especially cool) and maiming (and what a great character bit there -- it’s Wash who turns away, Wash who can’t handle it, and Zoe instead who takes the ear expressionlessly, who knows this world and how to act in it), all kinds of cool shot-em-up action, and of course the girl-girl action (with Kaylee and Jayne’s equally nonplussed reactions for different reasons). It’s so wonderful to see them casually incorporate the notion that in the future, gee golly whiz, there will still be people having same-sex relationships, that a woman would be just as likely to hire a companion as a man, and that even 500 years from now, jerky guys like Jayne will still get off on the idea of girl-girl sex.
I simply adore Firefly, and am so distressed by the news that Fox is putting it on hiatus in January, and not giving any indication if/when/how it will come back. Talking about it yesterday with friends, I realized that I am not alone in simply adoring this show and these characters, and the staff writers who are coming up with such fresh takes on standard stories. There are a lot of us out there, and I hate the thought that we could lose it. I’d say that I just want one full season, if we could get that I’d be happy, but I know it’s not true -- I want it around for a very long time.
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Date: 2002-12-09 01:20 pm (UTC)I'm bored by Book--- the idea of the "dark-past gunman/criminal who redeems himself and enters the church to serve god" is a boring cliche to me. But that might just be because I've seen that stupid western with Sharon Stone, where Russel Crowe is said ex-gunman priest, like four times.
Anyway, check out this petition to save Firefly should it get cancelled: http://www.savefirefly.com/