Just shoot 'em... politely.
Dec. 21st, 2002 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynSpoilers for Firefly pilot on 12/20, Serenity
This is what Fox felt wasn’t good enough to start out with? This? This is what they postponed, starting us in the middle of the story, and then further messed up the order of the episodes? And this was what they felt wasn’t actiony or engaging enough? Are those people just stupid, or do they take drugs to make them stupid?
Everything about this pilot felt engaging to me -- it had suspense, action, character development, humor, a little hint of horror thrown in for good measure, and even a bit of the sexy stuff. All disparate elements that could easily have been promoted and sold to the right audiences, if they’d put even the slightest effort into it -- the western crowd, the science fiction crowd, the suspense fans, instead of trying to sell it generically to morons in middle America.
There was so much going on here, and it meshed well. There were the usual pilot episode pitfalls -- lumps of exposition in the middle of dialog, calling people names or epithets that they never do again, just to sort of introduce us to the characters, and some talky setup of the situation, but overall little of that felt distracting or annoying. Seeing Mal and Zoe’s background in the war, and just how hopeless Mal felt at the battle of Serenity Valley, sets up so much of what we need to know about him. The way subsequent characters (Badger here, and an Alliance cop in Bushwhacked) rub it in that he was just a sergeant, yet we as the audience knowing just how responsible he was for so many people, gives a dimension to his character that no amount of explaining makes up for. And as the ep progresses, we see these leadership qualities in him, and just why people do believe in and follow him.
I wrote about Simon in Objects in Space last week, talking about how he found reserves that we, and he, didn’t really know he had -- only here, we would have seen them for the first time, and known something about Simon that would have resonated through the other episodes, if they’d bothered to air this. It makes him even more of a conundrum, because we understand by the end of this ep just what he’s got in him, just how far he’d go for River and what he’s capable of (and wasn’t he just creepy in those sunglasses?), which contrasts wonderfully with the Simon we see later -- stuffy, a little repressed, almost naïve. Only, obviously, he’s not.
Kaylee’s fear and sense of powerlessness that came to light so fully in Objects really makes much more sense after this -- being shot would have such an impact on her, and her place in this incredibly dangerous universe would feel so much more shaky to her, naturally. We were denied something vitally important about her early on by not getting this at the beginning. And Jayne’s cowardice in the face of the Reavers becomes much more understandable. He’s such a wonderful pig in this episode. His eventual betrayal of Mal is nicely foreshadowed, and in some ways, makes more sense once we see this -- he may have a lot of firepower, he may be fearless about many other things, but when it comes to being on Serenity, he is still at Mal’s mercy, and Mal is not willing to put up with his failings as a civilized human being, something that would end up festering inside Jayne, waiting for the right opportunity and the right amount of money. (And how hilarious was Jayne's whole torturing-Lawrence conversational-skill deficit? The whole scene was just a delight.)
The Reavers were genuinely creepy and threatening here -- we get a full sense of just how dangerous this universe really is, and how on the margins most people were living their lives out there, capturing a true sense of the western pioneers again. Even the Reavers’ spaceship was creepy, with its eyes and spines, and I’m at a loss as to why Fox wouldn’t pick up on this wonderful touch of suspense and advertise that when they were promoting the show this past summer. Most of the episode -- from Book wandering around Persephone looking for a ship to how Patience owned all of Whitefall -- had that sense of living on the fringes, of lives lived perilously close to the edge.
And there were so many wonderful Jossian touches. Wash playing with the dinosaurs at the beginning; the fact that the "gold" turns out to be food supplies; the stories about the Reavers; the sense we get of the inner Inara and how she feels about her work; Mal yanking Simon’s and our chains by telling him Kaylee is dead, and then the laughing about it later; the innocence (River and Kaylee) contrasted with the cynical and hard-bitten (Lawrence, Mal); Mal pulling a Sonny Crockett and shooting Lawrence without hesitation, even though he has a gun to River’s head; Wash muttering "work, work" when Zoe wants him to go rip her clothes off. Tiny, almost throwaway things like the fact that River and Simon are picked up in a place called Persephone (the goddess who was taken to the underworld to be Hades’s bride); the wonderful old-west-feeling name Patience for a woman who clearly has none; the name Reavers, which recalls Quantrill’s Raiders, who weren’t a whole lot better and were very real; setting up the Alliance, a word so much like Union, reminding us once again how much of a Reb Mal really is (although these rebels’ dissatisfaction feels a whole lot more legit, this time).
Lovely bits of setup, too: Wash’s slightly cranky comments about Zoe’s relationship to Mal echoed in War Stories; Jayne’s greed and willingness to betray, as well as how he can’t be left in charge of things; Inara’s interest in Mal and why (and it seemed so classically Joss to me to have Inara saying she was interested in Mal because he was a mystery when so few men are, and cutting straight to Mal doing up his spacepants -- I howled in laughter); Book’s fears and desire to help people, to change them, but that he’s not so much innocent as removed from the world -- and we have tiny glimpses that he isn’t quite that removed.
And Mal, most of all Mal. So much of what we need to know about him was provided here, so much of what we’ve seen in subsequent eps falls into place. He mistrusts Simon from the get-go, and has deep-seated prejudices against such a privileged person, and we can understand more of his bitterness after seeing what he fought for. We know how sour and resentful he is at being abandoned by the people he fought with, and how much he still holds against the ruling power. We also know just how loving and caring he is, and what he’s willing to sacrifice for people he does care about. His actions later make so much more sense, and Inara’s responses to him also make more sense. He is mysterious and complex, and haunted, and capable, and while we’ve seen most of that since, this episode finally puts the foundation in place, and we can see the whole character from the ground up.
Lovely touches outside of characterization, too, especially the weapons -- the guns look just enough like a typical gun now, but with the modifications you’d expect for the future. Whoever the armourer is on this show, they’ve done a marvelous job of imagining the weaponry of a universe that melds the wild west with futurism. Even something as simple as a bulletin looks both familiar and futuristic. Such care was put into this, there’s a sense of fun and gee-whizness about it that I adore, and it’s echoed in the use of multiple languages and dialects, in the way people dress, in the sort of dusty, dry, empty places sprinkled around a ‘verse where everything’s too far away and hard to get to.
For me, Firefly is every bit as good as Buffy, and this episode could so easily have been aired when it should have, and if promoted right could have lured in different types of audiences. The thing is, they have to know about it, first. I don’t trust Fox to show the rest of the unaired episodes. I have no idea if UPN or anyone will see fit to pick up this show. But my heart just aches for it, especially after seeing this, and knowing how badly treated it was. As soon as it was over, all I could do was sit there with the remote in hand and say, this is what they felt wasn’t worthy. And apparently, Joe Millionaire is. There really is no justice in this ‘verse.ƒ
This is what Fox felt wasn’t good enough to start out with? This? This is what they postponed, starting us in the middle of the story, and then further messed up the order of the episodes? And this was what they felt wasn’t actiony or engaging enough? Are those people just stupid, or do they take drugs to make them stupid?
Everything about this pilot felt engaging to me -- it had suspense, action, character development, humor, a little hint of horror thrown in for good measure, and even a bit of the sexy stuff. All disparate elements that could easily have been promoted and sold to the right audiences, if they’d put even the slightest effort into it -- the western crowd, the science fiction crowd, the suspense fans, instead of trying to sell it generically to morons in middle America.
There was so much going on here, and it meshed well. There were the usual pilot episode pitfalls -- lumps of exposition in the middle of dialog, calling people names or epithets that they never do again, just to sort of introduce us to the characters, and some talky setup of the situation, but overall little of that felt distracting or annoying. Seeing Mal and Zoe’s background in the war, and just how hopeless Mal felt at the battle of Serenity Valley, sets up so much of what we need to know about him. The way subsequent characters (Badger here, and an Alliance cop in Bushwhacked) rub it in that he was just a sergeant, yet we as the audience knowing just how responsible he was for so many people, gives a dimension to his character that no amount of explaining makes up for. And as the ep progresses, we see these leadership qualities in him, and just why people do believe in and follow him.
I wrote about Simon in Objects in Space last week, talking about how he found reserves that we, and he, didn’t really know he had -- only here, we would have seen them for the first time, and known something about Simon that would have resonated through the other episodes, if they’d bothered to air this. It makes him even more of a conundrum, because we understand by the end of this ep just what he’s got in him, just how far he’d go for River and what he’s capable of (and wasn’t he just creepy in those sunglasses?), which contrasts wonderfully with the Simon we see later -- stuffy, a little repressed, almost naïve. Only, obviously, he’s not.
Kaylee’s fear and sense of powerlessness that came to light so fully in Objects really makes much more sense after this -- being shot would have such an impact on her, and her place in this incredibly dangerous universe would feel so much more shaky to her, naturally. We were denied something vitally important about her early on by not getting this at the beginning. And Jayne’s cowardice in the face of the Reavers becomes much more understandable. He’s such a wonderful pig in this episode. His eventual betrayal of Mal is nicely foreshadowed, and in some ways, makes more sense once we see this -- he may have a lot of firepower, he may be fearless about many other things, but when it comes to being on Serenity, he is still at Mal’s mercy, and Mal is not willing to put up with his failings as a civilized human being, something that would end up festering inside Jayne, waiting for the right opportunity and the right amount of money. (And how hilarious was Jayne's whole torturing-Lawrence conversational-skill deficit? The whole scene was just a delight.)
The Reavers were genuinely creepy and threatening here -- we get a full sense of just how dangerous this universe really is, and how on the margins most people were living their lives out there, capturing a true sense of the western pioneers again. Even the Reavers’ spaceship was creepy, with its eyes and spines, and I’m at a loss as to why Fox wouldn’t pick up on this wonderful touch of suspense and advertise that when they were promoting the show this past summer. Most of the episode -- from Book wandering around Persephone looking for a ship to how Patience owned all of Whitefall -- had that sense of living on the fringes, of lives lived perilously close to the edge.
And there were so many wonderful Jossian touches. Wash playing with the dinosaurs at the beginning; the fact that the "gold" turns out to be food supplies; the stories about the Reavers; the sense we get of the inner Inara and how she feels about her work; Mal yanking Simon’s and our chains by telling him Kaylee is dead, and then the laughing about it later; the innocence (River and Kaylee) contrasted with the cynical and hard-bitten (Lawrence, Mal); Mal pulling a Sonny Crockett and shooting Lawrence without hesitation, even though he has a gun to River’s head; Wash muttering "work, work" when Zoe wants him to go rip her clothes off. Tiny, almost throwaway things like the fact that River and Simon are picked up in a place called Persephone (the goddess who was taken to the underworld to be Hades’s bride); the wonderful old-west-feeling name Patience for a woman who clearly has none; the name Reavers, which recalls Quantrill’s Raiders, who weren’t a whole lot better and were very real; setting up the Alliance, a word so much like Union, reminding us once again how much of a Reb Mal really is (although these rebels’ dissatisfaction feels a whole lot more legit, this time).
Lovely bits of setup, too: Wash’s slightly cranky comments about Zoe’s relationship to Mal echoed in War Stories; Jayne’s greed and willingness to betray, as well as how he can’t be left in charge of things; Inara’s interest in Mal and why (and it seemed so classically Joss to me to have Inara saying she was interested in Mal because he was a mystery when so few men are, and cutting straight to Mal doing up his spacepants -- I howled in laughter); Book’s fears and desire to help people, to change them, but that he’s not so much innocent as removed from the world -- and we have tiny glimpses that he isn’t quite that removed.
And Mal, most of all Mal. So much of what we need to know about him was provided here, so much of what we’ve seen in subsequent eps falls into place. He mistrusts Simon from the get-go, and has deep-seated prejudices against such a privileged person, and we can understand more of his bitterness after seeing what he fought for. We know how sour and resentful he is at being abandoned by the people he fought with, and how much he still holds against the ruling power. We also know just how loving and caring he is, and what he’s willing to sacrifice for people he does care about. His actions later make so much more sense, and Inara’s responses to him also make more sense. He is mysterious and complex, and haunted, and capable, and while we’ve seen most of that since, this episode finally puts the foundation in place, and we can see the whole character from the ground up.
Lovely touches outside of characterization, too, especially the weapons -- the guns look just enough like a typical gun now, but with the modifications you’d expect for the future. Whoever the armourer is on this show, they’ve done a marvelous job of imagining the weaponry of a universe that melds the wild west with futurism. Even something as simple as a bulletin looks both familiar and futuristic. Such care was put into this, there’s a sense of fun and gee-whizness about it that I adore, and it’s echoed in the use of multiple languages and dialects, in the way people dress, in the sort of dusty, dry, empty places sprinkled around a ‘verse where everything’s too far away and hard to get to.
For me, Firefly is every bit as good as Buffy, and this episode could so easily have been aired when it should have, and if promoted right could have lured in different types of audiences. The thing is, they have to know about it, first. I don’t trust Fox to show the rest of the unaired episodes. I have no idea if UPN or anyone will see fit to pick up this show. But my heart just aches for it, especially after seeing this, and knowing how badly treated it was. As soon as it was over, all I could do was sit there with the remote in hand and say, this is what they felt wasn’t worthy. And apparently, Joe Millionaire is. There really is no justice in this ‘verse.ƒ
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-12-21 07:00 pm (UTC)Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2002-12-24 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-12-21 09:40 pm (UTC)I was hoping you'd write something about this, and lucky for me, you did. It's just awful how Fox mishandled this series. Makes me wonder what exactly went on behind the scenes, you know? I couldn't believe how clear these episodes made everything we'd seen before, how much it would have added to so many scenes and to the characters.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-24 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-12-23 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-12-24 02:42 pm (UTC)And EZ Streets... that's what feels so weird about sending postcards to UPN and Les Moonves, right now, that I keep sending out -- the man is Satan. He cancelled EZ Streets before it even got started, cancelled Mag 7, Now and Again, Buddy Faro... the list goes on and on. And we got Survivor and reality tv instead. Lucifer, I tell you.Ï