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Corner of No and Where
Dec. 15th, 2002 06:25 pmSpoilers for Firefly episode 12/13, Objects in Space
It’s been hard even thinking about Firefly from Friday night. Over the weekend, I kept trying to think about what I wanted to say about this ep, and then I’d just get so sad and angry about the cancellation that I couldn’t come up with anything. And my black Friday was made complete when I found out that we didn’t get a necessary acount at work, so I’ll probably be out a job come the new year, and then to top it off, MDs finally got officially cancelled despite climbing ratings, and they’re pulling the promised episode of next week -- leaving five unaired eps that we’ll never get to see. But anyway.
If you have to have a talking killer, you should always have a talking killer like Jubal Early. Talking killers are a blight on the action film and tv landscape, and the most irritating cliche in the business, if you ask me. But Early, he was amusing in his talking killerness, he was the grand poobah of the talking killers. He simply never shut up, and he was genuinely creepy and disturbing with his disjointed asides and tangents (“I do go on”), and his repeated “does that seem right to you?” questions of the people he was threatening. It’s a great western name, too, lifted right out of a Louis L’Amour book.
What worked so well in this episode was what he brought out in each of the crew he affected directly. His quest brought River around to a full understanding of where she stood with the rest of the crew, and what she had inside her that she could call on to solve the situation. Simon found a tougher, stronger self than he probably knew he had (and Simon! Dear lord, what he’s been hiding under those vests and sweaters!). Kaylee cowered and was paralyzed by her fear, and even took refuge in it (saying she couldn’t do anything to help because she was tied up) -- because she is, after all, simply a girl on her first trip away from home, and this is not her arena at all. Mal was stuck in a completely uncaptainlike situation, unable to control things.
And Early was just heebie-jeebie inducing (Richard Brooks can play icily creepy like no one else), which contrasted nicely with the heebie-jeebies we get from River. Where his come from his malice, evil, and “not right”ness, River’s come from her innocence and the victimization that made her not right. The beginning of the ep, with her incredibly creepy dream/hallucination/vision, made the hair on my neck stand up, and nothing ever does that on tv. It was astonishingly well-done, with her picture of what she sees inside the others, the way they interacted with each other and seemed oblivious to her, yet were "telling" her what they really felt. Mal and Inara’s creeped me out the most, because of the way they stood looking away from each other, yet saying these deeply felt things, and the hopeless, choked voice with which Mal said that none of it really mattered... what an incredible picture Joss painted of who Mal is and how tortured he feels about life. I also loved the way it ended, with her on the floor covered in leaves, and then picking up the branch and saying “it’s just an object.” The shots inside the ship, where we move through the layers visually, was a nice foreshadowing of her “becoming” the ship later on (and what a delight that they again tied in to a previous episode, when Simon and she were outside the ship hiding). She clearly does feel part of it, and as Simon said, she feels more at home than anywhere she’s been while on Serenity, so those glimpses inside the ship, moving through and out, are like a visual signal of where River is mentally in her healing, and where she might be going.
Jayne, as always, and Wash, crack me up. Wash had some wonderful ripostes to Jayne’s crankiness, and Jayne's just so delightfully stupid. My favorite part was when he rips the blanket from the wall, showing off his armoury, and then when you think he’s going to leap up and be heroic, rolls over with the blanket on top and goes back to sleep. I loved that in everyone else on ship, River’s visions at the beginning showed something hidden and dark, except Zoe and Wash, whose passion for each other made River feel something different and deeper and in some ways, possibly more disturbing to her. And I felt so much for Kaylee when she tried to get Simon to admit that he might have found something worth being glad of on Serenity -- I could so identify with someone feeling so much for another person who would never have been spent time with them given their preferred choice, if they had not been stuck there with them. She looked so hopeful, and it was heartbreaking realizing that Simon would not have looked twice at her if he could have stayed in his world.
There was so much going on in this, which should simply have been the bounty hunter and talking killer episode you could shrug off as filler. As usual Joss’s hand showed in it -- the action was decidely unactiony, just a couple small fights, really, and the silent killer of space ends up being the most deadly thing of all. Even the tag, with Early’s “Here I am”, had a wonderfully ironic anti-climactic quality, something Joss seems to excel in. I’m treasuring every episode now, especially becuase I’m pessimistic about anyone else picking this up (that hardly ever happens successfully, so...) but it’s so easy to do, since Joss keeps giving us treasures.ˆ
It’s been hard even thinking about Firefly from Friday night. Over the weekend, I kept trying to think about what I wanted to say about this ep, and then I’d just get so sad and angry about the cancellation that I couldn’t come up with anything. And my black Friday was made complete when I found out that we didn’t get a necessary acount at work, so I’ll probably be out a job come the new year, and then to top it off, MDs finally got officially cancelled despite climbing ratings, and they’re pulling the promised episode of next week -- leaving five unaired eps that we’ll never get to see. But anyway.
If you have to have a talking killer, you should always have a talking killer like Jubal Early. Talking killers are a blight on the action film and tv landscape, and the most irritating cliche in the business, if you ask me. But Early, he was amusing in his talking killerness, he was the grand poobah of the talking killers. He simply never shut up, and he was genuinely creepy and disturbing with his disjointed asides and tangents (“I do go on”), and his repeated “does that seem right to you?” questions of the people he was threatening. It’s a great western name, too, lifted right out of a Louis L’Amour book.
What worked so well in this episode was what he brought out in each of the crew he affected directly. His quest brought River around to a full understanding of where she stood with the rest of the crew, and what she had inside her that she could call on to solve the situation. Simon found a tougher, stronger self than he probably knew he had (and Simon! Dear lord, what he’s been hiding under those vests and sweaters!). Kaylee cowered and was paralyzed by her fear, and even took refuge in it (saying she couldn’t do anything to help because she was tied up) -- because she is, after all, simply a girl on her first trip away from home, and this is not her arena at all. Mal was stuck in a completely uncaptainlike situation, unable to control things.
And Early was just heebie-jeebie inducing (Richard Brooks can play icily creepy like no one else), which contrasted nicely with the heebie-jeebies we get from River. Where his come from his malice, evil, and “not right”ness, River’s come from her innocence and the victimization that made her not right. The beginning of the ep, with her incredibly creepy dream/hallucination/vision, made the hair on my neck stand up, and nothing ever does that on tv. It was astonishingly well-done, with her picture of what she sees inside the others, the way they interacted with each other and seemed oblivious to her, yet were "telling" her what they really felt. Mal and Inara’s creeped me out the most, because of the way they stood looking away from each other, yet saying these deeply felt things, and the hopeless, choked voice with which Mal said that none of it really mattered... what an incredible picture Joss painted of who Mal is and how tortured he feels about life. I also loved the way it ended, with her on the floor covered in leaves, and then picking up the branch and saying “it’s just an object.” The shots inside the ship, where we move through the layers visually, was a nice foreshadowing of her “becoming” the ship later on (and what a delight that they again tied in to a previous episode, when Simon and she were outside the ship hiding). She clearly does feel part of it, and as Simon said, she feels more at home than anywhere she’s been while on Serenity, so those glimpses inside the ship, moving through and out, are like a visual signal of where River is mentally in her healing, and where she might be going.
Jayne, as always, and Wash, crack me up. Wash had some wonderful ripostes to Jayne’s crankiness, and Jayne's just so delightfully stupid. My favorite part was when he rips the blanket from the wall, showing off his armoury, and then when you think he’s going to leap up and be heroic, rolls over with the blanket on top and goes back to sleep. I loved that in everyone else on ship, River’s visions at the beginning showed something hidden and dark, except Zoe and Wash, whose passion for each other made River feel something different and deeper and in some ways, possibly more disturbing to her. And I felt so much for Kaylee when she tried to get Simon to admit that he might have found something worth being glad of on Serenity -- I could so identify with someone feeling so much for another person who would never have been spent time with them given their preferred choice, if they had not been stuck there with them. She looked so hopeful, and it was heartbreaking realizing that Simon would not have looked twice at her if he could have stayed in his world.
There was so much going on in this, which should simply have been the bounty hunter and talking killer episode you could shrug off as filler. As usual Joss’s hand showed in it -- the action was decidely unactiony, just a couple small fights, really, and the silent killer of space ends up being the most deadly thing of all. Even the tag, with Early’s “Here I am”, had a wonderfully ironic anti-climactic quality, something Joss seems to excel in. I’m treasuring every episode now, especially becuase I’m pessimistic about anyone else picking this up (that hardly ever happens successfully, so...) but it’s so easy to do, since Joss keeps giving us treasures.ˆ
