Requiem for a series
Dec. 14th, 2003 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI didn’t think it was possible to feel as devastated again by Firefly’s cancellation as I did when it happened, but now that I’ve had the chance to watch the entire series in order, I find myself so. As much as I love Angel, it was Firefly that felt like it would have been the successor to Buffy, the one I looked forward to weekly, that I spent all my fannish time on. The hardest thing about getting to the end of these discs was knowing there is no more.
The packaging surprised me. I actually liked the four thin cases, even though they’re hard to snap together. For one thing, it gives the discs an almost home-made feel, as if we’re part of a small, hand-made production process. It’s also nice because I’ve grown very tired of Fox’s fold-out packaging. The first time I opened an X-Files box, it was very cool and we all went “ahhhh” over it; by now it’s grown tiresome, especially when you have to open it all the way to the end to get the booklet that inevitably slides out just so you can find out which disc has which ep, and the trays come loose and break, and you can’t get to anything quickly. After the La Femme Nikita discs, in their book-shaped casings that are easy to access, I’m less than thrilled with the Buffy & Angel cases, so these are a welcome change. The ep information is right there on the back, I don’t have to guess. The images of four main characters over a galaxy in the background and the open plain behind them tells you right there what the show is about.
The discs themselves are interesting, in that my high-end player has come closer to choking on them than any other disc I’ve played, including the really complex Lord of the Rings and James Cameron special edition discs. At first I freaked, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to play them, but it seems consistent across all discs. So far, I’ve had to return three of the six Buffy/Angel sets I’ve bought because of shoddy production and unplayable or badly damaged in transit discs; I was panicked that it would be even longer before I’d see these, but they seemed to settle down. Unfortunately, while the packaging is better than the other Fox shows, these still use the annoying multi-layered menu options, forcing you to have to go through menu after submenu to get where you want. Much as I hate the packaging on Due South, at least those, and the LFN discs, allow you to Play All eps, so you don’t have to keep paging through menus. That, however, is my only gripe.
It was such a treat to watch these in order, as they were meant to be seen, all letterboxed to emphasize that quality of a western with its vistas and open spaces, and the science fiction aspect, with its shots of space and ships chasing one another. The last time I watched Firefly, I was watching it with the sound off in order to make a vid, and haven’t watched them since, as it as just too painful. So it was a rediscovery, almost, and even though in my head much of it is out of order and I know what will happen next, there was still a sense of surprise and newness about it. So much of the characterization that seemed random now makes sense, and it’s wonderful to see how much these characters developed over the short course of our time with them. Many shows have a weird, over the top quality about their initial few episodes, where the actors are finding the roles and the producers are establishing a sense of the show; maybe it’s because so many of these actors have considerable experience, or maybe it’s just that Joss had such a clear vision, but there isn’t much of that settling in here. You can see right from the beginning the connection each of them makes to their character, and I think it’s a tribute to everyone involved that the show doesn’t suffer from pilot-itis.
And the “new” episodes. I almost don’t know where to start, because I think each of them deserves a full review, but I’m not sure if that would be overkill. None disappointed in any way -- even when I thought they would. Trash was an often funny continuation of the storyline from Our Mrs. Reynolds, with Saffron coming back to torment everyone just a little bit more. It starts out with a bang when Mal and she first see each other, and their fight is just delightful -- once again, I’m grateful that Joss never shies away from a chick-guy fight, and in his universe, men and women hit and head butt each other with aplomb. I love Ben Edlund’s writing, anyway, but this had so many lovely twists and turns, with a constant meta-commentary by Mal about those very twists and turns. When he calls her YoSaffBridge, because of all the names she has used as aliases, I laughed out loud. And of course there were lovely throwaway touches, as in all the eps, such as calling the priceless gun a Lassiter in homage to Pixar’s John Lassiter, for whom Joss has done such notable work. I loved Durrin’s collection of artifacts -- things that seem so mundane now, such as a telephone booth. And it was especially nice seeing Inara participate in their capers, and of course, it’s hard to not like an episode that starts with Mal sitting naked on a rock, and ends with him wandering around totally starkers, ignoring the discomfort of his crew. And goodness, doesn’t he have a nice ass under those tight space pants, which we figured, but never got to visually verify. I do love the fact that Joss makes the men get naked on his shows far more than the women.
Out of Gas is still my favorite episode, and I found myself choking up over it this time, when Mal asks if they’ll all be here when wakes up. Considering how incredibly shut-off he is, this is his moment where, defenses down, he shows just how much he cares for them, and acknowledges their feelings for him. It left me teary-eyed. But I wasn’t prepared for how haunting and tragic The Message would be, and it may end up becoming my favorite episode. I don’t know if some of that feeling is because it guest-starred Jonathan M. Woodward, who I’ve come to adore as Holden on Buffy and now Knox on Angel, and so I was predisposed toward the story anyway. But I don’t think that’s it. The story was simply affecting and emotional in the best Joss tradition, and it’s so obviously written by him and Tim Minear, it just leaps off the screen at you. It starts out so familial and joking, with lovely character set pieces (Jayne’s hat! Simon’s ongoing stupidity in spite of his attraction to Kaylee! River trying to eat the ice planet!), and then slowly, gradually, through development of personalities rather than action, offers us an affecting new character, as well as new things about the characters we know. I was especially touched by the underlying theme of just how far loyalty in war extends for the soldiers who fight together, and the lasting impact it has on their lives after the war. Even though Tracey is another variation on the smartass adorable characters Woodward has played on the Whedonverse shows, his wry observations of his own fucked up life, and his tragic misguidedness, left me crying at the end. Really, really crying, not just misty-eyed. This is also the episode Richard Burgi guested in, for all you Sentinel fans, and he does a wonderful job with his role as a creepy, icky Fed who has something else up his sleeve. The scenes where Serenity hides in the ice caves, and they drop what are essentially depth charges over the ice fields, is as wonderfully tense as anything from a good WW II sub movie. I thought for certain this ep would have a gotcha ending, where they tell us it was all part of their clever plan; that it didn’t resort to that made this powerful, haunting, and truly affecting.
I thought Heart of Gold would be a very standard-issue big bad guy owns all the town and makes life hell for others plot, straight out of every Western TV show ever. So it was a total surprise when it turned out to really be about Mal and Inara’s inchoate love for each other, and Inara’s devastation at seeing the life she’s chosen unravel in front of her eyes -- and for Mal to learn just how much he needs love, despite all his protests to the contrary. I wanted to dislike Inara’s friend, especially for getting the big love scene with Mal those of us who’ve fallen in love with him wanted to see with someone else, but she was a wonderfully drawn character. And the things Mal needs in Inara are there in her, and his realization of that later is heart-breaking. This episode completely surprised me, hiding an intense emotional core underneath a standard-issue victims rise up against bad guys plotline. And it was especially nice that the up and down quality of Wash and Zoe’s marriage is taking another turn when Zoe admits to wanting a child, which baffles Wash. I feel so cheated and angry that I didn’t get to see that aspect of both of them developed further.
All of the episodes that weren’t aired suddenly make the events of Objects in Space so much clearer, and have a resonance they didn’t have before. I though Objects was brilliant; now I think it’s sublime, and a freeze-frame of a writer/producer/director and cast at the peak of their creative abilities. Because we now know how Inara feels she must leave to get control of her life again, and how Mal really does feel about her, their conversation in River’s psychic dream/vision of them and their interior thoughts take on a whole different meaning; Simon’s feelings of being trapped in the ass-end of space and caring for a girl who he wouldn’t have looked at before becomes even more painfully awkward, and Book’s comments about innocence have an even creepier feeling than before. And the ending of Objects, with that tiny glimmer of hope for River and Simon and the sense of family among the crew, is even more intense, since we’ve seen what led up to it before.
These unaired eps also serve to intrigue us even more about the characters -- especially Book, whose challenging of Burgi’s cop in The Message makes you wonder even more what the story is with this guy. Clearly he is far more worldly than he appears, but it leaves you wondering just how much he can be trusted, and where that could go. In the same way that finally seeing Serenity gave us a much clearer picture of who Mal was, seeing these new eps, especially The Message and Heart of Gold, paint an even deeper picture of him and Zoe. Even more than before, we know that Mal is so hard and bitter and angry simply to save himself from ever having to feel and care for anyone, to love, and the fact that he fails so completely, over and over, makes him the most poignant and complex hero on TV for a long time.
I haven’t listened yet to the commentary tracks and am saving that to draw out the warm fuzzies, but I did watch a few of the supplementary pieces. The Making Of left me particularly pleased, because they addressed two things I came to love about Firefly with fervid passion -- Greg Edmondson’s exquisite score, and the unique quality of the visual effects. I loved the fact that the show often employed a handheld camera feel, even when they were doing CGI effects. It made what is essentially a cheesy effect -- model ships docking, stuff flying through computer-made space -- have a verisimilitude that’s unexpected and fun. I especially loved it when they would zoom in on a ship flying, or have the camera shake a little during a docking, as if we were right there, seeing it. And everything from lens flares, that often gave the characters an interesting halo effect, to off-center framing, always made me love this show just that much more, and it was a thrill to hear them discuss this in the supplemental material. It deserves to be acknowledged.
Also deserving of singling out was Greg Edmondson’s music, which I often thought may have been the most wonderful scoring on TV in many years. Especially in Out of Gas, where it was haunting and tense at the same time, and Serenity, which later provided small musical elements that Edmonson picked up to use in other eps, carrying certain character qualities through among them. The music he wrote for The Message probably contributed a lot to how much that ep affected me; I was glad that he talked about it and how he was afraid that by writing it after they’d known the show was cancelled, he was scoring en elegy for the show and not the ending scene itself. It was an exquisite theme, it hit me right in the guts, and was a perfect accompaniment to the characters in that scene -- especially the shot of Kaylee and Simon taking each other’s hands, and Mal’s look of sadness and defeat.
It’s easy to focus on this show in the way they’ve been describing it in the blurbs: hip, funny, sci-fi, western, action, all those things. But what I came away with after watching the unaired eps, and watching the whole series in order, was the emotional depth and complete vision of a universe that this show offered. Eps like Heart of Gold and The Train Job do such an effective job of conveying what life on the fringes was really like for pioneers, and stories like Ariel and Bushwhacked give us a fantastic picture of why these people are rebelling against a controlling power. But more than anything, through each story, the characters come alive for us, become whole, real people we want to invite into our homes week after week. We want to know them.
A lot of my fellow Buffy fans have taken up Alias as the successor to that fannish feeling; some have stuck with Angel to carry on the tradition (as I have). As much as I love both of them, neither hits me the way Buffy did, and the way Firefly would have if it had been allowed to continue. These were people and stories I wanted to look forward to each week, to obsess over and talk about and nitpick and revel in. It makes me incredibly happy to have these episodes at last to watch and rewatch; yet it makes me heartsick that I won’t have the chance to invite them back every week for more.
The packaging surprised me. I actually liked the four thin cases, even though they’re hard to snap together. For one thing, it gives the discs an almost home-made feel, as if we’re part of a small, hand-made production process. It’s also nice because I’ve grown very tired of Fox’s fold-out packaging. The first time I opened an X-Files box, it was very cool and we all went “ahhhh” over it; by now it’s grown tiresome, especially when you have to open it all the way to the end to get the booklet that inevitably slides out just so you can find out which disc has which ep, and the trays come loose and break, and you can’t get to anything quickly. After the La Femme Nikita discs, in their book-shaped casings that are easy to access, I’m less than thrilled with the Buffy & Angel cases, so these are a welcome change. The ep information is right there on the back, I don’t have to guess. The images of four main characters over a galaxy in the background and the open plain behind them tells you right there what the show is about.
The discs themselves are interesting, in that my high-end player has come closer to choking on them than any other disc I’ve played, including the really complex Lord of the Rings and James Cameron special edition discs. At first I freaked, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to play them, but it seems consistent across all discs. So far, I’ve had to return three of the six Buffy/Angel sets I’ve bought because of shoddy production and unplayable or badly damaged in transit discs; I was panicked that it would be even longer before I’d see these, but they seemed to settle down. Unfortunately, while the packaging is better than the other Fox shows, these still use the annoying multi-layered menu options, forcing you to have to go through menu after submenu to get where you want. Much as I hate the packaging on Due South, at least those, and the LFN discs, allow you to Play All eps, so you don’t have to keep paging through menus. That, however, is my only gripe.
It was such a treat to watch these in order, as they were meant to be seen, all letterboxed to emphasize that quality of a western with its vistas and open spaces, and the science fiction aspect, with its shots of space and ships chasing one another. The last time I watched Firefly, I was watching it with the sound off in order to make a vid, and haven’t watched them since, as it as just too painful. So it was a rediscovery, almost, and even though in my head much of it is out of order and I know what will happen next, there was still a sense of surprise and newness about it. So much of the characterization that seemed random now makes sense, and it’s wonderful to see how much these characters developed over the short course of our time with them. Many shows have a weird, over the top quality about their initial few episodes, where the actors are finding the roles and the producers are establishing a sense of the show; maybe it’s because so many of these actors have considerable experience, or maybe it’s just that Joss had such a clear vision, but there isn’t much of that settling in here. You can see right from the beginning the connection each of them makes to their character, and I think it’s a tribute to everyone involved that the show doesn’t suffer from pilot-itis.
And the “new” episodes. I almost don’t know where to start, because I think each of them deserves a full review, but I’m not sure if that would be overkill. None disappointed in any way -- even when I thought they would. Trash was an often funny continuation of the storyline from Our Mrs. Reynolds, with Saffron coming back to torment everyone just a little bit more. It starts out with a bang when Mal and she first see each other, and their fight is just delightful -- once again, I’m grateful that Joss never shies away from a chick-guy fight, and in his universe, men and women hit and head butt each other with aplomb. I love Ben Edlund’s writing, anyway, but this had so many lovely twists and turns, with a constant meta-commentary by Mal about those very twists and turns. When he calls her YoSaffBridge, because of all the names she has used as aliases, I laughed out loud. And of course there were lovely throwaway touches, as in all the eps, such as calling the priceless gun a Lassiter in homage to Pixar’s John Lassiter, for whom Joss has done such notable work. I loved Durrin’s collection of artifacts -- things that seem so mundane now, such as a telephone booth. And it was especially nice seeing Inara participate in their capers, and of course, it’s hard to not like an episode that starts with Mal sitting naked on a rock, and ends with him wandering around totally starkers, ignoring the discomfort of his crew. And goodness, doesn’t he have a nice ass under those tight space pants, which we figured, but never got to visually verify. I do love the fact that Joss makes the men get naked on his shows far more than the women.
Out of Gas is still my favorite episode, and I found myself choking up over it this time, when Mal asks if they’ll all be here when wakes up. Considering how incredibly shut-off he is, this is his moment where, defenses down, he shows just how much he cares for them, and acknowledges their feelings for him. It left me teary-eyed. But I wasn’t prepared for how haunting and tragic The Message would be, and it may end up becoming my favorite episode. I don’t know if some of that feeling is because it guest-starred Jonathan M. Woodward, who I’ve come to adore as Holden on Buffy and now Knox on Angel, and so I was predisposed toward the story anyway. But I don’t think that’s it. The story was simply affecting and emotional in the best Joss tradition, and it’s so obviously written by him and Tim Minear, it just leaps off the screen at you. It starts out so familial and joking, with lovely character set pieces (Jayne’s hat! Simon’s ongoing stupidity in spite of his attraction to Kaylee! River trying to eat the ice planet!), and then slowly, gradually, through development of personalities rather than action, offers us an affecting new character, as well as new things about the characters we know. I was especially touched by the underlying theme of just how far loyalty in war extends for the soldiers who fight together, and the lasting impact it has on their lives after the war. Even though Tracey is another variation on the smartass adorable characters Woodward has played on the Whedonverse shows, his wry observations of his own fucked up life, and his tragic misguidedness, left me crying at the end. Really, really crying, not just misty-eyed. This is also the episode Richard Burgi guested in, for all you Sentinel fans, and he does a wonderful job with his role as a creepy, icky Fed who has something else up his sleeve. The scenes where Serenity hides in the ice caves, and they drop what are essentially depth charges over the ice fields, is as wonderfully tense as anything from a good WW II sub movie. I thought for certain this ep would have a gotcha ending, where they tell us it was all part of their clever plan; that it didn’t resort to that made this powerful, haunting, and truly affecting.
I thought Heart of Gold would be a very standard-issue big bad guy owns all the town and makes life hell for others plot, straight out of every Western TV show ever. So it was a total surprise when it turned out to really be about Mal and Inara’s inchoate love for each other, and Inara’s devastation at seeing the life she’s chosen unravel in front of her eyes -- and for Mal to learn just how much he needs love, despite all his protests to the contrary. I wanted to dislike Inara’s friend, especially for getting the big love scene with Mal those of us who’ve fallen in love with him wanted to see with someone else, but she was a wonderfully drawn character. And the things Mal needs in Inara are there in her, and his realization of that later is heart-breaking. This episode completely surprised me, hiding an intense emotional core underneath a standard-issue victims rise up against bad guys plotline. And it was especially nice that the up and down quality of Wash and Zoe’s marriage is taking another turn when Zoe admits to wanting a child, which baffles Wash. I feel so cheated and angry that I didn’t get to see that aspect of both of them developed further.
All of the episodes that weren’t aired suddenly make the events of Objects in Space so much clearer, and have a resonance they didn’t have before. I though Objects was brilliant; now I think it’s sublime, and a freeze-frame of a writer/producer/director and cast at the peak of their creative abilities. Because we now know how Inara feels she must leave to get control of her life again, and how Mal really does feel about her, their conversation in River’s psychic dream/vision of them and their interior thoughts take on a whole different meaning; Simon’s feelings of being trapped in the ass-end of space and caring for a girl who he wouldn’t have looked at before becomes even more painfully awkward, and Book’s comments about innocence have an even creepier feeling than before. And the ending of Objects, with that tiny glimmer of hope for River and Simon and the sense of family among the crew, is even more intense, since we’ve seen what led up to it before.
These unaired eps also serve to intrigue us even more about the characters -- especially Book, whose challenging of Burgi’s cop in The Message makes you wonder even more what the story is with this guy. Clearly he is far more worldly than he appears, but it leaves you wondering just how much he can be trusted, and where that could go. In the same way that finally seeing Serenity gave us a much clearer picture of who Mal was, seeing these new eps, especially The Message and Heart of Gold, paint an even deeper picture of him and Zoe. Even more than before, we know that Mal is so hard and bitter and angry simply to save himself from ever having to feel and care for anyone, to love, and the fact that he fails so completely, over and over, makes him the most poignant and complex hero on TV for a long time.
I haven’t listened yet to the commentary tracks and am saving that to draw out the warm fuzzies, but I did watch a few of the supplementary pieces. The Making Of left me particularly pleased, because they addressed two things I came to love about Firefly with fervid passion -- Greg Edmondson’s exquisite score, and the unique quality of the visual effects. I loved the fact that the show often employed a handheld camera feel, even when they were doing CGI effects. It made what is essentially a cheesy effect -- model ships docking, stuff flying through computer-made space -- have a verisimilitude that’s unexpected and fun. I especially loved it when they would zoom in on a ship flying, or have the camera shake a little during a docking, as if we were right there, seeing it. And everything from lens flares, that often gave the characters an interesting halo effect, to off-center framing, always made me love this show just that much more, and it was a thrill to hear them discuss this in the supplemental material. It deserves to be acknowledged.
Also deserving of singling out was Greg Edmondson’s music, which I often thought may have been the most wonderful scoring on TV in many years. Especially in Out of Gas, where it was haunting and tense at the same time, and Serenity, which later provided small musical elements that Edmonson picked up to use in other eps, carrying certain character qualities through among them. The music he wrote for The Message probably contributed a lot to how much that ep affected me; I was glad that he talked about it and how he was afraid that by writing it after they’d known the show was cancelled, he was scoring en elegy for the show and not the ending scene itself. It was an exquisite theme, it hit me right in the guts, and was a perfect accompaniment to the characters in that scene -- especially the shot of Kaylee and Simon taking each other’s hands, and Mal’s look of sadness and defeat.
It’s easy to focus on this show in the way they’ve been describing it in the blurbs: hip, funny, sci-fi, western, action, all those things. But what I came away with after watching the unaired eps, and watching the whole series in order, was the emotional depth and complete vision of a universe that this show offered. Eps like Heart of Gold and The Train Job do such an effective job of conveying what life on the fringes was really like for pioneers, and stories like Ariel and Bushwhacked give us a fantastic picture of why these people are rebelling against a controlling power. But more than anything, through each story, the characters come alive for us, become whole, real people we want to invite into our homes week after week. We want to know them.
A lot of my fellow Buffy fans have taken up Alias as the successor to that fannish feeling; some have stuck with Angel to carry on the tradition (as I have). As much as I love both of them, neither hits me the way Buffy did, and the way Firefly would have if it had been allowed to continue. These were people and stories I wanted to look forward to each week, to obsess over and talk about and nitpick and revel in. It makes me incredibly happy to have these episodes at last to watch and rewatch; yet it makes me heartsick that I won’t have the chance to invite them back every week for more.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-12-14 01:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 09:26 am (UTC)And I haven't forgotten about the Now and Again tapes, just FYI -- it's been really busy for me lately, and I do still plan to take care of that!
no subject
Date: 2003-12-14 02:56 pm (UTC)I think that is Joss's greatest gift as a writer, an ability to make you care or find something interesting about all of his main characters and most of his minor ones.
We watched Firefly in the UK long after we knew it had been cancelled and we ended every episode just turning to each other and saying "How could they cancel this?". Thanks for a great review and for including the little physical details about the packaging and the multi-layering. DVD packaging can be massively annoying!
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 09:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-14 06:50 pm (UTC)But the thing that struck me most in all your insightful remarks is this one, which is so true it actually made my chest ache:
...we know that Mal is so hard and bitter and angry simply to save himself from ever having to feel and care for anyone, to love, and the fact that he fails so completely, over and over, makes him the most poignant and complex hero on TV for a long time.
Amen.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 09:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-15 09:38 am (UTC)*nods* Yes. I love AtS but Firefly stole my heart.
When I heard about Firefly I wasn't sure if Joss could pull it off-- and was I ever wrong to doubt. I've been hearing about it and so out of curiousity I downloaded Serenity, I was blown away and instantly fell in love with everything about Firefly, the characters, the worlds, the writing I didn't want it to end.
Thank you for the review.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 03:08 pm (UTC)But them words are so damn cute --- um, my impression of a Western lingo, okay I'll stop now O__o;;
no subject
Date: 2003-12-15 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-16 08:37 am (UTC)Sorry, I may or may not be confused.
Date: 2003-12-16 10:58 am (UTC)Re: Sorry, I may or may not be confused.
Date: 2003-12-16 06:04 pm (UTC)