FOX Broadcasting Company: Firefly

“Our Mrs. Reynolds”

1AGE05
Writer: Joss Whedon
Director: Vondie Curtis Hall
Airdate: 10/4/02

We join the crew of Serenity riding a horse and buggy through a stream. Mal is disguised as a settler woman and Jayne as his husband. Suddenly a group of bandits storms them. Mal and Jayne surprise the bandits and pull out their guns, while Zoe appears from the back of the buggy to get in on the action.

Later that night, the crew is in a local village celebrating the victory from their latest job. Inara remarks to Mal that he should celebrate because they were finally hired to be heroes, and not criminals.

Mal and Jayne both get drunk at the ceremony, dancing, enjoying the people. A young woman places a headdress on Mal and gives him something to drink. He then dances with her around a large bonfire into the night.

The next day, back on Serenity, the crew is prepping to leave as the villagers pay them with what little they have. Up in space, Mal is putting things away when he happens on a stowaway. It’s the same woman he danced with the previous evening.

She tells Mal that she’s bequeathed to him. The dance and headdress from last night were in fact part of a marriage ceremony, rendering Mal her husband. Mal is in a state of shock as the rest of the crew enters the cargo bay to find out what the news is.

Zoe hams it up, introducing the woman to everyone as Mrs. Reynolds. The woman begins crying when Mal tells everyone she’s not his wife. Mal tells Wash to turn back, but unfortunately they can’t because right after they left, an Alliance ship touched down on the village.

Wash tells them they have to continue on. The woman runs off when Mal asks Shepherd what it’ll take to get a divorce. Mal finds her crying in the engine room and tells her that they have five days left on the ship until they reach their destination, so it’s best to remain friends and make herself comfortable.

The woman tells Mal she’d be a very good wife, but he tells her that he wouldn’t be a good husband. She then runs off and cooks Mal a meal. She tells him her name is Saffron. Shepherd then approaches Mal and tells him that if he takes sexual advantage of Saffron, he’ll go to a special part of hell, reserved for child molesters and people that talk at the theatre.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew continues to tease Mal about his new “wife.”

Over in Inara’s shuttle, Mal tries to hide from Saffron. Inara tells Mal that she finds his whole “marriage” degrading. He begins to play around and tease her, when Inara snaps and kicks him out of the shuttle.

Jayne confronts the Captain telling Mal that he doesn’t feel appreciated. He offers to trade his favorite gun for Saffron. Mal yells at him, telling Jayne that she’s not to be bought or sold.

Saffron overhears his conversation with Jayne and tells Mal that she’d rather work on a ranch than be wed to Jayne. Mal tells her that it’s good work and reveals that his mother owned a cattle ranch on Shadow, where he was brought up.
Mal catches himself talking about his past, but notices that he seems to have ease telling Saffron about it.

As Serenity flies through space, it passes by a small moon, where some men in a chop shop are analyzing Serenity, preparing to steal it.

Zoe and Wash discuss Saffron, and Zoe can’t believe how Saffron flaunts herself over the captain. Wash defends her, saying she’s just following customs and traditions. Zoe blows up at him for no real reason, but she feels that Saffron is trouble.

Over in Mal’s room, he finds a naked Saffron, waiting for him in bed. She ends up seducing him. When he kisses her, Mal comments that he’s going to hell, but then he suddenly passes out, poisoned by her kiss.

Saffron then enters the cockpit, where Wash is sulking by himself. Saffron closes the doors and tries to seduce him too. When it doesn’t work, she kicks him in the head instead, knocking him out.

Saffron takes over the cockpit and rewires the ship, as well as sealing the cockpit doors. She then runs off, looking for a shuttle to get off Serenity when she runs into Inara. She seduces Inara until an alarm suddenly sounds, tipping Inara to Saffron’s game.

Saffron takes off in one of the ship’s shuttles before anyone knows what’s happening. Inara goes searching for Mal and finds him on the floor. She thinks he’s dead, but when she finds him breathing, she kisses him with relief and is also poisoned from Saffron’s kiss.

Mal wakes up with the crew around him. Inara tries to tell everyone she fell, not letting them in on the kiss. The crew finally gets the cockpit open and realizes that Saffron wired the ship so the crew can’t turn Serenity around. Both Wash and Kaylee marvel at how Saffron wired the ship. Inara then adds that Saffron was trained in her art of Companionship as well.

The men from the chop shop wait for Serenity to come in. They both comment on how good Saffron is.

Wash and Kaylee get the ship back online. They quickly realize that they’re running towards an electromagnetic field that would kill them all on the inside while maintaining the ship for the chop-shoppers.

Mal tells Kaylee to keep on the ship while he comes up with a plan B. He and Jayne get in their space suits, and Jayne fires at the chop shop with his gun (encased in its own space suit to provide it with oxygen to fire) that he offered to trade with Mal.

The shot hits the magnetic field and blows up the chop shop. They regain control of the ship and go off to find Saffron. When Mal storms into Saffron’s room on a nearby planet, he finds out that she was working for the elders of the town that they saved earlier.

He asks Saffron what her real name is, she stares at him blankly and he knocks her out cold.

Back on the ship, Mal confronts Inara about the real reason for her loss of consciousness. Thinking that he knows the truth, Inara is excited, only to learn that Mal smugly thinks that she kissed Saffron.

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