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Originally posted by Khyron:
so is The Message, even though I thought there was some great drama (and a great musical score accompanying the funeral scene), but there were just too many loop holes in that one to make it enjoyable. Had the story been written in a way that avoids those loopholes but arrives at the same conclusion, then this might have been one of my favourites.

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Originally posted by sneaker98:
Why are so many people hating The Message?

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Originally posted by usagivindaloo:
The Message,
2) Look, I know that Simon is awkward and inept at talking to women, but jeez, Kaylee was a real bitch to him in this episode.
...snip...
But no, she treats him horribly for the rest of the episode until the very end. Which would be OK if the episode at least indicated that Kaylee is WRONG for behaving this way, that the mature response would be to giggle at Simon's awkwardness and let it pass! This complaint is also relevant in Safe (another of my least favourite episodes) and Jaynestown (though there it is redeemed by the scene in his room where he explains his politeness is his way of showing respect to her... did she just forget that?)

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Originally posted by YT:
War Stories, by far. How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways:
Book's line at the snatch scene. Laser sights? He can tell that from the wounds? Ridiculous. He could have said that all three were shot in the face, without even time to duck. That calls for either a Magic Bullet, or three marksmen. So much talent not often found on a ship; more likely a space station.
Niska (who is familiar with the works of poetical psychotic dictators), and his professional torturer, decide to torture Mal & Wash, together (ie at the same time), but oriented so they can't see each other. Even if Niska was just a Sadist, the professional should have known this is the least effective scenario. Better to torture them separately; much better to torture one in view of the other.
The torturers never interrupt the dialogue betwixt Mal & Wash.
When Zoe ransoms Wash, she helps him from Niska's Skyplex. Wash slumps to his knees shortly after entering Serenity, yet when Zoe says Niska will torture Mal for days, Wash stands up and shows no further effects from the torture. Obviously, the torture wasn't serious.
Wash flies Serenity into Niska's Skyplex without slowing down. Not only does this not damage the Skyplex, nor even Serenity, but the airlocks get a good seal. No, this must be what "Ridiculous" feels like.
*** Why can't Joss or Tim ask for advice when they get into something they know nothing about? (eg shooting, torture, physics, anything involving action) ***
Mal is tortured to death, then resuscitated. Yet upon being left alone for a minute, Mal is able to arise, without making a sound, and strike Niska with enough force to knock him down.
And lest we forget, the crew stole medicine on a Core world, then fled to the Rim to fence it. They'd already sold some of it, perhaps most, and been paid. Why the !@#$%^&*()_+{}:"<>? did they go to the world Niska's Skyplex orbits?

War Stories has no redeeming value.

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Originally posted by Wolfpoet:
Heart of Gold isn't such a bad episode: "Say hello to your daddy, Jonah. *shoots* Say goodbye to your daddy, Jonah."

Personally, I think Ariel is the worst episode. The plot is okay, but it just freaks me out too much... just that thing that makes your face bleed until you die. Objects in Space and War Stories aren't so great either.



"We will rule over all this land, and we will call it... this land."
"I think we should call it YOUR GRAVE!"
"Oh, no, sudden yet inevitable betrayal."
-Wash

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Originally posted by TwilightJack:
In brief defense of The Message:

"You mailed your ugly business to us, Tracey, and I will go to hell before I see you turn around and bite us for the favor."

Why didn't Mal tell Tracey about the plan? I've always felt that the line above outlines the reason pretty clearly. Tracey serves as a kind of foil to Simon here; both of them came aboard Serenity to get away from someone, and both did so under false pretense, trapping the crew in the middle of their troubles. The difference comes in how the two characters respond to the situation.

Although Simon bargains River's freedom against Kaylee's life in the pilot episode, he never presumes the help of the crew as his right. At all points, Simon is very aware of what he is risking, what he is paying, what he is getting himself into. He doesn't ever cross the line into the trap of demanding the crew's assistance as his due and proper. Also, he's defending his sister's life, not his own. His own life he would gladly throw away to protect River. In fact, in playing chicken with Mal over Kaylee's life, it's also his own life he's bartering away-and he knows it.

Tracey runs the opposite course. In the pilot episode, before Mal knows about River, he describes Simon as thinking his life is the only thing that matters. Of Tracey, that's completely true. He threatens the entire crew, including Kaylee (about whom he had professed to care), without even a pause to question or trust or even think about other options. Whether wrong or right, Mal's opinion here is that Tracey's actions dictate that he doesn't deserve an explanation. Furthermore, if you study the scene, Mal gives Tracey every opportunity to choose another way. He goes so far as to say that they're still trying to help Tracey and that the bullet wound "can be seen to." The one thing Mal doesn't do is explain the plan, because to do so validates Tracey's betrayal. For Mal, that's a matter of principal. His crew is family, and you don't turn on your family, no matter what. Tracey threw himself upon Serenity's mercy, and that--combined with Mal and Zoe's history with Tracey--marked him as potentially family as well, at least temporarily. Tracey betrayed that to save his own skin; he gets more than a small chance to come to his senses, but no explanation until he shows some regard for someone other than himself.

"You don't know me, son, so let me explain this to you once. If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed."

If we see the parallels between Simon and Tracey, it seems that Mal is good on his word.

Those who disagree with Mal's take on Tracey's action can easily see this as a fatal flaw of the episode, but knowing Mal's opinions regarding loyalty and family, I don't see any flaw here.

"No, son, you murdered yourself. I just carried the bullet awhile."









By the way, my least favorite episode was Safe. I love everything about the interactions between the characters; I love the first revelations of Book's secret life; I love Simon's overwhelming self-sacrifice on his sister's behalf. I just can't get past the burning at the stake. It does nothing to enhance our understanding/enjoyment of the story. Point of fact, it knocks my suspension of disbelief sideways every time. I don't have a problem with religious fanatics deciding that River's a witch. People fear and hate what they don't understand. It's the whole burning at the stake thing that ruins it for me. A different method of witchy execution would have fixed the whole thing for me, kept it novel and fresh. As it is, I cringe all the way through that scene until the Big Damn Heroes show up and rescue the scene from tackiness. Still, it ruins a perfectly good episode, in my opinion.

I love Heart of Gold, by the by. Sure, it's the Seven Samurai. I love the Seven Samurai. Mal/Inara goodness abounds. I totally buy Mal sleeping with Nandie, since I don't go in for the puritanical Mal theory that I keep seeing. He was more than ready to bang Saffron like a screen door, although ethical considerations of her "innocence" gave him significant pause. As far as the villain and main plot being uni-dimensional, consider this: without any member of his crew in danger, Mal is willingly assuming the role of the Big Damn Hero without it being forced upon him (for what some could say the first time since the war). The bad guy is irredeemably bad because this is the first time that we've seen Mal unequivocably good. It marks an important turning point for the character (or it could have, if Inara hadn't announced her departure immediately following). To me, it is a fascinating episode, in that the crew truly embraces a notion of themselves as heroes for the first (and last ) time.

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Originally posted by minra:

I had to tack this on to this "worst episode" thread as well.

Gold was easily the dumbest espisode of the bunch. It just does not mesh with the character Mal and what the whole crew is. They are scrounging for jobs all the time and they are *forced* to look out for number-one 90% of the time just to survive.

Who is Mal? "He's not an evil man... He hasn't lost his moral compass completely. He has just given up on the idea of the decency of human nature. Or that anything is worth fighting for, except the next meal and the people around him." ~Joss Whedon

Yet in Heart of Gold, Mal and the entire crew of firefly, risk DEATH in a deadly firefight - a western-style shootout because one hooker doesn't want to give up her baby. (cue Madonna song). The core of the conflict is this, and there's no exposition whatsoever to the interesting and real issues surrounding parental rights in a situation like this.

Instead, we get an entire firefly crew who is willing to kill, and be killed, as a favor.

We see the townsman whose barren wife won't give him a kid, which is reasonable motivation to seek a mother via a third party, yet the story is written to portray him with a shallowness that requires laser interferometry to measure. Why? They could have written him as the hardass town boss who has a valid motivation, but who botched negotiations with the whore. Or she could have been a surrogate who breached contract. All potentially interesting stories leading up to the conflict are ignored. There's not a fair protrayal of two legitimate interests in a conflict (something that Firefly does quite well in the alliance vs browncoat conflict).

To top it off, *it is assumed* that a woman has a higher claim to parenthood of an infant than a man. The attitude of this episode, the whole mental frame of reference is drenched in unjustified feminazi self-righteousness.

It's a mindless hackneyed cliche. It's just a dumbed-down good gals versus bad guys western bang-bang shootemup.

In defense of the producers, i see this as a protest against Fox, who had just cancelled the series during ep 12. To me this episode is a frustrated Firefly ranting at the lameness of the TV world "You want dreck? We can give you dreck! Here! See?"

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