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Originally posted by Delvo:
Well, this episode would be a huge disappointment for anyone who had come to like Mal's common sense, his ability to take care of business effectively.

Attacking people in their own environments, which are unknown to you, is stupid. You never know what will come of it, and this particular possibility is one of the most obvious ones that ANYbody should have foreseen. Deciding to stay when Inara had set up an escape for him was even stupider, since now he knew that his life was in serious danger over a few simple words stemming from an attitude on the other guy's part that a duel wouldn't ever fix anyway.

Spouting insults at a crew member and a tenant whose help you want, in a way that makes you sound like you have no respect for their whole sex, for little to no possible reason, is stupid. There were better ways to break up the groups fixation on the dress and get back to business. And calling your sword teacher a whore and arguing about technique with her is, at best, absolutely pointless antagonism.

And he's not the only one acting irrationally. There's more to being a Second than just fighting in the guy's place if he refuses, but as long as that IS a part of it, this guy who doesn't know Mal at all has no reason to volunteer to be his Second against a man he describes as "an expert swordsman".

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I'm not worried about Inara's characterization yet. I think that Atherton's idea of Companions is wrong, and her reaction and the consequences to him at the end showed that. What we're seeing here isn't that Companions are less than what you thought they were, but that there are people in the universe who don't acknowledge what they really are how they really do things. And in real life there WOULD be such people.

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The best parts of this episode for me, a Mal fan, were actually River's two scenes.

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Originally posted by Cardie:
QT, I'm glad to see you back in a gushing mood! I'd agree with Delvo that Mal acted foolish and reckless here, but we've seen that Mal has a complete blind spot about honor and goes out of his way to provoke fistfights with people he considers dishonorable. He's a romantic who was on the losing side of a war and keeps provoking situations where the odds are equally hopeless so that he can fight it all over again. He also has no sense of how to talk to women who aren't also soldiers. I did think the way he said "the whore academy" was hilarious, even though in a literal sense he was being a jerk.

Cardie

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Originally posted by Rhea:

Oh, and QT? To say Mal pushes MY buttons would be a vast understatement.

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Originally posted by Delvo:
I'm not worried about Inara's characterization yet. I think that Atherton's idea of Companions is wrong, and her reaction and the consequences to him at the end showed that.

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Originally posted by QueenTiye:
[B I persist in hoping that we see the opposite - that the profession has elevated to the point where the term "Companion" is its ONLY logical descriptor, whereas "whore" is something entirely different, for which very few "skills" are required.

QT

QueenTiye, Companion Academy, class of 2006

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Originally posted by Sensou:
So, along those lines, every time Mal calls Inara a whore would it be as if he was calling a SWAT team member "a guy with a gun?" And she hasn't slapped him yet?
Of coursse she could just be too lady-like

Sensou
Sweet is love when all is sane
Sweet is death to end the pain
Cruel is death when all is well
Cruel is love when all is hell

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Originally posted by Cardie:
Yet, onscreen, mostly what we see portrayed is nothing that will not nicely fulfill male expectations and male fantasies. For all the complexities it might entail, what we saw on Andromeda of matriarchy was pretty much polygamy, even if it was a polygamy that only the strong, clever, cool guys could get a shot at.

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In Firefly we're still seeing male resistance to a woman treating her sexual labor as simply part of a highly compensated profession.

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As in so many popular narratives about prostitution, the man wants to cast off the Companion only when he chooses and conversely becomes aggrieved if he cannot purchase exclusive rights to her.

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Meanwhile, it's strongly suggested that what she really wants is a romantic relationship with the caring and soulful guy who coverts her heart rather than her services--which is what happens between Ringo and Dallas in "Stagecoach," which Joss says is a model for Firefly.

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So I think we're going to see this play out fairly traditionally, with just a few feminist notions thrown in for contemporary interest.

Cardie

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Originally posted by Rhea:
^QT, I don't think Companions ARE an invention of the Alliance.

Inara specifically refers to a tradition going back hundreds of years, so it probably predates the Alliance.

Although, to be fair, we don't know enough about companions OR the history of the Alliance yet for anything but supposition anyway. I'm hoping FF will be around long enough for us to find out.

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Originally posted by QueenTiye:
What year is Firefly set in, btw?

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Originally posted by Rhea:
Book doesn't seem to have a problem with what Inara does for a living, and in fact, Mal is the only one on the crew that seems to.

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Originally posted by QueenTiye:


I can't figure out what was more endearing to me - watching him attempting (and failing) to rattle Inara with talk of "endurance" or the after effects of that conversation, in which he finds himself terribly threatened by the reminder of Inara's shindig by Kaylee's desire for a fancy dress, or how he fixes it with Kaylee.

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Back to gushing...Nathan Fillion turns in an amazing performance as we watch all of his emotions over Inara play through - from his sincere concern for her personhood, to his grudging jealousy...(thank you, Joss, for not letting Mal be so one-dimensional emotionally that he has nowhere to go...) every turn and twist I loved.

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Thanks for indulging my first ever Firefly Shamelessly Gushing review - your thoughts are welcome!

QueenTiye, Companion Academy, class of 2006

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