TAKE MY LOVE

Tuesday, February 3, 2004 8:46:41 PM

I didn't want to watch FIREFLY. The idea of using American Reconstruction as the backdrop for a scifi series was, I thought, a dicey proposition at best.

The Civil War is ongoing in many quarters and, I thought, whatever side Joss and Company eventually fell on, they would be opening old wounds and creating new ones unnecessarily.

I liked liking Joss's stuff, see. And I didn't want anything, even Joss himself, to tarnish that. The rumors about FIREFLY made me very nervous.

I didn't want to watch and, as the opening air date approached, I made great pronouncements about how I would not.

What a load of go se.

Of course I was right there opening night, anticipatory drool already dripping on my denims. I'm Joss Whedon's bitch when it comes to TV and I might as well accept that and come to grips.

And I wasn't disappointed. New folks to like. Snappy banter with lots of quirk and left turns. And, amazingly, some actual hints of science in the fiction.

Space is a soundless vacuum. People die out there. Often at the hands of other people.

And the much feared proConfederate spin on Reconstruction never actually materialized. What we got instead was the Alliance– a sort of nation-as-corporation thing- having pretty much wiped out the dreams of the Independants- a bunch of freedom loving edge dwellers who didn't cotton to too much hands on from Big Brother.

The Alliance is all encompassing, oppressive, implacable. It is that same dark future of BLADE RUNNER or even the ALIEN series. Scary. Ugly and possibly where we're really headed provided we don't blow or sick ourselves into oblivion before we get off this rock. The Alliance, like many corporations today, embraces all forms of slavery as a function of serving The Bottom Line.

By contrast the last of the Independants, Mal Reynolds and his Partner-in-Arms Zoe, are all that's really left of that fire that makes people head for the unknown horizon. Reynolds and his crew of criminals- unabashed and unapologetic- often screw themselves out of cash or dive headlong into danger simply to preserve or defend the freedom of others.

And they pay for it in blood and obscurity.

The Alliance isn't the Union. The Independants ain't the Confederacy however much they twang and twist the language. In the Whedon Reconstruction it seems the slaveholders won the day.

Interesting take. Wickedly subtle and even, amazingly, subversive. On television. On FOX television.

So, of course, it had to go.

But I did show up, like I said. I stayed until the final final credits rolled.

And, should this tweaked Reconstruction rise again, you can bet I'll be there for that too.