Firefly - The Complete Series (2002)
Created by Joss Whedon
I first watched Firefly on DVD starting in the summer of 2005. I'd been hearing the buzz for the short-lived 2002 series for a long time and finally bit the bullet, devouring the show just before the movie continuation “Serenity” hit theatres. It's a fantastic show that succeeds because it leans so heavily on creator Joss Whedon's two biggest strengths: characters and humour. Firefly is far from perfect, but I still think it's required viewing for any fan of genre television. I just wouldn't say that in public, for fear of being lumped in with probably the most obnoxious geek fan base there is.
Probably the most unique aspect of Firefly is the setting. Basically, it's a space western. Which is about as hokey and lame as it sounds. There are cool elements to it, but for every cool and interesting juxtaposition between advanced technology and the leftovers of a Sergio Leone film, there are just as many that don't work. Why would anyone go to the expense of creating a holographic pool table that plays exactly the same as, but offers no advantages over, the real deal?
The main problem is that I can't see what advantages this setting offers to the show. It sets it apart, but judging by its ratings and cancellation, apparently not in a good way. I guess its purpose is to show the lawlessness of these planets, but there are better ways to show backwards and run-down societies that aren't as ridiculous and unmarketable. Even Tatooine pulls off this look better and appears less dated.
A fun piece of colour used throughout the series is that all the characters swear in Chinese. The reason for this being that the galactic government is made up of an alliance between the two super powers of Earth That Was (as our planet is known), China and the USA. Thus everyone speaks both English and Chinese. For the first few episodes is pretty funny, and a nice bit of world building. But it quickly becomes annoying, as the actors struggle through 30-second outbursts of broken Chinese. That's small grapes though in comparison to the real issue that holds back this bit of background: Not a single Asian person appears in the entire series. Not one. If your universe is supposed to be built on a Sino-American alliance, maybe throwing in a couple of actual Chinese people would have worked better than ham-fisted bilingualism.
The look of the show, the sets and costumes, are as hit-and-miss as everything I've talked about so far. The titular ship is amazingly well realized. The set of the Firefly is about the only thing that absolutely works about the space western world, blending the two genres to create something that looks like it could belong in either. Most of all it looks like a real home for the characters: a warm and lived-in environment. In fact, most of the indoor sets in the series look pretty good. Sadly, it often falls apart when the story takes us outdoors. The towns the crew of Serenity visit look more like the work of a disinterested Civil War re-enactment society than they do of authentic old west builders, or even 20th Century Fox set designers. Sadly, budget and some weird decisions really take you out of the world during a lot of the outdoor scenes. The climax of the episode 'Shindig' is a great example. It takes place in a small forest clearing that would look perfectly fine except they decided to give it a more “otherworldly” look by surrounding it in copious amounts of dry ice fog.
I was extremely surprised by this, but I think the visual effects hold up amazingly well. Obviously they're not on par with modern movies, but for a 2002 television series they're more than adequate and wouldn't look too out of place on a 2009 Sci Fi TV production. Again, the ship Serenity looks the best, especially just flying through space. I find it pretty funny that the team at Zoic (who have since worked on Battlestar Galactica and Spider-Man 2, amongst others) turned in one the least dated looking aspects of the series.
What really makes Firefly a great show is the characters. Having nine main characters is quite the balancing act, but since they're the focus of the show they're handled perfectly. Every character is different and interesting, and the interactions between them are great and feel genuine. Even a lesser character like Simon who isn't terribly fascinating on his own becomes brilliant when he's paired with the crew of Serenity. The setting for these characters is just as perfect. Having them cooped up aboard the Firefly-class ship for long stretches forces them to interact and gives them and the writers little choice but to explore who these characters are and how they'd work together. It makes them into a real family that seems to really love each other and have a great rapport, even if they don't necessarily get along. This is communicated brilliantly by the actors, who by all accounts did form a great bond on-set, and it translates into a group of characters with great chemistry.
The relationships between the characters are all great, but it's the three romantic relationships that stand out. Zoe and Wash's marriage is done very well, with a maturity and relative lack of drama that is rarely seen on TV. It's kept interesting by some small fights that are generally handled quickly and sensibly, and the fact that Zoe wears the pants in the relationship even though Wash is a strong character himself. Typically in TV, if the woman is strong, the man is a door mat. It's nice to see a different take on that. Mal and Inara is a much more typical rom-com situation between two people who mask their feelings for each other in antagonism. While typical, it works because of the humour and Nathan Fillion's performance, and because the other two romances are so different. While Mal and Inara pretend their feelings don't exist, Simon and Kaylee admit that they like each other pretty early on in the story. That their relationship doesn't advance because Simon is so out of place and socially awkward feels right and is far less played out than if he were simply oblivious to Kaylee's advances.
Because this is a series review I didn't want to talk a lot about individual episodes, but 'Out of Gas' deserves a paragraph of its own. This is simply one of the best hours of television I've ever seen. The story is told out of sequence and brilliantly interweaves several different stories. The heart of the episode is a tense and dramatic situation taking place in the present that could absolutely serve as a story of its own. Throughout that story Mal flashes back to various points in the history of Serenity, and we find out how the crew we see in the pilot came to be a part of Mal's life. Not content with being just a fantastic episode, it's also a perfectly placed episode within the series. It's early enough that the characters aren't yet totally familiar and we can learn a lot about them through the short background flashbacks, yet it's late enough that the investment is there and we care about the drama that unfolds. This episode is the best of the series, and up there with some of the greatest episodes from Whedon's other series.
How does Firefly stack up against the other Whedon-created shows? As a first season it is head and shoulders above the rest. Sadly we'll never know if it could have approached the heights that Buffy and Angel reached, though the potential is definitely there. The problem is that it never really sets out a broader story or really establishes what it's meant to explore, so we don't know where it was going. Buffy was about growing up, so until the later seasons we always knew the direction of the show. Angel was still about growing as a person, and about Angel's ongoing search for redemption. And even the muddled first season of Dollhouse has established some weighty themes for itself going forwards, exploring what makes a person who they are. But Firefly never really let us know where it was going. The characters are already pretty fully formed, and the one ongoing storyline was the mystery concerning River, but only Simon seemed to be interested in solving that.
While we may never know what heights Firefly could have aspired to, it was a damn good show in its own right. Even if it never became as thematically rich as other Whedon shows, it still could still have delivered a damn entertaining episode of television every week. I was never truly sold on the world they inhabit, but I absolutely loved the characters and their incredible sense of humour. It's a shame we never got to spend more time with them.
Ranking of episodes. Dashed line indicates significant difference in quality:
Out of Gas
---
Objects in Space
Our Mrs Reynolds
Jaynestown
Ariel
---
Shindig
War Stories
Trash
Bushwacked
---
Heart of Gold
Serenity
The Train Job
The Message
Safe