I’ll bet you thought you were safe.
I’ll bet you thought you’d managed to outlast all those friends of yours that had
been begging, no...pleading you to watch the show.
You thought they’d moved on to saying you needed to watch Mad Men or Breaking Bad instead.
But, if you’re watching this video it’s probably because someone still needs you to
know…..Why You Should Watch Firefly.
Also, I really want to make “shiny” a part of the modern vernacular so let's do
this.
Firefly is a show from writer-director Joss Whedon which began in 2002 and was unceremoniously
canceled halfway through its first season by Fox - with a follow-up movie in 2005 to
finish the story.
The show follows the crew of Serenity, a Firefly class cargo ship doing jobs in the outer rim
of the universe.
In this future, the inner core of planets run by the Alliance have sent colonizing ships
out to the border planets.
But terraforming a planet or moon isn’t always enough and without the same technological
infrastructure of the core planets, those on the rim need to rely on more old-fashioned
means to make a sustainable living.
That’s how the show’s mashup of the Science Fiction and Western genres work.
Before the first episode, there was a civil war between the border planets wanting independence
and the Alliance.
The Independents lost and some of them were scattered to the rim in search of a life of
freedom including Serenity’s captain, Malcolm Reynolds, and his first officer Zoe.
In the pilot episode, they take on an ensemble of passengers including an enigmatic shepherd,
a buttoned-up young doctor named Simon and his unusual cargo: “Hunh…”
- His sister River.
There is a lot more detail and universe building in there but that is pretty much the gist
of the first half hour.
While Mal is the one who holds the crew together, Firefly was built to be an ensemble show with
no singular pro or antagonist.
Instead, there is just the struggle for survival, freedom, personal gain, and the next job is
just a means to keep that struggle going for another day - all in the service of characters
that are shockingly vivid for such a short lived series.
It may sound heavy, but the writers tell their stories with a generous amount of humor, and
it’s all held together by the absolutely electric chemistry between the cast.
101
Complaints “If it was so good, why did it get canceled?”
Well…short answer?
FOX Fox.
Fox did almost everything they could to prevent Firefly from finding an audience.
Several years prior, Fox was originally airing one of the most successful and long-running
science fiction shows in history, The X-Files, on Fridays.
The term, “Friday night death slot,” may actually come from Fox’s impatience to strike
X-Files gold there again.
That show would go off the air in 2002 when Fox began the longest TV show death march
of any network - *Family Guy clip.
But the network also meddled with the show directly.
including them wanting Whedon to nix the interracial relationship between Wash and Zoe.
Whedon originally made a 2-hour pilot called Serenity that takes some time introducing
the universe, the relationships between the characters, and the arc of the series.
Fox didn’t like it and requested something else so he and Tim Minear wrote “The Train
Job” over a weekend, a solid but far less elegant introduction to the world of the show
and its characters.
Fox then went and aired the episodes out of sequence (and because IMDB sorts by airdate,
they still have the wrong order) and twice preempted the broadcast of episodes to show
baseball games instead.
Fox officially canceled the show at the end of 2002 but strong word of mouth and critical
reception drove DVD sales that turned Firefly into something of a phenomenon in its time.
*Community episode: Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking (Season 2),
*Bones episode: The Man in the Fallout Shelter (Season 1) Zack is told by Hodgins that his
robot watches reruns of Firefly.
But...I don’t like Westerns/Science Fiction Well, you may think you don’t like the western
or science fiction genres but you probably HAVE liked stories that are Westerns and Science
Fiction.
Exhibit A. “Doc doc, come in doc.”
*Back to the Future montage.
Generally, I believe when people say they don’t like one genre or another what they’re
really saying is they don’t like the cliches of those genres.
Someone might find the rigid formula of the crime procedural (Castle/Bones) comforting
but roll their eyes at the mention of phasers (TNG) or the site of a large rolling vista
with some swelling brass.
(How the West Was Won.)
In a way, a genre can be an anchor for the viewer.
Either grounding them or weighing them down.
But it doesn’t take much for a story to transcend the genre gap.
A story can show you something you’ve never seen before (The Matrix,) or be so entrenched
in a gritty realism that it barely feels like genre fiction to begin with (Children of Men.)
A great performance can sucker us in “I’m your huckleberry.”
(Tombstone) As can great direction.
(True Grit.)
And, at various points throughout, Firefly exhibits all of those.
Wonderful performances, engrossing direction, and a story that feels less about space-faring
frontiersman and more about people dealing with the same questions of morality and human
purpose as we are.
Using characters and the motif to explore questions relevant to us today.
In fact, according to Whedon's vision, "nothing will change in the future: technology will
advance, but we will still have the same political, moral, and ethical problems as today".[2]
Generally speaking I think when people hear Western or Science Fiction, they end up with
relatively concrete mental images.
That of John Wayne fighting off deadly Indian (*doctor evil) threats (while at the same
time pushing further into and taking their lands) or
But Firefly offers a relatively unique approach to both genres through one conspicuous omission:
No aliens.
There are no natives losing their home to the rapidly encroaching English speakers,
written to be the heroes.
No long-winded negotiation scenes or ethnically questionable alien designs.
I’m not suggesting Firefly is any kind of storytelling state of perfection, free from
any problematic elements.
Far from it really.
Only that it is unique and won’t be what you’re expecting from either genre.
Whedon started developing the idea for Firefly when he read a Pulitzer Prize-winning book
about the American Civil War battle of Gettysburg and was inspired to create a more gritty tactile
character-driven science fiction show about people at the edges of civilization discovering
things about themselves and their humanity.
“Wait...so...this is like...romanticizing the South for the Civil War?
Gross.”
It’s possible that almost zero interesting pieces of fiction are completely free of problematic
elements.
At first blush, the idea that Whedon read a book about the Civil War and then went and
made a series in which the rebels were the heroes could and should raise some eyebrows.
But let’s dig a little deeper.
Within the Firefly Universe, the rebels, known as Browncoats, are mainly fighting to gain
independence from the corporate alliance.
Thus they avoid some of the more unsavory comparisons to the Confederates.In fact, it’s
much easier to say Mal bears a striking resemblance to another famous charming galactic rebel:
Hey, it’s me”
There have been many rebellions in history both successful and failed, yet no one looks
at Star Wars and wonders if George Lucas was secretly romanticizing the pro-slavery American
South.
The show is FAR more concerned with the Western notion of the frontier and the personal and
philosophical implications that would have on the individual.
As Joss said Firefly is about nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing
nine different things.
Nonetheless, it’s important to be aware of the potentially problematic aspects of
the stories we consume.
Especially since the rewriting of the southern cause as a just and noble one and not something
that was fought over slavery IS an actual ideology that has been around in America since
the civil war ended (“Revisionist history, it’s SUCH a comfort”).
In fact, it seems likely that the very liberal Whedon, might’ve eventually used Firefly
as a medium to comment on the topic, given that one of the first purveyors of the Lost
Cause was the Southern Confederate general, Jubal Early.
“Does that seem right to you?
Getting hooked on a show from the pilot or even the first couple episodes is a pretty
rare occurrence.
Even some of the best show out there have a hump to get over before you fall for the
characters or the universe they’re living in….
Sometimes that’s a few minutes sometimes a few episodes.
And sometimes it takes 2 WHOLE SEASONS before they stop making the cast wear the adult onesies,
get Riker a beard, bring back Beverly, and sto...wait, what was I saying?
Oh right.
Firefly.
Okay. first off, remember that Fox aired the show out of order so it’s important to make
sure that you’re watching the episodes as intended:
Serenity The Train Job
Bushwhacked Shindig
Safe Our Mrs. Reynolds
Jaynestown Out of Gas
Ariel War Stories
Trash The Message
Heart of Gold Objects in Space
Based on my deep, extensive (purely anecdotal) evidence, it generally takes people 3-4 episodes
to really get into the show.
By Shindig people are interested.
By Our Mrs. Reynolds, there is no turning back.
All in all not too bad if you bear in mind the multiple seasons of awkward breakfasts
at the ‘White’ household.
But...I don’t want to watch something without an ending - Conclusion
Well now...that I understand, even if Firefly still has more content than some film series.
The cultural fervor that existed around the show at the time, that still persists to this
day…
...was enough to allow Whedon to convince a studio to fund the movie, Serenity.
And the movie does bring a sense a closure to the major arcs the show set up.
When it’s over there are still a few unanswered questions, but I am never left with a sense
of incompletion.
But there is, some melancholy.
Firefly didn’t burn out.
It didn’t overextend it’s welcome.
It didn’t raise a bunch of questions it didn’t know how to answer.
It was just this...richly realized, delightful thing for a time.
And then..before long... it was over.
Some shows are on for six or seven years and the characters never feel as rich as Firefly’s.
The performances feel effortless and true.
Their actions are always inline with who they are.
Their choices are conflicted, but understandable.
Always reaching for some truth or moment that feels...indelibly human.
It is no more or less than what it should be.
Do yourself a favor and watch.
I’ll try and keep the links in the description for where you can, current.
If you watch and it sticks with you the way it did me and you want to go a bit deeper
I’ll be producing an episode by episode analysis of it here on this channel.
I’ll try and keep the links in the description for where to view it, current.
If NOTHING else, you’ll finally be able to shut those Firefly-recommending friends
of yours up.
“SHINY.
Let’s be bad guys.”