The Train Job

Firefly Episode Review

In which I've liked many a stupider show that didn't have Nathan Fillion...

What Did I Think?

You know the loudest I laughed during the series premiere of Firefly?

It was that new IKEA commercial, where the lamp gets thrown out and there's this great shot of it sitting on the curb by the trash bag, shivering in the rain. Then, this guy shows up and says, "Some of you feel sorry for this lamp. That is because you are crazy. Lamps have no feeling, and the new lamp is better."

Now, this may not reflect well on Firefly, but I'm still determined to like this show, so I'm not complaining.

OK, I'm complaining a little. I was not exactly grabbed by the throat from the first minutes and left breathless by a terrific finish, but I have to admit that there has been more than one Buffy season premiere that left me going "heh," as well. There were a lot of pieces of the puzzle that had promise, even if they didn't add up to a convincing whole just yet.

There may not have been as much humor in Firefly compared to Buffy, but Angel has occasionally lacked in that category, too. Not many situations are as inherently funny as a cheerleader who kicks demon butt. Thankfully, there's no artificial freakiness, which gets old. Fast. (Witness Push, Nevada.) I don't want people wandering around be weird for the sake of being weird. It gets exhausting, trying to figure out what's important and what's just quirky noise.

A sci-fi western does not especially offend me. Like combining horror and fantasy/romance, it gives the writers two genres worth of stock to draw their tales from. Here we get a standard plot from every Western ever made: a heist where something goes wrong, though we usually see it from the point of view of the person trying to prevent the heist, not the thieves themselves.

Character-wise, I like Nathan Fillion, who plays Mal and was the only Joey worth mentioning on One Life to Live, and Gina Torres, who is probably just glad to get out of those Cleopatra 2525 pigtails and electric purple hot-pants. Most of the others seemed likeable enough. It'll take a few more episodes before any one character is developed enough to stand out.

I've noticed that large ensemble casts often suffer from an embarrassment of riches. Buffy began with only four main characters, Angel with three; Firefly seems to have seven or so. A balance will need to be struck between giving everyone something to do and not diluting the story by pulling it in too many directions.

If the characters seemed a little flat here, I think that was because they were stuck in an event-driven plot in this episode. All the lines were taken up with "Who is this guy?" "What's the job?" "Where are the soldiers?" "We have to cover our tracks." "Oh, no, we shouldn't have taken the box. Now we have to give it back." There's not much room left, except for a standard "Meet the Crew" sequence that frustrates a little because it doesn't really impact on the events to follow.

The key to a lot of shows is that they start out with fairly standard characters and plots, then, hopefully, develop over time. Joss Whedon has proved himself to be very good at development; his shows do not stagnate. There were two reasons that I was willing to put up with Buffy last season. One, I had invested so much time in these characters, I wanted to know what happened to them, dammit. And two, I knew from experience that there would be a payoff at the end, and there was. These are not sitcoms, where everyone has a "thing" and remains stuck in that one joke the entire series; these characters grow and change, not always in pleasant ways, but that's life.

I'm fairly sure that if FOX, in all their infinite wisdom, hadn't decided to insist on a new pilot that included more action, we'd have gotten one of Joss Whedon's typically tight, interesting, character-driven stories to introduce us to all these people, and this second-rate heist ep would have come later on in the season. It's not like FOX has got such a wonderful track record with sci-fi/fantasy that they can confidently claim to know what people want. Based on the fate of Millennium and Harsh Realm and the dreck that was Dark Angel, I might even argue the opposite.

And while we're at it: you put the show on Friday nights? What? Are trying to get it cancelled?

Okay, that was complaining.

Next Week: Deserted spaceship. River senses danger.