I totally agree with you. My girlfriend is friends with a bunch of fanatical Browncoats and I just don't get them at all. Whenever I'm forced to watch an episode I ask myself,"What is so special about this show? It isn't that good. What the hell are they carrying on about?"
Well, we could always take the cynical approach, and say that Browncoats love
Firefly because
1. It's not for everyone. Hipsters, or so the stereotype goes, hate to have tastes that greatly overlap with the mainstream. Since
Firefly is a highly idiosyncratic franchise, with a style that puts many off, Browncoats embrace it as a niche obsession.
2. The look of the show. A spaceship whose kitchen has painted flowers that wouldn't look out of place in a vegan commune? All the Eastern stuff, poofy furniture and various oddments (dinosaur toys)? Not all that many Trekkies or Warsians would actually want to live on their franchise's ships, but
Serenity looks just like Browncoats' bedrooms.
- Also, the clothes. The costumes of everyone outside from the Alliance is a thrift-store shopper's dream.
3. Oh, the sarcasm. This reinforces #1, but deserves its own entry. The show's heroes are so very, very witty. Even better, there's a pretty square (100% sass-free) black woman
and a super-square black guy, who makes the rest seem wicked stylish by comparison,
and a total moron, who makes anything the rest say sound like Shakespeare writing Einstein.
4. Asian culture appropriation. This.
5. They were soldiers once! Contemporary hipsters are often far, far removed from any kind of military connection or experience.
Firefly's heroes are just as snarky and stylish as them... but they were in a military once! The fans thus get to bask in the glamor of veteran status without, y'know, actually having to
actually identify with active military types (who are, incidentally, the bad guys). I mean, Starfleet? How lame is
that? Starfleeters aren't allowed to be sarcastic or dress funkily
at all.
6. That damn theme song. Enough said.
7. Summer Glau. She's Asian, right? And hot. And crazy. She's a Manic Pixie Dream Girl who might totally do you if she felt like it, but no way would she ever want to be a girlfriend or, God forbid, get knocked up with your kid. She's made for doing a splits on your Delta Quadrant, not for mothering or talking on and on about her feelings or some crap.
8. They're all poor. The heroes are as broke as real-life hipsters, but they're still awesome. And they have free health care, so, y'know, it's all good. They're, like, totally authentic, and untainted by capitalism. No wage-slave losers here.
9. It's oh-so non-threatening. The male characters are needy, tender-hearted and not at all sexually assertive; by the same token, the females are perky, cute, and wholesome-looking. (The appeal of Zoe, I admit, I've got no theories whatsoever for.) You could buy some girlfriend experience time with Inara, and she'd be entirely nonjudgmental about it as long as you're not a dick. And Mal is a total bad boy with a heart of gold - he's violent, haunted and frequently abrasive, but he'd never break your heart or anything, because he's a single mom-raised softie underneath it all. Everybody wins.
10. ah,
screw it, that's enough reasons.
Now, I'm not saying that the above things make
Firefly bad; indeed, one could argue that they all make the series
good. And I
am playing a hypothetical
FF hater here.
