Is "Firefly" overated or underated?
- Thread starter Jayson
- Start date
It's perfectly rated. Its rating is flawless.
Overrated. It's not bad, but I don't see why it has legions of fans willing to die for Nathan Fillion. 
Next to BTVS it's my favorite Whedon show, and is in my top 10 favorite sf/fantasy TV shows ever.
Some days it's in the top 5.
Quantity does not concern me so much.
Some days it's in the top 5.
Quantity does not concern me so much.
The term 'overrated' is meaningless. Those who don't like the show will think it's overrated, those who like the show won't. It's all subjective.
You can like the show but think it's not as great as others make it to. I mean I like it enough to own it on Dvd but I still think people overate it sometimes.
Jason
What there is of it is pretty good. Not one of the show's central character did I find tedious or boring. It had no chance to out live its premise. The movie gives it a degree of closure. It's over. It is, in my opinion, accidentally almost perfect.
Considering how highly rated it is, it's almost impossible for it to be underrated. But I do think it's one of the best tv shows of all time, so I too agree with The Mirrorball Man.
Agreed. I love both Firefly and Serenity. It isn't the second coming, but should have gotten far more recognition from the public at large.
I know everybody has a story of someone they got to watch the show, but a few months back I had my dad watch Serenity for the first time. He really enjoyed the film, and said he's surprised he had never heard of it!
It didn't have time to become overrated. Had it been given a couple seasons and THEN been canned, it would have had time to have poor episodes and for the fans to really rip apart the universe's flaws.
It had one of the strongest opening seasons of any show ever, in terms of character likeability, strong storylines AND great FX and production design. It was very, very good. Close to perfect, and closer than much Sci-Fi we've had in the past decade. Overrated, though? Nope.
Mark
It had one of the strongest opening seasons of any show ever, in terms of character likeability, strong storylines AND great FX and production design. It was very, very good. Close to perfect, and closer than much Sci-Fi we've had in the past decade. Overrated, though? Nope.
Mark
I like this. Yeah, I'm going with this.
I found it a somewhat uneven show. Personally, I think the closer Firefly hewed to a standard space opera rather than a western in SF trappings, the better it was. Serenity 10, Ariel 10, that one where they fight for the rights of space hookers 1. Of course a Firefly "1" is still pretty decent.
I like it the best of all Whedon's shows, or his works in general for that matter, having read his comics.
I wouldn't call it uneven at all, though I agree that "Heart of Gold" was a pretty weak episode. It was basically a reworked A-Team script.
However, nearly every other episode was a gem, or had parts that make up for the bad. Even "Safe", one of the least liked episodes had the Big Damn Hero scene, which makes the episode a must see!
Indeed. It's pretty easy to make a case for Firefly being overrated simply because the levels of praise it's been given verge on the hyperbolic (I recently stumbled onto an old argument on another webpage where people roundly condemned Ron Moore for stealing all his ideas for Battlestar Galactica from Firefly, for example).
But the widest criticism I've ever seen of the show is 'overrated', but with the implicit 'still a good show overall'. I'm sure there are people who consider it a completely terrible television series but I just don't feel there's enough to offset the browncoats sufficiently for it to be an underrated gem.
And I'm sure if we were on a Western forum, people would be saying the more Firefly did good old fashioned Western stories the better a TV show it was.
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S
Stone_Cold_Sisko
Guest
It's a little overrated by the hardcore sci-fi crowd.
VASTLY underrated by the public at large (mostly because they're not even aware of it).
VASTLY underrated by the public at large (mostly because they're not even aware of it).
"Is Firefly overrated or underrated?"
By individual opinion, both. Overall, neither. Personally, I would put it in my top 5 sci-fi TV shows.
By individual opinion, both. Overall, neither. Personally, I would put it in my top 5 sci-fi TV shows.
I don't know if it's overrated or underrated. I don't know the Human Race At Large's opinion compared to the empirical quality of the show.
Speaking as a hardcore Firefly browncoat i'd say it's slightly overrated. Out of the 14 episodes (15 if you count the pilot as two episodes) there are 2-3 rather mediocre episodes and 2-3 stellar ones and between them most are very good.
Firefly had the "luck" to be cut short and remain this self contained short run miniseries but i'm convinced that if it had run its course there would have been some stinkers alongside as well as some truly memorable events and scenes but overall it would have settled into a damn good SF show but not into the second coming of Christ as it's sometimes perceived amongst the fandom.
However Joss still has found a way to break up a happy couple forever by killing one of them.. poor Wash (really Joss.. try a little more imagination and don't kill off your couples for some dramatic scenes in every show you do).
Firefly had the "luck" to be cut short and remain this self contained short run miniseries but i'm convinced that if it had run its course there would have been some stinkers alongside as well as some truly memorable events and scenes but overall it would have settled into a damn good SF show but not into the second coming of Christ as it's sometimes perceived amongst the fandom.
However Joss still has found a way to break up a happy couple forever by killing one of them.. poor Wash (really Joss.. try a little more imagination and don't kill off your couples for some dramatic scenes in every show you do).
It had a lot of potential. We'll never know if they could have kept up the quality long-term, because it died young. Firefly is the James Dean of space opera TV shows.
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