Sarcastic characters is a trademark of all of Whedon's shows, and he's been doing it before SG-1 even started.
Is "Firefly" overated or underated?
- Thread starter Jayson
- Start date
Sarcastic characters is a trademark of all of Whedon's shows, and he's been doing it before SG-1 even started.
It's like a wormhole of fail that whisks you to the next island of comprehensible posts.
)...
Yeah... Zoe is TOTALLY a "servile" person.... Wash would agree.
As for the rest...
I was going to write something about waiting for you to admit that Mal and Zoe's relationship isn't absurd, since you HAVE said it's possible to have post war friends... but, I don't think you're going to respond to this.
I really do seriously think you either a. haven't watched the show or b. hated it SO MUCH that you're actually blind
So, never mind.
Not in stj's opinion.
Yeah. That "servile" thing. More evidence that stj sees the world through a very, VERY different lense.
But it's facts he bring, and we are all wrong.
Ask him, he will tell you in book length prose.
It could be. I've never seen anything else of his. I saw a few Angel episodes and that was it. Not my style.
Yeah, if Zoe Alleyn Washburne is servile, I'd REALLY HATE to see her when she gets aggressive. Dong ma?
Criminally underrated by the network but slightly overrated by its hardcore fans. It's hardly the first nor the last one-season wonder that FOX shoved into the Friday night death slot and then completely forgot about. But to talk to some its fans, you'd think this was a unique atrocity. Personally, I think FOX treated Wonderfalls even worse and that was an even better show.
I'd also say Firefly wasn't quite as good as Buffy or Angel. Firefly, for all its merits, wasn't really about anything, despite its interesting premise and top-notch execution. It didn't have a strong, relatable central theme like Buffy's "High school is Hell" metaphor or Angel's arc of redemption and doing the right thing in a world where that doesn't make a whole lot of difference in the grand scheme of things.
Still, it was a lot more entertaining than Dollhouse.
I'd also say Firefly wasn't quite as good as Buffy or Angel. Firefly, for all its merits, wasn't really about anything, despite its interesting premise and top-notch execution. It didn't have a strong, relatable central theme like Buffy's "High school is Hell" metaphor or Angel's arc of redemption and doing the right thing in a world where that doesn't make a whole lot of difference in the grand scheme of things.
Still, it was a lot more entertaining than Dollhouse.
The biggest problem with gauging how Firefly stacks up next to Buffy or Angel is that Firefly never got the chance to develop. It'd be like judging Buffy by the first half of season 1.
Firefly, by its nature, was a lot more open ended and geared towards anthology stories than the earlier Whedon shows. But... it had plot threads, and it had the beginning of a central theme. It just never had a chance to go anywhere, and the movie largely focused on trying to create a sense of resolution and "sailing into the sunset" to cap the aborted first season off.
For example, one potential theme in Firefly that was hinted at, might've been a long an in-depth examination of the nature and purpose of belief. The character of Mal was set up to be a former man of religious faith, who had been turned entirely against not just religion but the very notion of belief itself. The movie presented a hyper rushed wrap up with Shepherd Book telling Mal "faith" had nothing to do with God and was about what believing in something did to a person, with the enemy in the film a counter example of belief being used for evil.
I always suspected that the show was going to have some very interesting themes, especially coming from Joss Whedon's own position as an atheist who would likely be inclined to agree with Mal in his fallen-out-of-faith state.
Then there was the complex, morally shades of grey scenario that was being built with the overt struggle between the Alliance and the people they oppressed. Because the Alliance wasn't simply evil, and the people inside the Alliance generally were not Nazis and even had legitimate reasons for believing what they were doing was right. This would have been a big change for a Whedon show where, while the cast usually deals with grey morality, they have a pretty simple, cartoonish Big Bad to fight, and the forces of evil are literally supernatural eternal evil.
In Firefly, the "big bad" was just life and its messy complexity.
Firefly, by its nature, was a lot more open ended and geared towards anthology stories than the earlier Whedon shows. But... it had plot threads, and it had the beginning of a central theme. It just never had a chance to go anywhere, and the movie largely focused on trying to create a sense of resolution and "sailing into the sunset" to cap the aborted first season off.
For example, one potential theme in Firefly that was hinted at, might've been a long an in-depth examination of the nature and purpose of belief. The character of Mal was set up to be a former man of religious faith, who had been turned entirely against not just religion but the very notion of belief itself. The movie presented a hyper rushed wrap up with Shepherd Book telling Mal "faith" had nothing to do with God and was about what believing in something did to a person, with the enemy in the film a counter example of belief being used for evil.
I always suspected that the show was going to have some very interesting themes, especially coming from Joss Whedon's own position as an atheist who would likely be inclined to agree with Mal in his fallen-out-of-faith state.
Then there was the complex, morally shades of grey scenario that was being built with the overt struggle between the Alliance and the people they oppressed. Because the Alliance wasn't simply evil, and the people inside the Alliance generally were not Nazis and even had legitimate reasons for believing what they were doing was right. This would have been a big change for a Whedon show where, while the cast usually deals with grey morality, they have a pretty simple, cartoonish Big Bad to fight, and the forces of evil are literally supernatural eternal evil.
In Firefly, the "big bad" was just life and its messy complexity.
I wanted to know why Inara was always so sad and why she chose to practice her profession via a junk heap rather than something more lux. She seemed very lost and disenchanted.
It's easily both. While the characters are fairly well drawn (and portrayed), I was really less happy with the verse and plots.
But after all its a first season, and a lot of shows manage to improve their early flaws. Look at Buffy and Angel, both had vastly superior 2nd seasons. YOu could also see the improvements going through the seasons, which is always a good sign.
It's a show that had great potential and never really got the chance to hit its full potential. But you can see it there, and that's the part that bothers me the most.
But after all its a first season, and a lot of shows manage to improve their early flaws. Look at Buffy and Angel, both had vastly superior 2nd seasons. YOu could also see the improvements going through the seasons, which is always a good sign.
It's a show that had great potential and never really got the chance to hit its full potential. But you can see it there, and that's the part that bothers me the most.
She was terminally ill.
You may be right. I've never seen anything else of his. Have zero interest in Buffy. Saw a bit of Angel, found him too weak physically (for a vampire he's sure underpowered).
Only reason I checked out Firefly was due to the fact that it was space based sci-fi. I did enjoy the show, but the movie was much better.
It's interesting that in terms of functionability aboard the ship, Mal himself was the most expendable. What exactly did he do besides secure the odd job (which never seemed to be enough) and constantly remind everyone that he was the captain? Don't get me wrong--loved the show, loved Mal. But he's a tough character to build a series around, especially since there's such a difference in personality between Serenity-Mal and Firefly-Mal.
To my mind the movie stripped out most of what I loved about the show and turned it into a guns-and-glory standard sci-fi shoot-em-up in space. What I loved about the show was the way each character genuinely seemed to have an interesting story of their own and we were teased by a little bit more of one or two of them each week. The mystery of River being the most high profile, and the movie sort of blew its load on that one in two hours flat. And the one-comic resolution of the Shepherd's story also failed to impress.
I would have thought the most functionally expendable would be River, followed by Book. Maybe we're defining it differently.
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