Firefly Flashback: Serenity

Ah, Firefly.

Among many great television series to be canceled before reaching a second season, Firefly remains my favorite. In fact, it sets the bar for brilliant-but-canceled so high, I suspect it will never be surpassed. I hope it will never be surpassed; as a fan of quality television, losing Firefly hurt so much that I don't know if I could go through it again.

The losing, I mean. Not the actually watching Firefly. On that count, I in fact could go through that again -- and very recently did. I got the thrill of watching Firefly in its entirety with someone who had never seen the series before. I figure this is as close as you can get to watching it for the first time yourself, and I loved every minute of it.

I'm now a full season and then some into my re-watching of Lost, and have been blogging about it every step of the way. I figure that a show I love (loved -- sniff) even more than Lost deserves equal attention. So here comes the first of a series of Firefly episode reviews!

It all starts with Serenity. (Except when FOX aired it, when it didn't.) ((Also, I mean "Serenity" the pilot episode, not the feature film. Though we will get there.)) This two-hour kickoff to Firefly is the perfect showcase of why losing Firefly was so sad -- the show was fantastic right out of the gate. There was no sense that the show had growing to do before finding itself. There was no need to apologize to a would-be viewer and reassure that "later episodes will get better." There was no sense that some characters weren't quite right. Serenity presents everything that would be good about the series right there at the beginning.

Series creator Joss Whedon wrote and directed this first episode. It crackles with his fantastic dialogue, and is filmed in his signature style. The actors -- regulars and guests -- all give razor-focused performances that define the show right out of the gate. Relationships are king on Firefly, and this pilot episode does an amazing job of showcasing them.

We see the history bonding Mal and Zoe, the fateful Battle of Serenity Valley. (It does make you wonder, given how cool some of the action in the Serenity movie is, what we could have seen here if the war wasn't presented on a television budget.) It's a particularly powerful sequence for Mal; even though he's a fun personality in the show's present, you see him even more open and breezy here in the past, and see that spark die in his eyes as he watches the Alliance ships land in the valley to effectively end the war.

There's Wash -- always witty, and yet not just comic relief. In the escape from the Reavers, he his the most cool and focused person on the ship.

We have the barely tamed animal in the group's midst, Jayne. The mercenary stays loyal to the crew in this episode despite temptation, but acknowledges that one day someone will make an offer he won't be able to refuse. (And we actually see this later in the show.)

Kaylee is firmly set up as the one character that everybody loves and rallies behind. When she's shot by Dobson, it's the most tense moment in the pilot. It cements him as a loathsome villain. And then it leads to one of the biggest laughs in the episode when Mal actually pranks Simon about Kaylee's death.

Inara is a fascinating focus as well; her role as "companion" is prime for all the other characters to have different opinions about. She makes ripples in the pond.

We meet rigid Simon, ever loyal to his poor sister River. River wouldn't become the graceful killing machine that got Summer Glau her job on Terminator until later, but the method-to-the-madness incarnation here is still compelling to watch.

Shepherd Book is the overtly religious character in the mix, though not the only source of spirituality by any means. He councils without condemnation, and tries to teach by example.

And this compelling group of characters are all aboard the "tenth character," the ship Serenity itself. It's no massive ship like an Enterprise or Galactica. It's home to a family, not a few characters like a Tardis. It's rundown, not cutting edge. It doesn't even have weapons. It's a very different setting for television science fiction.

We see the mashup of scifi and Western sensibilities. We're introduced to the already-formed dialogue of this (uni)verse, curious slang mixed with Western patois, spiced with Mandarin Chinese. Composer Greg Edmonson strikes a similar blend with his compelling musical score. The plot has action, intrigue, reversals, wit, and drama.

In short, it's a grade A episode of a grade A series. I don't know that the sad saga of Firefly would have gone differently if FOX had deigned to air this episode first, but you can surely see how the entire enterprise was doomed from the outset if their executives watched this and didn't see it worthy of kicking off the series run.