Firefly Flashback: The Train Job

I think the second episode of Firefly, The Train Job, is a great example of why the series was so fantastic. It was an episode that was basically crippled from conception. Joss Whedon and Tim Minear wrote it over a weekend at the demand of FOX executives, who had decided not to start the show with the original two-hour pilot, and who had basically give them a command to come up with a new, "better" pilot by Monday morning, or lose the show.

They had to start all over again, crafting a plot contrived for more action beats than the first episode. They had to reintroduce all nine characters all over again and explain their relationships, since viewers would be starting here. They had to do everything in half the screen time they'd done it the first time around.

The result isn't flawless. In fact, it ranks in the bottom 5 for me, if I list my favorite episodes in order. And yet, I still call the result an A-. Compromised, "bottom of the heap," and it's still that good compared to most television.

So what are those minor flaws? Well, one is that the character exposition isn't handled quite so deftly here. I honestly don't know how it could have been done any better given the situation. But with only minutes to spare, and with the "best" ways to introduce the characters already used up in the true pilot, everything here had to be done in a "second best" shorthand. There are a few lines in the first act that sound overly manufactured, like characters are saying things that don't come out quite natural just for the benefit of an audience they shouldn't really be aware of.

The other (again, minor) flaw I think comes at the climax of the episode, when Malcolm Reynolds kills Niska's brawny thug by kicking him through the engine of his ship. Don't get me wrong -- it's funny. I laugh every time I see it. I even think it may have been one of the highlights of the show when I first saw it air on TV, a kind of moment I hoped to see more of in future episodes. But the thing is, it makes Mal seem completely cavalier about killing, an attitude I came not to believe when I later learned more about his background in the war. It's a funny moment; I just don't think it's quite truthful.

But these are minor quibbles in an otherwise very enjoyable episode. The heist itself is fun and adventurous, and does an excellent job of fusing the western and science fiction elements of the show's premise. There's plenty of snappy dialogue. There's the nice "criminals with hearts of gold" twist of returning the stolen goods at the end of the hour. And there's the added bonus that the kingpin they cross here in this episode comes back to haunt (and hurt) them later in the series.

So, as I said, a solid A-. (And the first time around, when I didn't know the true beginning I was missing, it seemed better still.) Classic Firefly. Great even when it's not at its very best.