Firefly Flashback: Bushwhacked

You could really hold up any episode of Firefly as an example of the greatness of the show, but the third episode -- Bushwhacked -- makes a particularly interesting example, I think. It's one of my least favorite episodes of the series. (Only one other ranks lower, in fact; we'll get to that in time.) And yet it's really still a solid episode of television that surpasses what most other series put on the air week in and week out.

What have I got against Bushwhacked? Well, there's a lot about it that feels unfinished and unfulfilled to me. This is the big "Reaver episode." (In fact, with FOX not airing the pilot until the very end of the TV run, this almost felt like it became the only Reaver episode.) And yet, no Reavers actually appear in the episode.

The intrepid crew of Serenity comes across a ship after the Reavers have already ravaged it and moved on. We deal only with the aftermath of their attack. In fact, no one even realizes it was Reavers until a good ways into episode, and the Reavers never do "come back" as feared. And there are other areas where the setup doesn't quite match the payoff. The Reavers leave a booby trap bomb behind that latches onto Serenity -- but Kaylee deals with this so easily that her work isn't even depicted on screen. They find a survivor on the ship driven to madness by Reavers; when Serenity's crew encounters him, he's easily subdued; yet later, when the Alliance crew faces off with him, he's somehow turned in a dangerous killing machine that's more than a match for multiple armed troops.

So yeah, more than a few holes in this one, if you ask me. And yet, as I mentioned, still a really solid hour of television. And that's because of the greatest strength of Firefly -- the characters. Their behavior, their interactions; the wonderful performances of the amazing actors. The story might not be compelling, but that's easy to overlook when there are great moments like Jayne pranking Simon about the space suit, River's wonderment at the void of space, or Mal's chilling descriptions of Reavers and their victims.

And then there's the best sequence in the episode, in which the captain of the Alliance cruiser interrogates the crew of Serenity. It's a montage of one-on-one interviews where each of the characters is utterly themselves -- perfect little bite-sized glimpses into who each of these people are. Lots of laughs, too. The juxtaposition of husband and wife, Wash and Zoe, is especially great.

So all told, I grade Bushwhacked a B. The show really doesn't have much to be sorry for when this is nearly the most they have to be sorry for.