There are a lot of things about this show I find absolutely insufferable: the theme song, the soundtrack drenched in Western twang, the captain's suspenders, the cutesy half-clever dialogue. Mostly what gets on my nerves is the constant smirk the show seems to wear. Joss Whedon's smug sense of self-satisfaction is almost like a member of the cast, and arguably more important to the show than any of the other actors.
"Firefly" features a crew of interstellar rebels -- of the "South Will Rise Again" variety -- cruising the High Sierras of backwater planets in search of semi-legal employment. There's Captain Mal, the wisecrack dispenser; Zoe, his robotic first mate; Wash, the juvenile pilot; Kaylee, the oh-so-adorable grease monkey who keeps the Whatever Drive working; and Jayne, on the run from the loony bin with his massive gun collection. They pick up some hitchhikers: a priest, a prostitute, a doctor, and his autistic sister.
The series is proudly anti-authoritarian. The villains are the Alliance -- or the Federation, or something -- who lumber around the space lanes in massive starships, keeping the peace for Kaiser Wilhelm. Unlike real historical rebels, our heroes are never in any sort of danger from the Alliance -- at least not the sort of danger that a snarky remark and well-aimed bullet won't handle. Whedon's "stick it to the man" attitude is the kind of thing I might have found very appealing when I was sixteen and had blue hair, but from the vantage point of my late twenties it just looks childish. The Alliance never present a credible threat -- for example, no families are ever lined up against a wall and shot -- so overcoming them offers no satisfaction.
Dramatically, the series is a jumble. Nine main characters banter and bicker while shambling from job to low-rent job, and the Galactic Empire peeks over their shoulders from time to time. There's no cohesion, and even the setting is a mess: cattle rustlers and space ships, John Ford extras and "Starship Troopers" space marines. The dialogue delivers line after smirking line of futuristic cowboy slang, with the occasional inexplicable Mandarin curse word. There's no story, and no sense that any of this might mean anything. The end result is psychologically two-dimensional characters negotiating a landscape of tired clichés. This could be any hackneyed Western ever made.
The show's total failure may surprise anyone who's seen "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer". That was a genuinely intelligent show, but perhaps Joss Whedon got so accustomed to writing for teenagers that he never learned how to write for grown-ups.
"Firefly" features a crew of interstellar rebels -- of the "South Will Rise Again" variety -- cruising the High Sierras of backwater planets in search of semi-legal employment. There's Captain Mal, the wisecrack dispenser; Zoe, his robotic first mate; Wash, the juvenile pilot; Kaylee, the oh-so-adorable grease monkey who keeps the Whatever Drive working; and Jayne, on the run from the loony bin with his massive gun collection. They pick up some hitchhikers: a priest, a prostitute, a doctor, and his autistic sister.
The series is proudly anti-authoritarian. The villains are the Alliance -- or the Federation, or something -- who lumber around the space lanes in massive starships, keeping the peace for Kaiser Wilhelm. Unlike real historical rebels, our heroes are never in any sort of danger from the Alliance -- at least not the sort of danger that a snarky remark and well-aimed bullet won't handle. Whedon's "stick it to the man" attitude is the kind of thing I might have found very appealing when I was sixteen and had blue hair, but from the vantage point of my late twenties it just looks childish. The Alliance never present a credible threat -- for example, no families are ever lined up against a wall and shot -- so overcoming them offers no satisfaction.
Dramatically, the series is a jumble. Nine main characters banter and bicker while shambling from job to low-rent job, and the Galactic Empire peeks over their shoulders from time to time. There's no cohesion, and even the setting is a mess: cattle rustlers and space ships, John Ford extras and "Starship Troopers" space marines. The dialogue delivers line after smirking line of futuristic cowboy slang, with the occasional inexplicable Mandarin curse word. There's no story, and no sense that any of this might mean anything. The end result is psychologically two-dimensional characters negotiating a landscape of tired clichés. This could be any hackneyed Western ever made.
The show's total failure may surprise anyone who's seen "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer". That was a genuinely intelligent show, but perhaps Joss Whedon got so accustomed to writing for teenagers that he never learned how to write for grown-ups.