I wanted to like FIREFLY. You’ve no IDEA how much I wanted to like FIREFLY, if for no other reason than it features Jewel Staite from mine and Bill Mumy’s SPACE CASES.
Here’s the thing: Joss Whedon has made his name and reputation on programs that take cliches and invert them, stand them on their collective ears. The cute helpless blonde who is first to be screaming victim of the monster? She’s the heroine who kicks their butts. The vampiric creature who goes bump in the night? He’s the hero, helping the helpless (okay, between everything from St. Germain to “Forever Night,” that one isn’t so original, but still…)
FIREFLY doesn’t transcend cliches or invert them. It embraces them. It adores them. Oh, there’s touches here and there, flashes of the Whedon pull-the-rug-out-from-under-expectations. But the overall world in which they exist does very little to indicate original thought.
Me, I’m going to stick with it, partly because of Jewel, and partly because Whedon’s earned that through years of getting it so right on his two other series. But most viewers don’t have a personal attachment to one of the actresses, and furthermore, Friday evening can be a serious killer of genre shows unless they come out of the box fast. And the hard truth is that if it didn’t have Jewel and it wasn’t by Whedon, I’d don’t know that I’d ever tune in the series again.
PAD
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While I wasn’t blown away by Firefly either, I would contend that it’s perhaps a better move for Joss to come out of the gate a little slowly on this one. He’s offering a sci-fi western, both genres that tend to get ghettoized by both networks and fans. Whereas Buffy had a movie lead-in and Angel had a television lead-in, Firefly is–no pun intended–testing its wings without anything but creator name recognition. Offering first time viewers something unfamiliar (characters, world, odd genre-mix) that strikes them as comfortably familiar nonetheless might keep it from seeming too inaccessible. (Which, as we see from Farscape, is a label that can be brutally harmful.)
As we always say mid-season, “trust in Joss.” I suspect that once he’s established his world and its status quo, he’ll start upsetting it.
I dunno — I thought it really did get a lot of “little things” right that made it work for me. F’rex, they did the classic “I’m gonna be the guy hunting you down in every episode for the rest of your life” schtick, and you saw how that turned out.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was a heck of a lot of fun. I’ll be sticking with it as long as it’s as much of a romp as the first one.
-R
I didn’t LOVE it, but I see potential. I’m sure they have a plan of some sort and I’ll stick around for awhile to see what happens. I was saddened to read that Whedon plans no “aliens” in the series. I’d like to see how his team handles those.
Here’s hoping all goes well.
Bobby
I liked it better than the last two Star Trek spin-offs, plus Buffy didn’t really hit it’s stride until the 2nd season anyway. I just hope it last more than 3 eps like most shows that fox puts on friday night.
I liked it, but I didn’t love it. I’m willing to cut it slack for a number of reasons, chief among them the fact that this was a second pilot episode cobbled togerther after the initial pilot was pushed back in the season.
You guys aren’t saying anything much different than I am, really. I think we’re all inclined to cut it some slack since its Whedon. But we’re not most viewers. And considering the time slot, Whedon might not be afforded the grace period for the series to hit its stride.
Oh…and lord, did I hate the music. Just sucked the life out of so many scenes. No drive, no sense of urgency. Something should be done about that.
PAD
Re: the music. Note that Joss wrote at least the theme song. And after hearing the music, I’m really curious if High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling [the song, not the similarly named Prisoner episode]) is a particular favorite movie of his.
My main thought about Firefly is “Boy, Joss really wants to write a post-Civil War Western. I wish he’d done just that instead of having to epoxy a starship onto it. Yeah, Westerns aren’t big on tv these days, but to be honest, outside of Trek and B5, there ain’t exacly a lot of long running network space shows either [B5 being on a pseudo-network the first few years].
Tom
My $0.01 (I never over-value my own opinions):
As much as we all loved Babylon 5, I think it’s generally agreed that the quality of seasons 2 and later left season 1 in the dust.
Similarly, I recall turning on ST:TNG season 1, dismissing it as a dog, and getting hooked on seasons 2 and after.
So the good news/bad news situation is that if Firefly’s first season is buggy (NO! NO! DON’T HURT ME!…Well, OK, Ivanova can hurt me. All the rest of you Narns go paddle yer bats somewhere else), the second season would be expected to be better. This is good news/bad news because the way the industry seems to be going, a show with a lukewarm start may not get to finish its first season!
Didn’t make the Space Cases connection with Jewel. That’s another show I miss, although I’d say both seasons were equally good. Whatever you and Bill Mumy were smoking, PAD, the room was ventilated just right. (“An evil triplet scenario” indeed!) Pity you didn’t show up later relative to JK Rowling’s work…you could have had some luck pitching the show as a “sci-fi Harry Potter” (Back, narns, back!)
Well, I thought the first ep of Firefly was a great start.
PAD: “I think we’re all inclined to cut it some slack since its Whedon. But we’re not most viewers. And considering the time slot, Whedon might not be afforded the grace period for the series to hit its stride.”
See I disagree. I think that because we are Whedon fans we know what he’s capable of and we’re more critical. Maybe he didn’t pull out all the stops in ep one that we have come to expect, but the mainstream audience doesn’t know that. All the originality we’ve seen in Buffy ain’t all that embraced by the normal TV viewer, Peter. I think they’ll be more liklely to eat up Firefly.
As far as a first episode goes I thought it was great. I laughed a few times out loud and I liked the western angle. Reminds me a lot of the great anime series Cowboy Bebop actually. I wonder if that show had any influence.
-Markisan
reminded me more of the anime outlaw star, right down to the naked female pilot being discovered in a box.
brad
I just hope that Fox gives it a much greater chance than they gave “Harsh Realm” from Chris Carter a few years ago. IIRC, they pulled that after just two episodes.
Fazhoul
>>I just hope that Fox gives it a much greater chance than they gave “Harsh Realm” from Chris Carter a few years ago. IIRC, they pulled that after just two episodes.<<
Noooow you’re starting to see my concern. Talk of how the show will be better in its second season is moot if it doesn’t get past six episodes. A series that starts off slow (as many SF shows do) is only as good as the executives protecting it. The execs pick and choose their battles, and if they decide FIREFLY isn’t worth the battle, then any drop off will kill it faster than a stake.
PAD
And the bad news is… FIREFLY came in third in its time slot. Let’s hope episode 2 does better.
That is definitely the problem. If it was syndication or even UPN, WB, or basic cable, Joss might get that chance to let the show grow. As it stands, the plug can get pulled at any time.
I liked it. I need to sit down and watch it all in one sitting though.
I thought the cast was good. Thanks for reminding me where I knew Jewel from. I hadn’t had a chance to check the IMDB.
Maybe FX will pick it up.
-Joe (who really liked the opening “I just wanted you to face me so she could get behind you” and the ending “Or Darn “)
I liked it.
It has a touch of “Angel”, and a touch of “Star Wars”.
OK, the western music needs work, but I like it that there won’t been any aliens. (I do espect aliens of some sort, eventually, just not the “human-in-bad-makeup” type.)
I’m going to give the show a chance. I can only hope that FOX also gives it a chance.
Dale
“I think we’re all inclined to cut it some slack since its Whedon. But we’re not most viewers. And considering the time slot, Whedon might not be afforded the grace period for the series to hit its stride.”
I think you give too much credit to ‘most viewers’ – The first episode was a fairly simple straight-forward action-based episode (as requested by the network) that was accessible enough and appealing enough to the average person.
To those of us who’ve come to expect more from Joss, yes it was a bit light and superfluous but with any luck that will be left behind.
In many ways it seems to be similar to the first series of Buffy, other than it’s concept (typical girl victim stereotype is vampire slayer) it didn’t break any cliches: Xander was the typical side kick, Angel the mysterious character that lurks in the shadows to give the odd bit of cryptic advice, Giles the mentor character, Cordelia the typical teenage girl, and Willow the computer geek. It wasn’t really till the second series that it got beyond these sterotypes. So I’m cautiously optimistic, though the ratings are the worrying element.
I KNOW WHAT WRONG WITH FIREFLY NOW!!! I just downloaded and watched the first ep, which IMHO is far better that the one that was shown, plus it didn’t make you feel like you had missed something the entire time, this was more than likely the reason that a lot of people tuned in and then tuned out half way through, I’m just hoping that once again network stupidity doesn’t kill a show with a lot of potential, we’ve already lost Crusade.
Michael: The “first ep”? You mean the series pilot that’s (supposedly) going to be shown later this season? Dare I ask where you managed to find this?
I enjoyed the show, though it did seem a bit disjointed (the psychic sister, for instance, seemed superfluous). I can’t decide if it’s disjointed because “The Train Job” wasn’t the real pilot episode, or because the show (amazingly enough) hasn’t hit its stride yet. In any case, I really enjoyed the dry humor – bits like “I meant to shoot his head” and the aforementioned “I wanted you to face me so she could get behind you”.
I’ve never seen any other Whedon series, and I saw the first episode of Firefly with three friends who have also never seen anything by Whedon, and we all agreed that it was good stuff. It had comedy, action, sci-fi and western… and a pretty good mix, at that. The point I’m trying to get across here is this: from someone who isn’t a die-hard Joss Whedon fanatic (and who is therefore in the realm of “most viewers”, apparently), that was a pretty good show. So here’s hoping that the second episode doesn’t let me down.
You know what kept me thinking for a few hours.
Buffy was first in THe WB, then moved to UPN in the states, I wonder what if Buffy was originally broadcasted in FOX, or anyother from those BIg 4 channels.
Would it have survived this long?
I don’t know why I got the feeling since Firefly is in a bigger channel, that its somehow forced to do some sacrifices… at least from what I read it seems very far from most people expectations.
Haven’t watched the whole episode yet, only the first few minutes or so, and didn’t seem that slow to me, even though kinda confusing (could be because of that strange avi. video quality).
I don’t know never been of space TV shows and never liked westerns (actually I kinda hate westerns), but I ‘m willing to give my benefit of doubt to firefly. C’mon it’s Joss Whedon.
But hey, you guys are right, most viewers aren’t like WHedon viewers. WOnder if Firefly will survive the turmoil of the timeslot. That takes me back to that how would BtVS ended up if it was actually in one of the Big Networks…
It would be really cool if FIrefly actually did well, and kinda beat Dark Angel. Never liked that show, but respect who liked it though. However I have to say that would be really cool, to see JW having kicked “the King of the World ” A.. Just wondering anyway….
Guess we’ll have to wait to see how this will turn up…
Being I don’t like buffy, I wasn’t hoping for much, and I got it unfortuantly.
I was really needing a show to fill the B5/Farscape hole in my heart. This ain’t it so far. I’ll givve it a few, but we nearly dozed off during it.
And I dunno who she is, but the black chic who was on Herc… you’d think after that and having een on Cleo 2525 she’d have learne to throw a punch by now! jesus, she looked like she was wrestling the old lady for a gallon of milk at the grocery than brawling.
And if we’re devising nickanmes. I’ve been calling it “Fireflop” since it’s first commerical break. heh.
After one fellow US fan told me that me as a NF fan should really give Firefly a try if I can, my husband and me downloaded the first episode.
I like it. We both think it is solid entertainment and that it has potential. This is all what I am expecting from the first episode of a new series. Wheadon introduced a lot what he can build on, including characterizations and relationships, which is the most important element to me in any story.
He showed that he is very good at that in Buffy. I have no reason to believe it will be different with Firefly.
Wow this is an old post, well I can tell you the reason the shows not that great is that its a carbon rip off of the animated series called Cowboy Bebop,
wich it pales in comparison, even the ship looks the same. Granted I have learned in the past to ignore Peter David publicly insulting others that are more talented than he is, but in this case the show is a bit of a rip off. Just for the record however Peter David is not the one to be making comments on others work. This is the man who helped tear Marvel comics continuity apart in the 90s, and proceeded to write a series of bad books LOL.
I’ve managed to save up roughly $42457 in my bank account, but I’m not sure if I should buy a house or not. Do you think the market is stable or do you think that home prices will decrease by a lot?