I said I was gonna watch to see if there was a lot of shaky cam on the show, but I kinda forgot that. Makes me wonder if there wasn’t that much of it. This time I saw a lot of it though. Maybe that’s why I didn’t connect much with the episode, I dunno. Old war friend involves the crew in some crap, crap goes down, the crew gets through it, old war friend doesn’t. I’m not calling it a bad episode, but it never grabbed me.

There’s good stuff, though. The market on a space station is impressive enough. While most of what we see during the war flashbacks is on a small set, they do some one or two second shots of the city that make it look more like a sprawling battle.

It does make me happy to see some villains who threaten to kill someone but then don’t. That’s usually such a cheap and easy way to make villains seem threatening that not having it is actually more effective. Shame they also make some hacky prison rape jokes.

I primarily remember this one as the episode with butt.

If I were designing this show from scratch I’d’ve said it was too early for Saffron to come back. She’s clearly intended to be a recurring character, but I would have given her until the second season. But this show didn’t do that and it’s a good thing they got back to her because they got all cancelled and whatnot. I also would have made sure Monty became a recurring character. I don’t think this show gets the chance to do that. More the pity.

Anyway, we’ve got a heist. This time they do the thing where we see them planning the heist while we see them doing the heist, which always cuts down on things that can go wrong. Of course, things do go wrong because they have to for the story to happen.

One thing I will never understand about these kind of heist setups is why the security system always has those laser tripwires that you have to be all agile to get around. Just use a motion detector! We have those now, you idiots.

Most of the action planetside takes place on what appears to be a standard rich people manor, so it doesn’t require the cityscape and extras that I crave, but it is a floating rich people manor, so that’s pretty futuristic.

This is the one where the Niska guy comes back. It’s the one where he tortures Mal and Wash as they bicker about Zoe.

The stuff about Mal being so badass that he resists torture so well is the kind of thing I don’t like. It’s a kind of tough = cool that I dislike. That means that the ending, when at first Zoe is like “This is something the Captain has to do for himself” and Mal is like “No it isn’t” works for me. I am also happy with the way Kaylee falls apart under fire. More representation for those who don’t like fighting, I demand.

The best part for me is when Zoe cuts off Niska’s offer to choose one of the guys. I will always like it when some villain (or anyone) is trying to give their big speech and that is undercut.

Also, there’s a bunch of the heteronormativity typical of the era comes through in the relationship stuff, but the subplot with the hot lesbian stuff seems definitely done more to be titillating than any kind of real representation. Still, mostly a good episode.