This is a heist story and those are always good. And, in what feels like a rarity for this show, even after the standard things go wrong, the crew manages a win. Good for them.

We get to see a few glimpses of a core planet, which is the ones that are supposed to be all fancy and high tech. Mostly the action is inside a hospital, but we also see glimpses of a junkyard and a city street, but angles are chosen just enough to keep us from getting too good a look. We do get to see that they have funny-lookin’ cars, though (and yes I’ll note that they bear at least some similarity to my own car). I appreciate little touches like that, and acknowledge that they don’t need a lot of extras on these city streets given the crew would probably want to keep to the less-trafficked parts of town.

I have to note that, knowing the extremely skilled fighter that River will become, it is weird going back to seeing her before that. But I’m happy they are taking their time to earn it.

I just did a profile for the Marvel Appendix on the character Will O’ The Wisp. This is a character even more obscure than the Rocket Racer, but also who is minor part of Rocket Racer’s life. Bob and the Wisp met via their mutual “friend” Spider-Man, then became coworkers during Bob’s time with Silver Sable’s mercenary unit the Outlaws.

Wisp’s deal is that he was a scientist named Jackson Arvad who, because of corporate greed and corruption, got into an accident that gave him super powers, but also made him lose touch with his humanity a bit. He’s kind of Dr. Manhattan Lite (though he predates that guy). He can be a bit spooky, which is definitely what Bob and the others thought of him, but Wisp is in general a good person. Heck, when he met up with Bob and the others years later, he even asked how Bob’s mother was doing. Wisp cares is his thing.

Wisp’s life has sucked for sure. He’s often been blackmailed into doing crimes, but when that isn’t the case he had a tendency to wage war against evil corporations (for his own sake and that of others) which was technically a criminal act, but the stories always supported him. He was a noble figure who teamed up with Spider-Man several times. Which is what makes it sad that, as I point out in my Appendix profile, one day Peter Parker decided to do a bit where he pretended not to recognize Wisp. This was when Wisp was on a supervillain team, sure, but I feel it’s safe to assume he wasn’t there willingly given what has come before. Wisp was visibly upset about it and since that time he’s been seen hanging out with those we’d call “villains” a lot more often.

And then, after decades of attacking evil corporations in Spidey’s books and being seen as a good guy, he does it once in an Iron Man book and he winds up in Marvel’s ripoff of Arkham Asylum. I can’t help but wonder of Mr. Tony Stark didn’t arrange that to take a potentially powerful anti-capitalist hero off the board.

Anyway, regarding the title I’ve chosen here, is Wisp really the best coworker that Bob has had? No, that’s probably the Prowler, given that they were actually friends. But Wisp’s whole deal fits with where I’d want the Rocket Racer character to go. Bob SHOULD be a big anti-corporate figure, but actually he’s kind of a sellout and gives into The Man far more often than he should. Bob wants to be accepted by The Man and can’t ever seem to work out that that’s why his life keeps sucking. If Wisp could really get his message through to Bob, they’d both be better off.

Personally, if my car went up in a ball of flame, even if that flame ate up all the fuel, I wouldn’t say I was “out of gas” I would call it being “blowed up”. This episode should be called “Blowed Up”.

Anyway, this is the one where part of the ship blows up and they’re stranded out in space. It’s also got flashbacks to how the crew got together (the ones who didn’t join during the pilot, I mean). I almost wish those could have been two separate episodes. Maybe they could have done the meetings as a little anthology episode, and the stranded in space as another. But the reason for that is being stranded in space, so far from other humans, is something I’d want a deeper look at. The vastness of space, the largeness of infinity, how small we are, that stuff interests me greatly. But it’s probably less “space western” than getting ambushed by someone who wants to steal the ship is, the show did what it does instead of catering to me.

Anyway, what is most important here is that it is Simon’s birthday. Somehow. River actually mentions that measuring time by Solar cycles doesn’t make a lot of sense given their spacefaring, but somehow is still IS Simon’s birthday. Does that mean that back on whatever planet/moon he was born on a yearly cycle has been completed? Or, I must ask again, is there some standard of time set by some authority? I demand answers and refuse to look up if anyone who worked ont he show has ever said!

This is the one where the amoral jerk idiot character finds out that because he botched a crime years ago in a very specific way, he is now considered a folk hero by the whole town. I am on the record that the big dumb character on pretty much any show will be the one I will relate to, and even though Jayne is a bigger jerk than I prefer those characters to be, I remember on first viewing that I enjoyed him getting a focus episode like this. And I still do. It’s always nice to see a well-done, self-contained episode of television. Even Inara’s sub-plot, which seems unrelated, ties in at the end. And the River/Book stuff deals with the themes of faith and symbols relevant to how the town sees Jayne. Overall, just well made.

But you know what isn’t well made? The statue of Jayne that the town put up! He’s just standing there. That’s not heroic! Why didn’t you have him thrusting a victorious fist in the air or something? You just want a guy with his arms at his side, kinda scowling? That’s your hero? You idiots.

I guess the bit that amused me most in this one was when the doctor was like “Okay, I’ll go, just stop describing me.”

This is the one where a woman sneaks on board the ship, pretends to be from “primitive” society with simple rituals that mean she’s married to Mal, but it turns out she’s a femme fatale trying to steal the ship. The crew deal with that situation and the femme fatale, Saffron I believe, gets to be set up as a potential recurring character. I think she may actually come back before the show ends, but I can’t remember the details of that return.

Not much to report (apart from being disappointed that the idea of men wearing dresses is still meant to be funny in a future where humanity is spread over a bunch of worlds). One thing I did quite like was the idea of using a spacesuit to make sure a gun had oxygen so it could fire in a vacuum. I liked that.