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.

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.

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.