Firefly
Poor, set-upon Joss Whedon. He just can’t get a break. I mean, sure, he created Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show that lasted for 7 seasons and spawned a nearly-as-successful spin-off in Angel. And sure, the appropriately named Buffyverse continues in the guise of comic books, trade paperback adaptations, and an unending flow of fan fiction. And fine, Buffy studies has actually been recognized as an academic pursuit by otherwise respected scholars. And OK! there are the other projects of Whedon’s that have met with success, like Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Dollhouse, and, if the readership of this blog has their say, the upcoming Avengers film that Whedon will direct.
But Firefly… FIREFLY! Due to mismanaging by the good people at Fox, what could have been an enduring tale of intergalactic cowboys was doomed to become among the most lamented early cancellations since the original Star Trek. Fanboys and -girls to this day mourn the day that we lost Firefly.
But, sweet googily moogily, the THEME… eww!
Firefly
I mean, for realsies, the crew of the Firefly Class ship Serenity were a band of misfits so vividly rendered that their images were forever burned into our psyches from the end of the first episode. Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, fearless veteran of the Unification War and leader of his ragtag bunch, would take on any job, so long as it was honorable, and it paid. Warrior Woman Zoe, Reynolds’ trusted lieutenant since the end of the War, proudly upheld the Whedonesque tradition of having a hot woman character that invariably kicks ass. Wash, brilliant pilot and Zoe’s husband, provided brilliant, goofy comic relief, from the first episode where we witness him playing with toy dinosaurs (“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!”). Kaylee is the mechanical prodigy who also happens to be cute as the dickens. And then there’s Jayne Cobb, a man proudly in the vein of Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue,” all muscle and very little brains.
Firefly
Then there’re the passengers, who in time would become members of the crew. Shepherd Book, a man of the cloth who possesses skills that most priests don’t have, like marksmanship and martial arts. Simon Tam, brilliant doctor from the Central planets of the Alliance. And Simon’s little sister River, a genius who has been the victim of psychological and neurophysiologic experiments by a shadowy arm of the Alliance government.
The interweaving of the overarching plot of discovering the nature and reasoning of River’s experiments, the individual moneymaking jobs Capt. Reynolds hires out for, and encounters with a roving band of maniacs known as Reavers, and this show could have lasted indefinitely but for the criminal botch job perpetrated by Fox in playing episodes out of order, not promoting properly, and then canning the show after just one season. Firefly remains a moment of television perfection preserved in amber, its beauty forever present to behold, but never to be experienced again.
The show had only one visible flaw.
Firefly
The show’s theme song was, for lack of a better description, western. A slow, mellow dirge involving the banjo, fiddle, and guitar. Written by Joss Whedon himself, the song evokes images of dust and old wood, the tangy sweetness of bad whiskey, and, tellingly, the smell of horse manure.
The lyrics of the song are pretty banal. “Take my love, take my land/take me till I cannot stand/I don’t care, I’m still free/you can’t take the sky from me.” The imagery of the sky is apropos, since these cowboys don’t drive cows, they fly through space and rob stuff. But the repetition of the words, set against a vocal melody that is one step removed from monotone, is not quite annoying, but pretty damn close. The presence of blues legend Sonny Rhodes singing on the track does nothing but suggest that perhaps Mr. Rhodes had some debts that needed paying and Mr. Whedon came along with an attractive offer at a very opportune time.
Firefly
Firefly was my first experience with the work of Joss Whedon (unless you count the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie starring Kristy Swanson, which I don’t). I’ve since become a fan, voraciously consuming the entirety of the televised Buffy series, Angel, and Dollhouse. Whedon’s imagination, creativity, and attention to detail have won over a well-deserved cult of followers. Firefly is perhaps the best-realized example of Whedon’s brilliance, and the fact that it did not receive the opportunity to fully blossom is a bummer that is difficult to overcome. Seriously, I often get emotional just thinking of what could have been. I’ve seen the entire series of Firefly three times, and every time I’m excited at the right parts, saddened at the others, and depressed when it’s over, knowing there will never be another episode.
