Burn the land, boil the sea; You can't take the sky from me.

[usernamenumber]

So everyone from friends to slashdot to total strangers I've spoken to at (admittedly geeky) social gatherings have been telling me about Firefly; How it's the best sci-fi to ever grace the television screen, how terrible it was that it got canceled, etc etc etc.

Damn, they're right.

Early last week disc one arived via netflix. Late last week the series boxed-set arrived via amazon. We have one disc to go. We would've gotten through it sooner but we keep oscilating between wanting "more! more! more!" and just not wanting it to end. I'm almost (almost) tired of exclaiming "that's so cool!" in the middle of an episode. The writing so far, especially the episodes by Wheedon, Minear and/or Edlund (which is all but two), is fantastic. The acting is such that I can't point to a single weak link in the cast. XanderWash's non-stop "look how witty I am!" quipping gets a bit irritating at times, but that's the closest thing to a complaint that I have and it's still a believable facet of the character.

I find it suprising how closely my feelings about Firefly having been cancelled mirror my feelings about the presidential election. Obviously there's no comparison in terms of importance but both seem to denote a fundamental difference between what appeals to me and what seems to appeal to the majority of the country. Or maybe it's not the rest of the country's fault at all. If the airdates shown (prominently, so I think Mr. Wheedon was trying to make a point) on the back of the discs are to be believed... wtf was Fox thinking? They aired the pilot, which explains why everyone is there in the first place *after* everything else?? If that's the case then no wonder it never caught on. Chalk up one more reason to love Fox for taking on great new shows and then hate them destroying said shows, wondering why nobody's watching and then replacing them with more proffitable things-- like Fear Factor reruns. Grr.

--Brad (continuing his proud tradition of getting in on trends two years after the fact)

Comments

[eruthros]

It was really depressing -- I mean, it was practically like Fox was trying to kill it. They were showing it at 9 pm on Friday night, which is Death to a show. (Unless you're lucky enough to be the X-Files, in which case for some reason they won't get around to canceling you even though you don't have great ratings, and they'll keep you around and hope for more ratings later.) And then the way they ordered them! I mean! They wanted to start with "action" so they started with Train Job, and Joss had to shove in all of this exposition so you could sort of work out who everyone was. And then it was canceled, and it was just so so depressing. Except then the DVDs sold incredibly -- something like 25th on amazon.com's ranking system. And so they're giving us a movie!

In a way, though, I wish I'd seen the show on dvd in the right order -- because I think the pilot would be much more tension-making if you didn't already know who was going to be sticking around later and people's motivations and stuff.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

Believe me. It was quite, quite tension making. Especially since we started it with an hour before we had to leave the house, not realizing it was a two-hour pilot. We had to pause it and leave at the commercial break right after Malcolm kicks open the doctor's "cargo"!

Painful, that was.

[eruthros]

Oh man, yah. That must have been pretty tense. I wish I'd had that first-viewing experience. :)

And it makes the Reavers much scarier.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

And wtf is this about the pilot not having action?? It had a hell of a lot more action than, say, Encounter at Farpoint. And I hear that series did OK.


Yeesh. #%$%$#@ing Fox...

[ryca.livejournal.com]

You're preaching to the choir with this post here. ;) I am definitely among the faithful. I watched the show on Fox (but missed a couple of eps) and then got the dvds for Christmas last year and watched them rapid-fire. SO MUCH LOVE. It honestly makes me really sad to think that there's *only* going to be the movie and then it's over. I was sad when Buffy ended, and pissed when Angel was cancelled, but *furious* about the untimely death of Firefly, and honestly still in mourning. I could extoll it's virtues for pages upon pages, but I'll stop here.
Glad you're on board!

[eruthros]

Welllll, Joss isn't promising anything, and he says he's too worried right now about making the movie the best movie it can be to think about the future of FF, but. He also said that if the movie does well, and especially if the DVD of the movie does well -- because tv shows make more money on dvd now than they do actually on tv -- that Firefly might return to the small screen.

Although it would have to be Fox -- they licensed FF for five years, so it couldn't show on any other network until, like, 2007 or something.

Anyway.

[choose-again.livejournal.com]

whee!
not getting hopes up, not getting hopes up....
whee!

[ex-nihilo.livejournal.com]

Hahaha. Brad! I guess you missed my rants about this once I got the DVD set for my birthday. I absolutely love this show so much and I was so pissed off about the way Fox treated the show.

But.. but.. but.. You do know there's a MOVIE coming in April, right?
http://www.serenitymovie.com
I'm joining the Browncoats! -- I even have a Zoe lj-icon, but LJ is being stupid and only letting me access ONE of my icons for some reason.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

I do know there's going to be a movie, but honestly I'm a little worried. It sounds like it's going to be a re-telling of the series, which implies that it's going to resolve a lot of the threads left hanging by the series. So even if the movie is a huge success, where would a potential reprise of the series have left to go?

[hyperverbal777.livejournal.com]

I say you in Daves journal and then i say you liked Firefly... soo you too cool for school.. I'm adding you to my frineds list

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

Cool. I think we know each other via (speaking of Old School) Henry's BBS since I recognize your handle. I was Ouch!! My Pancreas!!! Small world. =:)

[hyperverbal777.livejournal.com]

OH, I rememebr you. :) We've probably meet at one of the socials long ago.