(Season 1, Episode 5)
All right, River better do something even remotely interesting again soon because displaying a slight fondness for cattle and prancing around in an over-sized sweater (and bike shorts under her pink skirt?) isn’t quite enough for me to like her.
Until I find a reason to take River super-seriously, I’m going to think about how hilarious it is that wee Simon was played by Zac Efron. Ha! Look at ‘im there. He’s so sad.
“Safe”
The Shepherd’s gunshot wound scare was pretty involving, especially once Simon and River got sucked into the town desperate for medical attention. I then found myself distracted when I noticed Wash was wearing a mildly horrifying Hawaiian shirt. Of course, my attention was quickly re-seized when Shepherd’s ident card proved to be extra-helpful in getting Alliance medial help. Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser.
At this point, I’m doing all right with Firefly, though I can kind of understand why I didn’t catch it when it originally aired. There’s no sense of “I can’t believe I’ve lived without experiencing Firefly JOSS WHEDON WHOO!” I’m only five episodes in, sure, so I might as well stick around until the end.
Clacked by Annie Wu 
on Jul 10, 2009 @ 13:00 EST5EDT
I’ll agree with you regarding your initial assessment of River. I didn’t really get into her in the final, final episodes. However, Serenity is when I felt the character truly reached her peak of what Wheedon was going for -
Oops, I meant to say ‘I didn’t get into her until the final, final episodes’ . . .
I didn’t catch firefly when it originally aired either and yet it was a wild ride watching it all on one single sunday afternoon :-)
Problem is I don’t understand why it got canceled, it’s such a good show.
Probably the same reason that most shows get canceled: Not enough people watching :)
Seriously though, folks, just about every story I hear about people liking this show was that they found it on DVD. Well, if people had found it on Fox it might still be on.
(Full disclosure: Count me in on those people that found it on DVD :) )
Fox didn’t air the pilot first, they started with “The Train Job,” I believe, so it made no ruddy sense. They wanted to open with a more action-packed episode than the pilot. Lame. They proceeded to play it out of order and even not air three episodes. THAT is why it never got any damn traction, and why Fox cancelled it. It never stood a chance. I discovered it on DVD, like so many others.
I’m not saying Fox was a saint in this whole thing, either. But the Train Job was written and filmed to be a second pilot. Granted, it wasn’t what Joss wanted, but it wasn’t completely out of left field.
When a show builds its audience week to week, that means that there are some people out there that didn’t watch the first episode, or the second, and so on.
Fox totally botched the whole thing, but at the same time, we didn’t watch it. Every fan that discovered it on DVD, like both of us, didn’t watch the first episode and give up, so its party our fault for not knowing about it (You can reasonably blame Fox here to for marketing efforts, but I would hazard a guess that if we’re here on the Internet discussing it now, we were on the internet seven years ago and heard about it through that, I know I did), or for not being interested enough to give it a chance. Count me in the second boat.
These days I’m the champion of shows with no following. But as Brett so politely pointed out to me in an email that became our Behind the Scenes post, if more people were watching these shows, they would be less likely to be canceled:
https://www.cliqueclack.com/tv/2009/06/11/reapers-fate-behind-the-scenes-at-cliqueclack-tv/