in which Lisa rambles a lot about her newest precious
Feel free to skip down a few paragraphs if you're not interested in my sister's opinion of Firefly. I have thoughts of the episodes in particular near the end of the cut.
I have seen two episodes of Firefly and I absolutely adore them both. I mean I really really adore them. As I stated before, I believe I was preconditioned to like all things Joss. I pretty much loved this show before I saw any of it. Last week I had the entire cast memorized, along with the general role that each character plays on the show. The downside of this was that I more or less knew everything that was going to happen in the first episode, and some of what was going to happen in the second. For instance, I already knew that River was going to be in Simon's box-thing, and that Kaylee was going to get shot. But I still managed to find the whole thing completely enjoyable. When you know what's going to happen and you're still on the edge of your seat with excitement, then it's a good show.
My sister watched the first episode with me last week. I'm not entirely sure why since she's never shown much interest in other aspects of the Jossverse before. She's seen whole episodes of AtS and BtVS ("Orpheus," "Smile Time," "Once More, With Feeling," "Fool for Love") and bits and pieces of lots of others. She occasionally turns the TV in her bedroom on just after she wakes up and she catches some of either of the shows, and then she describes what she saw and I explain it to her. Of course, I am incapable of giving her simple explanations. She'll ask me something and then see the look on my face and you just know that she regrets asking. Then I launch into a long and complex answer that includes quotes and references to several episodes, and her eyes start to glaze over.
(Ahem. See? I don't do simple. Not when I care about something.)
Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that my sister is not typically a fangirl. She watches TV shows and occasionally gets excited about them but she doesn't count down the hours until she can watch them. Not that I do that. (Boy did I bug the crap out of her with my perpetual countdown until 7 today.) She seemed to be enjoying the first episode and she expressed an interest in eventually seeing the movie. Then today she set up the VCR to tape the episode. She unfortunately, buy some fluke, managed to miss the very beginning. I started to get the same knot in my stomach that I get whenever something goes wrong with my fandoms on my end (i.e. when I accidentally taped a movie on a different channel instead of an ep of AtS, or when my sister accidentally recorded an AtS ep in Spanish). All I could think of was the fact that the ep was not supposed to be airing again anytime soon. She had also managed to tape over the very end of the first ep, cutting off before Mal says "Huh," (I love that) and skipping straight to Simon hugging River and reassuring her that she was okay. My sister was the one who almost immediately started talking about us buying the whole season soon, rather than after we'd seen all the episodes. She was clearly distressed, a rarity with her, and that lost minute or so was rather irritating.
When we finished watching the ep, we checked online for the season and found that Borders had it for $70. We were nearly apoplectic (would you believe that I almost typed apocalyptic here?) over this. Even if we weren't obligated to buy it from there, the price was just so insane, and for only 14 episodes. Then we checked amazon and found it for only $35, which seems like a particularly good deal. And as luck would have it, my mother is already planning to place an order from there in the near future. We're just working on the actually getting it part but that's a whole 'nother story.
And now my disjointed thoughts on the episodes themselves:
I loved Wash's dinosaurs. Mal is wonderful and is, at the moment, my favorite lead character in the Jossverse (I have ironically never been particularly fond of Buffy or Angel as characters). Gina Torres has never thrilled me all that much before but I like her her. For that matter, I wasn't too fond of Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin when they were on BtVS and AtS, respectively but I forgot that quickly. Kaylee's undying enthusiasm should bug the crap out of me but it doesn't. Book and Inara and Simon are all wonderful as well. I think this is the first show I've watched in which I truly adore ALL of the characters. It figures that it would be something so short. I love Simon's devotion to River, as he was with her and as he explained their story to the gang. I also loved his reaction to thinking Kaylee was dead, even though I knew she wasn't. I'm already torn as to which ship I like better, Simon and Kaylee or Mal and Inara. But this is a good kind of torn. I loved the scene in which Mal was talking to Kaylee. Ummm. . . What else was there? I'm sure I'll be watching the ep a second (and third and fourth and fifth and. . .) time at some point in the near future and I'm sure I'll remember something.
Oh! The reavers. They are just so Joss. He had to have something remotely inhuman in there, didn't he?
I'm trying not to collect icons, although I can't always remember why I've decided this.
I had decided not to watch the trailer until I was at least a little further in the series. I already watched it, or at least one version of it, a few weeks ago but nothing really stuck with me because I didn't know the show yet. Then they aired the trailer during the ep, and my sister didn't start fastforwarding immediately, so I watched it. Then I had to immediately go online to find the cast list because I didn't see Kaylee or Book at all in the trailer. (And if anyone who is reading this has seen the movie I don't want to hear ANYTHING about it.)
Thus ends the Firefly ranting. But the love won't die. (Y'all should really pity violetsocks when she gets back. We had already decided that she would watch the eps I'd taped but we couldn't have know how frickin' obsessed I would be.)
I finished reading The Scarlet Pimpernel last night, and I downed Neil Gaiman's Coraline today. Now I'm working on The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett.
I visited apple.com's trailers and viewed a bunch in recent days. V for Vendetta, Mirrormask, Pride & Prejudice, King Kong, Valiant, Red Eye, Domino, and The Brothers Grimm were all viewed. I have varying levels of interest in all of them with the last three appealing to me the least. I have no idea why I watched the Mirrormask trailer; it wasn't like I knew in advance that it was a Neil Gaiman creation. But I think that I want to see it, even if the idea of Neil Gaiman on screen is vaguely daunting.
I've been watching the Gilmore Girls reruns on ABCFamily the last few days (it's 44 minutes in which I am distracted just enough not to think about Firefly). I just saw the episode in which Jess comes to Stars Hollow for the first time and I found myself thoroughly enjoying him once more. I've been so focused on Rory/Logan that I forgot all the things I loved about Rory/Jess.
It is now 12:30 in the morning and I have apparently been typing for the last when in actuality I have just been focusing on several things simultaneously. I should probably- okay, definitely- go to bed, but I think I shall read some more Pratchett instead. 'Night all.