A few thoughts on Firefly
I just realized one of the reasons why I love Firefly so much.
I was watching BSG tonight (awesome episode, btw, yay for SciFi Fridays being back!) and trying to pinpoint why I like that show so much. And I was thinking, plots, BSG's plots are good. They're really good. They don't fall into the Formula trap that Star Trek made a career out of, and SG1 has spent eight years repeating, and Stargate Atlantis is currently ruining itself with. But even though it's not formulaic, I still know how every episode is going to end. Because it has to end that way. There are narrative laws, and they must be followed. Lee will shoot the Cylons in time, or else we don't get to move on with the story. The long-term plots, well, those are anyone's guess, probably including the writers at this point. But for episode-by-episode guesswork, it's obvious. I still love BSG, of course. But you always know what's going to happen.
And then I realized. Why is Firefly so wonderful? Because you don't know what's going to happen. (Yes, I realize we've all seen all 13 episodes and we all have them memorized and we all can say the lines along with the characters and we all know what's going to happen. And we've all seen the trailer for Serenity so many times we can probably guess what's going to happen there, too. But I'm talking about the first time we saw it.) Firefly doesn't follow any narrative laws. It breaks them from the very begining -- Mal and crew aren't only not heroes, they're not even anti-heroes. They don't fit any of the hero classifications. Hell, they're not even that good of people. They're just people. The narrative laws don't work for them because they aren't in a story. The story just sort of happens around them. And if it works out, that's good, we can be happy for them. But there's no guarentee it will work out. There's no guarentee of anything. If, heaven forbid, the crew of Serenity was stranded on a hostile planet, and one of their members was dying, and they didn't have the medkit, and someone had to go back to get the medkit to save the other person -- narrative law says the rescuer has to die. Thank you, BSG, the rescuer died. But in Firefly, who says the rescuer will die? Hell, who says they'll even go back for the medkit? Maybe they'll be rescued by Alliance and Book will pull a magic ident out of his pocket and they'll all be saved. Screw narrative causality. This is Firefly here.
And that's what makes it brilliant. (One of the things. Let us not forget how much we love Inara.) You can't tell the ending of the episode from the begining. And that, alone, is enough to make it exciting, I think. Enough to make it worth something.
"She's a witch!"
"Yeah, but she's our witch."
I was watching BSG tonight (awesome episode, btw, yay for SciFi Fridays being back!) and trying to pinpoint why I like that show so much. And I was thinking, plots, BSG's plots are good. They're really good. They don't fall into the Formula trap that Star Trek made a career out of, and SG1 has spent eight years repeating, and Stargate Atlantis is currently ruining itself with. But even though it's not formulaic, I still know how every episode is going to end. Because it has to end that way. There are narrative laws, and they must be followed. Lee will shoot the Cylons in time, or else we don't get to move on with the story. The long-term plots, well, those are anyone's guess, probably including the writers at this point. But for episode-by-episode guesswork, it's obvious. I still love BSG, of course. But you always know what's going to happen.
And then I realized. Why is Firefly so wonderful? Because you don't know what's going to happen. (Yes, I realize we've all seen all 13 episodes and we all have them memorized and we all can say the lines along with the characters and we all know what's going to happen. And we've all seen the trailer for Serenity so many times we can probably guess what's going to happen there, too. But I'm talking about the first time we saw it.) Firefly doesn't follow any narrative laws. It breaks them from the very begining -- Mal and crew aren't only not heroes, they're not even anti-heroes. They don't fit any of the hero classifications. Hell, they're not even that good of people. They're just people. The narrative laws don't work for them because they aren't in a story. The story just sort of happens around them. And if it works out, that's good, we can be happy for them. But there's no guarentee it will work out. There's no guarentee of anything. If, heaven forbid, the crew of Serenity was stranded on a hostile planet, and one of their members was dying, and they didn't have the medkit, and someone had to go back to get the medkit to save the other person -- narrative law says the rescuer has to die. Thank you, BSG, the rescuer died. But in Firefly, who says the rescuer will die? Hell, who says they'll even go back for the medkit? Maybe they'll be rescued by Alliance and Book will pull a magic ident out of his pocket and they'll all be saved. Screw narrative causality. This is Firefly here.
And that's what makes it brilliant. (One of the things. Let us not forget how much we love Inara.) You can't tell the ending of the episode from the begining. And that, alone, is enough to make it exciting, I think. Enough to make it worth something.
"She's a witch!"
"Yeah, but she's our witch."