Which one is your least favourite Firefly episode?
POSTED BY: Khyron
UPDATED: Thursday, March 22, 2007 00:07
VIEWED: 56043
PAGE 15 of 16
Quote:
Originally posted by minra:
I had to tack this on to this "worst episode" thread as well.
Gold was easily the dumbest espisode of the bunch. It just does not mesh with the character Mal and what the whole crew is. They are scrounging for jobs all the time and they are *forced* to look out for number-one 90% of the time just to survive.
Who is Mal? "He's not an evil man... He hasn't lost his moral compass completely. He has just given up on the idea of the decency of human nature. Or that anything is worth fighting for, except the next meal and the people around him." ~Joss Whedon
Yet in Heart of Gold, Mal and the entire crew of firefly, risk DEATH in a deadly firefight - a western-style shootout because one hooker doesn't want to give up her baby. (cue Madonna song). The core of the conflict is this, and there's no exposition whatsoever to the interesting and real issues surrounding parental rights in a situation like this.
Instead, we get an entire firefly crew who is willing to kill, and be killed, as a favor.
We see the townsman whose barren wife won't give him a kid, which is reasonable motivation to seek a mother via a third party, yet the story is written to portray him with a shallowness that requires laser interferometry to measure. Why? They could have written him as the hardass town boss who has a valid motivation, but who botched negotiations with the whore. Or she could have been a surrogate who breached contract. All potentially interesting stories leading up to the conflict are ignored. There's not a fair protrayal of two legitimate interests in a conflict (something that Firefly does quite well in the alliance vs browncoat conflict).
To top it off, *it is assumed* that a woman has a higher claim to parenthood of an infant than a man. The attitude of this episode, the whole mental frame of reference is drenched in unjustified feminazi self-righteousness.
It's a mindless hackneyed cliche. It's just a dumbed-down good gals versus bad guys western bang-bang shootemup.
In defense of the producers, i see this as a protest against Fox, who had just cancelled the series during ep 12. To me this episode is a frustrated Firefly ranting at the lameness of the TV world "You want dreck? We can give you dreck! Here! See?"
I love the fact that you want there to be no stereotypes in a country town. And I love that you tag a woman's right to keep her baby OVER the right of some psycho with a big laser (who has, at that point already been shown saying to one of the girls 'get on your knees... this is what a woman should be to a man') ... that you tag THAT as 'feminazi'.
Are you this bigoted in your whole life, or are you just an idiot on forums?
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My least favorite episode is the one where all of the overcritical dorks sit at home on their computers and tear apart a beautiful work of art presented in 14 parts. And one BDM.
But it's still better than anything else on tv. So that makes my statement and critique ok.
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I'll go with many on this one: Heart of Gold.
My reason? I found the story to be dumb, but the sweet fight at the end kind of made up for it. Kind of. Not completely...
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My least favourite episode is War Stories, not because it is less appealing but because of the torture scenes which bring out a less appealing side of myself - they are really hard to watch because they are so graphic IMO yet at the same time they are so funny with the banter between Wash and Mal you can't help watching them. I can't believe something so sick could be so enjoyable. Oh and I have never been so overjoyed at a bad guy getting his just desserts only shame that Mal didn't manage to hurt Niska 
They weren't cows inside. They were waiting to be, but they forgot. Now they see sky, and they remember what they are.
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Shindig was probably the weakest of the bunch. I was surpised by this, as it was an episode penned by Jane Espenson, one of the best Buffy writers. Shindig just didn't seem to have as strong character relations, dialogue and insight into the series as the others have. All the Mal/Inara stuff was rather off and didn't really ring true to the characters...it was too ordinary and predictable. Not how I thought either of them would act.
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Heart of Gold is definitely up there in my favorites. I was never a Mal/Inara shipper (please don't flame me), I never bought their chemistry, and both of their attitudes annoyed me to no end. They were never honest or open with each other, they just danced around and pretended and had all kinds of silly teenaged angst about it. To me, Mal's liason with Nandi (which seems to be the problem most people have with this episode) was totally logical. Nandi was direct with him, they had some good chemistry and some similar sensibilities. They actually liked each other and could communicate, on top of being attracted to each other. So that I had no problems with at all. The western showdown and doing the job as a 'favor' also made sense. Yes, they were always struggling to make end's meet, but Mal always roots for the underdog because he is one. i.e. "You're my kind of stupid." A 'senseless' showdown like this one not only followed a Western theme, but also the theme of Serenity Valley and fighting for the freedom to live. Only this time they won. There was also a brilliant deconstruction of the Goddess themes in this episode in 'Finding Serenity', which I highly recommend to anyone who hasn't read it.
And Rance did NOT deserve that baby just because he wanted it. Nandi was right when she said he wasn't fit to raise a cactus plant.
All in all, I adore this episode for many of the reasons others seem to have a problem with it.
I also have to defend Safe, because I think it's a brilliant episode. I could go point for point, but that could take days. There's nothing I don't like about it; it never fails to get a reaction out of me.
My two least favorite episodes after first burning through the series were Train Job and The Message, but both grew on me after the second viewing. they left me a little cold at first, but after I watched them again I just caught more and more nuance in them and enjoyed them a lot more. I think the science in The Message is a little... far-fetched, but it is science fiction, after all.
The episode I watch the least might be Our Mrs Reynolds, but that's because it's not quite as fun to watch when you know what's coming. It's good in a lot of ways, and has a lot of things going for it other than the element of surprise, but the surprise was a big deal the first time I saw it...
Damn good television.
[]
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Pressed on the issue, I'd have to say "Bushwhacked" is my least favorite episode.
There isn't much action, the crew gets caught by the Alliance, and one transforming Reaver seems to cause havoc amongst all those heavily armed soldiers.
That said, in this episode and all the others, there are many, many great moments & conversations...the little things, whatever they are, that make Firefly so unique and enjoyable.
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Of all the episodes, I'd almost certainly have to go with Bushwacked.
There are definately episodes that have worse scenes in it, but those episodes also had better scenes in them.
Bushwacked is entirely forgettable, with no scenes or lines that stand out in my mind, and of all the episodes, I skip over it the most to get to the "good ones". The second one I skip over is Safe, but at least that ends with the "BIG DAMN HEROES, SIR." which almost makes the whole lousy episode worthwhile. (as well as showing some nice scenes of the characters in town, and Book plays a rare part in an episode for once).
I agree that Heart of Gold's plot is cliched, but well... thats kinda what Firefly is all about... taking what would otherwise be a cheap cliche and imbuing it with the shows character and emotion. Maybe Heart of Gold didnt succeed as well as some of the other cliched episodes did, but it DID have some decent scenes. The tangled web between Mal and Inara is brought up... the worst part of the show, imo... isnt the cliched plot... but how they build up how great the big bad evil guy's technology is... and the hovercraft and superscoperlasergun turn out to be little better then tin cans.
The Message easily had some of the worst scenes in the whole series, imo, but it also had some of the best, which kinda justifies it. Not only do I find the premise behind organ smuggling kinda weak to begin with... (ie... they cant smuggle the new-hightech-valuable organs... but they CAN smuggle his old organs through to replace them when they need to retrieve the smuggled organs ? issues....issues...) and then there's the "we'll spend weeks chasing this guy across the galaxy to recover our goods, but when we see he's shot AND STILL BREATHING WITH A MIRACLE DOCTOR ON BOARD we simply back off without bothering to confirm that he dies and the goods are worthless." but well... it was funny.. and funny goes a long way ... "so... who ordered the dead body ?"
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"Heart of Gold".
It's the one I just can't bring myself to rewatch - and not because of thee Mal/Inara tragedy, but because of the ridiculously lazy cardboard bad guy and resolution to the plot. I was thoroughly disappointed.
The only thing that saves it is the Mal/Inara aspect, for me, because it's just so deeply tragic. Inara rejects Mal because she can't be tied down, Mal's heart cracks and he spends a night with Nandi essentially pretending it's Inara, Inara's heart breaks finding out, Mal's heart cracks thinking she doesn't care at all, Inara's heart cracks seeing her beloved friend die, she's honest with Mal for once only to utterly break his heart the next sentence. Ow ow ow.
I love the constellation because it's... just all about love, for Inara, Mal and Nandi alike, but I cannot rewatch this episode without forcing myself simply because everything around it is so very very bad.
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