QT's First Firefly Shamelessly Gushing Review: Shindig
POSTED BY: QueenTiye
UPDATED: Friday, November 8, 2002 16:37
VIEWED: 8004
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Well... I promised that if Mal kept it up, I'd have to import the shamelessly gushing reviews for him. Well he did, so I must... so let me first explain the shamelessly gushing review. It is totally and uniquely (on this board) dedicated to Malcolm Reynolds... and will only be written on those weeks when I just can't help myself from gushing over his wonderfulness! LOL! Here for your approval, or lack thereof, is QT's first Firefly Shamelessly Gushing Review!
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I said that I had lost my heart to Mal. This is no small feat.
Indeed - I commenced the original Shamelessly Gushing Review for one Mr. Tyr Anasazi of Andromeda fame, and I didn't expect to be able to shamelessly gush over another character for a long while - especially not while Mr. Anasazi still graces the television. But here it is, and Malcolm Reynolds accomplished in 4 episodes (which is how many episodes I've seen) what it took Tyr Anasazi an entire season to do.
Shindig is the episode that teaches me just what it is about Mal that I positively love. And mind you, this is no small thing - from henceforth onward - Joss Whedon had better give me THIS Mal - some other one just WON'T do. What is it about Malcolm Reynolds that I love? Besides the fact that he's just a cutie... Malcolm Reynolds feels. Yes. That's it. LOL! It seems so small, but it's so real... without being a wuss, or soft, or crazy, or dependent or any other icky thing... Malcolm Reynolds feels. He feels deeply, and it shows. And, no, damn it. He isn't talking about it. His feelings are his own damned business. And he'll damned well figure out what to do about them. But what he isn't going to do is run from them. He's going to have them, in the very moment. SO what if he momentarily stumbles over the idea of Inara running off with the other guy? He feels it, he ain't ashamed of it, he ain't scared of it...and he ain't talking about it. Instead he's doing what men do... he's figuring out what to do next...
I can't figure out what was more endearing to me - watching him attempting (and failing) to rattle Inara with talk of "endurance" or the after effects of that conversation, in which he finds himself terribly threatened by the reminder of Inara's shindig by Kaylee's desire for a fancy dress, or how he fixes it with Kaylee.
K. I'll take a moment here to say YOU GO KAYLEE!!! Boy I loved that scene of her holding court chatting up the fellas about engines...so very My Fair Lady...
A second pause for a slight feeling of disappointment about Inara's profession and what she was being offered...it looks like the script really is being set up for Mal to eventually make an "honest" woman of her, either with him or without... and for what I'd hoped to see of the Companions, this doesn't bode well. It's too early to tell, but this development, if it continues, is going to force me to be an Academy drop out!
Back to gushing...Nathan Fillion turns in an amazing performance as we watch all of his emotions over Inara play through - from his sincere concern for her personhood, to his grudging jealousy...(thank you, Joss, for not letting Mal be so one-dimensional emotionally that he has nowhere to go...) every turn and twist I loved.
And with this, I finally get to see what people love about Buffy and Angel (assuming that this shows up in those shows as well...) I don't do vampires EVER so I was not privy to Joss Whedon's brilliant writing, but if he consistently brings very simply drawn characters such complexity and depth, I'm going to love Firefly in a big way, and one Captain Malcolm Reynolds is going to top the list.
Thanks for indulging my first ever Firefly Shamelessly Gushing review - your thoughts are welcome!
QueenTiye, Companion Academy, class of 2006
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Well, this episode would be a huge disappointment for anyone who had come to like Mal's common sense, his ability to take care of business effectively.
Attacking people in their own environments, which are unknown to you, is stupid. You never know what will come of it, and this particular possibility is one of the most obvious ones that ANYbody should have foreseen. Deciding to stay when Inara had set up an escape for him was even stupider, since now he knew that his life was in serious danger over a few simple words stemming from an attitude on the other guy's part that a duel wouldn't ever fix anyway.
Spouting insults at a crew member and a tenant whose help you want, in a way that makes you sound like you have no respect for their whole sex, for little to no possible reason, is stupid. There were better ways to break up the groups fixation on the dress and get back to business. And calling your sword teacher a whore and arguing about technique with her is, at best, absolutely pointless antagonism.
And he's not the only one acting irrationally. There's more to being a Second than just fighting in the guy's place if he refuses, but as long as that IS a part of it, this guy who doesn't know Mal at all has no reason to volunteer to be his Second against a man he describes as "an expert swordsman".
I'm not worried about Inara's characterization yet. I think that Atherton's idea of Companions is wrong, and her reaction and the consequences to him at the end showed that. What we're seeing here isn't that Companions are less than what you thought they were, but that there are people in the universe who don't acknowledge what they really are how they really do things. And in real life there WOULD be such people.
The best parts of this episode for me, a Mal fan, were actually River's two scenes.
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QT, I'm glad to see you back in a gushing mood! I'd agree with Delvo that Mal acted foolish and reckless here, but we've seen that Mal has a complete blind spot about honor and goes out of his way to provoke fistfights with people he considers dishonorable. He's a romantic who was on the losing side of a war and keeps provoking situations where the odds are equally hopeless so that he can fight it all over again. He also has no sense of how to talk to women who aren't also soldiers. I did think the way he said "the whore academy" was hilarious, even though in a literal sense he was being a jerk.
Cardie
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Quote:
Originally posted by Delvo:
Well, this episode would be a huge disappointment for anyone who had come to like Mal's common sense, his ability to take care of business effectively.
Attacking people in their own environments, which are unknown to you, is stupid. You never know what will come of it, and this particular possibility is one of the most obvious ones that ANYbody should have foreseen. Deciding to stay when Inara had set up an escape for him was even stupider, since now he knew that his life was in serious danger over a few simple words stemming from an attitude on the other guy's part that a duel wouldn't ever fix anyway.
Spouting insults at a crew member and a tenant whose help you want, in a way that makes you sound like you have no respect for their whole sex, for little to no possible reason, is stupid. There were better ways to break up the groups fixation on the dress and get back to business. And calling your sword teacher a whore and arguing about technique with her is, at best, absolutely pointless antagonism.
And he's not the only one acting irrationally. There's more to being a Second than just fighting in the guy's place if he refuses, but as long as that IS a part of it, this guy who doesn't know Mal at all has no reason to volunteer to be his Second against a man he describes as "an expert swordsman".
YES!!! Common sense out the window! Stupidity abounds! YES!!! That Inara is one lucky woman. ;) LOL!!!
Quote:
I'm not worried about Inara's characterization yet. I think that Atherton's idea of Companions is wrong, and her reaction and the consequences to him at the end showed that. What we're seeing here isn't that Companions are less than what you thought they were, but that there are people in the universe who don't acknowledge what they really are how they really do things. And in real life there WOULD be such people.
You have a point... I'm hoping you are right... And I guess I'm sad that Mal is one of those people. But we shall see..
Quote:
The best parts of this episode for me, a Mal fan, were actually River's two scenes.
Yeah, she was pretty amazing... but I'm still not quite clear on her.
QueenTiye, Companion Academy, class of 2006
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Quote:
Originally posted by Cardie:
QT, I'm glad to see you back in a gushing mood! I'd agree with Delvo that Mal acted foolish and reckless here, but we've seen that Mal has a complete blind spot about honor and goes out of his way to provoke fistfights with people he considers dishonorable. He's a romantic who was on the losing side of a war and keeps provoking situations where the odds are equally hopeless so that he can fight it all over again. He also has no sense of how to talk to women who aren't also soldiers. I did think the way he said "the whore academy" was hilarious, even though in a literal sense he was being a jerk.
Cardie
Thanks, Cardie! It's good to be back in a gushing mood! LOL!
Yes. But as you can see - I think that A LOT of buttons got pushed on Mal... his sense of honor, his need to continue fighting a war that is lost, and the potential loss of Inara before he's had a chance to figure out just what the heck it is about her that scrambles his brain circuitry... LOL!! Yeah. I'm one of those people who see's romance everywhere, and likes it... so I'm thoroughly enjoying the normally sensible Mal acting all out of character where Inara is involved...
QT
QueenTiye, Companion Academy, class of 2006
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I LOVED Kaylee's scene. That'll be me at the AF ball once i finish tech school...All dressed up and pretty, talking engines with the boys. (-:
And River, with that accent...That was funny.
~S.
You can't take the sky from me.
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LOL @ Cardie. The "whore academy" line tickled me too.
I love the fact that these aren't cookie cutter characters - they're each a mixed bag of good and not-so-good traits.
No Captain Terrific here, just an ordinary guy with some extraordinary traits and some very ordinary hangups. 
Oh, and QT? To say Mal pushes MY buttons would be a vast understatement. 
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rhea:
Oh, and QT? To say Mal pushes MY buttons would be a vast understatement.
;) LOL!!! A fellow gusher... YAY!
QT
QueenTiye, Companion Academy, class of 2006
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Quote:
Originally posted by Delvo:
I'm not worried about Inara's characterization yet. I think that Atherton's idea of Companions is wrong, and her reaction and the consequences to him at the end showed that.
Delvo I neglected to comment here - I'm not convinced that this companion thing is not going to be shallowly played for schoolboy laughs...but this comment does hold out some hope...
I had forgotten that Inara is going to make a few er...phone calls? Just how do they communicate in the firefly universe? What are those screens where people talk to each other called? What is the means by which communications are transmitted?
Anyway - yes.
But on the other hand...my concern is that the Alliance is the "bad guy" so while Inara can make a few calls because she is academy trained (an institution that has to be recognized by the alliance), it does not necessarily follow that the role the companions play is anything more than regulated trade. I persist in hoping that we see the opposite - that the profession has elevated to the point where the term "Companion" is its ONLY logical descriptor, whereas "whore" is something entirely different, for which very few "skills" are required.
QT
QueenTiye, Companion Academy, class of 2006
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Quote:
Originally posted by QueenTiye:
[B I persist in hoping that we see the opposite - that the profession has elevated to the point where the term "Companion" is its ONLY logical descriptor, whereas "whore" is something entirely different, for which very few "skills" are required.
QT
QueenTiye, Companion Academy, class of 2006
So, along those lines, every time Mal calls Inara a whore would it be as if he was calling a SWAT team member "a guy with a gun?" And she hasn't slapped him yet?
Of coursse she could just be too lady-like
Sensou
Sweet is love when all is sane
Sweet is death to end the pain
Cruel is death when all is well
Cruel is love when all is hell
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