Ariel - and Mal's forgiveness

POSTED BY: TauSetiPrime
UPDATED: Monday, August 2, 2004 02:19
VIEWED: 23705
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STATIC

Monday, July 19, 2004 7:46 PM

Going back to the whole 'remorse/regret' thing. . .re-watch the episode. Adam Baldwin is an incredible actor. During the scene where Simon is explaining to Jayne what's been done to River, you begin to see even that early the 'oh shit. . .what have I done?' look on Jayne's face.

I think at this point, the only reason he goes through with it is because he figures, "in for a penny, in for a pound."

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"Wash. . .we got some local color happening. A grand entrance would not go amiss."

JUSTANOTHERMUDDER

Monday, July 19, 2004 8:04 PM

Thats what I thought too: It was the 'don't tell em what I done' line that gave Mal enough reason to not kill Jayne. And I do believe has really wanted a reason to not kill him.
I don't know why Jayne went with the Doc and River as opposed to anyone else. Guess it was just habit on Mal's part. Zoe always has his back.
IMO, this episode is another example of how much smarter Mal is then he likes to admit. :D He always seems to know what others are thinking. Except Inara. ;)

"Always be yourself. Unless you suck." Joss Whedon
"Where else are you going to get a love story that begins:
Boy meets girl. Girl kicks boy's ass." NYPinTA @WatchFarscape.com

LIZ

Monday, July 19, 2004 9:25 PM

I remembered that Mal had written them down. i also remember Mal explaining to Simon " If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed." Perhaps that's only if your Simon.

So, yeah, some of it doesn't fit as well but, here's my rationalization: Jayne isn't book smart enough to grab the right stuff fast enough and probably wouldn't deal well if he was questioned. (If faced with that doctor's questioning, i think Jayne would have escalated the argument to a shouting match, thus bringing attention to them... and then just punched the doctor.) As far as the wrench to the back of the head vs. the facing each other armed, perhaps Jayne gave up that right when he betrayed a memeber of the crew. Of course, Simon threatened to not save Kaylee's life, so maybe that logic doesn't work either.
i give up. i believe that Mal had good reason to leave Jayne w/Simon and River, and that he was ready to kill Jayne for the betrayal. My reasoning: 'cuz.

TAUSETIPRIME

Tuesday, July 20, 2004 3:01 AM

This is a good point.

I like the way you think.........:)

I wasn't askin'.....I was tellin'.....

TALONPEST

Tuesday, July 20, 2004 5:06 AM

The one thing that's always bothered me about the line "If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed" is that in the very next episode Mal kicks Krowl (or Crow, or whatever Niska's thug's name was) into the engine while he's unarmed and has his hands bound. So yeah, I think it only applies to Simon.

DRALIONSOLEIL

Tuesday, July 20, 2004 5:21 AM

i like to think the "if i ever kill you..." line was given to simon becuase he feels simon deserves the honor of defending himself. cause of his ideals... simon wanted to be river's big damn hero and save her from the bad place no matter the cost. where as crow's just a thug, and uhm
::thinks about it:: well yeah i guess it's just a plain old double standard.
:p

PURPLEBELLY

Tuesday, July 20, 2004 5:42 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Talonpest:
Mal kicks Krowl (or Crow, or whatever Niska's thug's name was) into the engine while he's unarmed and has his hands bound.

IIRC Whedon was concerned the character of Crow (spelling taken from shooting script) would be attractive to the Network, which had forced the rapid writing of The Train Job 'pilot'. Crow's disappearance is therefore a symbolic rejection of Network influence. We now know the sensitivity of the Network to such statements.

I took the road less travelled ...

LOFWYRR

Tuesday, July 20, 2004 6:35 AM

Back to the whole 'why let Jayne got with River and Simon, instead of Mal and Zoe" bit, combined with Mal having the list written on his arm...in 'The Message", when Jayne get the letter from home, I saw that Jayne, while intelligent and ruthless, can't read so well. So it's not really that big of a suprise that the merc couldn't be expected to decipher names of medicines he'd never seen before.

"If I'd have wanted schooling, I'd have gone to school"

SOUPCATCHER

Tuesday, July 20, 2004 7:22 AM

I've always liked what Hank Parnell had to say about Mal in general and this scene in particular. The rest of Hank's thesis on why Firefly was canceled is less convincing to me. He may very well be right however it's not something that can ever be verified. But he makes some good points and I think it's time the article got dusted off and re-read. I'll just excerpt the relevant parts and link to the whole article.

Quote:
from "Swatting the Firefly" by Hank Parnell originally published in The Texas Mercury
But most of all, living "beyond the law" as Reynolds and his crew had to, the moral universe of Firefly depended not on the "rule of law," but on its much-maligned and deliberately-misunderstood alternative, the rule of honor. And Firefly made the case, through Reynolds, as persuasively as it has ever been made in American fiction, print, TV, film or otherwise, in my opinion, for the ultimate superiority of the rule of honor over the rule of law—at least for uncommon people, if not the run-of-the-mill herds of swine, sheep, slaves and robots held to be so dear today.

For you see, the rule of honor demands what law must defer: individual responsibility, personal culpability, what is fair and what is just, of every man (and woman) who lives by it. Nowhere is this made more clear than at the climax of the episode "Ariel," in which Reynolds is about to space Jayne for betraying River and her doctor brother to the Feds. Jayne, after some hemming and hawing, admits his guilt, and his reasons for the betrayal: "The money was too good. I got stupid." This makes little impression on Reynolds, who turns and walks away: he knows Jayne is guilty, and why. What turns him back around and stops him is when Jayne asks what Reynolds plans to tell the others, and says, rather pathetically:

"Make something up. Don't tell 'em what I did."

I, for one, could see the wheels turning in Mal Reynolds' head: He's ashamed. There may be something of a man in him after all.

It is then, of course, that Reynolds closes the outer hatch before Serenity leaves the atmosphere, and spares Jayne's life.

Some of you may think this is only in my imagination; and to be sure, I do not imagine that Joss Whedon has sat down and thought about the rule of honor as I have, or would even support or espouse it, as I do, other than as a fictional device for the development of one of his characters. And yet there it is; consciously or not, it is in there, and it underlies every single thing that Reynolds does. Honor is his roadmap in life, his way of finding his way through the wilderness. It says to him at every turn: This thing I can do and live with myself; this thing I can't. It is in the end what makes him a "good" man, in the conventional sense, and an American, and, ultimately, a Southerner.

http://www.fireflyfans.net/feature.asp?f=39

I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!

HKCAVALIER

Tuesday, July 20, 2004 7:34 AM

Couple thoughts: the "I won't kill you..." line makes perfect sense to me in the context of Krowl. It'd be just silly if Mal gave Simon all the corrolaries and exceptions to his basic rule: "Oh, but if you've tried to kill me and members of my crew, and I have you at my mercy and you insist on threatening to hound me till the day I die, then, yeah, I might kill you even if you aren't at that moment armed."

And also, Mal puts his faith in Jayne. He treats him as a member of his crew, which means he trusts him. This is a choice Mal makes. Jayne acknowledged that "doc had a good plan." Mal doesn't have the benefit of our omniscient awareness of Jayne and his motives. And Mal could make little use of Jayne if he based his decisions on Jayne's essencial untrustworthiness.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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