War and Peace and Sex and Violins

I don't understand all this fuss about too much violins on TV. I think there should be MORE violins on TV. Wait, that's an old SNL bit. Nevermind.

War and Peace and Sex and Violence
OK. Now that I got that out of my system. About "War Stories." Brian brings up some interesting points about the violence contained in this episode. I'm not sure that I agree, however. Every drama has an episode (at least one, maybe more) where the purpose is to try and shock the audience with hard emotions. This can be caused primarily (but not limited to) in one of two ways....Tragedy or Violence. This episode used violence.

But beyond that, this episode ran the gambit of every emotional extreme. We were happy and having fun in the beginning. River and Kaylee acting like children (a great moment and a good sigh of relief given Simon's assertion that it was time for River to "wake up") was a fantastically funny moment combined with Mal and Inara discussing the impending arrival of the councilor (counterpointed in an almost parental way by their disussion of Kaylee and River.) Foreboding was properly queued just before the credits as we joined our antagonist (did anyone else notice, by the way, the absence of the prologue?) Concern was put in place for Wash and Zoe during their "lover's spat." This was made ever so much more important by the fact that, to this point, Wash was the wise-guy in the group and the one who seemed to be the most care-free. To see him upset made the stress all the more clear.

Then, for a brief moment, it turned into one of those road pictures (ala Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.) Then came fear. Their capture. Their torture. Now, let's give credit where it is due. Only in Joss's world can two characters be tortured HEAVILY and still be funny. The crew took our emotional innards and played tug-of-war with them, with us wanting to laugh at the witty banter, but fear for our characters safety. Now let's be frank for a minute. Yes, as Brian points out, there may not be enough viewers out there to care about these people. On the flip side, this show has not been on long enough and does not have a clear enough future for us to believe that these characters MUST survive every encounter. For a moment, when Mal was pronounced dead, I almost believed it!!!

Let's not forget Zoe's rescue of Wash. At first I was surprised that she would pick him so quickly. Then I realized I shouldn't have been. Mal could take care of himself. He could last longer. And what's more, Wash is her husband. How could she decide otherwise? And this was the turning point in the episode. Upon their return to Serenity, the episode became like a true action western. The cavalry suited up and rode into town to save Mal. (Kudos to Book for one of the best spiritual lines ever on a television show, regarding the good book and kneecaps.)

The episode ended well. Especially with Kaylee now fearing River (for more than adequate reasons. I kinda fear her myself.) Mal's revelation to Zoe about how they are going to have to sleep together was priceless and highlights what I love so much abbout Zoe's character and what makes Gina Torres a great actress for the part. And that would be her deadpan reactions, which were in the rarest of forms Friday night with the two of them milking the situation for maximum effect until Wash would come in and break them up (tee hee.)

Of course, no review of the episode would be complete without examining Inara and the Councilor. To be honest, I wasn't terribly surprised by this latest development. Unfortunately, I don't know how much of the audience would be either. But what made this moment was not the shock value for us, but the shock value for the crew. Again, I must agree with Brian that Jayne wins the award for best reaction to this revelation.

As to Firefly as a whole. I have to admit that I started feeling the end of Firefly back when Farscape was cancelled. Not because I feel that Farscape is more worthy than Firefly--that's far from the case. But what I do realize is that quality is no longer a factor in a network keeping a show on the air. In the good old days when a show was of good quality, but was not good in the ratings, a network would move it around to see if, perhaps, it would do better in another timeslot with maybe a different audience. Nowadays networks are too quick to drop the axe on intelligent programming in favor of such intellectually limited fare as "Joe Millionaire" (coming to a FOX station near you.)

  posted by J @ 14:37