Reviews Series / Firefly

"Agreed, they shouldn't have done that with Nandi, and the villain was weak and stereotyped.

Although, the wham line at the end of the episode is pretty well done, and some of Inara's reactions in this episode gain new meaning and insights when you know what her secret is. But yeah, even that doesn't save it from the bland villain and the bland shootout. "

Moved to the right conversation thread. :)

Cheers, also thanks for the heads up on the Inara secret. I always figured it was going to be a Book thing again, maybe she was part of some secret society, but this is good enough that I'm going to enjoy watching Heart of Gold again, just to see her actions and make sense of them through this. It just makes so much sense of everything she's been doing

I think she's very affected by what happens to Nandi, and how Mal's so guilty about it, and that's probably the big driver for her decision at the end more than any kind of jealousy. Really, I don't see so much jealousy in Inara so much as this deep, inescapable sadness about things she wants and thinks she can't have. So many of her reactions throughout the series are explained by this, and it sets her up for worlds of hurt with a lot of her clients - she gets to pretend for a little while that she's fine and happy, but the illusion often comes crashing down.

Knowing that doesn't really salvage the Heart of Gold episode, but it does make some moments of it very poignant.

Oh also. Yes, there's some implied obligation weirdness in the crew helping the women out and taking their services. Including what happens with Nandi, which actually also undermines the moment. It's almost like she sees what's going on, and that being a replacement fantasy was how she chose to make some kind of repayment. Very odd.

Joss has a strange view of feminism - in his world women only deserve respect if they're cool action heroes, maybe with special powers, and sex isn't coerced if it's the heroes asking for it. And if some girl goes against the majority because she thinks she's actually defusing the situation and helping, Joss seems to think she deserves what happens to her.

And that's without getting into that sticky fatherhood issue. Would actually have liked to have seen something exploring that neither Rance Burgess or Petaline were suitable parents, instead of just assuming that just because a woman becomes pregnant, she's automatically going to be a good mother and that she has the best claim on the child. There's also logical flaws in the premise itself - we're never really given a motive for why Petaline even wants the child beyond that she considers it hers.

It makes sense you might think Heart of Gold was the 2nd worst episode of the series. At this point in time the show had already been canceled and they were running on fumes budgetarily speaking. Also, I agree that the premise seemed a little weak sauce, but I do not think they were trying to tackle any major issues with the episode. I believe it was simply setting up for Inara to leave and trying to show the difference between a whore and a registered companion in universe.

As for the shoot out, I think had the show continued we might have seen a lot more LAZOR battles (pew pew) and interesting combat, but again, they spent almost their entire budget on the dumb hovercraft (to make it more science-y fiction-y) and so they did not have the money or time to really do much with the rest of it. On that same note of being canceled, I think the crew was a little disheartened (pun intended) by everything and may not have given it their all for this episode.

My question for the reviewer - what did you think was the worst episode if this is only second worst? (I personally think this was the most weak tea of the whole short series).

Not trying to have a message is part of my problem with the episode though. They poke an absolute hornet's nest but then the episode is way to weak and they're playing it way too safe to do anything with it, and it ends up being this tangled mess. If you want a normal nice generic episode then choose normal nice generic topics to fill it with

The Message is my worst. It's actually got much stronger points than Heart of Gold but the bad parts are also much starker to me. It's odd, I remember considering voting on a TV Tropes poll (back when polls were part of a lot of episodes) for The Message to be my favourite but since then I really grew to dislike Death Of The Hypotenuse and the ending whilst emotive is pretty forced and contrived.