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In fairness, the pilot wasn't that good. Ink Dagger said "I think it would have carried itself. I've yet to show the series to someone and for them to hate it" but personally, I've yet to show the series to anyone and have them get through the pilot without significant prodding.
I have to disagree there. The first time I watched the series I happen to caught the cattle-run/witchhunt episode and I thought the whole show was terrible. When it dropped on Netflix I decided to gave it a second chance and just binge it...it's not that many episodes after all. And while it is not the most amazing pilot I have ever seen (frankly, there are only a few pilots I would consider great in the first place), it gave me a sense of the characters which made me more interested to watch more.
Properly introducing characters matters for a show like this. (The witchhunt episode is still my least favourite, though)
The pilot is a LOT of exposition and infodumps.
Reavers, the Alliance, The Battle of Serenity Valley, River and Simon, and so on and so on.
If your attention span is not 100% focused on it, you won't be able to absorb everything.
I actually am with Fox's executives on Train Job that it's better just to get to Point B.
I.e. "These guys are space criminals, they do space crime, it's hilarious."
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.The best pilot episodes are the ones that feel breezy and get across all the character and premise introductions with as little dialogue as possible. Two of the best pilot episodes I've seen are for Arrested Development and My Name Is Earl, and it's probably no coincidence that they both had voice over narrators with flashbacks to move things along.
"Serenity" isn't the best pilot I've seen, as the show has a large cast and thus the introductions are exhausting and has just a lot of unrelated stuff going on, but Whedon's dialogue is as crisp as it always is.

I think the show didn't need a seasonal arc.
Because it wasn't that kind of show.
There's no "villain" in Firefly, it's just about a bunch of Space Truckers living the Independent Dream.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.