@ Tracy: I was surprised by how much older and heavier he’s gotten. He really looks a whole lot older than Mal in Castle, doesn’t he?

I loved the guy who played Mal so much. I was thrilled when he was going to be in a show that also included dead bodies (one of my personal mottos is “if it’s got a dead body in the first ten minutes, it’s worth watching at least once”, along with ” if you are pissing off the same number of people on either side of the debate, you’re either just about right or very very VERY wrong” and “if you can’t be helpful at least be quiet” gets me through life. I love parentheses). Castle isn’t great tv but my goodness, that man is adorable *giggle*.

So R3, don’t know if it’s because it resonates with Texans or not. I only know *he* resonates with this Texan

Kenn – “Firefly” is essentially a variation on the theme of “The Killer Angels” – If you’ve never read the book, it’s about what happens to the side that lost the Civil War, people who weren’t villains, many of whom were high-minded idealists, many just fighting for their homes, when their side looses, their culutre is all-but destroyed, they become 3rd class citizens, and can’t or simply won’t fit back in to society. As Texans, that’s got to resonate a bit, right? A little? The more developed central planets are more modern and traditionally SF, and we see some of those, others are more western or more eastern, the ones on the fringes of society tend to be frontiery because they’re poor, on the edge of society, and generally ignored by the central planets until tax time rolls around. I thought it was great fun, myself, but then I like westerns and SF, so in my mind it’s only natural they’d go together like wet and rain.

Mr. Sideous – I think you’re bang on target. I think he tends to be in love with his own words – which is actually a good quality in a writer – and I think his projects eventually collapse under their own acumulated weight. Firefly is different for several reasons – it’s SF, not Fantasy, and since it’s 500 years in the future and Earth is only slightly better than a legend, there are few-if-any pop culture references beyond the obvious shoutouts to Westerns, the Civil War, and a couple subtle digs at Star Trek. None are particularly overt. And of course the show only produced 13 episodes before it got killed, so there wasn’t time for it’s inherent Whedonism to eat itself.

It’s a fun little failed series. I can’t whole-heartedly reccomend anything that had so few episodes to actually show, I don’t think we ever get a really solid feel for where the show was going, but I did really enjoy it. “Cancelled” doesn’t always mean “Failed,” it might simply mean the show ran on Fox.

Wrong Indy film, bud!

@ No One In Particular – I’m the guy who walked out of Raiders of the Lost Ark the first time because I thought they were trying to say the Ark was some kind of hokey Eric Von Danikin radio transmitter to aliens, so I know where you’re coming from, and I also know how easy it is to be wrong when you make those kinds of snap decisions. (For instance, they were NOT saying that bout the Ark in Raiders). That said, I’ve watched every episode of Firefly umpteen times, and can honestly say none of them match your description. I can also say that your objections to a “Preist with a past” are shortsighted. The “Whiskey Priest” is a longstanding tradition of western movies and books and the west itself, and though Shepherd Book very clearly has some sordid details in his past, it is also just as obviously clear that he devoted himself to God as a result of guilt over that past, and that he is – now – a very good man who’s found the strength through Christ to rebuild himself and help others. It’s very obvious that when Book says things about God in the series, he honestly means them, and I consider him to be one of the best portrayals of a traditionally religious man in SF and on TV, period, end of sentence.
As to him going to a prostitute for guidance, he’s made it clear that he doesn’t approve of her job, but she *is* the only other ‘educated’ person on the boat, and she does have some religious training (Buddhist), so it’s only fitting they’d have at least a little bit in common.
I think you’re way off base there, Mr. No One In Particular, if in fact that is your real name.