Firefly Review

What exists is a crew comedy with a war behind it. The idea underneath is the strongest thing here, that the protagonists lost, and that the frontier they scrape a living on is the losing side's exile rather than a promise. Nathan Fillion plays Mal as a man whose humor is entirely defensive, and the show is at its best in small scenes, a dinner table, a card game, a job going wrong in a predictable way. Out of Gas is the standout, a bottle episode built on a fractured timeline that explains the entire crew in forty minutes.

Objects in Space is stranger and better than anything a first season should be attempting. The costs are obvious. It aired out of order and was cancelled before any arc could develop, so the Alliance is a rumor, River's plot is a sketch, and the emotional payoffs eventually happen in a feature film instead. It looks cheap and the western signifiers are laid on very thickly. The talk is exceptional and the loss is real.