Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Classics: Firefly 1:10 - Ariel

Overall Rating: 8.9

Dude! That's some seriously scary sh*t! Sorry...I'd just forgotten how freakin' creepy the alliance is...YIPES! Also...Mal earned about a thousand cool points for his handling of Jayne's betrayal. Deeply awesome.

Plot Synopsis:

After River randomly slashes Jayne in the chest with a huge knife, Simon decides that her condition is getting worse and she needs to be treated soon with actual medicine. Since Serenity is briefly putting into port on Ariel to drop off Inara for a core-planet booty call, Simon takes advantage of this one-time chance to get some answers with state of the art equipment. He contracts Serenity for a heist. They're going to steal medicine from the hospital store rooms to make some needed cash and Simon is going to get half an hour alone with River in a diagnostic ward.

En route, Simon and River have to pretend to be dead to get through the doors with the rest of the crooks, and Jayne, Mal, Wash and Zoe all have to learn to speak like paramedics (with some mildly comical results). When they get there, all seems to be going according to plan...but Jayne has other ideas on his payday. He contacts alliance officials to confirm his deal...a prisoner swap for some serious credits. As the Feds are closing their net, Simon scans River and finds out that she's had her Amigdala stripped, meaning she can't suppress her emotions at all...she feels everything at maximum volume. Jayne hurries them away from the medical lab and to the back door instead of the front while Mal and Zoe haul off with a ton of tasty loot.

At the back door, Jayne meets Federal Marshalls who put all three of them in cuffs. Jayne's been had...after a scary bit of interrogation, they are moved to a holding cell where Jayne goes rambo on their asses and delivers some serious beat-downage to the guards and breaks them out. Meanwhile, the uber-Feds arrive wearing blue gloves and, upon realizing that the low-level guards have spoken with the prisoners, go on a mass killing spree using a hyper-sonic generator that causes a person's blood vessels to explode (COOL!...and SCARY!!). They do this with surgical calm and River senses their approach. Quivering with fear (saying "hands of blue, two by two...") she leads them to a back exit and Mal arrives just in time to blow the door open from the other side.

Everyone returns to Serenity with all the tasty drug spoils and all seems well. But Mal knows better. He clubs Jayne over the head with a crowbar and throws him into an airlock. As the ship takes off, Jayne wakes up and realizes Mal has him trapped. Mal confronts his treasonous crewmate, angrily bellowing that when someone betrays anyone on his crew...they betray him. Jayne asks what Mal will do to explain why Jayne died and begs Mal not to tell them what he did. This being at least some small sign of guilt, Mal lets him live. The episode concludes with Simon giving River a new medication that he hopes will help her stay more calm.

Writing: 8.0

The plot is a more-than-servicable suspense-thriller-style action story. I found it a tad lacking from the language/theater side of things (the dialogue was a bit limited...much of the episode's time was spent in group montages and escape sequences/stage combat scenes...heh), but what it misses there, it more than makes up for in scary Federal bad guys and character developments. They made an interesting choice, for example, to show us how good a doctor Simon is by having him save a random patient's life and bark at an incompetent doctor. It's ncie to see Simon - normally kind of a Nancy (LOL), get tough and kick some booty too when properly motivated. As well, we have Jayne learning a couple of very important lessons - 1) dealing with the devil usually costs you a lot more than the reward he's offering and 2) this is not a crew of solitary wanderers...it's a family.

Acting: 9.7

The big winners this week were: Sean Maher (a fabulous rendering he gave of his professional confidence, his love for River, and his inner strength and tenacity), Summer Glau (who I like more each time I see her prominently featured), Nathan Fillon (right at the end when he demonstrates how to keep order on a ship of well-meaning thieves with one rather bad influence), and, of course, Adam Baldwin...if you watch carefully, you see just a hint of guilt on his face when Mal reminds Jayne that disloyalty to anyone on the crew is the same as disloyalty to Mal...and it carries through to his request (which I believe to have been genuine) that Mal not tell the others about his misdeeds.

Not to be ignored, the guys playing the blue-hand Feds were REALLY good...and really...f***ing...scary.

Message: 9.0

We've got such a lovely cornucopia of morally impressive elements mixing together to form this story.

1) The power that filial love gives Simon is depicted to be just as crucial as any romantic love could be in forming his identity. Never is Simon's character more noble than when he's fighting for River.

2) That same filial love drives Mal too...his crew IS his family...and he'll fight to keep them together at all costs...including the life of his wavering black sheep if necessary.

3) If you don't watch what your government is doing...if you let youself be placated by a stunning array of government services and cushy jobs and a media very much in the pockets of said government...that power WILL corrupt the men who wield it. And innocent people WILL feel the consequences. Large governemtn beaurocracies aren't to be trusted blindly.

God I love this show. It's a shame it never got a fair chance.

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