Some friends talked me into buying the boxed set a few months ago and I’m just now getting around to watching it. WHAT THE HELL WAS FOX THINKING?!?! The show is brilliant.
I’ve only seen the first 3 episodes so far, but wow. My favorite part so far is when the Russian enforcer comes for the cargo they stole from the train and Mal tries to explain to him that theres no need for anyone to get hurt and to take the money back, the guy refuses, so mal kicks him into the engine.
How were we supposed to know this was “really good” at the time? There’s so much din out of fandom that anything can seem good to that subculture and for the rest of us it’s impossible to distinguish. It wasn’t like Fox went overboard promoting the series. I barely even knew it existed. Just one of many sci fi shows out there to me.
Most non-Browncoat Firefly fans I run into also only discovered it via the DVD release and well after the fact. Most seem to have stumbled across the movie DVD first, not having even seen it in the theatres, and then picked up the set after getting hooked there.
If it ever did come back the base of viewers and fans would be pretty huge. Only more so the longer it marinates out there. Look at this:
The boxed series is still at #14 for Amazon’s DVD sales.
Wildly underpromoted, and promoted incorrectly. The few ads I saw for the show emphasized the action or pretty CG. Not the characters or humor, which is the real reason the show was so great.
Having watched the box set recently myself, I’m betting the scene where River cuts up the Bible to correct some inconsistencies is the cause of its cancellation. This did air on FOX, after all.
Someone here posted a rumor a while back that it was deliberately sabotaged by a Fox exec who fired the guy responsible for greenlighting the show. Hence the terrible promotion, airing episodes out of order, etc.
what extarbags said could be a good theory, stuff like that happens with screenplays that get the go under one exec only to get killed by the next exec to make sure the old guard can’t take credit.
I tuned into the show once or twice when it was on the air, but it really didn’t make much sense (I watched the first show, and of course, it wasn’t the pilot so I had no idea what was what). Then I had trouble figuring out when it was on. So basically whatever Fox was doing kept me away from the show. Watching it now in the correct order, saw Bushwacked last night. Loved the “Jayne, you’ll scare the women” line. Absolutely brilliant.
I had mostly stopped watching TV by the time it was released. All I’d heard about it was vaguely space related. Until about a year ago I thought it was some kind of show about alien abduction, heh. But then a friend lent me his DVDs, and I realized how I missed out.
Realistically though, it’s probably better to have watched it after the fact than in the crazed fox order anyway.
No, for all that I love the show to death Fox made the right economic decision. This was nicely demonstrated when the movie failed at the box office as well. So for all that we all might think it, and the series, are great we are clearly in a minority. Everyone I know who has seen the series loves it. All these people knew about the movie. And yet the movie totally failed to make money. We are clearly operating in a special geek zone. At least our tv shows are better…
I wish there was a way to bring that clever character interaction and behavior into a setting far more palatable to the average joe than the firefly universe. I think the sci-fi western stuff would have put the nail in the show’s coffin at some point. But my favorite little moments and details from the show have nothing really to do with the actual setting. Moments like when Mal kicks the guy into the engine could have happened a number of ways in a number of different settings and still would have had a similar effect.
I may just go buy the DVDs just to throw some more cash at the franchise, even though its too late anyway.
From a British perspective, which is limited in knowledge of such things, Mr. A, can I just point out the Simpsons, which may put your theory to the test?
I disagree. I think a lot of the reason Firefly works is because we still get the cultural significance of the wild west imagery. As soon as you grok that it’s the wild west in space, you suddenly understand that Mal can do things that’d be downright evil in the midst of society, but are simply pragmatic on the fringe. I suppose it could have been set in any other way and they could have expounded on this ad nauseum, but really, all they had to do was set it as a western and 95% of the people watching will innately understand the whole “frontier = rough times” underlying theme. We just don’t have any other cultural reference as strong for implying “The far frontier” as “western”.
I may just go buy the DVDs just to throw some more cash at the franchise, even though its too late anyway.
IMO, buy the DVDs to watch them again. They’re good multiple times, really. Whedon writes some compelling characters. (Though I think he got mired in Buffy about college time, when he lost the main vampire=supernatural threat -> teen angst made real link.)
I think the Simpsons worked primarily because it started out so long ago. I think Married with Children would die hideously if it were to come out on Fox now for similar reasons. I can’t think of anything on Fox right now worth watching. (Including the Simpsons.) They just simply had better stuff when they were less established and more hungry. Now it’s a matter of trying to play to the “right demographic” instead of simply saying “Hey, look at us, we have something cool.”
I bought the DVD and am just now watching it. I love the writing and the characters and while usually a big SF fan, the setting doesn’t do that much for me.
Now, I’m not geek enough to complain about sounds in space (which I actually don’t think Firefly has?), but the suspension of disbelief needed to imagine an universe, where it makes sense to fly small herds of cattle between planets is hard to come by…
Maybe Whedon would have fleshed it out more or explained some stuff had the series continued, but right now it just seems like somebody wrote ‘cowboys in space’ on a blackboard and went from there.
… and I’m sorry to say it, but the ‘simple villagers wants to burn the psychic at the stake’ would have been clichéd had it aired as an original trek episode.
But the characters, dialogue and interaction is great and it beats most other shows out there, so I’d loved for it to carry on.
Also, the current Fox strategy of “see what ABC is doing and then copy it in trashier form” really makes me hate the network far more than a sycophantic “news channel” under their banner can.
