Firefly S1-02: The Short Review

'Bushwhacked'

Written and Directed by Tim Minear

"Bushwhack: Verb, transitive, 'to attack suddenly from a place of concealment, ambush.'"

Well...I don't know about anyone else, but I thought that was a weird mix of the kick-ass and the disappointingly poor. It almost felt like two different episodes spliced down the middle. Or to put it another way, it felt simultaneously as though it had too much plot, and too little.

The first half of the episode, in which Firefly investigates the derelict corpse of a bushwhacked transport ship, is moody and atmospheric (albeit with a few diversions that seemed utterly superfluous; what was that booby-trap segment all about?). There are some nice character scenes - any conversation between Book and Mal gets an enthusiastic thumbs-up from me - and the Reavers are effectively established as an enemy simultaneously intriguing and frightening. I think it works because there is a survivor; through him, we see what the Reavers are like rather than just being told about it. And worse, we're afraid that what we're seeing is just a pale shadow of the real thing.

Then things get turned on their head, and Serenity is bushwhacked and boarded by an Alliance vessel. The pace shifts dramatically - too dramatically, for my tastes; it feels as though too long was spent on the first half, and Tim Minear suddenly realised what he had to fit into the second half. Not that there aren't some very nice scenes here, too, with the juxtaposed ransacking of Serenity and interrogation of her crew working particularly well. But the denouement feels too quick; all the tension built up in the first half of the episode isn't so much released as it is wasted.

I think the problem is that the narrative threads - the Reaver attack, and the Alliance boarding Serenity - never really come together. The half-way point doesn't feel so much like a twist as it does a reboot, and whilst I like the fact that the most obvious denouement (returning Reavers) was avoided, the replacement (Mal helps out the Alliance, they let him go after a rap on the knuckles) wasn't much better.

Character-wise, Inara and Zoe still bore me to tears, but I'm increasingly enjoying Mal, Book and Kaylee. I've also decided that although there are definite Wesley/Simon similarities, they are in at least one important respect opposites - where Wesley was sent out into the world overprepared, Simon is massively underprepared. The music was a lot better this time around, as well, with the strings and twangs in the main working for the episode, rather than against it (although it has to be said that there was still some unfortunate 'comedy' scoring). Unfortunately, I still don't feel that the writers have quite got the right balance of modern and 'western' language; there were some moments that grated.

But all in all, it's probably a step up from last week. I still don't have a clear sense of the why of Firefly, mind you. I don't know what it's about; I don't know why it has to be set in spaaaace. But even with the weird plotting, I enjoyed the episode, and that has to mean something.