EDIT: I wrote this review a while ago back when I was still fuming over how horribly disappointed I was when I watched Firefly. Since then Guardians of the Galaxy came out and was EXACTLY what I expected/wanted Firefly to be--fun, funny, action packed, and full of space ships. Firefly is more of a depressing, dark, sometimes pseudo-funny drama set in the wild west with a few space ships thrown in. Anyway, Guardians gave me the release I desperately needed and I've since destroyed my copy of Firefly and moved on. I'll write a less angry, more TLDR review right here, but I'll leave the longer, angrier one intact below to be fair to those who commented on it earlier.
In my humble opinion, Firefly has pretty bad writing, but then again I find most serious TV shows' writing pretentious so take that as you will. I appreciate that they tried to work in a little bit of humor, but for me it fell flat and felt out of place. Also, the space western theme needed to be much more subdued because it often seemed nonsensical.
My main disappointment came from the characters Mal and River. I expected Mal to be a funny, quirky guy like Quill from Guardians of the Galaxy, but instead he's moody, angry, and mean all the time. I hate that kind of character. Also, I expected River to be an awesome female warrior that had a quirky personality, but (and the Firefly fans I've talked to agree) she's an annoying crybaby and doesn't do anything most of the time. I didn't really like the rest of the cast, and several of the characters feel superfluous, but then again that's just me.
Anyway, that's my new review and I think it's a bit more fair to Firefly, but if you want to read my much longer, much angrier old review it's below. I don't recommend it.
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I hate this show. There, I said it. I know a lot of people are going to hate on me for saying it, but it's the truth. I. DON'T. LIKE. FIREFLY. Now that you've probably already clicked "unhelpful," please allow me to explain/vent.
I'm sure you're aware, dear reader, of Firefly's immense popularity. Many of my friends recommended it to me, saying it was like Star Wars, except somehow better. Also, the internet made the show sound totally awesome, so I ordered the complete series on blu-ray. When it finally came I IMMEDIATELY shoved it in my PS3 and slammed the play button, I was so excited to watch it. Then... well... my first impression of the show (other than it wasn't at all like Star Wars) was that I didn't like the style of it at all. I think it was the country music theme song playing over the menu screen that put me off initially. I hate that theme song, it's horrible and it feels really out of place. Plus that guy's got some sort of speech impediment. Anyway, then the pilot episode started and I can't say I found it anything but boring and waaay too long. Still, everyone did say the show was the best thing ever, and dagnabbit I was going to see what the hype was about. I forced myself to watch the rest of the first disk, but it took me a couple weeks because it kept getting harder and harder to make myself push that play button. After finishing that one disk I still can't bring myself to watch any more.
Don't get me wrong, though, I love the premise of the show. I mean, space pirates and smugglers? Sign me up! Plus there are plenty of space westerns out there that I do love, like Star Wars, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Outlaw Star. Firefly is just... really badly done. It's like they made a cowboy show and shoehorned in spaceships and space-age technology, not even trying to make it seem logical or fluid. I mean, Joss Whedon even said the Reavers are supposed to be Apaches. SPACE APACHES. This sort of thing would be okay with a cartoon or something, but it just doesn't work for a serious live action show because all the space stuff seems out of place when they're on the ground, and all the cowboy stuff seems out of place when they're in space.
So yeah, I honestly tried as hard as I could to get into the show but wound up hating it. That's okay, right? I'm allowed to dislike some things that other people do like, right? WRONG. If you don't like Firefly, everyone makes you keep watching it until you tell them you like it. "Did you watch them in order?" YES. "Did you get to the one where--" YES. "You should try rewatching them, I'm sure you'll eventually 'get' it." NO. It's like people can't believe that Firefly isn't perfect, just as I can't believe people actually enjoy it. What makes it even worse is the fact that you can't swing a dead internet around without tripping over some Firefly fanblog or T-shirt sale or facebook post touting it as the greatest work of art ever created, or condemning FOX for cancelling it when it wasn't getting enough ratings to warrant a second season (don't give me anything about 'time slots' either, I hear no one even watched the Firefly marathon they played after it got cancelled!)
... But I digress. If you haven't already been turned off by my negativity and want to keep reading I'll tell you exactly what it is I hate about Firefly.
I think the main thing that really kills the show for me is the characters--I can't stand any of them except the engineer. Please allow me to enumerate.
First you have Wash, the pilot. His quirk is that he plays with plastic dinosaurs. We're obviously supposed to find this hilarious, which I find insulting. The idea sounds funny on paper, but Wash comes off as annoying instead of funny. Robin Williams he is not.
Wash is married to the first mate. If you've ever been in the same room as an over-affectionate couple that can't control themselves, then get ready for the same awkwardness because they're always talking about tearing each other's clothes off. When not conjuring up unsavory mental images, the first mate acts all tough and serious, which makes me wonder what she sees in Wash because... well, look at him, he's an idiot. The first mate is actually kind of cool when she's not hitting on her husband, so I think they should've made her captain instead of the other guy.
The next crew member is a guy who isn't the first mate but seems to carry the same authority. This guy looks and acts like a friggin' criminal, and none of the other crew members like him. I remember in one episode the captain asks this man if he would ever accept money to assassinate him, to which he answered yes. He also tried to abandon the captain and first mate on some planet while stealing command of the ship for himself at one point. Why would anyone would keep this person in their crew, let alone give him a place in the chain of command? If I was the captain I'd fire him and take his guns away, if not push him out the airlock. Or, y'know, just not hire him to begin with. Two words, captain: "BACKGROUND CHECK."
There's also (for some reason) a space hooker, called a 'Companion.' She, being a prostitute, is inexplicably given VIP treatment wherever she goes. She is sometimes used as a plot device, but otherwise contributes nothing to the show and annoys the crap out of me, especially with her 'I Dream of Jeannie' wardrobe. I think she and the captain have some sort of attraction going on or something, but they can't do anything about it because space prostitutes are like royalty in this universe.
Then we have a priest named Book. I kind of like the priest, but the captain's always yelling at him and I hate that.
OH GOOD GRIEF then there is an annoying doctor and his even more annoying stowaway sister, River. The doctor WILL NOT STOP WHINING, and River is worse!
Now, back before I saw any Firefly the internet told me that River was awesome, and I was excited to see her in action because I saw an awesome picture of her with swords in a karate pose somewhere. She was THE reason I wanted to watch the show. Imagine my disappointment when I got halfway through the series and all she's done so far is cry and babble nonsense! I was seriously pissed off, I felt like I was a victim of false advertising. No, I'm STILL pissed off! She probably starts doing cool stuff by the end of the show, but I'll probably never watch to find out. I have yet to hear her say one complete sentence, even though she's supposed to be some sort of prodigy.
Next there's the engineer, the only character I do like. She is bubbly and friendly and is the only character that isn't rude to all the other characters. At the end of the pilot episode the captain told the everyone she had died, and I was like, "WHAT?! Did they just kill off the ONLY character I like?!" Yeah ...and then you see her alive and the captain's like, "April Fools, she's alive!" HOW HILARIOUS. The captain had been such a grouchy douche so far and the last thing I expected was a joke out of him, not that tricking people into thinking someone is dead qualifies as a 'joke.' Good grief, that pissed me off so much I started yelling at the TV, and I almost stopped watching the show right there because she's the only thing that made it almost tolerable. Imagine if someone pulled a prank like that in real life? The captain is such a friggin' psycho.
Which brings me to the captain himself. The internet told me he was a funny, quirky, lovable rogue with a heart of gold, and he was my number two reason for wanting to see Firefly after River. I gotta say though, I hate him. He's absolutely nothing like how I heard. He's always all dark and moody, and he yells at Book just for being a priest EVERY TIME HE SEES HIM. I mean, isn't Book a paying customer?! What kind of idiot yells at a paying customer?! Aren't they in desperate need of income?! What an awful character!
What I REALLY hate about the captain, however, is that he doesn't even play his character consistently. Usually he's grouchy and moody, being a jerk to almost everyone else. Then, after he's made me hate him for half an hour, he'll suddenly make a completely unexpected lighthearted joke and then go back to being a jerk. This happens maybe once every episode, and it really bothers me because the jokes not only seem out of character but whenever he makes them my reaction is, "Did ... did he just make a joke?? He's not allowed to ... you're not allowed to be funny, captain! I hate your character!" (I actually yelled this at the TV while watching.) If he was ALWAYS that lighthearted and quirky I would probably like him, but instead it just feels like the writers couldn't decide on what kind of character to write.
Speaking of the writing, I remember yelling at the TV quite a lot about the idiocy going on in some of the episodes. For instance, we have the Reavers. I'll grant that the Reavers are a cool concept--they're a bunch of castaways that got Space Madness like in Ren and Stimpy--but if you think about it, these people have space rabies, so wouldn't they just all kill each other instead of giving themselves prison piercings and acting like Animal from the Muppets? What makes these violent crazy people say, "We'll kill, rape, and eat people as long as they're NOT Reavers?" And how can these completely irrational human beings pilot something as sophisticated as a spaceship? Plus I find it hard to believe that simply seeing a Reaver doing Reaver stuff is enough make you to go crazy and become one of them.
Also, the people on all the planets they visit are impossibly backward. There are SPACESHIPS in this universe, how are there people that still believe in witchcraft?! Is there no internet or education in the future? It just pushes all suspension of disbelief out the window! (They even dress like they're in Little House on the Prairie, for Pete's sake! MAN, I hate that!) And how does the captain, with ABSOLUTELY NO SWORDFIGTHING EXPERIENCE, kill an expert fencer in a swordfighting duel? He doesn't even cheat to win! Speaking from experience it's just not possible, but come to think of it, why are there still swordfighting duels in the space age?! Haven't they invented more civilized (or at least more hi-tech) means of settling disputes by now? How stupid does the captain have to be in order to get in a fight to the death with an expert swordsman over the honor of a SPACE PROSTITUTE?! It's mind boggling!
Then there's the awful dialogue--everyone's always mean to each other, and I hate that. Not only do I not want to watch it, but it just feels like they injected arguments into the show as a feeble attempt at making the characters more believable. (And then after it's established that everyone hates each other, they show everyone playing basketball together in their spare time as though they're best buddies. I was like, "What?!") Anyway, besides the unlikable characters, the dialogue has to be the biggest reason why I can't stand this show.
Also, all the storylines are lousy. That train episode kept making me think of FF8, and then there's another episode about ballroom dancing (of all things) that was completely boring and stupid. (Why were they all dressed in Elizabethan clothes in the future?! That's not even fitting with the Western/Sci-fi theme of the show!) And another episode was about a space version of the Crucible that didn't make any sense. Okay, so first River says something about a mute child talking to her, and then for some reason the villagers' immediate assumption was that River is a witch?? Then they were going to burn River and her brother on a stake, even though they kidnapped the brother because he's a doctor they're in desperate need of! And then the captain, who doesn't even know the doctor is in trouble, comes to rescue them even though it's established that he hates the doctor! The reason the captain gives for rescuing the doctor is that he's "part of the crew." No, captain, he's a passenger that everyone on board hates, and his sister is a stowaway that the police are after. Plus, the doctor jumped ship voluntarily because he was stupid, and I don't think that it's ever explained how they knew the villagers were going to burn them. I remember being angry most of the time while I was watching this show, and wondering just how anyone could like it because the writing was so bad.
That being said, the special effects are actually pretty friggin' good for a television show. Color me impressed. I don't like the spaceship designs, though. I think the Serenity looks like they took an average looking spaceship, put a big red light on its tail end, and then stepped on it to make it crooked. It bugs me every time I look at it. I've heard people complain that the guns in this show look like old west guns but shoot lasers, but to be honest I didn't even notice.
Overall, maybe I'm being too harsh. I don't suppose it's a TERRIBLE show, I just can't stand it personally. There were two parts I did kind of like--the part where the captain kicks some dude into an engine, and the part where the engineer was talking about spaceships with random guys at the ballroom dance. The rest of the show I can do without. I dunno, maybe Firefly just didn't live up to my expectations, or maybe being constantly reminded that it exists has made me jaded. I don't suppose it deserved to be cancelled based on its merits (I think CSI is a hundred times worse), but I also doubt it would have reached the popularity it currently enjoys had it not been for the scandal surrounding its cancellation. Anyway, I could never give a show I hate this much anything more than one star, so bring on the haters.
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