Television is a fickle creature.
It gives us great shows and characters we love…but it also can also cause us heartache and sadness when shows that we’ve come to adore are forced off the air before they have a chance to really shine.
Out of all the shows that have premiered and suddenly gotten the ax, FIREFLY remains the biggest example of television’s mistakes. It’s the one that gets the most outcry when anyone talks about shows that were cancelled prematurely – and more than 10 years later, Browncoats still reign as science fiction’s most dedicated fans.
The opinion is a simple one – Firefly SHOULDN’T have been cancelled in the first place, it should have been given a chance to shine.
The great Captain Mal Reynolds…need I say more? Ask any Browncoat (or even a non-Browncoat) about Nathan Fillion, and you get a response akin to gushing.
In terms of television characters, there really was no one better than Captain Mal. He essentially epitomized the definition of awesome action hero – not to mention he was witty, cunning, smart and handsome. A respected leader, the one that everyone loved, you wanted to be his best friend and you also wanted to be his mate (sorry, Inara.)
Nathan was a large part of what made Firefly so great. His ability to bring so much of Joss Whedon’s vision to life is a testament to how the show truly wouldn’t have been the same without him.
Joss Whedon pulled together a phenomenal cast for his series, and the most depressing thing about Firefly‘s premature cancellation was that none of them truly got to exercise their acting chops in the way they should have.
Nathan Fillion, Jewel Staite, Adam Baldwin, Sean Maher, Alan Tudyk, Gina Torres and Morena Baccarin all brought something special to the table as their respective characters. Not only that, their close rapport to each other off the air helped sell their interactions on the show. We believed that Serenity was a crew who loved and supported each other because in real life, the actors had that great bond. And because they were able to sell their character’s stories with so much credibility, it made us love them even more.
Firefly created its own universe, which, at the time, was something pretty awesome and not something you saw in most television shows. It’s truly sad that it never got past its first season, because there were some major storylines that had the potential to be really involving and interesting. Who else wanted to know what River was REALLY on the run from? Who else wanted to know what why the phrase “hands of blue, two by two” was easily one the creepiest things in the world? And admit it – didn’t you want to see if there was ANOTHER crappy town where Jayne was the hero?
One only has to look at the track record of Joss’ work to see how brilliant the man is. Ask yourself who else could create a show about a western bandit space crew that curses frequently in Chinese and makes it sound…well…normal? Who else could create dialogue that involves a grown man playing with toy dinosaurs (and believably sell it as a part of a character) or put into an episode a group of townspeople singing a rousing drinking song about “The Man They Call Jayne?”
Joss managed to use a writing style which employed techniques from different types of television shows, and his unique brand of humor remains unrivaled by other television creators and writers. Firefly‘s stories and script, from Joss’ voice and mind, made it leagues ahead of other science fiction television shows on the air, and it’s incredibly sad that more of the public didn’t realize that.
Firefly gave us characters that were believable and easy to relate to in every way, and it was large reason of why the fans reacted so strongly to the show in the first place.
From the temptress Inara, to brash Jayne, to ship mechanic Kaylee, to sweet Simon, to Captain Mal, to abducted runaway River, to wise Book, to pilot Wash, to hardcore fighter Zoe…every single character on the show had something about them that made the audience connect on a personal level. Fans bonded over their love of certain characters and even today, having moved on to other projects, the actors are best known and recognized for their Firefly counterparts.
The good news for Firefly fans is that you can currently catch episodes on the Science Channel, Sunday nights at 10pm. While we may never get over our pain of cancellation, we’ll settle for seeing the awesome cast around conventions, in other series, and we’ll continue to wear our Browncoats with pride as we show future generations of tv viewers how great this show really was.
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