Re: The grumpasaurus, and "Firefly"

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

[No spoilers, and well, **I** like to think I'm being good natured. But
those sensitive to my critical skills should probably mosey on.]

Kirayoshi,

Now, now, I haven't hated **everything**. There were parts of "Beneath
You" that were quite good. (Okay, mostly just the third act). And
"Selfless" covered very important ground and was strong, before falling
horribly apart in the final act.

(They say Joss rewrites new writers, and we know he redid the final
Spuffy scene in "Beneath You". If he also handled the finale of
"Selfless", then he's racking up a scary amount of bad writing, because
I bow before no one in my dislike of "Lessons". And the only "Firefly"
I've actively disliked is Joss's "The Train Job". Frankly, I'm worried
about him.)  

"Same Time Same Place" does make a lovely jumping-off place for fics
(good work, Ida, Mike, and CDS!), but I still think the actual scene was
too cold. And given that we haven't had a single B/W scene in the two
following eps (although we did get Buffy's half of a phone call in
"Selfless"), I'm still worried that that's all we're going to get.

"Firefly" is doing okay, but nine characters is waaay too many. "Buffy"
started with four (Cordy was on the show, but not really in it until
"Out of Mind, Out of Sight") and "Angel" had three. Heck, nowadays on
"Angel", they work real hard to keep the characters down to four to make
the stories manageable--I just can't understand why they think we'd
rather see Fred, Gunn and Lorne than Cordelia, Wesley and Connor.

It's nice Joss has decided to include a married couple, but I still want
to throw Wash and Zoe, who are just taking up space, out of an airlock.
And please take River, who seems to have been created out of the notion
that we all loved Crazy Fred and want to see her played by a
less-skilled actress, with them.

I'm not really happy with the reverend, but I'll put up with a lot for a
weekly dose of Ron Glass. I'm also of two minds about Jayne, who's
entertaining, but a complete cartoon. (And I really think "Jaynestown"
would have done better as a story about Mal.)

But Morena Baccarin (Inara) is doing a good job for someone who was a
last-minute recast, Sean Maher (Simon) is finally proving why Fox puts
him in a new series, year after year, and Nathan Fillion has blown me
away ever since "Saving Private Ryan".

And, of course, we **all** love Kaylee. 

Dan

PS--Actually, the closest I've seen Joss come to accepting
responsibility for last year was saying they got too "dark" for the
audience. Not that the show was bad, or anything, it was **our** fault.
Feh.