Lisin March 28, 2014 Share March 28, 2014 From IMDB: Mal and his crew pull a train robbery. Sorry guys! I haven't had a chance to watch this one yet so I can't give my normal thoughts but I wanted to open the thread for the rest of you. This is the episode that aired originally as the pilot. Link to comment
kiran March 28, 2014 Share March 28, 2014 Wait.. The Train Job should be next, and Bushwacked the one after that, right? 1 Link to comment
Lisin March 28, 2014 Author Share March 28, 2014 You're right. I was foolishly not paying attention and IMDB has them in "aired" order not "real" order. Sorry! My bad! Link to comment
Chickp March 29, 2014 Share March 29, 2014 I watched this one with my eleven year old, and she had lots of questions about the plot and characters and such. She hasn't seen the pilot, and it came home to me again how super dumb it was to show this one first. I do love this episode, though. So many quotable moments, and so much good Jayne stuff: "Time for some thrilling heroics." And Kaylee's perfectly delivered, "Crime." My favorite part was how they start to play with Mal's atheism and altruism. God's not welcome on his boat, but he'll allow the Shepherd, and he has "no choice" but to bring the medicine back. And it's not by accident that River says, "Mal. Bad, in. Latin." I still find her so super annoying, way more than the first watch. Link to comment
halgia March 30, 2014 Share March 30, 2014 Yeah, this one is pretty great, though doing it first was just dumb. The buyer is sufficiently creepy. The train heist itself was pretty good, though not enough to sustain an episode on its own. The turnaround with the medicine and whatnot was good for establishing the "yes, they're thieves, but they're not bad thieves" deal. But the moments that made it: Wash swooping up with the ship to break up a barfight; as Chickp mentioned, Kaylee's "Crime" and Jayne's "Time for some thrilling heroics"; "tragic space dementia"; Inara slapping Mal to rescue him; Mal casually kicking the guy into the jet and then starting to repeat his spiel. I didn't dislike River as much as most of the fandom seems to the first time through. I found her pretty annoying in this episode, but of course her better stuff is still to come. "Hey, the world is supposedly run by Chinese people" notes: in addition to a few random dialogue lines of Mandarin, Mal gets schooled by Zoe at Chinese checkers...a game which, despite having the word Chinese in its name, was invented in Germany as a simplification of an American game. Also, like maybe three of the extras appeared to be of Asian descent. Cool! 2 Link to comment
Portia March 30, 2014 Share March 30, 2014 That dorky narration-montage opener wouldn't have been necessary if the network had just used the real pilot. 2 Link to comment
EC Amber April 3, 2014 Share April 3, 2014 This episode has one of my favorite all time scenes: Mal kicking the enforcer into the turbine. I love it for a couple of reasons1, the wholly unexpected element. Who expects the hero to so causally send a man to his (albeit quick) end like that?2, amusement. Ok, it was FUNNY that he kicked him into the engine. After all the guy was there to either kill or bring them back to be killed. It's not like he didn't have it coming. And the editing really made it such a non-event that it was rendered humorous.3, we get another example of how easy it is for Mal to kill. Sure, we saw him at war and so obviously he has killed before. And yes, he combined focus and complete disregard when he shot Lawrence the mole in the eye and tossed him out like trash. But he was threatening to kill River - a girl Mal knows to be innocent and damaged. But this?? This was just a hairs breadth from actual enjoyment. It was like "ah well, I gave you a chance. Off you go." This, to me, is the first warning that our hero is a very, very dark hero. Aside of this rather minor scene I love the way the town's reaction to Inara. Their rusty, monotone coloring of clothes and land and buildings and air compared to the vivid color of Inara's entrance... it was a really subtle way of underscoring her status in this 'Verse. It helps keep the audience from easily falling into Mal's categorizing her as a "whore." I know we're supposed to feel like Geppetto (I know, Niska) is a sadistic bastard under the kindly old man persona... But I just don't feel any... dammit, I can't think of the word. Somewhere between malice and competence. I don't know, he just didn't hit the notes that Joss was aiming for with me. On the whole this is a fun little episode, good to get our characters more firmly established, but it hasn't really developed much depth or angst. 2 Link to comment
femmefan1946 September 20, 2014 Share September 20, 2014 There were also several women in burquas or hijabs, a geisha and of course a belly dancer. Just background colour. And the deputy is Amerindian which doesn't count at all I guess. Link to comment
Raja September 17, 2015 Share September 17, 2015 What I caught on the latest re-watch is despite the stated "respectability" of the Companion class others beside Mal or a Shepard holding his tongue in the face of community standards that the kid customer reverted too the she is just a whore Link to comment
Joe Hellandback May 28, 2018 Share May 28, 2018 On 28/03/2014 at 4:55 PM, Lisin said: You're right. I was foolishly not paying attention and IMDB has them in "aired" order not "real" order. Sorry! My bad! Don't worry, it's such a mess everyone gets confused. On 03/04/2014 at 4:36 AM, EC Amber said: This episode has one of my favorite all time scenes: Mal kicking the enforcer into the turbine. I love it for a couple of reasons 1, the wholly unexpected element. Who expects the hero to so causally send a man to his (albeit quick) end like that? 2, amusement. Ok, it was FUNNY that he kicked him into the engine. After all the guy was there to either kill or bring them back to be killed. It's not like he didn't have it coming. And the editing really made it such a non-event that it was rendered humorous. 3, we get another example of how easy it is for Mal to kill. Sure, we saw him at war and so obviously he has killed before. And yes, he combined focus and complete disregard when he shot Lawrence the mole in the eye and tossed him out like trash. But he was threatening to kill River - a girl Mal knows to be innocent and damaged. But this?? This was just a hairs breadth from actual enjoyment. It was like "ah well, I gave you a chance. Off you go." This, to me, is the first warning that our hero is a very, very dark hero. Aside of this rather minor scene I love the way the town's reaction to Inara. Their rusty, monotone coloring of clothes and land and buildings and air compared to the vivid color of Inara's entrance... it was a really subtle way of underscoring her status in this 'Verse. It helps keep the audience from easily falling into Mal's categorizing her as a "whore." I know we're supposed to feel like Geppetto (I know, Niska) is a sadistic bastard under the kindly old man persona... But I just don't feel any... dammit, I can't think of the word. Somewhere between malice and competence. I don't know, he just didn't hit the notes that Joss was aiming for with me. On the whole this is a fun little episode, good to get our characters more firmly established, but it hasn't really developed much depth or angst. The Firefly crew rather break the rules of the Jossverse, a lot more happy to use guns and kill in cold blood than the Scoobies. The good; We see a more moral side to the Serenity crew and love the face-off between Jayne and the others without Mal around. The bad; The sick bay design is rather stupid, wouldn't you want some privacy rather than all those windows for people to see in? No one notices Serenity flying alongside the train? Notches on the Serenity bedpost; Inarra;1-a paying customer who wishes to make her his kept woman Wash; 1-the missus Zoe; 1-the hubby Capt subtext; Mal talks of 'being on the edge' then 'moving towards the middle', possibly alluding to the frontier and the central planets. Innara and Kaylee have a big girly hair-stroking session (how the Summer's girls on Buffy used to express physical affection for one another). Inarra remarks to Kaylee "We could experiment". Mal seems keen on the idea and refers to Inarra 'servicing the crew' but she dismisses that as his 'lonely pathetic dreams'. Summer points out that Mal=Bad in Latin/French. Mal tells Zoe he loves her but it's all part of their cover(?) Happy high-class hookers in Space (the title the porn industry wished they'd thought of!); Kaylee seems fascinated by the details of Inarra's profession. Inarra claims a companion gets to pick and choose her clients which I think is about as realistic and truthful as the Dollhouse staff pretending to themselves that they don't hire the Actives out as sexual submissives. Mal still needles Inarra about her hooking but does so more subtly and less nastily than he did in 'Serenity'. The nature of the companions work is left very vague here, if you hadn't seen Serenity you wouldn't know exactly what her job is, she could be a beautician. Inarra enjoys turning the tables on Mal, pretending he's her indentured man (some form of community service in the future?). Questions and observations; We now know the war ended 6 years ago. Inarra has been on the ship 8 months. Here we have a much more upbeat, likable Mal, perhaps the events of Serenity mellowed him? He even says 'It's the right thing to do'. Book refers to the 'Fuzzy wuzzies' referring to Kiplings poems concerning the Sudan campaign Britain fought against Islamic fundamentalists in C19th (and we're still doing it today!). What is the chain of command on Serenity? It seems to go Mal, Zoe, Jayne, Wash, after that anyone's guess. Note Mal doesn't kill the Fed on the train, just knocks him out. Joss refers to Inarra and Mal as Beatrice and Benedict from 'Much ado about nothing', check out the Kenneth Branagh version for the Beatrice and the Duke (Denzel Washington) proposal scene alone. Joss refers to Firefly as Star Trek; TNG dark underbelly, much as what was explored in DS;9. Marks out of 10; 5 out of ten, nowhere near as good as Serenity, not a bad ep in itself but feels cheap in comparison to it's predecessor, like Charmed to Buffy. 1 Link to comment
Raja May 29, 2018 Share May 29, 2018 After Mal and Zoe there is no formal chain of command. If Mal didn't leave specific instructions and they were flying then Wash would do his thing, if fighting on the ground Jayne had the guns. Link to comment
femmefan1946 June 1, 2018 Share June 1, 2018 The Train Job was the first program aired, and was written over the weekend when Fox refused to use the Introductory episode Serenity. So weaknesses are to be expected. Link to comment
Joe Hellandback June 2, 2018 Share June 2, 2018 On 01/06/2018 at 3:35 AM, femmefan1946 said: The Train Job was the first program aired, and was written over the weekend when Fox refused to use the Introductory episode Serenity. So weaknesses are to be expected. What were they thinking? Link to comment
femmefan1946 June 3, 2018 Share June 3, 2018 12 hours ago, Joe Hellandback said: What were they thinking? There is one word too many in that question. Link to comment
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