Firefly #5 TOP 10 TV Shows You Should Watch Over The Summer Break

5. FireFly

Joss Whedon’s Firefly is an action-adventure western/sc-fi. It chronicles the lives of the crew of Serenity (the firefly class ship). It is set 500 years in the future, when humanity leaves earth and colonizes various planets. Shortly after a civil war between the Alliance and the brown coats, the unified government and the Independents, the crew of the ship Serenity, lead by Captain Malcolm Reynolds, attempts to maintain a life on Serenity by taking any job that pays enough.

Firefly is sort of the passion project of Joss Whedon that he made after Buffy the Vampire Slayer and before Dollhouse. It was canceled before its time, which ultimately made Whedon die inside and ruined him for Dollhouse. It’s an interesting concept: cowboys in space. All the elements that Whedon excels at are seen here, a descent story, character driven, and especially witty dialogue, and this is something that seems to be missing in today’s television.

Whedon seems to have somewhat taken the story for Firefly from Clint Eastwood’s western The Outlaw Josey Whales. I have no idea people cannot see the connection; just put Eastwood in space and it’s the same thing. This isn’t a bad thing because it had an interesting concept. It featured Eastwood as a confederate soldier on the run from the Union army immediately after the fall of the Confederacy. The twist is that the confederate soldier is the good guy and the Union is bad. Why? Because Josey Whales isn’t fighting for slavery; he’s fighting for his own freedom. In it Eastwood’s character goes on the run from the Union and encounters people, outcasts who have been wronged by the Union society, who join him and create a home for themselves on a farm in a ghost town. Whedon uses the same idea in Firefly by making Malcolm Reynolds a soldier who lost in the fight for independence against the Alliance and makes a home for himself along with his crew in the sci-fi version of a ghost town, a ship in space.If you know Whedon, it’s all about the dialogue. Firefly is serious when it needs to be and witty the rest of the time. What Whedon shows in Firefly is that the action shouldn’t be the only entertaining part of a show, you need good dialogue to keep it entertaining the entire time, and this show has that. Last but not least is the early performance by Summer Glau as River. Before she played creepy/crazy fem-bot on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, she was doing it better on Firefly. It is also where you will find the origination of the camera zoom-in. Before Battlestar Galactica used the zoom-in to distinguish their space battles, Firefly did it first and probably inspired its use in Galactica.