Alyssa, I think that is a completely reasonable critique of Firefly. I liked it because I accepted it as a mash-up. My biggest beef with Firefly is that they posit a Chinese dominant upper class but then we never see them, not even (I think) in the episode Ariel where if they had simply made most of the background characters of Asian descent (or more specifically Chinese, but whatever) you would have gotten a sense of that. So - yeah. But I do love the characters and the dialogue.

As for Firefly, I don’t want to get into a pissing contest with Wheadon fans. (Of which I am one, as I loved Buffy and Angel.) But I am of the strong opinion that while the character stuff may be good (and I’ll grant that’s Wheadon’t strength, one of the reasons Dollhouse disappoints me so much is that his character building is by necessity curtailed by his premise) that the rest of that series wasn’t a particularly imaginative take on the idea of space as another frontier to conquer. You can evoke the Wild West without dressing your characters in actual gingham, putting them in covered wagons and having TUMBLEWEED blow by while they escape from cattle rustlers and speaking with Texan accents. Either make a Western, or make a space show, but.. it was a huge disconnect for me, the scenes on the ship and the scenes on the planets. Two series who did similar premises were the anime Cowboy Bebop and Sci Fi’s Farscape. Both which I felt evoked the feeling of the sorts of ungoverned frontiers you might find out in the bowels of space while still making it feel like a future society. I just can’t imagine that a society where he’s clearly laid out a merging of Western and Chinese society would regress to such a faithfully rendered version of the American Wild West. That being said, it is a shame they gave Firefly so little time on air. Sometimes I think that shows have to go on for a little while before they find their groove. Farscape, which is one of my favorite series of all times, kinda sucks for the first half of the first season. It’s cheesy and weird and a little too serious. They find their groove eventually and the next few seasons are pretty high quality, which I think you can only get away with as a cable show anymore. So I do wish networks were willing to extend a little more time to series that show some promise.

And woo Firefly! Have either of you seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog? I would recommend it. Nathan Fillion is in it, as Captain Hammer, a douchebag-cum-superhero, the arch-enemy of the titulat Dr. Horrible. It’s on Hulu. Watch it now if you haven’t.