The second show in the Firefly series "train job" didn't really help with my conversion. It was good I enjoyed it, but it was just....I don't know. It seemed a bit mediocre. After watching the DVD extras I found out that this episode had to be written as a grabby new action filled pilot for the TV execs to be happy, and to give them something to air that (they thought) people would watch.
I hate US TV execs, not that I've ever met one. I mean either (a) The majority of the population of the US is not prepared to watch a Tv show with some actual story in it, or (b) They talk complete bollocks all the time. I reckon (b). I think that TV exec in the US look down on mere viewers and vastly under-estimate their intelligence. This is the 21st century! We've been story telling for five thousand years! We know how it works, it doesn't have to be all action. It's about S-T-O-R-Y. Good grief.
Anyway, what Joss Wheedon did from then on was brilliant, because the series is constructed in such a brilliantly delicate way that before we know it we love the characters, and yet can't remember when that happened. For example "Jaynestown" would not work as an episode unless you really knew what Jayne was like. When you do the episode is hilarious. And it was all done without an episode "focussing on Jayne", never one of those Star Trek like episodes where one of the cast gets stuck in a shuttle and has to tell their life story. No big chunks of exposition. We got to know the characters because we were shown them, not told about them.
By the end of the series you really know all the characters, each episode exposing something new. Each one built upon the previous. Lovely design.
