Browncoat fever

It's said to say but I almost feel like I should be required to turn in my geek card. Every self respecting nerd in the continental United States has seen and adored Firefly at this point and somehow I have managed to avoid it. Maybe it has to do with my aforementioned aversion to chasing the crowd, but sometimes, when the crowd is small and well trusted, (here is where I would include a link to one of the discussions about the show on thegamersforum.com, but, alas, it appears to be entering it's twilight) I should just chase after the thing in question.


So, maybe you have been living under a large rock on the internet for the past two years and somehow have avoided the call of the browncoats. You know who you are (Lance). Firefly was the new show put together by Joss Whedon (if you need me to tell you what else he has done you may need to buck up and resign yourself to the fact that you, sir, are no geek.) Anyway, he put together half a season of the show and handed it over to Fox for air and they managed to make one of the worst mistakes in recent history when it come to the handling of a TV property. If they had canceled Arrested Development this year, I would say they are completely incompetent but it appears that at least someone who knows what they are doing over there.

So what makes Firefly so great? Well, I happen to love the sci-fi/western mashup, but it's not really the most original idea in the world. I seem to be drawn to things mixed with westerns, as The Dark Tower is my favorite book series and it combines western and fantasy. In fact, the show really borrows from Star Wars and reminds me a bit of Cowboy Bebop. The writing, of course, is the star of the show and the time that it takes to develop real, meaty characters is excellent. The special effects while kept to a minimum (think A New Hope, not Attack of the Clones) are really well done for a television budget.

You may be wondering why am I talking about a show that has been canceled for two years and is never coming back (/reverse psychology). Because of the movie, Silly. When the resulting DVD set sold a quarter of a million copies in the first couple of weeks, Universal Sudios took notice and greenlighted a film based on the show called Serenity It opens on September 30th and should be great. So, as I specialize in being so far behind the curve it is almost laughable, check out the show on DVD (or on the Sci-Fi Channel that is running the series on Friday nights right now) and don't miss the movie.