(Season 1, Episodes 9 – 10)
With this episode, we got to see — Holy crap! Did River just cut up Jayne!? And did she just shoot three dudes without looking? Finally, some of River’s badassery is making itself known. I’m digging the team dynamic revealing itself; it’s the ensemble cast that really makes this show work.
“Ariel”, “War Stories”
The crew’s reaction to Jayne’s chest getting surprise-slashed was hilariously mild. No one on the crew really cares about that guy, do they? Once again, another great performance from Adam Baldwin. I’m even starting to feel okay about River and Simon, who have been annoying me through most of the episodes. Maybe I’ll even — horror of horrors — start to kind of, sort of like them in a little while.
As for the shocking (heh) argument between Mal and Wash over Zoe, I’m surprised it took that long to be addressed. I was starting to shrug off Wash as extremely, extremely tolerant. Extremely. The relationship between Zoe and Wash is getting better with every episode. Wash’s turn in ass-kicking didn’t hurt either. Seeing him and the wife taking down some bad guys together was strangely adorable. I think I may have felt something in my robot heart, but I’m not sure.
I was reading some of the production details about “Ariel” and thought the inclusion of Mal and Kaylee’s hug was — dare I say it — kind of adorable. I think it was because of Kaylee’s look of delighted surprise.
Also, I watched these two episodes back-to-back and was surprised by the sudden re-appearance of Shepherd. I guess he was back on Serenity pumping iron while everyone else was running amok. I forgot he was even around.
And how could I close this without mentioning the completely unnecessary girl-on-girl action. Oh, Inara. It’s like the writers gave the audience a taste with the tension between Inara and Joan Holloway in “Our Mrs. Reynolds“, and received so much angry fan mail for being teases that they had to write in a kiss and some slow massage. I’ll just go ahead and pretend that’s exactly what happened.
Clacked by Annie Wu 
on Aug 21, 2009 @ 17:00 EST5EDT
