Gone West

First, a toast to the glory that is Netflix. If there were any justice in this world, the post office would get me their DVDs more than once a week, but there is not, so what can you do.

I mentioned HBO's Deadwood briefly earlier, but didn't give it its due. This is the most enthralling television program I have ever seen. It's better than the Sopranos. You get deep and complicated characters, characters who feel like real people that actually inhabit this mining town that's been created for them. And what a place! Deadwood is a mining town set up in Indian territory, in contravention of the US government and its army. So it's not just a frontier town that doesn't have any law, it's a town that can't have any law, because setting up that would be taken as insurrection. Then the whole series explores how social order forms and is maintained in the absence of law, and how people behave in that order. And what you get is the most amazing picture of people in all of their contradictions and imperfections. The finale is so good that as soon as it was over I had to go back and watch it again immediately. It's like the great literature of television. In a hundred years you'll have to watch it in English class. Okay. Clearly, I just can't say enough good things about the show, so I'll move on.

Firefly is unlucky to have come after Deadwood's unalloyed brilliance, because it's actually very good. After Deadwood, you can't help but notice that its characters really are characters, even if they are a fun mix of them. In particular, Kaylee's personality seems more like my cat's than any person's. Hopefully they'll flesh out in later episodes (I've only seen the first disc so far). Already, though, there is much to love. The best summary (and some of the highest praise) I've seen is from one critic/fan who wrote : "Think of it as Star Wars, if Han Solo were the main character, and he still shot Greedo first." So it's got the right style. Actually, better style, since there are more dusters and six-guns. In one of my favorite sequences, the captain is hurrying back to his ship and walks right into the middle of tense hostage standoff. Before even making it into the foreground of the shot he draws and fires, shooting the bad guy in the head without breaking stride. As in Deadwood, the series centers around outlaws; in this case the crew are salvages, thieves and smugglers joined by drifters and fugitives.

Joss Whedon is clearly having a lot of fun playing with genre conventions - there are even savage Indians in the form of the Reavers, a kind of psychotic serial killer space pirate. We still haven't seen them in person, but they're used to great effect, especially in the silent space sequences. I haven't seen Battlestar Gallactica yet, but I can say that keeping things quiet certainly works well when our heroes' only options in their weaponless ship are ever (1) run and (2) hide. I caught myself holding my breath in two of those sequences. The craft is just good all around, with solid pacing and clever dialogue. All this lets Whedon pull of the space western thing rather well. Fittingly, everyone is just a bit exaggerated, and things have a slightly Romantic cast. At the end of the pilot episode's wild adventures, the captain leans back and declares that it's been a good day. A crewman is aghast: they've run from the law and from pirates, killed a lawman and taken on fugitives, deals have gone bad and half the crew has been shot.
"We're still flying."
"That's not much."
"It's enough."