Why I didn't like Firefly

I was originally going to let this just go off and be forgotten, but I thought I'd repost this, because I know it'll be brought up again some day.

I don't like Firefly.

Not the Cobra saboteur, or the Batman pyromaniac, or the Rob Zombie’s psychopathic family. Joss Whedon’s Firefly. Yes… THAT Firefly. (Oh yes, I’m goin’ there.) Before I continue, I want to emphasize that I got nothing against the man or his other works. I wasn’t a fan of Buffy or Angel, not because I disliked them, but because it just wasn’t what I was interested in. I loved his run on X-Men, up until that conclusion (and I probably wouldn’t have disliked it so much if it hadn’t been so chronically late all the time) and I look forward to his Avengers movie. (Though, I have nothing good to say about Dollhouse. I’m still irked they cancelled the Sarah Conner Chronicles for it.)

You see, at that time when the show was airing, science fiction was essentially was in a dearth. Star Trek: Enterprise was sucking Warp Factor vapors right out of drydock, Star Wars had just delivered Episode II, which I consider to be the worst of the saga (And I LIKED the prequels), X-Files had wrapped up with a whimper, Lexx had ended with a depressing sigh, Babylon 5 had embarrassed itself with Crusade, Stargate SG1 was still a Showtime exclusive, and Sci-Fi Channel had JUST cancelled the really awesome and really underrated Farscape. (I miss Scorpius.) If you were a science fiction fan, Firefly was your only real outlet. So I understand why it’s so popular. It’s one of those “right place, right time” sort of things. The problem is every sci-fi fan and friend I had was telling me I have to watch Firefly, and that it’s the greatest science fiction show in years. And at the time, I didn’t want to watch it, I just did not want to get involved into a new show. Especially on FOX, since it’ll be cancelled in a season. Doesn’t matter if it’s good or not, if it didn’t get higher ratings than reruns of Cops, then getting attached to a new show was just an exercise in masochism. And it had happened over and over again. Millennium, Strange Luck, VR5, Brisco Country Jr., Brimstone, Wonderfalls, The Lone Gunmen… I just didn’t feel like getting attached to a show AGAIN and having it cancelled, leaving the series in a cliffhanger or on a downer note. And of course, it was cancelled. Big shock. But even after it’s cancellation, people were still praising it’s greatness to me. And I just didn’t really wanna see it. I didn’t want to watch a series that I’d just get irritated at because it ended on an unresolved note. Then Serenity came out, and then my friends were all “Dave, it’s got an ending now! And the movie was awesome! You HAVE to watch it!”

You see, especially at that time, I had this reputation of being the ‘guy who doesn’t like anything.’ Like I was cynical and saw flaws in everything. Which is frellin’ hilarious, because if anyone even really talks to me for more than ten minutes, they find out that I’m a pretty open minded guy who likes cheesy stupid movies, bad pop music, and silly cartoons. I just don’t like pretentious. You might have noticed in our comic, when faced against great odds, our characters don’t pull out some magical deus ex machina about the meaninglessness of life and how humanity is a cancer or whatever. We use a steel chair on a vampire and had a green dreadlocked cyborg roundhouse kick the one-eyed bitch. Our book is many things, but pretentious is NOT one of them. I had a long rant about the Matrix movies here, but it was too much of a derailment. (So I’ll get back to them later.) But the same people who were telling me how The Matrix films were the greatest movies ever were telling me how Firefly was the greatest show ever. My Pretentious Warning Alarm went off like a klaxon. So I managed to avoid watching it for a few years.

So one day, I was bored, and I decided to borrow my uncle’s copy of the show, and sat down and watched it. I sat through seven episodes: It wasn’t pretentious at all. But it wasn’t the greatest show ever. It was okay. Really, that’s it. Just okay. After the seventh episode… Time came to swap out the disk, and just didn’t want to. I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about River, didn’t care about Mal Reynolds, even though we shared a last name, I didn’t care about Zoe, or the Reavers or whatever the hell. (I kinda liked Book though. He was kinda neat.) I could see why people liked the show and that was cool, but it just didn’t appeal to me. In actuality, I thought it borrowed too much from other science fiction shows. Outlaw Star is the one that immediately popped to my head. Space western, smart mouth but disallusioned hero in a brown trench coat and a pistol, renegade crew, young emotionally impaired girl who seems “sweet and innocent but harbors darkness in her”, badass chick who can kick anyone’s ass, a sidekick like mechanic youth, and of course the Serenity looked similar to the Outlaw Star. All it was missing was a Ctarl-Ctarl. But hey, you know… Star Wars and Indiana Jones were essentially homages and borrowed heavily from old 1930 serials and adventure flicks, and they were my favorite films. And it’s not like influences aren’t found rife in my own artwork. I didn’t mind the universe, I just didn’t care about the story. So I jumped ahead and watched Serenity and just to see how it ended, and “Oh wow, what a shock! Joss Whedon killed the kinda likable character! I didn’t see that coming a mile away.”

So yeah, I didn’t hate Firefly. I just didn’t like it.

That’s not where the fun begins with me though. It’s when I tell people I didn’t like Firefly, they start down this same exact list each time. This has happened so much, it’s in the double digits. It’s hilarious. Here’s an approximate retelling of all the conversations:
______
ME: I didn’t like Firefly.
THEM: Why not? (Almost always in an accusatory manner, like I just insulted their genitals.)
ME: I watched the first seven episodes, and the movie, and it didn’t appeal to me. Just wasn’t my thing.
THEM: Did you watch them in order?
ME: um... Yes.
THEM: What didn’t you like about them?
ME: I just didn’t really care for the characters. The characters they bothered to develop I wasn’t really liking and I wasn’t all that interested in the story.
THEM: (Usually here they ask for specifics, which they almost always tell me how River isn’t a one dimensional and she develops more as time goes on, or that Zoe isn‘t a Mary Sue.)
ME: Yes, but I wasn’t liking just about any character by the time I quit. I think they should have developed themselves a bit more… Like within the first few episodes.
THEM: Well you got to watch more than seven episodes! (This is always in that “insulting tone” like I’m an idiot for not realizing this.)
ME: I watched seven episodes and the movie. That’s over half the series. That’s the equivalent of watching two and a half of the three Lord of the Rings movies. If I didn’t care about Frodo and Sam by the battle of Minas Tirith, I wasn’t going to care about them ever. I’m not saying the show was bad, I was just saying it wasn’t my thing.
THEM: But you liked (insert whatever dumb sci-fi movie or show that I liked that nerds hated, like the Star Wars Prequels for example).
ME: Yeah, and they were flawed, but there was stuff in it I really liked, usually the characters. (As bad as Episode I was, Qui-Gon Jinn was really likable.) I just didn’t care about the characters in Firefly. It's like the one good line from the second 'From Dusk til Dawn' movie: "When I care more about the characters, I care more about the fuckin'."
THEM: Whatever, you’re an idiot.
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And that’s every goddamn discussion I ever have about Firefly. Even though I said I like Joss Whedon and I said I didn’t hate the show, and I’m not even saying people are wrong for liking it... The fucking Browncoats decide to get a major stick up their butt for it!

Imagine the crap I put up with when I tell people I liked Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.