Previously: People drank and sang a song about Jayne and it was magical.
—
Out of Gas
Sweeney: It’s been a while, so I’m not pleased with the very somber introduction to this episode, my return to the show. Funereal music plays as we see a bunch of shots of the empty ship. The sequence ends with a shot of Mal collapsing.
He has a flashback. I think Whedon took a cue from Rosewood because this flashback is clearly brought to us by a particularly strong Instagram filter. I’m thinking Toaster? Anyway, this flashback is of the day he showed Zoe the brand new ship he bought. She is all sorts of unimpressed by Serenity – thinks it’s a bit of a dump. Future!Kaylee is off somewhere, taking offense, I’m sure.
Sweeney: All of Mal’s talk of freedom wins Zoe over, and she begins to see its appeal. They walk off and the flashback ends. We can see that Mal is bleeding.
Roll credits. AND ALL RIGHT FINE I SANG ALONG TOO THIS TIME. YOU CAN’T TAKE THE SKY FROM MEEEEEE.
After that little pick-me-up, bummertown continues. Mal is seriously wounded, but he picks himself up and carries off a metal object of some sort.
We jump backwards, again, I assume, though not any great distance back, because the Serenity crew as we all know it (including the Tam siblings and Book) is sitting around the dinner table laughing and being happy. So fucking Whedon to take us back and forth between our dying, lonely hero, and happy-laughing-family time. They’re sitting around swapping funny stories and then everything gets quiet, so Kaylee insists that it’s Simon’s turn to tell funny work stories. He struggles a bit to come up with one, and Jayne ribs him a little before trying to get a story out of Inara, who refuses. Kaylee returns with a birthday cake for Simon, who is stunned and has no idea how they knew.
Sweeney: Mal says that they picked up his birthday from the warrant for his arrest. Happy birthday! Just as Simon is about to blow out the candles, the lights flicker. Kaylee goes to inspect, but River says something about fire and Zoe knocks her out of the way just as the blast from an explosion comes roaring through – knocking Zoe out instead. Mal shuts the door just in time to save them from the impending flames. I don’t know if I explained all of that correctly. IT HAPPENED SO FAST AND WAS ALSO SCARY. This explanation brought to you by my complete lack of scientific knowledge.
Mari: You did a good job. AND IT DID HAPPEN SO FAST. You had to know it was coming, because again, the happy family times were just so freakin’ great. There was husband and wife kissing, and teasing and so much fun. Then boom. Ship explosion. Whedon:
Sweeney: Everything is sealed off. We get a shot outside the ship of a door opening. Simon tries to go get his medical supplies, but Jayne says that he can’t be allowed through because opening the door will kill them all. Mal does some stuff in the bridge and then we see really bad CGI flames swirling through the ship and out the open door. Guys, I really wish I had any understanding of physics or chemistry or whatever sciencey science would be useful in explaining the things that are on my screen.
Mari: Yeeeah, I have no specifics but fire needs oxygen and space is oxygen-less, so opening the cargo bay doors was a means of extinguishing the fire. And I guess it was sucked out by the space-vacuum… thing… stuff.
BAM. SCIENCED.
Sweeney: HIGH FIVE!
We jump forward again, to wounded Mal stumbling around the ship alone – he’s looking pretty pale. He reaches a door and it opens to carry us back to where we just were, post-explosion. After whatever Mal did to make the CGI flames go outside, they are down in the medical room, with Simon trying to take care of Zoe. Mal tells a stunned Kaylee that she needs to go the engine room to investigate. “She ain’t moving.” Kaylee’s talking about both Zoe and the ship, but eventually she goes.
Next Mal’s got to try to coax Wash to go up to the bridge to figure out how bad the situation is, and his reaction is a general, “It’s terrible, but also my wife is maybe dying right now so how’s about you shut the fuck up?” Wash tells him to stop telling him to go up to the bridge because he won’t leave her side. Mal wasn’t asking, though – he was telling. Wash curses in Chinese and I’m super confident that my context-clues translation of “FUCK OFF” is accurate. (See, context clues! Look at all the fun stuff humanities students learn!) Mal throws Wash up against the wall and they have a ragey-bro stare off before Wash begrudgingly goes up to the bridge.
Sara: All of this is so sad because I understand everyone’s point. Mal needs Wash to focus and do his job, but Wash can’t even think of leaving Zoe in case something happens. Sads all around.
Sweeney: Toaster Flashback. Wash has a mustache. (M: A PORNSTACH?) (S: YES.) He’s in the bridge and is generally optimistic about the ship. He eyes Zoe a bit and accepts Mal’s job offer. Zoe and Mal walk off and Zoe complains that she doesn’t like him. Mal says Wash has some really amazing recommendations though, and overrules Zoe’s bad vibes objections. We also see that before Kaylee they had a prettyboy mechanic with surfer hair.
Infirmary. Simon is stabbing Zoe with a ginormous shot of pure adrenaline. Jumping forward, wounded Mal stumbles over to that same drawer and grabs another shot, which he injects himself with.
There are so many damn timelines to keep track of in this episode. Filter-Free-Show-Timeline Flashback. Kaylee and Mal are discussing the problems she discovered and shit’s really bad. Their life support and backup life support are both out. Their oxygen supply is gone and they’ve got maybe a few more hours before it’s gone. “We’ll start to feel it. Then we won’t feel nothing at all.”
Mari: Kaylee says it’s the compression coil, which is a blink and you’ll miss it reference. In the pilot, Kaylee asks for a new coil, as a busted one would mean bad news for the ship. YOU RIGHT, KAYLEE. YOU RIGHT.
Sweeney: Inara checks on Zoe in the infirmary. She’s still out, but her vitals are good. Simon notes that if she stays like that, she’ll outlive them all – she’s using less oxygen. They sit down outside the infirmary and chat. Simon says that he always thought the name Serenity had a vaguely funereal sound which I mention solely because I want to assure everyone that I recap as I watch and appreciated this, “Hey, we used the same SAT word!” moment. Inara says that she always loved the ship, and Simon says that he’d rather not die on it. He starts to nerd out and explain how the science of they’re going to die, but Inara cuts him off. He apologizes and mentions that this was his birthday. She sighs and holds his hand.
River sits outside Book’s room, where he’s praying. She tells him not to be afraid. She says he’s afraid that they’re going to run out of air and die gasping – but that won’t happen. Book looks up, hopeful for a second. She says that they’ll freeze to death first and scampers off.
Sara: River, the beacon of happiness.
Sweeney: Bridge. Wash is sitting in his chair, supremely defeated. Mal says he’s getting weary of Wash’s attitude and Wash is sorry he’s not sorry for being snippy about their impending doom. They fight about whether or not anyone is going to pick up their distress signal – what with them deliberately flying so far away from people. They also bicker about whether there is anything else Wash can do about the situation. Wash angrily realizes that Mal’s suggestion – which sounds basically like turning their distress signal into a thing that will jam the navigation of anything that does come in the vicinity – is legit and shouts that he should maybe go do the thing. Jayne pokes his head in to tell them to stop wasting the oxygen with the yelling.
Toaster Flashback. Mal walks in on their prettyboy mechanic screwing a girl in the engine room. Mal waits it out and yells at him for wasting time instead of getting actual work done. In this I see that he’s wearing some sort of pooka-shell-ish necklace too. Excellent. Anyway, Prettyboy tells Mal that they can’t go anywhere because something is wrong with some part. Then the girl speaks up – it’s Kaylee! She corrects Prettyboy that the part in question is totes fine and she noticed – “when I was laying on my back” – that it was some other part. Prettyboy doesn’t know what she’s talking about, so she ushers him and Mal over to look at it. Kaylee gets right to fixing it. The engine gets going again and Mal asks if she’s ever been a ship like that. She hasn’t, but Mal offers her the job anyway. She runs off to ask her parents and Prettyboy is a little slow on the uptake, asking what Mal needs two mechanics for.
Sara: And Kaylee continues to be the best. Girlfriend can get her sex on and be smarter than the boys when it comes to mechanics. Prettyboy was lucky to have a moment with our Kaylee.
Sweeney: YES. That introduction was entirely perfect.
Explosion Timeline. Mal finds Kaylee sitting alone in the engine room moping and asks what’s wrong. She’s distressed that she didn’t take better care of the ship – but she usually lets Kaylee know when something’s wrong. There’s a part that’s broken, but Mal says she’ll need to make do because there isn’t any new one coming. He grabs the part and we can see that it’s the metal thing he’s been carrying around in his Dying Timeline. He tries to get her to think of a way to make it work.
He focuses on the fact that she needs to make this work in order for the engine to turn and, importantly, the oxygen to come back. She nods her acquiescence to keep trying.
Dying Timeline. Mal stumbles into the engine room, bleeding, and tries to make it work. The ship helpfully has a programmed British woman announcing that they’re in system failure, with some swell alarms to boot. Thanks, Serenity! I think they got that memo already. Mal drops the part.
Explosion Timeline. They have a big crew meeting just outside the infirmary. Mal notes that in light of their general lack of options, they need to focus on what they do have. They have two shuttles with heat and air. Not enough to reach anywhere, but if they send both shuttles off in opposite directions, they have a better chance of being seen by someone. Book, Kaylee, and Jayne will ride with Inara. Simon and River are go with Wash and Zoe, what with Zoe’s continued need for medical help. Mal will be staying with the ship. Kaylee protests, but Mal is adamant. They sent out the beacon and boosted it a little, but someone’s got to be there to answer if anyone responds. Wash runs up to the bridge to make sure that Mal will be able to call everyone back in the event that the beacon is answered. Everyone else disperses to get the shuttles ready.
Inara pleads with Mal not to try to go down with the ship. He’s not listening. He says that her rent’s paid up so the shuttle is still hers and she needs to not let Jayne take over. “As far as your security deposit goes – that I might have to owe you.”
Toaster Flashback. Mal is showing Inara the sexytimes shuttle. It looks like a total dump before Inara got her magic hands on it. She checks the place out and finds it enough to her liking. She tells Mal that she’s got three main requirements: (1) Autonomy – nobody’s allowed in without her permission. (2) No sexytimes for Mal or any of his employees. (3) Assurance that she’ll be able to keep appointments with her clients. Mal tries to brush her off, saying he’ll consider all that while reviewing applications. She laughs and says that he’s totes going to rent to her, and for less than his asking price. Mal incredulously asks her why she’d snag that bargain. She points out, albeit delicately, that she can tell he’ll be doing shady business on the trip and he wants her and the respectability that she can carry. LAWYERED. Mal tries to flip it, asking what a “respectable” registered companion is even doing trying to enter into arrangement like that. He calls her a whore when she says that she supported unification and adds a further requirement – that he never call her that again. He relents.
Explosion/Escape Timeline. They’re on the sexytime shuttle, with Mal giving her final advice. Talking wastes precious oxygen, so do less of that. Inara pleads with him to go with them, if only so that he won’t die alone. “Everybody dies alone.”
Mari: Dude, the longing looks. I’m not ashamed to say that I had a Little Mermaid song playing in my head the whole time.
Sara: Kissing doesn’t require oxygen, right??
Sweeney: Elsewhere, Wash is showing Mal what button to push in order to call the shuttles back when (not if!) his miracle gets there. Mal nods and tells Wash to go see his wife.
Mal says goodbye to Jayne, who has left Mal a way to off himself when the time comes. I love this little back-to-back display of their respective personalities. Both men are doing the most helpful thing that they can think of to do and it’s so fitting and appropriate that Wash – even after the fatalism he exhibited throughout this episode – would be the one trying to impart that final bit of optimism. Jayne, on the other hand, sees himself as a realist. His parting gift to his friend is the promise that he shouldn’t have to suffer. In summary: FEELS. (M: A+)
We get a shot outside Serenity of the two shuttles taking off at once. The orchestra of feels is doing its thing as Mal treks back through the ship, closing doors, before making his way to the bridge, where he grabs a blanket and waits for that miracle.
Sara: Nope, no crying here, none at all.
Sweeney: We really have to do something about Traumaland’s hay fever epidemic.
Some time later, Mal is sleeping, and someone tries to answer his distress call, but he’s passed out. Eventually, though, he sees the other ship directly in front of him. He chats with the guy a bit. The guy who answers the distress call kind of seems like a dick. I know he’s just had his navigation scrambled and his STRANGER DANGER concern with inviting Mal aboard their ship has a bit of validity to it, but still. He seems like a dick. He’s dubious of Mal’s story, and wants to know how he won’t get jumped if he comes aboard. Mal says that he can see that the shuttles have launched and that they’ve certainly just scanned the ship and can confirm that his life support is out, as well. The guy says that he doesn’t expect to see any weapons and Mal says he expects to see engine parts before he opens the door.
Downstairs, the guy holds up the part, and Mal opens the door. He breathes in deep when fresh oxygen blows in. Naturally, the Shady Beacon Answerer enters with several other people, all with their guns up. Mal does an of-fucking-course sigh and puts his hands up. Not much in the way of options. He says he thought they were going to be reasonable about this.
Segue magic to a Toaster Flashback: Serenity is on the ground somewhere and a guy holding a gun at Mal and Zoe, asking if they look reasonable. Mal says that looks can be deceiving and the Unreasonable Man’s accomplice, JAYNE, says, “Not as deceiving as low down, dirty…deceiver.” It reminds me of our “lying liar who lies” tag.
Post-Shuttle-Departure-Pre-Dying Timeline. Mal tells the Shady Beacon Answerer that anything of value is there in the cargo bay, so they should have a look around and take whatever they think is fair. He’s already decided, though – he shoots Mal in the stomach, because he’s taking Serenity. He hands the part to one of his minions and tells him to go plug that in, and begins dispensing orders. Mal grabs the gun Jayne left him and tells them all to GTFO and leave the part. Shady Beacon Answerer obliges, telling Mal that he would have done the same. “We kind of already see I haven’t. Now get the hell off my ship.” He closes the door and then collapses, taking us back to where the episode began.
Sara: Mal is still a boss with a damn gunshot wound to the gut. Of course.
Sweeney: We follow his path through the ship with shots of the trail of blood he left behind. In the engine room, the useless British voice continues to inform him of his imminent demise, but now she’s drowned out by the orchestra doing its thing. Mal gets the part in place and gets the engine going again.
He stumbles back through the ship and we know he’s super stumbly, because we’re doing it from his shakycam POV. He collapses when he reaches the bridge, a few feet shy of the magic red button.
Fade to black, and a slew of voices. He opens his eyes, in a well-lit room. He turns his head and sees that he is in the infirmary. Everyone else is there too.
Sara: AND I FEEL SO MANY HAPPY FEELS.
Sweeney: He’s confused as to how they came back. He did not make it to the button in time, but when Zoe (who is still a patient herself, though in better shape) came to, she took charge and made her shuttle go back. Jayne tries to insist that he’d have done the same, but Inara’s shuttle smells funny. She insists that it’s just incense. Kaylee adorably tells Mal that he did good work in fixing the ship.
Simon kicks everyone out so Mal can rest. Mal’s super drugged up, but agrees. He then looks very anxious and asks if they will all be there when he wakes up. They assure him that they will and he dozes off into his final Toaster Flashback. It’s the day he actually bought the ship. A large man is trying to sell him a big yellow monstrosity, but he spots Serenity off in the distance and tunes him out. End credits.
Well. That was a different thing. I’m not a huge fan of the way they shifted us through the main timeline of the show, to be honest. The actual flashbacks served the episode in a really nice way – similar to the effect of the flashbacks when we learned the Tam background. The time jumping within the events of the episode, however, felt pointless. The whole, “WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF OXYGEN” thing was sufficiently suspenseful without all the shots of Mal dying alone. And even if this is a Whedon show where important characters can/will be killed off, you actually don’t have a show anymore if Mal dies alone on Serenity, so the attempt to build the, “MAYBE HE WON’T MAKE IT!” suspense felt a little artless – especially since the solution itself was a little contrived. They just happened to come back and save him.
Mari: I have a feeling this will be the general complaint with people who rank this episode lower than what we’ve seen so far. It might be a preference thing, though I think blogging through the different timelines would’ve crippled my enjoyment of them. I didn’t pause this episode; I watched through. I didn’t think they were pushing the suspense of Mal dying, because of the reasons you stated. Like Wash said, it was more of a “when you get your miracle,” so the timelines was just a way of piecing together that story. It was less about what happens in the future (will he make it??) and more about seeing the full picture of the past (that’s how he got shot! that’s how he got the ship part! etc.)
Sara: I totally agree about the difference between blogging it and watching it straight through, because I also watched this one straight through and enjoyed the crap out of it. The moments with Mal alone made me emotional, even knowing he wasn’t going to die. Seeing how the different crew members said goodbye was also special and another one of those consistent character moments. And getting to “meet” the whole crew for the first time mixed a good bit of humor in with the stressful almost-dying stuff.
Sweeney: That bit of criticism aside, don’t mistake that for me saying I actively dislike this episode. I loved all the little flashbacks and a subpar episode of this show still counts as a damn good episode of television. I’m even a fan of the slightly contrived resolution – while that wound being a little too convenient, I also don’t question that Zoe woke up and, though she was still terribly unwell, demanded that they go back for Mal. Of course she did.
Mari: Yep. I feel similarly about Zoe turning the ship around. I also believe the crew would listen to her. We’ve seen enough of Zoe to think that this development was likely.
Sara: It also goes to show that when a television show is good enough, sometimes contrivance doesn’t make you groan as much as it would in something like Pretty Little Liars. Joss Whedon doesn’t fall back on that much, so a little bit of convenience isn’t as angering as it might be in some of the other things we cover.
Sweeney: Yes, exactly! I sort of felt obligated to refer to it as “convenient” rather than contrived, if only to make the distinction between what happened here and what happens in, to borrow your example, Rosewood.
I appreciated, too, that this episode addressed the very real consequences that come from living so incredibly under the radar while still being so technologically reliant, BECAUSE SPACE. I’m not sure the episode handled it perfectly, but I dig that they dedicated an entire episode addressing that.
The flashbacks were way cheesy but also incredibly lovable. It was fun to see how everybody came to be with the ship and the sense that it just fit and was home for the entire crew. That was sweet. The Inara and Jayne bits were my favorites. I guess that was my general critique of the episode – it wasn’t executed quite to its usual standard, but the basic narrative choices themselves were sound ones.
And, of course, the credits music finally won me over, so there’s that.
Mari: I love this episode so it makes me a little sad. BUT FINE, YOU LIKE THE CREDITS NOW. EVERYTHING IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD.
Next time on Firefly: The crew infiltrates a hospital to steal some medicine (as one does) in S01 E09 – Ariel.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a 30-something with three kids who spends an embarrassing amount of time watching teen television dramas. There's a whole lot of Internet out there, and I plan on reading all of it before I die.
