Firefly: The Intro

So, Firefly. Where do I start? Do I begin with its origins? Or do I talk about how I came to like it? I think that I'll start at the end, which is actually the middle.

Firefly was canceled after 11 episodes aired (though it was 12 hours, since the final episode aired was a two hour entry). Ratings were low, production was expensive, and it wasn't easy to describe the show to newcomers, so FOX shut down production. And that should have been the end. Keep in mind that all of this happened before I ever saw a single episode of the show. The most I had seen were about 4 thirty-second commercials that made the series look absolutely awful (keep that in mind for later). The show was over, and that should have been that.
But this happened around the time when releasing television shows on DVD started to become popular. I think the first time I ever saw a television season released on DVD was the first season of The Simpsons way back in 2001. By 2003 (one year after Firefly was canceled), studios started to realize that there was a huge market for seasons on DVD, and they could release shows that got short runs if they are marketed correctly. For Firefly, it wasn't hard, since the reviews had been positive overall, and it was created by a man whose name will show up a lot on this blog: Joss Whedon.

Whedon created the critically acclaimed Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and its equally awesome, equally acclaimed, but criminally less watched spin-off Angel), and all the people at FOX DVD had to do was slap a sticker on Firefly's box stating that it was from the creator of Buffy, and Whedon fans would stop at nothing to get their hands on a set. Worked for me.


I had discovered Buffy and Angel in the summer of 2003, right before my senior year of high school. I think that my discovery of Whedon's shows set me on my path to truly enjoying the serialized format of television. I already liked 24, but that was pretty much the only other series that I was watching that had a running story line (before Buffy, my favorite shows consisted of things like Frasier and Seinfeld, which are great shows, but don't have the power of something like Arrested Development or Scrubs, which have a grander story to tell than just what is happening in a given week). Anyway, in December of 2003, the complete series of Firefly was released on DVD, and I was intrigued that (1) FOX would release a show that had done so poorly on the air and that (2) a show by Joss Whedon could do poorly (see the picture of the shirt to know what I'm talking about). So I decided to check it out. The rest is future history.

Up next: Why Firefly is so great...