Angel: Home

”We do have a dungeon. I can show you around later if...”

So Lilah gives Angel that thingummy wotsit to take to Buffy in Sunnydale for Spike’s big heroic sacrifice? I wish I hadn’t lost that list of the right order to watch episodes of both series a while ago. Still, no great harm done, and this is an intriguing and unusual finale which points forwards to the next season of what is now the only Buffyverse show.

It’s a lighthearted episode, a good thing after all the recent angst,  showing how all of Angel’s gang are slowly corrupted by Wolfram & Hart and agree to take over the LA branch of the evil law firm for their far from nefarious purposes but, it’s heavily implied, losing a part of their souls in the process.

It’s fun to see a temporarily resurrected Lilah tempting them all with her customary wit; she seems somewhat cheerful for someone who has just been in Hell and will be back there soon. It’s also unclear what’s so outrageous about her contractual obligations to her employer extending beyond death, with the alternative again being Hell. But it’s fun seeing her sparring yet again with Angel and, indeed, with Wesley.

They all get their individual temptations- Fred is to be head of science, Lorne of entertainment, Wesley of arcane lore or something and Gunn... well, we know not what, but he takes a trip to the big white room where a panther has replaced the little girl. He’s very conscious about what his supposed talent may be that Wolfram & Hart so require; we shall no doubt find out at the start of next season. Angel, of course, is CEO, with Sun-proof executive windows and twelve cars. Not bad.

The season has largely been about annoying little Connor, though, so it’s fitting that he should get a fitting send-off as Angel foils his psychopathic son in a nasty little hostage situation and Wolfram & Hart arrange for Connor to get an entirely different life.

It’s been a wonderfully changeable season, easily as good as the last, ending up with yet another major change. Is this going to continue...?

Angel: Benediction

“Well, aren’t you just sneaky with the subtext?”

Such a tragic episode, this; we can very much see how, behind the endearingly awkward scenes of Angel slowly connecting with Connor/Steven, things are about to go horribly wrong in all sorts of ways. Connor is confused, bewildered, hostile to Lorne as a visible demon, torn between his two fathers. He may fight by his father, but growing up in a hell dimension (“Who hasn’t?” asks Fred) is in many ways a very sheltered upbringing.

I think we shall be charitable and ignore the deeply unconvincing appearance of Prosthetic Holtz, as he does die, after all. But he’s devious, later upon layer, every word and every action crafted for maximum revenge on Angel, and he just doesn’t care about the collateral damage to the boy he supposedly loves and whom he has raised for the best part of two decades.

Things get more and more arse-clenchingly awkward between Corey and Groo, with Groo very much aware of his status as pet more than lover. I give them about, well, an episode. lol ah so to use her highly entertaining  plot to corrupt the lonely, unloved Wesley. Ironically, though, it would probably be best for all concerned if Justine had indeed died, and it’s doubly ironic, given the ending, that it should be Angel and Connor who save her.

The ending is ominous indeed; Connor believes Angel has killed Holtz and is now under Justine’s baleful influence. This superb episode is both intricately crafted and full of deep foreboding for the finale...

Angel: Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been

"It's all just blood…!"

This splendid episode from Tim Minear is just a story of the week, sort of, with no allusions to Wolfram and Hart or any great degree of arciness. I suspect it tells us an awful lot about the season's upcoming themes, though. Plus it gives our heroes a swanky new base.

It's the 1950s. The first thing we see after the opening titles is a news report about the House of Un-American activities. Seconds later we see a black family being told by the hotel manager that there are no vacancies, although there definitely are. This sets the tone; prejudice and paranoia are this episode's social evils, complete with a metaphorical demon (with an accent from vaguely south of the Mason-Dixon line) to represent them. Guests at the hotel call each other "pansy" and "red". Angel gets lynched for being a bit odd. It's a strong cocktail of prejudice, although I'm slightly uncomfortable with the implicit assumption that all this sort of prejudice is safely in the past. It isn't, not be a long shot.

The episode focuses mainly on Judy, a mixed-race lady who's "passed" for white for most of her life but has been found out, sacked, and dumped by her fiancé, leading her to steal a load of money and ruin her life forever; she effectively does spend the rest of her life in prison, burdened by guilt. It's arresting to be reminded of how 1952 is not that long ago. Silly prejudices had- and have- the power to destroy people arbitrarily and waste their lives.

Interestingly, the Angel of 1952 starts out fairly indifferent to the evils around him. He gets slowly dragged into helping Judy, but after she betrays him (not her fault) he washes his hands of the whole affair, something which shames him up to the present day. So… we have an Angel who retains his soul but loses his ability to care about people through loneliness and isolation. Foreshadowing, do you reckon?

Back in the present day, not much happens aside from a neat little structural trick in which Cordy and Wesley get to narrate events from a vantage point fifty years later. We also establish a slight bit of friction between Wesley and Gunn, who appears for the first time without reference to his dependents.

That's two episodes, and two excellent scripts. Can Angel keep this up?

Angel: Sanctuary

"Don't you dare take the moral high ground with me after what she did?"

This is simply a superb episode, and such a heady brew of themes, simmering for a long time on both Buffy and Angel, which now finally boil over. This is the most intimidating episode to write about for some considerable time.

Redemption, and how you deal with overwhelming feelings of guilt, is both the main theme of this show and the absolute centre of Angel's character. It's not surprising, then, that he should emphasise so strongly with Faith's deep desire for redemption and her helplessness at the enormity of what she has to atone for. The scene with Faith, Lady Macbeth-like, looking at her bloody hands might as well serve as the episode's defining image.

Of course, no one else has Angel's empathy for Faith. Not Cordelia, who buggers off in the first few minutes. Certainly not Buffy. Not Wolfram and Hart, who don't like being cheated. Not the Watchers' Council. Not the police, and especially not X-Files viewer Kate. Everyone is outraged that he should be harbouring such a notorious criminal, the sole Guardian reader on Planet Daily Mail. For someone like me, with deeply unfashionable, wishy-washy opinions on crime and punishment, this is actually quite moving. It's often not easy to be the only person in the group who thinks that, actually, it isn't a particularly good idea to string anybody up, not even the very worst.

The twist, of course- that Angel's ultimate purpose is to convince Faith to give herself up willingly to the law- is even more deeply, deeply rich with meaning. For so long, albeit in Buffy rather than Angel, we've splayed with the question of whether those with power, Greek style heroes such as slayers, should be subject to the same laws as the rest of us. Faith, in Bad Girls, just before her fall, stated that they shouldn't. This episode, co-written by creators Joss Whedon and Tim Minear, states unequivocally that they should. This is a heavy theme, redolent of Crime and Punishment, The Outsider (I read it last month on a long train journey, incidentally; if you haven't read it, do so now), and even, for such a secular show, theological stuff.

There's one name, incidentally, whom I left off the list of people who turn against Angel: Wesley, the person recently tortured by Faith. He has every reason to help the Council, during their cosy little chat with good English beer, to seize Faith, but his deep loyalty to Angel means he doesn't. He may not entirely agree with his boss, but he's no traitor. And once again it's notable that he's moved a long way on his journey from klutz to badass. He's bloody good at darts. He punches Weatherby for calling him a ponce. And he feels a sense of purpose and pride working for Angel that he never did while working for the Council.

But perhaps the most interesting element, arc-wise, is the clash between Angel and Buffy. They part on very bad terms with each staking out their territory, almost, in metatextual terms, as though the two shows are diverging and divorcing from this point. I suspect this is the last time we'll ever see the two of them meet.

Oh yes, and there's Wolfram and Hart. Once again, we have Lilah and Lindsey. And we get what I believe to be out first reference to the "Senior Partners". Something is cooking…

Angel: The Prodigal

"Since she tried to kill me, it's been different…"

Oooh boy. This season has generally had a strong "monster of the week" feel. Excessively so, much as the individual episodes have often been good. But this episode, for once, is arc, arc, arc. We have a hint that there are things afoot which don't involve reset buttons.

We see Kate's continuing struggle to accept who Angel is, and to grasp that there are such things as vampires and demons, completely shattering the world view that underpins all her values; what use is a cop against such things? How can she possibly protect the public? There's a rapprochement, of sorts, in the middle of the episode, but she ends the episode still feeling as she did at the start, but with added grief. Will she and Angel ever reconcile? Still, the concept of demons on PCP (with added eye of newt!) is pretty damn brilliant, as is the fact that Angel can't prevent Lockley Snr's death because he hasn't been invited in although, interestingly, he's able to enter from the moment of the owner's death. Of course, I'm still watching this show like a hawk for the inevitable moment when Anger enters a property and shouldn't be able to…..

But this episode is mainly about fathers. Kate, in the present, sees her father sin, and suffer death as a consequence, leaving so many things unsaid between them. This is strongly paralleled with scenes between Liam, in 1753, and his own father, a similarly difficult-to-please figure.

But there's a third father, intriguingly: Darla. It was she who "sired" Angel: note the masculinity of the verb, which neatly implies that she is his father as well as his lover. That seems more than a little disgustingly incestuous, yes, and no, it wasn't a sentence I was particularly expecting to be writing this morning.

It's a bit strange, though, to bring back a character, even in flashback, after so long. We haven't seen Darla since the early episodes of Buffy Season One, after all. Casual or first time viewers won't even remember her. I certainly didn't, on my first marathon trek through the Buffyverse.

We learn a few more things about Liam, most notably his year of birth (1727; he turns 23 in 2000), and the circumstances of his awakening as a vampire and his first kill. A possible source of the nickname Angel is even rather awkwardly crowbarred in.

Things end on a rather unresolved not, in terms of Kate and Angel's relationship but also in a wider sense. But I think Kate is wrong to doubt Angel's humanity; his body may be all vampire, but that's not who he is.

Angel: Somnambulist

"Great news, sports fans. There's been another killing!"

This is a fascinating mid-season episode. It's almost about the very fact that the show is in the process of changing its format from semi-police procedural with the supernatural as metaphors for aspects of city life to something a bit more directly supernatural. All this seems to be reflected in the central focus of this episode: Kate, a character associated with the earlier format, having to come to terms with Angel's supernatural nature and, by extension, the fact that she's now going to have to find a place to exist as a character in a genre she wasn't made for and, perhaps, may not fit.

Kate's shocked, understandably. But she's focused, together and efficient. She''' be fine. After all, in this episode she says the word "recidivist" out loud, with out fear of tripping over the vowels. That takes real courage.

Kate is the focus of some superb directorial choices, incidentally. Her talk about the profile of the killer, with traits matching Angel, is matched to footage of our hero, brooding. There's a nice little research montage towards the end. And the opening is a nice bit of misdirection. At first we don't see the face of the vampire that's just killed someone, but then we do see: it's Angel. Although, admittedly, it's all a dream.

We don't spend too much time on the idea that Angel may be committing murders in his sleep; it's revealed pretty quickly that it's Penn, a young man sired by Angelus in eighteenth century Ireland, as communicated in those flashbacks that won't really become a fixture of the show until Darla comes back. Interestingly, Penn is a "Puritan". If he knew Liam socially when they were both alive, this might indicate that they were both Protestants, which would explain their apparent wealth in the context of the time, when the Catholic majority in Ireland led less than ideal lives and the Protestant Ascendancy owned most things. Although, come to think of it, Penn as a "Puritan" wouldn't have been part of it, so ignore what I just said.

Still, that was then.  Geeky historical footnote over. This is now, and Penn (Hawkeye himself, Jeremy Renner!) looks curiously like a 19^th century David Bowie. He's a serial killer, yes, but I don't think there's anything metaphorical going on here; the future of the show does not lie in such things.

There are other interesting things in this episode, mind. Wesley is not yet an official member of Angel Investigations, although I notice that Alexis Denisof has now been promoted to the credits. His rapport with the other two regulars is already a pleasure to behold. And it seems that a vampire can enter the lair of another vampire without permission. I wonder if this is entirely consistent with what we've seen before?

Mostly, though, this episode has me curious about how this show is going to be developed. It's fairly clear that the format is changing, but into what? It's very possible, interestingly, to read the final exchange between Cordelia and Angel as a possible harbinger for Angelus' return. After all, it's bound to happen at some point, right?

Angel: Sense and Sensitivity

"Oh, she thinks you're insensitive and, not to bring up the irony but, heh, consider the source…"

It's becoming a bit of a pattern with Angel; a good episode, which I like, which nevertheless highlights a couple of problems with the series so far. The episodes are far too "story of the week" and lacking in continuity from episode to episode. There's nothing wrong with having episodes being essentially standalone, but there have to be some elements, however subtle, that carry on from episode to episode, or you just end up with a big fat reset button and not a lot of character development. Also, I don't like the increasing focus on the "police procedural" style, partly because it encourages this very tendency. Much as I can see the attraction of the character of Kate, having her as a semi-regular is pushing the show more into this sort of format. Yes, I get that the show uses the supernatural as metaphors for life in the big city, in much the same way as Buffy does with the experience of growing up, but the show needs a bigger cast and more continuing elements. Fortunately, with the increased foregrounding of Wolfram and Hart, we seem to be getting the beginnings of that. And now they're very much aware of Angel's presence in LA.

All that said, though, this episode is very good indeed. It deals very cleverly with its very Southern Californian theme of therapy, psychobabble, obsession with "issues" and the absurdity thereof. There's a nice parallel between the early scenes, where Cordelia criticises Angel for being repressed and insensitive, and the rather hilarious later scenes, where she wishes he would be rather more repressed and insensitive. The second half of the episode, which shows us the consequences of a police department getting too far in touch with its feelings, is enormous fun. The episode takes a clear stance against this sort of thing, and I, being British, naturally approve. A certain amount of repression is needed so that people can function, and too much unnecessary obsessing over personal "issues" makes people retreat from the world into the self, with chaotic consequences for society.

One of the more illustrative scenes, perhaps, is the policeman refusing to help Doyle and insisting that the station is closed. It's tempting to see a political subtext here, that there's a link between all these hippyish notions of "letting it all hang out" that arose in the '60s and the right-wing individualism that has so dominated politics in the decades since. People in the 1950s may have been more buttoned-up, but they were solidly behind the welfare state and paid their high taxes without much blubbing. There's a political price to be paid for people getting too much in touch with their feelings.

Having said all that, though, there is such a thing as being too repressed, and Kate's father is there to remind us of that. We need to be wary of an overreliance on quacks and trendy psychobabble, but there's still a balance to be struck.

Firefly: The Message

“You are such a boob.”

Another good one, this, although not one to particularly stand out in such exalted company. There’s a nice twist, yet again, and once again it’s made clear what a fantastic cast and group of characters we have.

It seems there are still travelling shows in the far future, exhibiting “freakish” stuff. Also, there’s still awkwardness between Simon and Kaylee. Er, isn’t this going on a bit too long? I mean, I can be as awkward around girls I like as the next boy, but surely it can’t be that hard for Simon just to tell Kaylee that she’s lovely or pretty or cute or something when he’s pretty much invited to do so? I have no sympathy for him at all, and Kaylee is quite right, and also most amusing, to spend the rest of the episode hating him.

Anyway, the post has come. Jayne has got a rather fetching hat from Mummy, which is nice. I love the bit where he reads her letter aloud, stumbling over the words! Adam Baldwin is great, as ever.

But Mal and Zoe have a parcel which is far more McGuffin-y: the corpse of their old war buddy, Tracey. What is it with Firefly and blokes with girls’ names?

Another war flashback- oh goody; I love these. The whole vibe is very First World War, with trenches, shell shock and period helmets. Appropriate, then, on this day of the year. I seem to have been noticing the excellence of Gina Torres a lot lately, but she’s excellent here. She plays Zoe very differently, as a hard, gritty soldier, and we see how much she’s been changed by (relative) peace and married bliss. This scene, introducing Tracey as a bit of a useless but likeable twonk, is very funny indeed. Mal, of course, is the same as ever.

It’s rather touching how every one instantly drops everything to abide by Tracey’s recorded last wishes: Mal and Zoe out of loyalty and everyone else, even Jayne, by simple decency. And Inara is clearly putting herself to great inconvenience.

We get a quick scene to establish that a bunch of badass cops are coming after the ship and its corpse, and it’s clearly underlined just how sadistic and unpleasant they are. Still, anyone who wears a black leather trenchcoat must be up to no good, right?

There are some very nice scenes showing us everyone’s different reactions to death- Jayne likes to make himself feel alive, River is just weird, and Mal and Zoe get bladdered and share old war stories with Inara. Then, bang.

Tracey has clearly bitten off more than he can chew, and his story makes it clear that he’s in deep trouble, trouble from which perhaps he has no chance of recovering. He may not be dead, but even if he evades his pursuers he’s smuggling someone else’s organs, and is likely to be hunted forever. He’s a little boy in a man’s world, and he can’t possibly survive the episode.

Kaylee, on the rebound, takes a liking to him, which instantly tells us that he’ll betray her in a moment of weakness before he dies. And so he does. There are some exciting moments during the pursuit during the cops, but it’s ok; Shepherd Book has a brilliant plan which works perfectly. Tracey gets himself killed out of pure stupidity.

Firefly: Out of Gas

“Mal, you don’t have to die alone.”

“Everybody dies alone.”

This sort of episode is pretty much obligatory for any genre series; we’re a few episodes in, so it’s time to flesh out the characters’ backgrounds by means of some amusing flashbacks. And it’s fun, so fun that it’s not until the end that you realise you’ve been watching a “bottle” episode.

It’s an impressive bit of structuring from Tim Minear, too; we have two parallel “presents”-Mal alone in Serenity, having been shot, with little oxygen left, and a few hours earlier as the crisis hits- interspersed with the flashbacks. It’s complex, but never difficult for the viewer to follow, and it’s nice that the disaster A-plot is sufficiently simple to allow for this complex structure. It’s very much a Mal episode, really, showing him to be an old-fashioned heroic type, likeable in spite of everything, who insists on going down with his ship while allowing the rest of his crew a better chance of survival. It’s notable that he’s ultimately able to impose his authority even in these circumstances, even getting Wash to get back to the bridge while his wife might be dying.

It’s Wash (with a very ‘70s porn moustache!) who gets the first brief flashback, in which we also see the ship’s previous engineer, Bester, who has hair rather like mine but is considerably better looking than me (grr!), and is of course named after Alfred. Next we move on to Kaylee, who probably gets the best flashback. This scene is hilarious. Plus, if Kaylee noticed all that technical stuff while she was lying on her back then this Bester chap probably doesn’t have the, er, skills to back up his good looks, which is a rather comforting thought to us more ordinary-looking blokes.

Inara’s flashback is interesting; she drives a hard bargain, and has the measure of Mal from the start. Interesting that her politics are at odds with his. It’s also interesting that she’s the one who tries to persuade Mal not to stay with the ship. A lot of things are obviously left unsaid at their parting.

Jayne’s flashback is comedy gold, of course, and in hindsight the whole “How much are they paying you?” thing is the only way you can imagine him joining the crew. None of these flashbacks really tell us much about the characters that’s likely to affect how we see them or anything that’s likely to happen from now on, of course, but they’re certainly entertaining, and that’s how to do this sort of thing; play up the comedy. It certainly makes a nice contrast with the uber-serious A-plot, and gives us a chance to get a deeper, more serious look at Mal by putting him under severe pressure while we have fun with everyone else.

There’s one overwhelming thought that always strikes me whenever I come across stories of spaceships breaking down, though. Life on a spaceship is incredibly dependent on life support, and things break. Surely, in reality, life aboard a spaceship, with the constant real risk of life support failure and death, would be far too dangerous for non-specialists to attempt? Sadly, much though I enjoy good space-set science fiction, I suspect that, in reality, space travel will never progress much beyond the space programmes of today (or should that be yesterday?).

Firefly: Bushwhacked

“Couldn’t let us profit. Wouldn’t be civilised.”

We hear the word “civilised” a lot here, in different contexts- it’s certainly a theme. We also get some incremental development of the Simon / River arc, and continued bigging up of the still-unseen Reavers into the most fearsome ever. Mainly, though, we get a damned good script. It’s not quite up there with the last couple of episodes- Tim Minear is not Joss Whedon, good though he is- but it’s still up there somewhere.

The characters continue to be wonderful, with Jayne playing a delightful prank on Simon and Mal having an interesting debate with Jayne and Shepherd Book on whether to look for survivors on the derelict transport that Serenity is passing. This sort of demonstrates that, while Mal’s manner may be closer to Jayne, his sense of right and wrong is much closer to Book’s, in spite of their philosophical disagreement. A good conscience is a good conscience, whether religion is involved or not. Kaylee has Mal pretty much right when she praises his speech later on.

I’m not sure how realistic it is for Serenity to just bump into another ship (this ain’t the ocean; space is much, much bigger even if we’re only talking the space between a limited number of planets and moons), but I’ll not single out this episode to criticise for a common sci-fi failing, especially as I failed to mention this during fifty-two episodes of Blake’s 7.

We have a proper Mary Celeste-style mystery, soon solved by the realisation that Reavers have been here. The script and the performances really pull out the stops in underlining just how bad-ass they are: even Jayne is terrified. I suspect once we finally get to see them they won’t be anywhere near as scary.

There’s also a sad story here, of poor colonists looking for a new life at the frontier having their hopes cruelly snatched away. It’s clear that the worlds under the Alliance are home to an awful lot of poverty, inequality and state indifference to the have-nots.

Kaylee gets a moment to shine, as she calmly defuses the Reavers’ booby trap, and there’s a quick but interesting shot of Inara with her calligraphy. This seems to symbolise grace, serenity and other such predictable things, but also perhaps, at a moment like this, it signifies feelings underneath that she’s trying to cover up.

Just when they’re about to leave, though, they’re boarded by a load of Alliance troops looking for River. Mal is smart at not falling for any verbal traps (“No children on board.”), but soon clashes with the leader of the Feds. Politics rears its head here; we learn that the ship is named after the Battle of Serenity Valley, where the Browncoats lost the war.

The hiding place for River and Simon- outside the hull in their spacesuits- is clever, and it’s wonderful to see River, so very innocent, gaping at the stars with childlike wonder. I love the interviews with the crew, too. Especially Kaylee’s. I think I’m getting a crush on her. Perhaps I’m in luck. She seems to like Simons.

It’s a bit of a stretch, perhaps, that the Reavers’ traumatised victim should start to become a Reaver himself, but we end the episode with a nice bit of tension before, for the second episode in a row, the authority figure lets Mal go with just a slap on the wrist for being a fundamentally decent sort.

The backstory has now been set up in quite some detail. We have a deeper understanding of the Reavers, the Alliance and the world in which Mal and co all operate. We can expect Reavers at a later date, and of course Niska. And what’s going on with River…?

Firefly: The Train Job

“Take us out of the World, Wash. We got us some crime to be done.”

I have a vague idea of the story behind this episode: of how Fox insisted in being utter wankers, on how they refused to show the pilot and, indeed, proceeded to screen the whole series in an eccentric order, and of how we foreigners and latecomers with our DVD box sets are indeed fortunate to be experiencing the show this way. All of which is to say that I’m well aware that this episode was unfortunately pressed into the job of introducing everyone and everything once more.

It’s obvious, knowing this, that all the characters are being subtly introduced once more, and that the entire backstory is pretty much related to us again. Yet it’s never intrusive, or too obvious, and the fact that this script also happens to be completely bloody brilliant is a huge credit to Joss Whedon, he who can do no wrong, and Tim Minear. I’m vaguely aware that this episode hasn’t got too good a reputation. If that’s the case, I’m looking forward to seeing a popular one.

Whedon also directs here, and rather brilliantly. The opening shots in the bar, with the constantly moving camera, set things up really, really well, and the fight with the clientele of the Alliance-supporting bar is a great set-piece. We also get a bit of a backstory; the civil war between the Alliance and the Browncoats took place six years ago.

We get a few nice character scenes- Inara and Mal are fantastic together, while Shepherd Book once again shows himself to be an incisive judge of human character. It’s becoming clear, already, what a fantastic cast this is. It’s great to see a bunch of actors who are clearly very, very into their characters, enjoying themselves hugely, and relishing the superb dialogue that Whedon is giving them.

The actual plot is a fairly perfunctory backdrop for all this, really, although Niska is a delightfully evil character whom we can hardly fail to see again. His deliciously nasty threats to our heroes as they accept the job pretty much tell us that they’re going to somehow fail and earn his enmity.

A train robbery is a traditional Western trope, of course. But I’m glad to see an interplanetary future which still has them around- I suspect that’s what would happen. Plus, we get some rather fun set pieces such as Jayne jumping out of Serenity on to a moving train. You’ve always got to love that. I also love the silly euphemism “gorram”. Still not sure about all the Mandarin, though. There doesn’t really seem to be enough Chinese cultural influence to justify it so far.

Interesting that Inara should rescue Mal by claiming that he’s her “indentured man”. This future society is no utopia.

The episode hinges, of course, on Mal being a decent man, and insisting on returning the stolen goods once he realises that the crates contain much-needed medicine. Mal’s great; rough, gruff, incredibly witty, but with a conscience underneath it all.

It’s a great twist, but typically Whedon, that the Sheriff immediately sees what Mal is doing, understands, and lets them off. We’re shown that Mal’s no saint, though; he’s honourable enough to return Niska’s money but quite prepared to kill his thuggish underling.

We end with a bit of juicy arc stuff. River is starting to become a bit more lucid, and is now going on about “two by two, hands of blue”. We end with the sight of some official types on River’s trail, and either their gloves or their hands are bright blue…