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Firefly - The Complete Series Customer Reviews (28 - 30 of 83 Reviews)
The only SF series my wife really, really liked
She's still upset that Fox cancelled it. Me, too, but I'm more used to idiocy in high places.
But now we have the DVD set--and it's gorgeous. You have not seen "Firefly" until you have seen it in widescreen and real sound on a large screen (in my case, 42" plasma HD) TV. The images are sharp, the effects hold up very well, and the cast is as quirky as ever. Heck, the pilot episode alone is probably better than 90% of all SF films ever released. And, as my wife says, "No commercials."
Firefly was intelligent, witty, a bit goofy, character-driven, and a lot of fun. Also had one of the best theme songs of any show of recent memory. So, of course, the network executives moved it around, forced the episodes to be shown out of order, then cancelled it abruptly.
Imagine if those same executives had been running Fox when The X-Files started a decade ago. All we'd have would be a VHS set of a dozen or so episodes of Scully and Mulder. Bozos. All I can hope is that Joss Whedon succeeds in bringing "Firefly" to the big screen--and then back to the small one. ..bruce..
EXCELLENT Boxed Set for an EXCELLENT Show!!
I just bought this from my local Best Buy, they had it early :-) Anyway, the set itself is put together like the Boxed Sets of 'King Of The Hill', 'Futurama' and 'Family Guy', NOT like the Buffy, Angel, and Simpsons Boxed Sets. It's got the slimline DVD cases in a cardboard slipcase. The picture and sound quality ROCKS and is presented in Anamorphic Widescreen. It includes 3 episodes that FOX never aired (STUPID!!) and bloopers (which I love). The show is the perfect mix of sci-fi, comedy, suspense, and drama (like you'd expect from Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy & Angel and writer of Alien: Resurrection) I can only hope that when the upcoming movie comes out, FOX kicks itself for cancelling such a great show! I blame FOX for not giving the show a chance, the promos they created for it did NOT do this show justice, this is NOT a space-western!!! FOX, hopefully the sales figures of your TV DVDs have shown you that you've cancelled some very popular shows: Firefly, Futurama, and most of all, FAMILY GUY!!!
Don't miss this sleeper masterpiece!
I just watched the entire 'Firefly' series in three consecutive sittings, and I'm compelled to try to convince any fence-sitters to give this series an honest chance. This is definitely worth owning on DVD.
To my shame, I saw bits of this series during its disgracefully short television run and really didn't care for it at the time. Most of the blame of course goes to the network, which stuck Firefly into an inconvenient time slot and aired the 2-hour pilot episode that establishes the premise & players as the series FINALE -- unforgivable with a show whose appeal so deeply springs from its evolving characters. Not having a feel for the people and their situations, tuning into the series left me thinking that the whole premise of the show simply revolved around the 'Wild West in Space' concept, which didn't strike me at the time as particularly clever or interesting. Add to that the Chinese slang used for cursing which must have sounded good on paper but actually detracts in practice (Galactica's 'frak!' and 'felgercarb!' sounded much more natural), and the apparent central plot of an extremely evil bunch of gloved government agents and the reason they seem to want River Tam... well, that idea was a yawner 25 years ago when it was the basis for 'The Fury,' and about a hundred science-fiction stories like it before and since. So when Firefly was cancelled, I was only mildly disappointed.
But now, seeing the series straight through, complete and sequential, I can appreciate it for the first time, and deeply; I wish I had understood its wonderful qualities right from the start. The characters and their relationships are exceptionally rendered; the casting is perfect; the production values are top notch; the dialog with its well-timed humor is a real joy... now I'm left wanting much more! I guess I'll have to watch the series straight through again right away; I'm sure I'll pick up much more detail during a second pass.
The real fun of Firefly is watching a group of well-developed characters with very different points of view try to make it to the next day in a morally ambiguous universe with a quirky social order. Oh, and there are spaceships, knives, guns, grenades, train robberies, shoot-outs, prostitutes, kidnappers, cattle-rustlers, break-ins, bounty hunters, gangsters, and tough guys that wear colorful wool knit hats, too. (And sing!) And while it is certainly science-fiction, the technology does not get in the way at all (no ditching out of tight spots by 'reversing the phase polarity of the tetrion field'), and the drama springs from the characters and not any gee-whiz alien-of-the-week (there are no aliens, only human settlers). Solid, interesting drama with no dodgy literary tricks.
The DVD set is nicely presented with the four discs each in their own ThinPak slim cases - no annoying accordion/billfold packaging - and these are held together by an outer box sleeve. The menus on the discs are just a little annoying and don't reflect the mood of the show, and the disclaimer about the 'opinions expressed' seems to hang on the screen forever, but these are very minor gripes.
Like the series, the extras in this set are far too short-lived for my tastes, but are worth every minute. Several of the episodes have commentaries which range from heartwarming fun to very enlightening. One easily comes to empathize with the love these people had for their show. The commentary on 'Objects in Space' is a solo by Whedon, and rather than reveal anecdotes about the production, he gives us a lengthy insight into what he was trying to achieve with this episode (which ended up being the last). Some have criticized this commentary as being ambiguous and self-indulgent, but I hung on every word as the filmmaker explained the key concepts he tried to communicate and the methods he used to do so. Really good stuff. If you enjoy Firefly, and if you listen to one DVD commentary this year, make it a commentary from this set.
Some may be turned off by the fact that they would be jumping into a show that is already orphaned, so 'why get into it?' Well, partially bolstered by the success of the sales of these discs, a theatrical film is currently in the works, and this DVD set would be a perfect lead up to it. And to borrow from one of the characters in the series, 'just because I may lose something doesn't mean I'm not going to try to have it.'
Give Firefly a chance. Every episode is a gem, and just because you'll be left wondering what happens next doesn't mean you shouldn't find out what's happened so far.
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