035. Jaynestown (Firefly)

"Our love for him now ain't hard to explain. The hero of Canton, the man they call Jayne"

ORIGINAL AIRDATE: 18th October 2002
EPISODE NUMBER: Season 1, Episode 7
WRITTEN BY: Ben Edlund

There's a lot of great characters in Firefly, but this episode was Jayne's chance to shine, as we arrive on a planet where he's hailed as a hero, after accidentally dropping a bag of money onto the houses of the "mudders".  But obviously not everyone is happy to see Jayne back, and Boss Higgins plots to take him down. Jayne proved he was up to the task of having an episode center on him and was brilliant throughout.

The scene where the minstrel sings the song about Jayne is some brilliant comedy. Simon's reaction is the funniest, wondering if he is "going mad", seeing his nemesis being heralded with praise. And if you want more laughs, check out Book's hair.

The concept of the episode was great, because Jayne is the character least deserving of hero status. He's selfish, arrogant and completely lacking in morals and class. And he knows it. The guilt he feels when his secret is exposed feels genuine, and gave it a sombre climax.

It also leads to a great ending, where Mal explains that the people needed something to believe in, whether it was true or not. He then caps the episode off with a great quote: "every guy who got a statue made of him was one kind of sonuvabitch of another".

009. Our Mrs Reynolds (Firefly)

"If you take sexual advantage of that girl, you're going to a special level of Hell reserved for child molestors and people who talk at the theatre"

ORIGINAL AIRDATE: 4th October 2002
EPISODE NUMBER: Season 1, Episode 6
WRITTEN BY: Joss Whedon

I'm not going to make many promises on this list, but here's one I do feel confident of: Firefly will have the highest ratio of episodes featured. Joss Whedon's unfairly-cancelled space western only aired 14 episodes, but they were all pretty good, and you can expect quite a few of them to show up here.

Our Mrs Reynolds was the start of an excellent run. It combines action with humour really well, has some great one-liners, and an excellent guest star. Christina Hendricks really steals the show as the seductive femme fatale Saffron, whom Mal accidentally marries. A simple story about the awkwardness of Mal having a fish-out-of-water new bride would have sufficed, but the episode is elevated to the next level when Saffron's true nature as a con artist is revealed. Hendricks is completely convincing as good girl and bad girl.

But the whole crew are actually on top form, as they react to the bizarre predicament Mal finds himself in. Wash cracks jokes about it, Book offers a stern lecture and Jayne even tries to compete for her affections. Inara's face-off is the most interesting, as even she almost falls for her charms.

It's a shame that such a wonderful character was only in 2 episodes, but that's the problem with Firefly as a whole: there just isn't enough of it.