Firefly 1.10 (War Stories)
Torture, smorture, the real pain is in not getting to see the rest of what happens between Inara and the Counselor!
Written By: Cheryl Cain
Directed By: James A. Contner
–I always envisioned Niska as a recurring big bad for the series, I’m always glad when I get to War Stories and he recurs as the case may be.
–Little moments like Mal yelling at River and Kaylee to “shut up” when they’re running around near the beginning of the episode, or his following barb about not cleaning it up when one of them falls and dies brings the family aspect of the show front and center. Mal’s trying to act cold and detached, but with each episode that facade gives way to the emotional core that exists within him.
–Jayne’s “I’ll be in my bunk” is an all time classic.
–The unspoken growth of a relationship between Jayne and Shepherd Book is one of many unspoken of things that Firefly does that make the show so unique.
–The more lines Alan Tudyck gets the happier I tend to be, now you have an episode where Tudyck and Nathan Fillion are interacting all the time and I’m downright giddy!
–The way they structure the torture scenes between Niska, Mal and Wash is pure genius. It’s funny, it’s dramatic, but at the same time it gets to the heart of what type of man Wash is, but most of all what type of man Mal is.
–I love the abruptness of when Zoë chooses to save Wash.
–I remember being quite shocked when I first watched War Stories at the moment when Mal is pronounced dead. It doesn’t shock me any more, but it’s still a great moment.
–It is suitably creepy to hear River’s words post-shooting.
If it weren’t for a particularly dicey instance of CGI when Mal’s torturer’s dead body is shown falling to its ultimate resting place, I reckon War Stories would be yet another perfect episode in Firefly. Most of what War Stories does so well I touched on in my bullet points above, and thus I don’t feel the need to touch on them again. Something else War Stories does however, is to create mystery around a certain idea, Shepherd Book’s knowledge of and skill with a gun, and then suddenly shift that mystery to a scarier place, River’s actions in killing Niska’s men. That is an example of the layered storytelling found in Firefly that is hard to find in a lot of television shows. Most TV shows have an A and a B plot, sometimes even C or D plots, but it’s not often that I’ve seen a show suddenly introduce a major plot point like River’s gun play and have it exist on its own not, to simply linger in the mind of the viewer until a future date.
For the above reason and for War Stories being yet another example of how seamlessly the people involved with Firefly blend the worlds of drama, action and comedy, I have no choice but to highly recommend War Stories. It is another great episode of Firefly, and as redundant as that statement may be, it means even more when discussing this series since Firefly has created some lofty standards for itself.
Rating:
99/100
A
Cheers,
Bill
