Firefly and Serenity...

Come to find out, there was this TV series about these folks on a space ship who flew around outer space going from planet to planet, smuggling, thieving, saving the day for those needing saving and harboring a fugitive crazy chick and her doctor brother. If you recognize it, then you know I'm talking about Firefly and the movie that sort of wrapped up the single season effort, Serenity.

Several of you urged us to give it a shot and our neighbors came through with the full set of disks and the movie so we could see what it was all about. For me not being a sci-fi type of person, the fact that none of the characters had pointy ears or weird goiters protruding from their heads made this a little more acceptable to give a shot.

Most of you are already familiar with this (and pretty much every other show I am late coming to) but on the off chance you aren't, I'll mention that the cool thing to me was the way the characters had sort of an old western movie feel to them. It's this sort of writing style that entertains me. I loved Deadwood for a similar reason. As you watched these people out in the wild West, they all spoke like they had just walked out of Oxford, but with a slight edge. In other words, don't watch Deadwood if you can't handle the F-word or an assortment of wonderfully colorful vulgarities. Firefly was certainly more PG rated, though it did feature a member of the ship's crew who was a "companion". I'm sure former councilperson Diane Cibrian was a fan.

And that leads me to the local connection I was not aware of, and that is the star crazy person in the show, River Tam, was played by San Antonio native Summer Glau. I had no idea.

If you haven't seen it and just need a recommendation, I say go for it. My wife and I skipped a lot of our regular DVR choices to knock out the 14 episodes and movie, and we really did enjoy it.

What's next? Your ideas? Should we just break down and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer since it was written by the same Joss Whedon who did Firefly? If you have a recommendation, feel free to leave a comment or send me a note.