Firefly - "Our Mrs. Reynolds" (TV Episode Review #18)

90% of “Our Mrs. Reynolds” takes place onboard Serenity, after Mal is tricked into marrying a young girl named Saffron while trading on a remote border planet.  As he has to put up with admitting his unwanted newlywed as his newest crewmember, what follows is 44 minutes of awkwardness, innuendo, and some troublemaking.

Largely a comedy episode until the end (save for a falling action that makes for some standard space opera action fare, which flows nicely with the rest of this episode), most of the plot is driven solely by its writing and acting.  The lines and dialogue between the characters are sharply written and very funny, often playing off of how cringeworthy this situation really is.  It is already so awkward for Mal, but everyone else in Serenity’s crew plays it up.  Shepherd Book, Jayne, and Inara are suspicious of Mal, while Kaylee, being the heart of the crew, is really the first person to make Saffron feel at home.  One of the episode’s funniest moments is an anecdote where Shepherd Book acts very sly and sarcastic when warning Mal about what he can and can’t do with his new “wife”—a brief moment that actor Ron Glass makes so sincere, it is arguably one of Book’s best scenes in the whole show.

But the two biggest-selling performances of this episode come from Nathan Fillion as Mal Reynolds and guest star Christina Hendricks as Saffron, which are both supplemented by how Joss Whedon wrote their interactions.  Mal’s scenes with Saffron make for some hilariously awkward moments.  He didn’t consent to marry her, as he was unaware of the planet’s patriarchal marriage customs.  As such, he is always doing his best to make her feel comfortable but always turn down her offers for sex.  He treats her more as a new member of the crew than his lawfully wedded, is rather uncomfy with her excessive clinginess and servitude, and tries to persuade her to be her own person (albeit to no avail, at least it seems).  For all he knows, she really is a slave bride sold to him and he (rightfully) feels it would be wrong to do... with her... well... you know!

SPOILERS

Saffron is initially believable as an innocent and sheltered girl with a background of patriarchal subjugation.  In her early scenes, she sports a soft-spoken fragility, such as when she cries on Kaylee’s shoulder, and her constant insistence to “help” Mal comes off as showing someone who does not know true independence, at least at first.  In a twist, we later find out it’s all just BS—she’s actually a con artist.  Her real motive is to steal not Mal but his ship, as a hired gun for her own clients.

This plot twist could have failed had Christina Hendricks not nailed both personas of Saffron as flawlessly as she did.  Her character is a unique kind of femme fatale who makes her innocent façade shockingly convincing; if you were even able to win the heart of KAYLEE of all people, you’ve done a great job.  In character, the fact that Saffron mastered her façade is a sign that she had done her research and knows the ins and outs of the culture she was infiltrating.  As far as acting is concerned, this was an early sign of Christina Hendricks’s versatile acting chops from her pre-Mad Men days, able to convince the audience that she is someone else not once, but twice, in the same episode.

SPOILERS END HERE

This is an episode that finds a striking balance between comedy and suspense, and manages to segue the flow between these two moods seamlessly.  Joss Whedon knows how to write effective humor that dares to offend without going overboard (again, just watch Book’s iconic scene) but does not forget to still create stakes as well.  The awkward anti-romance may be the highlight of “Our Mrs. Reynolds”, but the episode goes further from that to make it a true standout.