“Out
of Gas” is as close to a bottle episode as Firefly
could get. Almost all of it takes place
on Serenity, with the conflict happening
on just the ship. This smaller scale
premise allows for greater focus on the characters (the only ones who are
really in danger in this), lending to one of Firefly’s greatest episodes.
After
the ship’s engine overheats and explodes, Serenity
is running out of oxygen (hence, the title).
With a few hours of oxygen to spare, can the engine be fixed in time? This scenario is simple but very effective. The story is told as a nonlinear narrative that
works to its own benefit. It mainly
jumps between two timeframes: the climax and the rising action leading up to
it. This format leaves you not only wondering
what happened before, keeps you guessing what is going to happen next. There is a constant underlying threat that
looms all throughout this episode. While
heavily reliant on slow-building tension, it is very fast-paced and its
momentum never slows down.
“Out
of Gas” also sheds some new light on the characters, especially in the
near-past sequences. After all, the main
plot chronologically opens with Simon’s birthday party. They laugh and joke around, sharing past
memories with each other. The chemistry
of the entire cast is at its finest, everyone’s personalities are bouncing off
each other. It is a very quiet and
down-to-earth moment that shows the crew’s human side in the best way possible:
as one big happy family. On another
note, sprinkled throughout this episode are some flashbacks that tell the story
of how the crew of Serenity came together. While it is interesting (and often
entertaining) to see these backstories, they don’t add much to the central
story or to the characters other than what we already know about them—for lack
of better words, they’re just filler.
Furthermore, the episode shows the vulnerable side of the crew during the disaster. The climax has sequences of Mal injured and
stumbling through the halls of the ship when she’s almost (no pun intended) out
of gas, and Nathan Fillion’s performance demonstrates Mal’s vulnerability and
desperation really well. The supporting
cast gets to flex their muscles, too, with Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, and Alan
Tudyk as the highlights. Jayne Cobb,
normally the hothead, gets to be the glue who keeps the crew together in this
stressful time for once. It’s refreshing
to see Adam Baldwin play Jayne with a more levelheaded and underplayed tone—a
softer side of Jayne not present before.
From Wash having a breakdown after Zoe gets knocked out to Kaylee doubting
her own talents and abilities when she has trouble fixing the engine, this
episode is full of little moments that underline how Serenity’s crew would behave in such a tense and dire situation
where the chances of survival are so low.
This
is one of the best episodes of Firefly,
period. Despite a few padding scenes,
the nonlinear narrative technique succeeds at delivering its story in a way
that hooks the viewer in. Now combine
that with a scenario where the stakes are very high not because of an
apocalyptic doomsday situation, but because all of the main characters’ lives
are on the line. In a good way, this
episode is a lot like a puzzle. And the
pieces of this puzzle all fit together really well in the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment