The best thing I saw last week was the complete run of Firefly. I again watched all 14 episodes over the week on Netflix streaming. I’ve done this 4 or 5 times since it became available on the Netflix instant queue, and this week I’ll probably watch the film Serenity again as for me it does kind of work as a great topper after you watch the full show.

Sadly I was not a Browncoat from day one, I think I only ever caught one or two episodes as they went live on Fox before the shows sad cancellation. And I do remember seeing ads for the show and thinking “Cool, this looks like it could be a The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. in space!”, which I thought was a great idea. What I saw was an interesting show that seemed fairly cool and then it faded into the background noise. Then the movie Serenity came out, which I saw on the big screen. Mainly due to having seen Nathan Fillion’s performance in one of Joss Whedon’s other epic projects, Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

After all that I saw Firefly was available for streaming and one weekend I set down and watched it all over the course of a weekend. Now I understand why this show has such ardent fans. Now I see why there are Browncoats at all the conventions. Now I see that I want to be bad guys, and I want my world shiny. From design to script, characterization to set design, fight scenes to cursing in Chinese, Firefly is as well built as it is full of heart.

At its most basic Firefly is Joss Whedon’s idea of a western set in space, think half Brisco County Jr., half Star Trek. But what this cast of characters brought to the screen is so much more than that that it’s almost unbelievable. A whole that is far more powerful than the sum of its parts.  Nathan Fillion leads the crew of Serenity, a Firefly class starship, as Malcolm Reynolds, an ex-soldier that fought against the Alliance that now has most of known space under its control. Being a man of honor that has no problem being unscrupulous in the eyes of the government he is in the unique position to smuggle, rob, and basically be a pain in the backside of the Alliance. Mal has put together a crew capable of handling almost any situation, even if it’s not in the most straight ahead fashion. Over the course of the show you see a crew grow closer as a family as they face situations that always seem to be more gray than the original black and white seen at the outset. They fight, they sneak, they rabble rouse, they generally are just damn entertaining and you’ll enjoy being along for the ride.

If you’ve got the Netflix queue up and running I would say to give it a chance, I have trouble thinking of someone that would not enjoy this show. And if you don’t want to face down a stack of 14 episodes than watch the film Serenity which does stand alone as it was written to work even if you’ve never seen a minute of the show. It may not be your favorite thing ever, you may not become a Browncoat, but I bet you’ll think it’s shiny!