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You know, Teshi is going to be incredibly disappointed when these aren't as interesting as she'd been imagining them to be while she was avoiding them.

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Teshi was not disappointed. Even what I imagined could not start on what this last episode ended up being. This was tv at the potential it should reach. This was great writing and great characters and great ifs and great storytelling and great ideas. All in all, it's like a sapling cut off half way up the trunk by vandals, what happened to Firefly.

After I watched this episode, I knew from the lines and the way it was filmed that there was more here than just plot, and I also wanted to hear the line that Book says when River reads his mind, I'll come to that later. So I started it again, and immediately noticed the planet at the start is the same as the bouncey ball from the end. *click*. After hearing Book's line and thinking "what the heck?" a couple of times I stopped the replay and went back to listen to the commentary, hoping Joss Whedon would shed some light on the subject.

I was very interested in what he had to say, and I was pleased how much of it was communicated clearly to me as a passive but thinking viewer. I got the 'walls opening' line immediately, from the sheer clarity of the writing, direction etc. I was also happy, and somewhat amused, to hear that JW disliked guns and violence and yet those things are just so much of this show. It's clear he knows that it sells, it makes the story exciting, and so he puts it in, but it's also nice to know that he wants to go beyond that. I think that's part of what makes Firefly so great.

Some of the shots in this episode were truly lovely. The one with River balanced on the railings, listening, took my breath away.

On a more mundane level, I thought Early was a great villian. I don't want to say too much but since you've turned this thread into a spoiler mine-field I feel like what I'm saying is totally inconsequential, so. Early's creeping yet laid back evil and violence was horrifying. Made my skin crawl, especially the scene with Kaylee. Holy crumpets. Not a fun situation.

And yet this episode for all its deepness, for all the horrible creepyness of Early, managed to have its moments of glee. Jayne's obliviousness, the midget exchange, the conversation between River and Mal. They were perfect.

And I loved that great scene when River floats towards Mal. Like JW said, she looks like a cheerful little kid in an oversized snowsuit. Fabulous.

I have no idea how to express how much I love this series, this storyline, this idea and these characters and how much disbelief I feel at the fact that it never even had a chance. There is no justice, is all I can say.

You can hear in JW's voice, in the actors, how they share the same sentiment. It's almost like the "what went wrong" idea. "The perfect show, and yet we failed, how the heck did that happen?"

I am, I think you can say, safely converted. You can have your DVD back when you want it, twinky. I'm going to go and find somewhere to buy my own .

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Anyway, the speculation doesn't end here, certainly. I still have Book's character to investigate. Clearly, he has a (much) darker history, and possibly and much darker side. That cryptic comment read by River, which at this rate, we'll never know what it meant, kind of alerts us to this. I think it's a real sentiment, although I'm not sure if it was directed at River, or if River plucked it from a memory.

I don't have a clue what to make of it, though. Sounds like a cruel man, but I still legitimately believe that he is, at face value, a Shepherd, despite Early's comment that he's not. I'm sticking to this idea because, by the fourteenth episode, we've only seen him use whatever talents he has in the effort to further his Shepherdness. The act has been too long to pull the rug out completely from under us.

My theory now is that I don't think he's been a Shepherd for as long as he leads us to believe. He's obviously a man of action, and has been, or still conceals, a heartless general, cop or any number of other people that he could have been.

I have a further feel. If he was an undercover agent in a former life, who was then forced to take the guise of a Shepherd, who then decided to actually take up the vows of a Shepherd, he might garner the kind of things we've seen from him- the extensive battle knowledge yet the desire to be gentle, and not kill.

More later, I need to think .

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