I think they have a very tight and invaluable bond, but that there are different characteristics from what I count as friendship.

I don't think they talk much, but my BF doesn't "talk" much to his closest friends, but the friendship is very real.

I'm with Robin on this one. Neither Mal or Zoe are the type to do much talking, in any case, but I think their friendship is a solid and unshakable thing.

I bet Zoe does a hell of a lot of talking with Wash. It's not a her thing. It's a them thing. They're comrades. They're a team. I'd be really really startled if romance was possible for them -- if it is indeed a friendship, I'd say it's a friendship that doesn't extrapolate.

This may be a semantic distinction that only exists in my head.

If I recall correctly, Mal was raised by his widowed and/or single mother. He mentions that his mom had a ranch, not that his folks had a ranch. Being raised by a single mom might account for his rapport with women who don't frip, like Kaylee and Zoe, and unlike Inara, whose frippery is apparent.

Being raised by a single mom might account for his rapport with women who don't frip, like Kaylee and Zoe, and unlike Inara, whose frippery is apparent.

But Kaylee wants to frip (though he thinks poorly of it), and he seems to be in love with Inara.

Also -- single mothers frip less?

I think that a single mother who owned a ranch would have less occasion to frip and probably less of the wherewithal to do it with.

Well, hard-working ranch owners probably don't have much time for frippery.

My point, aside from the flippancy, was that he seems able to befriend women who are competent at non-gender specific tasks, Kaylee and Zoe. Where he has more romantic feelings toward a woman with a more traditionally feminine occupation.

I think that a single mother who owned a ranch would have less occasion to frip and probably less of the wherewithal to do it with.

Was she poor? Poorer than she'd have been if she was married? It's a whole lot of hypothesis.

I think it's a bit of a stretch. As noted above, I think that Zoe is a soldier, and his soldier, and that's easy enough and gender-independent. So is Kaylee, plus she's just so damned cute. Inara is deliberately distant, and in a profession for which he has contempt.

I don't know if you have to infer how much his mother may have disdained pretty things to explain anything.

Do you think that Mal comes from a Jossiverse version of the King Ranch? Where they have servants and 'hands that did all the work while, he was sent to was sent off to some boarding school that the Tams would appreicate and his mom entertained high society in town somewhere? Because that isn't how I've imagined his childhood.

Not poor -- just not with lots of extras and less money and more land and livestock. That is what I've imagined.

Do you think that Mal comes from a Jossiverse version of the King Ranch?

I don't think his having a father in place or not has anything to do with whatever a King Ranch is -- that's my point. His mother could have had a fetish for porcelain puppies, for all I know. That's what I'm saying.