Kaylee is my least favourite character. I could take her or leave her. Probably leave her, if I had to spend too much time with her. I think the times I liked her most were when she was pissed off.

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When there's reason to be unhappy, her emotions are appropriate, and she shows them as easily as she does her cheerfulness....Kaylee's had a lot of scary experiences since joining Serenity, but while those may have matured her and her expectation of other humans, she still sees the universe as basically a good place, and her ground state will probably always be happiness. Her brain is just wired that way. Lucky her.

I guess she just doesn't seem complex to me. Not at all. I don't get the sense that there's anything under the surface. Or perhaps that just means she isn't closed-off and duplicitous. I dunno. To me it comes off as simplistic, though.

Of course, I also see the hero of Canton that way, too.

Mal = complex. Book = complex. I actually think that Inara is complex, too, though not nearly as much as Mal and Book.

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So what you're saying is, Kaylee has no Secret Pain?

I'll agree that her viewpoint tends to be uncomplicated, but that doesn't mean that she is written simply or that she's a simple person. I think she is untested, and unself-aware. Looking at her in Out of Gas, and a couple other places, I saw signs of her going into total emotional collapse when a situation got really bad. That's something that might be interesting to explore, especially in tension with all the people aboard who are good at bad situations, and who need her expertise. The conflict with how to approach River, knowing she can kill, that had potential too.

Jayne has no Secret Pain either, but the detail that helped frame him, for me, was his automatic submissiveness when Mal got all het up. One suspects he himself doesn't notice his own behavior, but it's an interesting marker of how the world works for him.

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Or perhaps that just means she isn't closed-off and duplicitous. I dunno. To me it comes off as simplistic, though.

I prefer to think of her as simple, which is a huge distinction. Character complexity isn't a requirement for a good character for me.

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Although I generally like Kaylee, I was annoyed by her efforts at gunslinging in "War Stories." The guys on the commentary were all "aww, isn't she cute, we wouldn't want to see her able to shoot a gun anyway," and I was yelling at the screen "She's a liability! If you were counting on her to cover your back you'd be dead!" If River hadn't stowed away and had her crazy freaky powers, they would have had those 4 guys coming behind them.

Then again in "The Message," when Tracey was holding everyone at gunpoint in the cockpit, he shot Wash, and Zoe shot him, so guns and bullets were flying everywhere, Kaylee just wanders right into the middle of it... tra la la, hi everyone, what's going on, can I get lemonade for ya'll?.... I found it unlikely and stupid.

As I said, I generally like her, but those two incidents grated.

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Or perhaps that just means she isn't closed-off and duplicitous.

This is what I tend to think.

Much like Cordelia and Anya, Kaylee says exactly what she thinks. It's just that the things they said were meaner. I sympathize greatly with this facet of Kaylee's personality. I just don't understand the point of duplicity. It always seems to me like more work than it's worth, and usually I feel bad about it. I am projecting onto Kaylee here, but that's kind of what I do when I identify with a character. (I don't think that's particularly unique.) I also really sympathize with (but DO NOT like, in Kaylee OR myself) the fact that the littlest thing sets her off. Simon puts his foot in his mouth one time, and she is all huffy and angry. Me too. Well, not Simon, because I don't interact with him, as we inhabit different universes. But you get my meaning.

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"Have good sex!"

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"Joss Whedon is my master now"

Hee. Those are at ThinkGeek.

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Yup. The concept came from a cartoon.

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PvP. In reference to George Lucas.

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