We are mourning Wash just like the characters are mourning Wash. Part of the reason of seeing BDM2 and BDM3 is seeing how the characters move on and deal with his loss. Just like we are. Don't you want to see this?

I'm not mourning Wash. I haven't even seen the film. I just find the concept of more FF without him kind of...boring.

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Hush, now, Cindy. Psycho is telling you what you really think; the least you can do is accept it without protest.

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Oh, and there was a pretty good fannish crowd at our little theater -- a little surprising. No costumes, because none of us can ever ever admit that we are geeks in this town. But still, a good crowd, and they seemed to react appropriately throughout.

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To me, Wash's death feels like Tara's death, emotional bitchslap and all. Only Tara wasn't even about to fight for her life in a battle with terrifying psychotics, she was just getting ready for lunch with her girlfriend or whatever.

Did this conversation come up then? I wasn't around, yet. I know some people felt just as betrayed by that, though that may have been because they had decided Willow/Tara was TV's one good symbol of homosexual love or whatever, rather than feeling that Joss killed her just to be cruel.

Personally, Tara hurt me more. Wash hurt me a lot, but he was not a character I ever loved as much as many do, while Tara was my favorite. But I felt both deaths were well-executed, and, if not necessary plot points per se, at least consistent, interesting, and powerful additions to the universe.

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Eddie, shooting script says Mal broke both the Big O's arms.

Thanks, Zenkitty. I thought his back was broken because of the way Mal had ahold of him when things went crunch, plus the way The Operative just sat there gasping. It read "back broken" to me.

Edit: On reflection, if The Operative's back were broken,there would be no need to pin him with his own sword.

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A lot of people (self included) feel that the Operative's storyline was intended to give us a glimpse into Book's back story. One person mused that she wasn't sure she liked the notion of Book as a sociopath like the Operative, but that perhaps that was the whole point: that anyone, even the worst person alive, could be redeemed in the proper circumstances.

I like the symmetry of this. Especially after:

Mal: "you'll have to tell me about that one day"
Book: "No, I really don't"

We then get shown a possible backstory for Book, complete with redemptive possibilities - "I'm not their man anymore".

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To me, Wash's death feels like Tara's death, emotional bitchslap and all.

I thought Wash's death was more like Anya's death - quick, shocking, and effective. Except Wash's death got 5 seconds as supposed to Anya's 2, which was nice. But it showed that the stakes were actually high.

I hated Book's death. It was cheap, predictable, and ineffective. And now we pretty much certainly will never learn Book's secret.

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Between the time Mal and the Op. fight and the Op. shows up at Serenity there is a montage where the crew puts Serenity back together and a funeral scene. That indicates the passage of time. The question is were the damage to the ship significant enough so that the time needed to repair it would equal the time needed for broken bones to heal? Maybe they took some time to grieve before the repairs as well. I don't have a problem with it.

Mal was at the canon on the way back. The first time I saw it it struck me since you would think this is something Jayne perfectly suited for Jayne. The second time I saw it I made sure to pay attention and it was Mal.

I still maintain that Wash was chosen to die because of non story reasons. It's not personal, it's just business. As for being the conscience of the ship you can see how Simon would step up and fill in there. Harder to replace would be Wash as pilot as so often it was his skill in that department that got them out of sticky situations.

As far as a Book/Operative connection I thought for sure the Op. was going to announce he was becoming a shepherd at the end.

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It knocked me out of my sense of complacency and surface comfort in my ability to protect myself by second-guessing the plot. The bitchslap put more life into my fiction, and for me, not in a bad way.

Let me be the first to say that it worked for me like this too, in a good way.

Book getting to make his last speech was a bit contrived, sure, but I felt it got redeemed somewhat by him not actually getting to make his point entirely. There's definitely something more to the sentence he's about to whisper to Mal before he kicks. Mal's just left with "believe" and he takes that and runs with it in Mal fashion, which is to believe in the righteousness of his cause. It takes the he's-dead-so-now-I-fight angle and makes it, if not more believable, at least fuller.

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I enjoyed the movie. I didn't love it. Book's death I accept very sadly (I want backstory!) since Ron Glass isn't in good enough health anymore to film another TV series. Wash was a shock, but I like what it did. It made the audience hurt and that's a happy thing in a movie like this. Simon being the one to break out River is like the Mule changing from a 4-wheeler and trailer (destroyed in War Stories) into a modified flying forklift from Batman Beyond (too expensive for our crew to operate), a necessary change to tell this particular story. And the Mule chase was a cool scene, so I'll give them that one without argument.

What I saw Mal do to The Operative was something referred to in combat circles as The Muppet Dance. Break the clavicles and dislocate the shoulders, causing both arms to hang limp so when the person tries to retaliate they look like a Muppet. But the 'two by two, hands of blue' guys were scarier.

As for the grand revelation of the movie I'm left at odds. I thought it was a cheap way out. I also think the crew's actions in the movie would have a significant effect not only on themselves, but on the 'verse as a whole. Maybe not enough to break the Alliance, but certainly enough to severely erode what support they might have had from the border planets. And that would certainly alter the powerbase of the solar system. Perhaps this is what Joss had in mind for the Season 2 (3?) finale, but I think I prefer my 'verse the way it was.

Oh yeah. Hello (again?) folks, it's been a few years since I had martinis with the Atlantic Canadians. Good to be back on Buffistas.

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