I refused to watch the last episode for a long time until the movie was coming out.

I saved the commentary on Objects in Space until after the Big Damn Movie, for the exact same reason.

OiS wasn't actually the last episode, Joss just made it that for the DeeVeeDee. Which I can understand, as it's one of the better ones.

The back two (ie the last two people WnP'ed on) were ordered but never aired as it was canned by then. I don't even know why FOX ordered them, to be honest.

Joss on HoG:

Another one that we did a lot of reshooting and tinkering with after the fact. I think it came together really well, but when we looked at the first cut it left something to be desired. It was just one of those things with a lot of missteps. Also we had been getting notes from the network and we had done this early enough in the process where we looked at it and we were, like, “Nobody but us seems to have gotten the message to tone down the Western thing, so everything looked so Western that we were, like, “The network is going to kill us. This is like we’re spitting in their face.” So we did a few reshoots and changed a couple of lines to sort of hit the idea of why it was the way it was. We did a lot of tweaking. Our guest star, Belinda Clarke, I loved and I loved Inara’s reaction to them sleeping together. There are a lot of things in that episode that are key, but there was much work done in the editing room because we were scratching our heads saying, “It looks like Bonanza, what do we do?”

“Heart of Gold” is one of the unaired episodes and it had one of the most important moments, which is Inara telling Mal she’s leaving the ship. Which we referenced in “Objects in Space,” and then had to reshoot the scene because we weren’t going to air “Heart of Gold” before “Objects in Space.” So we had a little scene between Mal and Inara which we had to do a reshoot in which they didn’t reference that. Now with the DVD, where they’re in the correct order, we put it back in and it does.

Tim on Heart of Gold:

This one is also known as “Shower of Gold” or “Heart of Pooh.” It’s not our favorite episode. This one kind of fell through the cracks. We never quite got the story broken properly. There were just things about it we didn’t love. But as far as I’m concerned, any episode of Firefly is good; it’s always fun to see those people. This episode, though, is a little generic. I will say that the last things that I shot for the series were some inserts for that episode; pick-up shots for a montage and that sort of thing. I remember the A.D. sending each actor into the room as I was shooting and they would get wrapped out of the series after I’d get them. That was weird, because you wrap out guest characters, you don’t wrap out your regular actors, except we were cancelled. So they would come into this room, do a shot or two, and then the A.D. would say, “Ron Glass. That’s a Firefly wrap for Ron Glass,” and then Ron would make a speech to the crew and everyone would cry and then each person came in. Everyone hung around until the last person was finished, because they wanted to be there for it. So that was kind of odd. Then the last shot I did of all of them together - there’s a shot where the entire crew of Serenity is walking up to a brothel. That was actually shot on a soundstage and it’s everyone walking up to this brothel and it was the last time they were all together on a stage to shoot a moment in Firefly.

After this really depressing day of everyone crying and making beautiful speeches, I packed up my bag and went home that night and it was all finished. I turned on the TV and that was the night they were airing the pilot finally, so that was the great irony.

OiS wasn't actually the last episode, Joss just made it that for the DeeVeeDee.

People always say that, but I've never understood how that could be. Shooting wise, it wasn't the last, sure. But storywise... it has to come after HoG because of the Inara leaving thing. And if Trash and The Message were supposed to come after OiS originally, then we're missing a major scene/episode of Inara's leaving being resolved. The Mal/Inara scene in Trash is a totally different dynamic from anything in OiS.

today had two FF moments for me. At lunch time, a few co-workers started giving me a hard time for using the word "Shiny". Whatever. But then, after work, was celebrating a different co-workers b-day. After dinner the party moved to a bar. Pictures started being snapped, so my iPhone (with Serenity logo as the desktop) gets whipped out. One of the other party goers sees the brief flash of it and asks. It was a great geek moment. There are Browncoats out there! Yippee.

OiS wasn't actually the last episode, Joss just made it that for the DeeVeeDee.

People always say that, but I've never understood how that could be.

Because it was actually intended to be the last. See Joss's comment on Heart Of Gold above.

The DVD order is the order Joss intended. Time pressures and studio execs caused a different order.

Because of the shuffling, some scenes got shuffled.

Presumably if more eps were forthcoming beyond OiS, we would have gotten more closure/resolution/story.

I think Tim was also involved in shifting episode order on air. Which, really, I agree with - they needed the better episodes up front as it was obvious from the first episode they were going to get cancelled if it didn't find a much bigger audience.

Finally watched HoG. I've always thought it was out of character for Mal to decline payment but now I'm thinking it's because Inarra said she was going to pay and out of her savings.

Wash made New York magazine's 10 most ignoble deaths: [link]

takes a grappling hook through the chest

um. Did they even watch the movie?

What was it? I see no reason why a reasonable person wouldn't think it was some sort of grappling hook. I saw the movie twice and still couldn't figure out what the hell it was.