I lent my DVDs to a coworker, who wasn't much of a sci-fi fan, and she came back after watching a few eps with her husband and said she was surprised how quickly she came to care for the characters.

Everyone I ever lent the show to came back to me with stories of how they weren't allowed to cheat on their SO's with Firefly by watching without them.

It's my firm belief the first 10 minutes of Serenity (the pilot), even revised, are the weakest of the series. It's a bunch of characters we don't yet care about, doing random stuff, talking chinese, making no sense... I only really got a grip on Firefly when Kaylee got shot, as *everything* was going on at that moment, the characters were coming out and somebody got almost killed. You're invested by then.

Comics are pushed back to first quarter 08 at the minute. They're written, awaiting inking.

I never realized how Out of Gas could work as a pilot.

Yeah, there are some double takes that don't work then, because you don't know the characters, but I think that while they're funny, they're less important to the show as a whole.

I thought the first ten minutes could have had better production value and staging, but I forgive it all simply for the last minute as Mal stares at the valley being ravaged and the angels aren't coming.

My girlfriend hates science fiction and "war movies" so I started her with "Out of Gas."

I always start new folks out with Out of Gas. They learn to love the characters and then go back to the appropriate order. Usually with a rewatch of OoG to pick up the bits of tid they may have missed the first time out.

Hooks 'em every time.

Ok...I keep forgetting that my first episode (parts of it) was Jaynestown. I was flipping around tv, saw it, heard it was pretty good, and thought the episode was funny. After that I forgot about it. Once the dvd's were out my brother made me promise to watch something and I agreed after a lot of badgering. I still didn't make the connection untill I finally got to Jaynestown.

I almost missed FF, because the ads were rather boring, and I wasn't into BtVS, so that connection didn't draw me in. Thankfully my brother was a Buffy fan and made me watch TTJ. Which then of course gave me faith to try out Buffy, which had sounded cornball to me.

Does anyone feel like their grampa almost died, but didn't, and your're making sure to have breakfast every Sunday morning with him? (Granted, both my gramps are dead now, but if they hadn't, I'd sure be having breakfast every Sunday with [the one I didn't hate] and appreciating what I'd almost lost. Okay, so grampa's are so much more important than buffistas firefly threads, but my analogy still stands).

edited for really bad grammar.

Juliebird, there's pretty much nothing that would fix the whole space hooker issue with Dad. Which is too bad because he'd love the show for the same reasons I do -- Western in Space! The two great tastes that taste great together. Seriously, Dad influenced a lot of my early viewing habits, he was the one who introduced us to Doctor Who (although I'm never sure how he found it), and we'd watch reruns of serials on weekend mornings when the public broadcast channel showed them. Plus I remember watching Winchester '73 with him the first time, and Star Trek reruns. Plus professional wrestling (old school professional wrestling).

But everyone has their values and I wouldn't want him to watch the show if it made him uncomfortable.

That's too bad, askye. My own father is a born-again (crossing over from habitual Catholicism) and even he adored Firefly and I can't remember him batting an eyelash at Inara. But he also adores astronomy and somehow manages to compartmentalize creationism and scientific fact in a peaceable manner.

I'm still incredibly saddened that Jane Espensen's ep took the Inara story in the generic direction, instead of the more interesting "Yeah, we actually are a spiritual organisation that uses sex as one of our tools. Okay, so some of us are really glorified mistresses spinning a publicity yarn, but Inara believes it" and just made her a silly whore.

I wasn't even thinking about the episode where Inara has a female client No way would Dad be okay with that. or heart of Gold.

My Dad's a Christian, but I can't really say born again since he was raised up a Southern Baptist (although he attends a different denomination now).