but I felt there were still moments in the episode that made it feel Jossian to me. The dialog between Kaylee and Wash Allyson quoted above, for example. Jayne and his hilarious body languages (the rather adorable rapport he seemed to have developed with his lady of the night, the combing of her hair, etc.) Wash and Zoe's conversation about having a child. And there were genuinely nice moments between Mal and Nandi,

I agree about those. I thought that Jayne was well written in the ep. The Wash - Kaylee dialogue was funny. I would have liked Wash - Zoe conversation more if they hadn't tried to make him look stupid later on. Apart from the scene with Kaylee, Wash isn't portrayed very favorably in the episode.

I thought Melinda Clarke who played Nandi had way more sparks with Fillion.

Yup. I had no problem believing that Mal would wind up with her. Imagine her as Inara. It doesn't solve the problems with the concept of Companions, but at least she'd be a bit more believable.

No, I think your comments are all very fair and reasonable, Nutty, fwiw.

Do you think it would have been more believable for Mal not to have The Sex? Or for Kaylee to have The Sex?

I never did read the Buffista rewrite of Spiral, but I'm getting the feeling that we should rewrite the script for Heart of Gold and see whether we could make it better, given the basic outline.

eta I'm misremembering, I think; why do you think Wash was portrayed stupidly throughout the episode? I totally agree that the business with the ship was dumb as a box of rocks, but up until that point I don't remember him being dumb. Remind me?

I never did read the Buffista rewrite of Spiral, but I'm getting the feeling that we should rewrite the script for Heart of Gold and see whether we could make it better, given the basic outline.

Hah! I had the same thought earlier this morning. The problem is different, though. "Spiral" was a kind of connecting ep, with way too much exposition, so a lot of the rewrite was mainly to smooth over the dialogue, and cut down on the exposition. The plot wasn't really touched. Much more about editing than truly rewriting, if you get what I mean. With HoG, the problems are mostly with the plot. You can improve some of the characterization, but you'd really have to change the basic plot a lot to get it to work (IMO).

No, I think your comments are all very fair and reasonable, Nutty, fwiw.

Heh, you should've been there when she actually watched the ep. I got to hear her reaction first hand. There was animation, and foul language and stuff.

Can I rewrite a whole concept of the series? I want Companions to be a guild of Alliance cultural propagandists, where sex is only one of many functions they might perform. (And we should actually see someone hire Inara to play cribbage, or for gossip, or to instruct children in etiquette.) And hey, it's a nice source of conflict with Mal, since he needs the money and the prestige she confers, and she maybe isn't a True Believer in the propaganda she sells.

That all given, it lets one rewrite HOG as a study of what sex-working really is, and contrast personal freedom to choose against exploitation. (And give Inara something to really be angsty about: a presumed superiority over unlicensed sex-workers, whereas the unlicensed ones don't have to toe the party line.) Let the conflict involve the son of the planetary Head Honcho, who has run away to become a sex worker rather than (say) marry. Let wackiness and violence thereby ensue.

And Bob's your uncle.

(Actually, I have been thinking vaguely about what would happen if you gender-switched various different characters, especially those that have come to feel -- to me -- hackneyed as done by M. E. Need a crazy, victimized waifish character, with a tightly-wound, protective older sibling? Meet Jeff the genius mind-reader and his sister Kelly!

(Imagine how the traditional Dru/Crazy-Fred/River could be reimagined if she were a man -- or if Inara were. Whole different vibe, whole new way to reorient the themes and intellectual arguments.)

(see my previous editing re Wash?)

I think that rewriting it would be an interesting exercise, though. You could take the basic premise of Magnificent 7 style plot, with the brothel asking for help, and maybe include all/some of the same characters, with the idea that Mal's going to wind up shagging another bird and Inara's going to be gutted. And include the Zoe/Wash talk about the baby, maybe. And just try to do it better -- play with the trope, if possible, do interesting stuff with structure, if possible, have more of the sparkling dialogue. (Alternatively if there were other points that seemed key, include those instead.)

I think it would be an interesting exercise.

(x postage)

Nutty, I'd love to see that -- especially the cribbage. That would be grand.

And now I really, really want to see an AU with genders switched. Hell yeah.

That all given, it lets one rewrite HOG as a study of what sex-working really is, and contrast personal freedom to choose against exploitation. (And give Inara something to really be angsty about: a presumed superiority over unlicensed sex-workers, whereas the unlicensed ones don't have to toe the party line.) Let the conflict involve the son of the planetary Head Honcho, who has run away to become a sex worker rather than (say) marry. Let wackiness and violence thereby ensue.

Replace Burgess with Patience (Bonnie Bartlett's character in "Serenity"). Her son is working at the HoG. Petaline is pregnant with Patience's grandchild.

Oooh, yes. Yes, that could be fun.

It is a damn shame that more was not made of the boys working at the HoG. (The title, incidentally, didn't piss me off -- but that's just because it takes me to a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy place. Which is nice.)

Are there male Companions? One would certainly think so, since evidently women use the Companion service, and there are plenty of places in the 'verse where women are sufficiently emancipated to be soldiers and mechanics. And the HoG boys were there for the Big Gay Sex. So you'd expect there, logically, to be male Companions too.

That I'd like to see. Mal's reaction to same, I'd like to see.

Hell, Inara as a man would have been fun, for that matter.

a space monkey in sore need of a spanking

Oh god. Now, for the first time in my life, I feel he urge to write some fan fiction.

And we should actually see someone hire Inara to play cribbage, or for gossip, or to instruct children in etiquette.

This is what *I* wanted to see. It really would have helped the companions idea to make more sense to me. In order for it to be more believable, I would have needed a) more male companions shown, b) companions do lots of things, like being hired to teach baroque piano, c) companions as an generalized Alliance cultural phenomenon would have made more sense than companions as higher-paid sex worker. Because as portrayed, it was hard to tell exactly how they were viewed, other than "Oh, they're supposed to be respectable but none of the characters seem to have noticed."

Certainly Shindig sends out a strong message that even in the higher strata of Alliance society, they are considered rented property. Which leaves me with the impression that few really believe the whole respectability thing, though the companions themselves are buying the myth.

I am not sure about that. Shindig did take place on a fringe world. A nice fringe world, mind you, but probably the equivalent of Carson City or some other large town/small city in the frontier. It's the only place for the want-to-be-cultured and the recently rich to hang out and impress their peers, but it is not a core world. The mere fact that in Shindig that Kaylee was talking to a bunch of the men about something mechanical means that most of them were only one step away from managing their property personally, or were still doing it. Nouveau rich.

Whereas the old money in the core worlds (a New York City in comparision) would probably look down at those gentry at the Shindig, or at least treat them as their social inferiors.

Extrapolating elite behavior from Shindig to the folks in the Core Worlds is probably a false linkage.