The most important part of the pilot for me was where Mal shot the guy in the face. I gasped, cheered, and loved Mal.

Furio and the turbine was a paler echo of that, but lovely, and helped me with the Mal-oost in the same way.

I also loved the more explicit Inara (have they, onscreen made much reference to a SEX trade?), sulkier Wash, and River bothered me less.

Well, in episode one Book asks Inara how long has she been on Serenity, and she says 8 months, and in this episode it is almost a year. I figured they were just skipping time, but that does explain the leap.

In reading the script, I did enjoy the bit where Book rather efficiently clobbers and disarms the Alliance spy.

I look forward to hearing more about his past.

I'm not used to spoiler threads, so correct me if I'm wrong ... we don't need to white font, right?

He knew about Nikos by rep, also.

I'm suspecting his maybe something like a non-denomonitional Jesusist, sort of philosophical shock troops and information gatherer for his order.

Taking a walk in the world, out in the frontier. Doing a survey of what is really like out there.

Dunno what happend to that post. Whatever.

Hey Tim, how is it going?

next week on Firefly, Jayne gets hungry and eats a space fox, for dinner. Alive.

edited for clarity because Tim edited his post that was the backstory. (only a quote of Wanda's mention that they're airing episode 5 this week)

Or there's always the "Wanda's on crack" theory, which always explains so much.