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S02E01

If you haven't seen the show, please do. It's nice. But this recap doesn't assume that you have -- and in that, we're being a touch nicer than the movie. And meaner, considering the best characters get routinely shit on. If you have seen the show...I hope I've done justice. You deserve it.

The Universal logo globe becomes Earth-That-Was as we hear the prologue once again. This time, though, it's from the Alliance side. See if you can decode the propaganda: "Earth-That-Was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many." We see ships bound out from what is left of Earth-That-Was. "We found a new solar system: Dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Each one terraformed, a process taking decades to support human life. To be new Earths. The central planets formed the Alliance." We see these new Earths, all different, all interesting. One looks a lot like Naboo. "Ruled by an interplanetary parliament, the Alliance was a beacon of civilization. The savage outer planets were not so enlightened, and refused Alliance control." One looks a lot like Tatooine. "The war was devastating. But the Alliance's victory over the Independents ensured a safer universe." We pull back to reveal a screen, diagrammed with a visual representation. "And now, everyone can enjoy the comfort and enlightenment of true civilization." The teacher speaking is Tamara Taylor, a wonderful Toronto actor who is maybe best known here for her role as Michael's ex on Lost, and she's speaking to kids in various kinds of dress, Asian dresses and Mormon shirt-and-tie, kneeling at desks with styluses in an open tent. Outside them is a beautiful garden.

This is smart because it's always been easier to explain the show in terms of a physical spectrum: toward the center, the Alliance, absolute control. Spinning out into the prairie, absolute chaos. Chaos, control. You like? And at the extremity, in the black, the Reavers: just as bad as the Alliance, but in a completely different way. (If you fall on the Farscape side of the argument: compare the cold, rational energy of the Sebaceans with the brainless inner fire of the Scarrans.) And this is the point of the show, and the film: petty criminals or not, the men and women of Serenity, of all the worlds outside the Core Planets, are people, not extremes, not symbols, and they have to live somewhere on that spectrum, which means they're fucked either way.

"Why were the Independents even fighting us? Why wouldn't they look to be more civilized?" History is written by the victors. Another child speaks, only to be interrupted: "I hear they're cannibals." "That's only Reavers!" The children fight over whether Reavers exist -- it's a standard point that the Alliance planets have a vested interest in not believing in Reavers, and I always thought that was because of the chaos/control stuff, but as we'll see in this movie, it's a bit more involved than that. Same war, different battle. "Full well they are. I heard they attack settlers from space and kill them, and wear their skins, and rape them for hours and hours." Succinct, you creepy little kid. The teacher shouts in Mandarin, asking them to button it. "It's true that there are dangers on the outer planets..." Toward the back of the class, a cute but severely baggy-eyed little girl is doing amazing things with her desk, tapping it like a hummingbird, making it dance and bleep. "So with so many social and medical advancements we can bring to the Independents, why would they fight so hard against us?" And the spooky, funny little girl, genius River Tam, gives the child's answer, no less right for being blunt: "We meddle. People don't like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think. Don't run, don't walk. We're in their homes, and in their heads, and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome."

And the teacher gives the authority answer, no less wrong for being logical: "River, we're not telling people what to think, we're just trying to show them how." She leans in and stabs something deep into River's forehead. We jump-cut to an older River (Summer Glau, the River you know already), where she's being experimented upon in a cold, blue laboratory, needles in her brain, strapped in a chair. The world of you watching a movie has become the world of a history lesson, has become the world of a history class, which has become a nightmare. She screams. Dr. Mathias registers that she's in REM, "off the charts," and wants to "amp it up." He turns to a freakishly beautiful Alliance inspector, a guy named Simon we know from the show, who's holding a strange-looking device and looking at him intensely. Simon does everything intensely.

"See, most of our best work is done when they're asleep," the doctor explains to the guy. "We can monitor and direct their subconscious implant suggestions. It's a little startling to see at first, but results are spectacular. Especially in this case. River Tam is our star pupil." The man, whose name is Simon, has in fact heard that. The doctor refers to her suitability for "defense deployment, even with "the side effects." Yeah, the side effects are a bitch. "Tell me about them." She unstable, clearly, due to the "neural stripping" somehow fragmenting "their...reality matrix." This gobbledygook is basically manifested as "borderline" something. "What use do we have for a psychic if she's insane?" This Simon man is wearing a flattering uniform. "She's not just a psychic. Given the right trigger, this girl is a living weapon." She screams and moves, in the chair. He doesn't seem to notice. "She has her lucid periods. We're hoping to improve upon the...I'm sorry, sir, but I have to ask. Is there a reason for this inspection?" Simon, who is creepy on a good day, asks if he's making Mathias "nervous."

"Key members of Parliament have personally observed this subject," Mathias equivocates. "I was told that the Alliance's support for the project was unanimous. The demonstration of her power is..." Simon asks how she is doing physically, but Mathias thinks he means her physical performance: "Like nothing we've seen." Simon stalks the room. "All our subjects are conditioned for combat, but River -- she's a creature of extraordinary grace." True that. She is one of those girls that is acceptable-looking at rest, but becomes beautiful when she's moving. River moans, and Simon looks directly at her, something Mathias basically has yet to do. "Yes. She always did love to dance."

The man in uniform hits the floor with his strange device, kneeling. A head-level shock wave drops all the doctors and aides and soldiers in the room. "River, it's Simon. Please, it's Simon. It's your brother." In terms of the philosophical framework of the show, it's important to note a few things that will help us make sense of the unholy mess that is this movie: the linguistic difference between "River" and "Reaver" is negligible at best. That's always been the point, but it becomes medically precise in the movie. Likewise, the difference between "Simon" and Core Planet "Sinon" is similar, if softened. She's nuts, he's anal-retentive, but he's older, primary, so he wins. The centrifuge of the 'verse keeps it all centralized, and that is -- not some kind of weird obsession with the Southern side of the American Civil War, as some seem to think -- the point. Chaos, control. This is about Reconstruction, as Joss ever is, not slavery. Or it is about slavery, but not like that. Point being, Simon's shiny and beautiful but broken inside, she's visibly nuts, but knows the truth about everything -- it's just that nobody can understand when she speaks. Her signal-to-noise is ugly at best. They are the spectrum, and between the two of them, they fuck up everything they touch. He unstraps his sister and she's pretty wobbly. He gets up and runs to the door, taking off his armor. Suddenly, she's standing right behind him, across the room, freaking him out.

"Simon. They know you've come." Cut to the hands-of-blue guys, whom we won't be seeing again, in a pink-lit room, acting creepy and mobilizing some forces. He sends her to find a escape hatch at the sound of doors. "Find out." As the second wave of soldiers comes running down the hall, we pan up to see River, legs braced against the walls, against the ceiling like Spider-Man. It's beautiful and cool. Simon forces a door open onto a wide shaft, open to the sky. Red lasers of death go clunch, clunch, clunch as the tunnel up is sealed off one level at a time. A small ship appears overhead -- Simon's collaborators in the rescue -- and lowers a platform as lots of guys shoot and try to force their way into the shaft. Simon and River climb onto the platform and a voice calls, "Stop. Backtrack. Stop." The image of their escape runs back, and the Operative, Chiwetel Ejiofor from Dirty Pretty Things and She Hate Me, walks through the image of them -- which self-consciously mimics the first Star Wars poster, that iconic image of Leia crouched and her brother standing above -- and is interrupted by Dr. Mathias: all of this was just another level of the image. The world of the lab has become the flashback. Note please that there are enough cameras in the Alliance worlds to create a three-dimensional image of this escape: the Alliance world is one of constant surveillance; Serenity moves through the spaces between-times. As we all do, criminals or no.

Dr. Mathias tells the Operative that he's not allowed in the "Records Room" without permission, and asks for his clearance, which turns out to be "Parliamentary override. Full access." Again we see Dr. Mathias backtracking and eating shit. "Apologies. An operative of the Parliament will, of course, have full cooperation." Mathias notes that the Operative's clearance ID notes neither name nor rank: "I have neither. Like this facility, I don't exist. Let's talk about the Tams. River was your greatest success. A prodigy. A phenomenon. Until her brother walked in here and took her from you." Mathias protests that it's not that simple, even though it...kind of is...and makes a bunch of excuses: "The boy spent his entire fortune developing the contacts to infiltrate this place. Gave up a brilliant future in medicine as well. It's madness." The Operative corrects him, pointing to the scan image, Simon's face looking down at her: "It's love, in point of fact. Something a good deal more dangerous."

Mathias asks why the Operative has come, and the Operative takes him through it slowly: "Because the situation is even less simple than you think. Do you know what your sin is, Doctor? It's pride." He runs back to the conversation with Simon, Dr. Mathias explaining, "Key members of Parliament have personally observed this subject. I was told that the Alliance's support..." The Operative looks at him coldly, standing completely still. "'Key members of Parliament.' Key. The minds behind every military, diplomatic, and covert operation in the galaxy, and you put them in a room...with a psychic." River stares out at us, from the image. And yeah, that's quite the boner, but the feedback on a redundant bureaucracy is like that, so it's not out of the question. She's a weapon of mass delirium; she's her own Valerie Plame, interrogating herself, reporting on herself, hunted down by a terrified government caught with its pants down and the kill order still in its hand like a copy of Mandate. "If there was some classified information that she...she never spoke of it. I don't know what it is." Neither does the Operative, but... "Judging by her deteriorating mental state, I'd say we're both better off. Secrets are not my concern. Keeping them is." Dr. Mathias starts getting nervous. It's a great performance, this ongoing ass-covering and self-justification. "Whatever secrets she might have accidentally gleaned, it's probable she doesn't even know she knows them. That they're buried beneath layers of psychosis."

The Operative gives him a history lesson: "In certain older, civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords." My emphasis, for now, but he'll explain himself way better later on. Suffice it to say that if the Alliance and the fringes are two ends of one road, the Operative and the Captain of Serenity, who we're about to meet, are two sides of a coin in the middle of it, about to get run over. One mimics the control of the Alliance with an existential understanding that his deeds are irredeemable, the other mimics the madness of the outer planets with a value-free nihilism born of disappointment in every part of the system. The Operative reacts to the disorder in his society with a counterintuitively rigorous system of belief, Captain Reynolds reacts by denying belief of any kind. Dr. Mathias is too dumb to do the work, so he just gets snotty: "Well, unfortunately, I forgot to bring a sword." The Operative helpfully pulls one out, schwing, and smiles at it, turning slowly. Mathias has no idea that that was the worst possible thing he could say -- followed, of course, by: "I would put that down right now, if I were you."

The Operative holds it out handle-first, asking if Mathias would rather "be killed in [his] sleep, like an ailing pet" -- he has no way of understanding that the answer is "Um, totally?" Guys advance and he kills them abruptly and beautifully, and into the hallway he pursues Dr. Mathias, giving him a nerve-pinch that causes him to stand stock-still, wavering slightly on his feet. Down the hall, a scientist lady squeaks due to the giant sword. "Young miss? Young miss, I'll need all the logs on behavioral modification triggers. We'll have to reach out to River Tam and help her to come back to us. No matter how far out..." He kneels in front of Mathias, his back to him, sword blade up. Mathias drops onto it, sliding down slowly, disgustingly. The Operative comforts him without looking: "This is a good death. There's no shame in this in a man's death. A man who has done fine works. We're making a better world. All of them better worlds." There's a cruelty that pertains to this, because Mathias can't be expected to understand or approach this situation from the Operative's highly-developed code of bushido or whatever, because of the sword slowly sliding through his guts and stuff, but it's essential to the Operative that he maintain his point of view regardless of what happens . Compare the Mayor on Buffy, his often-hilarious obsession with etiquette and germophobia -- everybody builds these walls so they can live, but only heroes can see over them. He looks at him without feeling anything, pulls it out, cleans the sword as he walks down the hallway, tossing orders over his shoulder without looking back at the terrified woman. "Young miss, I need you to go to work now. I think I may have a long way to travel." To the image: "Where are you hiding, little girl?"

Here's where: title card, golden smoke behind it becoming the Serenity logo, becoming the logo on the side of a Firefly-class starship, as the violins play, and things probably get emotional if you're a big fan of the show. She fires her thrusters and the banjo starts in, a long CGI-porn view sliding down the skin of the whole ship, gliding along it, coming around in front, atmo burning gorgeously all along the front. It's majestic, a triumphant swelling in the music, you can almost see Mal and Wash inside, and then...something flies off the nose of the ship, bangs into the windscreen, and flies off into space. Ha! I guess the movie started.

Inside, Captain Malcolm Reynolds freaks. I wonder if he was thinking all that majestic crap when it happened. "Ah, my beautiful ship, standing strong in her, getting all Captain-y, leading a crew of rag-tag freaks with good hearts and healthy sex drives, my spine straight as an arrow as I lead us once again into the fray, as once again I risk life in order to bring a better -- what the fuck was that?" Wash, the ship's pilot, admits that the thing that just flew off the ship resembled the "primary buffer panel." "Did the primary buffer panel just fall off my gorramn ship for no apparent reason?" He complains that Kaylee "checked the entry couplings," and Wash responds that if she doesn't get some "extra flow from the engine room to offset the burn-through," things will get interesting, here defined in classic Wash-speak as "Oh, God, we're all gonna die?" Mal pulls down the PA mic from a ceiling panel, and speaks out over the ship. "This is the Captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode." With that, he hangs up and asks Wash to "shave the vector." As Wash explains that he's doing the best he can, Mal demands that he just get them on the ground. "That part will happen pretty definitely."

That whole sequence, while adorable and definitely giving good intro for Wash and Mal, really just sets up an awesome tracking shot that will introduce the cast. If you know the architecture of the Serenity, you know that Mal's going to have to literally visit every part of the ship in order to go yell at Kaylee about the entry couplings or whatever, which you know he's going to do, because no matter what happens, he will always yell at Kaylee about the entry couplings or whatever. He loves his ship more than anything, but like with anything else he loves, he has no idea what's going on inside her.

Jayne, the muscle, comes running out into the corridor. "We're gonna explode? I don't wanna explode!" Mal wants him focused on the crisis immediately after the one where they explode, the robbery job they're planning planet-side. Mal will distract you so fast. "Jayne, how many weapons you plan on taking? You only got two arms." Jayne explains that he gets "excitable as to choice," and likes to have his options open. It's a nice pointer to both his capacity for violence and the fact that all he loves is guns. And his lovely hat, which we'll see a bit later. Mal explains that the plan for this job doesn't include shooting, and Jayne notes that what Mal plans and what usually takes place "ain't ever exactly been similar." Mal can't argue that, but tells Jayne he can't bring any grenades, causing him to whine like a baby.

Zoe, first mate, Mal's war buddy from the fight for independence, my personal favorite character, appears: "We crashing again?" Mal tells her to ask her husband, who is the pilot, Wash, and asks if the Mule is prepped -- that's the four-person ATV they use on the ground. In the Big Damn Movie, it flies. Mal, and the tracking shot, continue into the kitchen as Zoe and Jayne trail off, still talking about the grenades: "We're robbing the place, we're not occupying it..." Into the engine room, where adorable, wonderful Kaylee is running around, calm and efficient as a cucumber with an engineering degree, as the interior of the engine room goes to merry hell all around her: sparks, smoke, buzzing, beeping, freaking. "Kaylee! Kaylee, what in the sphincter of hell are you playing at? We got the primary buffer panel coming right..." She smiles. "Everything's shiny, Captain. Not to fret." Behind her, the room is almost entirely obscured by smoke and steam, and sparks are shooting out of everything. Mal complains that she told him the entry couplings would hold for another week, and she reminds him that this conversation actually took place six months ago. Hmm. Wonder how long Inara's been gone?

"My ship don't crash. If she crashes, you crashed her!" She ignores him, because blustering is his main hobby. Simon approaches from behind, and Mal reminds him that River will be accompanying them on the job once they land, should they not explode and die. There's another crash and shake, and Simon looks nervous. "Fear is nothing to be ashamed of, Doctor." Simon explains that it is not fear, but anger that he is feeling. Mal says it's hard to tell, and Simon gives him a snippy over-explanation in reply: "Well, I imagine if it were fear, my eyes would be wider." Mal says he'll look out for that time, knowing full well that Simon's wrong: it's fear. "You're not taking her," says Simon, and somewhere in this beat of the scene there's a cut because of the set constraints -- the camera has to get all the way around Simon to follow them down through the ship, and can't. But you wouldn't notice, so it doesn't count -- the point of the tracking shot is not affected, and the continuity of the ship exploration is not interrupted. The movie's named after her; it's important we get to know her and the people inside as efficiently and engagingly as possible.

Simon follows Mal through the ship, bitching at him. Mal ignores him until he's forced to suddenly whip around on him: "I hear the words 'that's final' come out your mouth ever again, they truly will be. This boat is my home. You all are guests on it." Simon continues to bitch about how he's more than a guest; as ship doctor, he's earned his passage. Dumb move. "...And it's time your little sister learned from your example." They get down a stairway into the lounge (most memorably visited by River when she saw Simon and Kaylee canoodling in "Objects In Space") as Simon points out that this work usually involves "bullet holes, knife wounds, laser burns" from the kinds of jobs Mal means to take River on now. Mal explains that mentally traumatized 17-year-old or not, she's still psychic, and they need protection and foreknowledge on this trip. He does not yet know that she is also a crazy ninja, because nobody knows that yet. In the med lab, one of my favorite sets, they continue bitching as Mal rolls up his sleeve and Simon injects him with something. It's a wonderful note on the scene, the way they're at each other's throats and still so intimate that their physical routine isn't interrupted in the slightest. It makes the point that no matter how much they complain, Simon's still crew, and no matter how bad Mal's decisions, he's still a patient, and they are family. Simon criticizes Mal for his economics of utility, and Mal comforts him: "Honestly, Doctor, I think we may really crash this time anyway."

Simon whinges about how hard he worked to get his sister away from the Alliance, and Mal sneakily threatens him: "I [know], and it's a fact we here have been courteous enough to keep to our own selves. I look out for me and mine. That don't include you less I conjure it does. You stuck a thorn in the Alliance's paw. That tickles me a bit, but it also means I got to step twice as fast to avoid them, and that means turning down plenty of jobs. Even honest ones. Put this crew together with the promise of work, which the Alliance makes harder every year." It's a matter of whether the Tams as part of the family really weigh off against the fact that they endanger the group as a whole, and it's a very dark train of thought that Mal's never really considered this seriously before, even hypothetically. He's thrown them off the ship plenty of times, but he always comes back. "Come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all. This job goes south, there well may not be another. So here is us, on the raggedy edge." He gets right up in Simon's face: "Don't push me, and I won't push you." He stalks off, cursing in Mandarin, and the camera follows Simon up the catwalk, to where River's been listening since they reached the hangar bay. Below, Zoe and Mal continue to discuss whether her husband is going to end up killing them all in a minute or two. "Like a downy feather, sir. No one flies like my mister." Simon kneels at River's side and touches her back. "I know. We're going for a ride." The shot finally cuts. That was awesome!

We see Serenity landing, like a downy feather, and Mal's always cagey around River: "Hey, little one. Understand your part in all this?" She stalks around him madly, not looking in his face. "Do you?" He smiles. "This is what I do, darlin'." But he thinks, and is nervous, because if the Alliance really is getting tighter -- and it's not just more of his dissociation and retreat into his own bitterness that's apparently been going down since the series end six months prior -- he's not exaggerating when he says the stakes are upped. He repeats to himself: "This is what I do." He blusters over to Kaylee, his favorite stress-reducer, and she smiles and tells him to have some faith. "Not today," he says, which is a nice line of dialogue, because it's a joke about how they're going to be landing during Sunday services, but also because faith is a thing he doesn't understand by that name anymore. "If Fanty and Mingo are right about the payroll this could look to be a sunny day for us." In much the same way that the Operative is like a less-interesting Jubal Early with a totally different agenda, Fanty and Mingo are twins, a pair of less-interesting Badgers with the same agenda as everybody else on the outer planets. Simon reaches up to the side of the Mule as they're all packing in: "River, stay behind the others. If there's fighting, drop to the floor or run away. It's okay to leave them to die." Hee! Since Mal can't handle anybody having a better line than him, he jumps in. "Doctor, I'm taking your sister under my protection here. If anything happens to her, anything at all, I swear to you I will get very choked up. Honestly. There could be tears." Which is a very Joss line, but not as funny as what Simon said.

Kaylee and Simon watch the Mule exit and cross the desert: "Don't mind the Captain none, Simon. I know he'll look out for her. They'll be back before you can spit." He ignores her and walks off. Her huge smile follows after: "Well, not that you spit." Her smile turns to yearning, and then to sadness. I forgot how good she was in these scenes with Simon, the way she takes the non-energy of his obliviousness and returns it in a signal without a feedback loop, just loving forever, into space like a microwave. It's painful. You know, I was always impressed with the way the pilot (also called Serenity, linked above) managed to introduce so many characters without seeming blocky or aggressive -- it's nice to watch it play out here as well.

On the prairie, Jayne crudely requests some exposition: "What are we hoping to find here that equals the worth of a turd?" And Mal obliges: "Security payroll. Alliance don't have the manpower to 'enforce the peace' on every outer-rim planet. They hire out to the private firms, who will not work for credit. They get paid in cashy money, which once a month rests here." While Jayne wonders how that doesn't mean they're stealing directly from the Alliance, and thus asking to be blown up, but Zoe's on it: "No private firm would ever report the theft of their own payroll. They'd appear weak, might lose their contract." Mal explains that, thusly, this is a low-pressure job: "We're as ghosts in this. Won't but rattle the floor." Jayne's pleased: "Shiny. Let's be bad guys."

Jayne and Mal enter the building with guns drawn and everybody drops. "You all wanna be looking very intently at your own belly buttons. I see a head start to rise, violence is going to ensue." Zoe opens the door to River, who walks in all creepy like usual. Mal explains to them that resistance is futile because what they're stealing doesn't belong to the settlers themselves, but the Alliance. In other words, not the people but the people that exploit them. River's dancer feet find their way slowly into the middle of the room, and as she listens, the camera goes wonky and drifts down across the people on the floor, finally resting on one young guy. She points to him without looking, very cool and spooky, and Zoe steps forward. She gets a look at the guy, looks at River with a questioning eye, and gets a full on Fucking yes, dude! What's your problem? in return. River gives the best withering looks this side of Martha Stewart. Zoe kneels beside the kid, and gets his gun away. "Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed." She tosses the gun aside and adds a completely unnecessary, "You can look it up later." She notifies Mal that the de-gunning of the people is complete, and Mal makes a tossed-off "big happy family?" before they get the guy to open the safe.

It's pretty empty, a few stacks of bills and random coins. "At last," snarks Zoe. "We can retire and give up this life of crime." Mal, his mouth a thin line, reaches up into the top of the safe that we didn't notice before. Jayne squeals as a panel in the floor opens up below his feet. "Hey!" exclaims the safe-opening dude. "You all are Browncoats, eh? Fought for independence? Petty thieving ain't exactly soldiers' work." Mal nods. "War's long done. We're all just folk now." Also known as the opposite of what Mal actually believes, which is why he named his ship Serenity, which was the valley where the final battle of his war took place, and he lost all track of what his life was about and abandoned belief altogether. "Listen up! We are coming down to empty that vault!" The guard kid downstairs, who is awesomely nonchalant about this whole thing, and has a pretty wry sense of humor his own self, calls back up: "You have to give me your authorization password!" Mal fires his gun, and the kid allows as how he's cleared for entry.

Upstairs, River gets scared. Outside, one heathen child notices the sound of Mal's gun, and his godless mother agrees that they might want to "run tell Lawman." Flash to a Reaver, killing somebody, and River screams and drops. Jayne -- although he'd be ashamed to admit it -- rushes to her side. "What the hell is up? You all right? What's going on?" She wriggles in panic, then whispers: "Reavers." Outside, several Reaver ships pull into position overhead, Reavers sliding down zip lines, twenty a ship, the townspeople shrieking and getting their asses killed but good.

Mal and the guard kid are negotiating where best to put his gunshot injury for the heist. "The leg is good. It'll bleed plenty, and we avoid any necessary organs." The kid's iffy on that: "I was thinking more of a graze..." Mal smiles into the kid's face, loving his collaboration on this. "No! You don't want it to look like you gave up," he says. "No, I get that," agrees the kid, and they smile at each other. Jayne comes running down the steps. "Mal!" Mal rolls his eyes. "Every heist, he's got to start yelling my name." Jayne comes to a stop on the steps, yelling, "Reavers! The girl's pitching a fit. They're here, or they're coming soon." Jayne and Zoe grab the cash and start loading the Mule upstairs, and Mal counsels the kid to get everyone he can into the vault, and lock it until they run out of air. The kid's scared, but Mal gets intense in his face about it.

Everybody loads up on the Mule, and Zoe's driving. One man comes running out of nowhere and latches onto the Mule. "Take me with you!" Mal tells him to get back in the vault, and the man begs, scared out of his wits. Mal can't get the guy to let go and go inside, and the Reavers are advancing. He finally pushes him down, and the Reavers grab him immediately, tackling him into the dust. Mal shoots him in the chest, and Zoe floors it. They take off through the town, back toward Serenity, as Reavers grab lots of people and kill them horribly. One growls directly at the camera, again pointing to a connection between them and the only other habitual fourth-wall violator, River Tam herself. A Reaver ship pulls in behind the Mule, and Mal and Jayne fire revolvers at it. Reaver ships are really scary -- they spew black smoke and have creepy shit all over them. It's the black smoke that gets me, though, it's so out of control and self-destructive and crazy -- it's always been a key image for me with this show.

Mal and Zoe explain to Jayne -- who's kind of a Colonel Tigh a lot of the time, always grumpily begging for exposition -- that the Reavers haven't just shot the Mule down because they prefer an up-close kill. Or, as River murmurs, "They want us alive when they eat us." I still prefer Zoe's first description of them, both for its simplicity and imagery, but I guess we got a variation on that at the beginning from that weird little boy. As they run and shoot and try to leave, Jayne whines petulantly, "Boy, sure would be nice if we had some grenades, don't you think?" Because he's the Mel Gibson in this movie, we lose a lot of the moral ambiguity that made this character bearable in the show. I would have to say that my chief disappointment with this film has to do with the focus on him, and stripping down of him, as some kind of gonzo Hollywood meathead, because it's just one joke over and over: "Hey, he'll eat the last chocolate out of the box and he won't even apologize! Seriously! And then he might masturbate! He likes guns! And also your chocolates, of which he will eat the last without apologizing! He has some questions, if you'd like to explain a bunch of basic shit to the audience, via him! He also has guns!" His bastardy is pointless in this context, because he's usually the dark half of Mal, the "what would you do, where is your line," and in this movie, that role is played by...Mal.

Zoe and Wash discuss how there are Reavers, and Wash mobilizes the crew still on board. Over Zoe's increasing anxiety over how they might soon die -- again, in like an hour -- Serenity takes off and heads for them. Jayne reaches for the reload clips in a hatch on the Mule, and something resembling a rotary blade from the Shop class in Hell embeds itself quite near his hand. He screams, and everybody else stays focused. The Reavers then harpoon Jayne through the leg, and he ends up stretched out parallel to the ground, holding on to the edge of the Mule and freaking out. "I won't get ate! You shoot me if they take me!" Mal pulls out a gun and he whines, "Well, don't shoot me first!" Mal fires over him at the ship several times, everybody stays in the chase, and he shoots at the harpoon instead, breaking the wire. Jayne abruptly falls, hanging from the end of the Mule, dragging behind, and Mal grabs and pulls him up.

Wash tells Zoe to get over the flats and swing around, because they're going to "try a Barn Swallow." Beat. "Simon!" Poor Simon. Even Wash is cracking gay jokes now. Mal tells Zoe to crash into some boulders a little bit and maybe knock some distance into the Raider ship. It works, and part of the debris blows one Reaver engine. This relates to the Crazy Ivan, in that it involves abruptly flipping around to face the Reaver ship, which is less maneuverable, but the difference is that the Mule is just basically a moped, a part to Serenity's whole, and Serenity will swoop in, the Mule crashing into her hangar like a barn swallow, and take off leaving the Reavers holding the bag. Which, not for nothing, but since most of the meaning of this movie involves the politics of location, who is inside and who is outside Serenity, the family, at any given time, it's a nice reference with an even better twist. The Crazy Ivan is about facing the Reavers with their own madness, playing chicken with chaos and then laughing into a full burn up into the sky, but the Barn Swallow is about surrendering to the safety of Serenity herself. It's about trust.

Which is at issue. Wash and Zoe talk about how they've discussed the maneuver before, but as Zoe mentions, "Talking ain't doing." Which in terms of surrendering to the trust of Serenity, whether their self-created family means anything at all, is the central issue. They pull it off, of course, because Serenity will never let you down, and they crash hard into the hangar's back wall, followed by one small Reaver vessel that looks like a Viper. Simon closes the doors behind them as they all pick themselves up and dust off, and again drops to her side: "River?" She smiles. "I swallowed a bug." Kaylee runs to Simon, whose main part here has been standing around, and asks if he's okay. Mal gives an outraged squeak at this, but just then a Reaver jumps up growling. Mal shoots him fast as anything, and they stand around. In the cockpit, Wash calls again and again: "We all here? What's going on?" Cut to a wide shot, Wash tiny and alone, cut off yet again from the action. "...Hello?"

Wash and Zoe touch base, as they always do, and he confirms that they've made a clean getaway. "Set course for Beaumonde," orders Mal. "First thing, I want this body..." Simon punches Mal in the jaw, and he falls, cursing in Mandarin. Kaylee jumps forward as Mal stands and they face off. "You son of a whore!" Mal points out that he is "a hair's breadth from riddling" Simon with bullet holes, but Simon's off on a thing. "One simple job! She'll be fine!" Like the Operative, like Mal himself, Simon has been forced to give up everything, every single thing, to protect his sister. And like the Operative and Mal, he's hardened around this mission with a scary single-mindedness. It's not that he doesn't love her, he does, but there's an extra layer of it now being his Entire Purpose that has given him incredible blind spots w/r/t emotional outbursts about it. The thing is that Simon can't ask the question Mal keeps asking, which is: is this worth it? If Mal loses two more members of his crew, well, there are still four people left to live for, and his ship. If Simon even considered dumping River, he'd die.

"She is fine! Except for being still crazy, she's a picture of health!" Zoe tries to calm Simon: "Wasn't for River, we'd probably be left there. She felt them coming." Simon tells Mal coldly, "Never again. You understand me?" And Mal gets cold in response: "Seems I remember a talk about you giving orders on my boat." Neither of them are thinking clearly right now; I'd say that neither of them are technically conscious right now, which is how this shit always happens. Mal has leveraged Simon's entire belief system, "Save River," against his own, "Save Serenity," and neither of them is allowed to blink. "Well, we're off your boat," yells Simon. "Just as soon as River gets her share of the bounty." Kaylee jumps in to cut this conversation dead, but Mal's not feeling that. Simon's managed to unlock the one way that he can actually dump them both, scot-free, and not feel bad about it. "No, shiny! We'll be on Beaumonde in hours' time. You can pick up your earnings and be on your merry. Meantime, you do your job. Patch up my crew." River stares at the Reaver, but she's talking about Mal, herself, every victim of the Alliance's self-reinforcing tyranny: "He didn't lie down. They never lie down."

Zoe and Mal pedeconference in the main corridor, where the crew quarters are. "No," she admits, "I think things will glide a deal smoother for us without River and Simon on board. But how long do you think they'll last?" Weaker than ever, Mal takes a child's alibi: "Doc made his call." He gives her a speech neither of them really believe, about how they were as "babes in a basket" when they came aboard, and Serenity "sheltered them plenty," but a man "has to cut loose, learn to stand on his own." Zoe picks up the slack: "Like that man back in town?" Even though he knows it's an apt comparison, and that she's not talking about this, it's all he's got: "I had to shoot him. What Reavers would've done before they killed him..." She admits this was "a piece of mercy," but pushes the issue: "But before that, him begging us to bring him along." Mal whines that they couldn't take the weight, that he had to make the call: "I should've dumped the girl? Or you? Or Jayne?" He reconsiders. "Well, Jayne..." But again, it has to do with him being a frat boy, and not the Gollum, gray-scale, like he was in the show.

She floats the idea that he could've tossed the payload instead, which is script gerrymandering so that Mal can give another "life is hard out in the black" speech: "Tossed the...Zoe, I got bits falling off my ship, I got a crew ain't been paid and, oh, yeah, a powerful need to eat sometime this month. We tell Fanty and Mingo we skunked the job, what do think they'll do to us? We're close to gone out here. We get a job, we got to make good." She admits that she doesn't disagree "on any particular point" with this, but before she can clarify that she's actually trying to get him to talk about the downward spiral he's in, he turns to leave. "It's just in the time of war, we would've never left a man stranded." Mal speaks, from the shadows: "Maybe that's why we lost." (Actually, you personally lost at Serenity because the Browncoats gave up and abandoned you, and now you are crazy, but I don't want to poke the bear right now.) He drops to his bunk, and Wash and Zoe embrace. "That was close." They smile, and are very cute.

Jayne bags the Reaver and kicks him down the chute. He and Kaylee discuss the Reavers a bit more, and Jayne gives a funny speech. "I do not get it. How's a guy get so wrong? Cutting on his own face, raping and murdering. I'll kill a man in a fair fight, or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight, or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman, or if I'm getting paid. Mostly only when I'm getting paid. These Reavers, the last years, they show up like the Bogeyman from stories. Eating people alive? Where does that get fun?" Kaylee's scavenging from all the wreckage, inspecting parts, seeing if they're useful. "Shepherd Book said they was men who just reached the edge of space, saw a vasty nothingness, and went bibbledy over it." Which explanation was sufficient for me, back in the day, but this movie takes what's essentially a philosophical show, about negotiating between two ethical extremes and relying on yourself to provide the ultimate moral compass, because that's what Joss Whedon writes TV shows about, and makes it a political movie, which means the whole "staring into the abyss makes you crazy" argument is not going to hold water, because it's politics in action and not a hypothetical Rousseauist tract. In case you were confused, Jayne will explain the difference now: "Oh, hell. I've been to the edge. Just looked like more space." Above him, tellingly, River lies face up on the catwalk. "I don't know, it can get awful lonely in the black," muses Kaylee, and brings the philosophical aspect back around to point at Mal. "Like to get addlepated ourselves, we stay on this boat much longer. Captain will drive us all off, one by one. Just like Simon and River." In the deleted scene, you see her sad face as she says the last line, "Just like Inara," but here we fade to Mal's bunk, where he's watching a vid Kaylee shot while Inara was preparing to leave, after "Objects In Space."

Inara laughs. "Kaylee, are you ever going to put that capture down?" But Kaylee's so excited with her toy: "We got to have records of everything, Inara! A bona fide Companion entertained clients on this very ship! In this very bed!" Inara smiles. "Well, I can't do my work here. And I don't think the Captain approves." Kaylee begs to differ that this means she must leave: "The Captain wants you to stay as much as..." but Inara interrupts her right there, not wanting to broach that subject any more than Mal ever does. "That man doesn't know what he wants." He puts it down.

Serenity docks on the ironically-named Beaumonde, and Kaylee is instructing Simon on what to do once they've left. Her innocence is so completely congruent with her earthiness; I love how she can get her heart broken a thousand times by one gay doctor, or the empty Mean Girl victims on Persephone, but still knows you don't buy drugs sight unseen, and likes to fuck in the engine room. You know? There's a Kitty Pryde for every story, but I think Kaylee's the best and truest example. Willow's irritating repression, Fred's irritating everything, but Kaylee's just a sweet girl with her heart on her smudgy sleeve. "Don't talk to the barkers, talk to the Captains. You look the Captain in the eye. Know who you're dealing with. I wish there was..." Mal steps between them, unloading, and he and Simon awkwardly do not touch, or look at each other. "You shouldn't ought to be so clean. It's a dead giveaway you don't belong, you always got to be tidy." She's almost crying, and can't look at him. "Don't pay anybody in advance." She's going to keep talking forever, if possible. "And don't ride in anything with a Capissen engine, they fall right out of the sky." Unable to continue, she breaks off and joins the Captain. River watches her leave, and Simon asks if she wants to stay with them. She looks amazing, these lovely tendrils in her hair, a slinky black dress with a silk kimono-jacket over it. "It isn't safe." He agrees pompously ("No. I fear it isn't safe anymore."), and takes off. "For them," she says to herself.

There's a mad bazaar where they'll meet Fanty and Mingo, a bar called the Maidenhead (Okay?!?): gambling, strippers, the news, booze. On the TV, a man reports on the heist-slash-Reaver attack: "...only survivors of the massacre apparently locked themselves in the train station vault..." Kaylee's up Mal's ass about Simon, still. "Kaylee, this is a place of business. We can talk about Simon..." They approach the bouncer, who's locking all their weapons in a cool waterwheel of toolboxes. "...When he's four worlds away? Or the Alliance gets ahold of him and River?" He's much aggrieved. "That ain't my worry. I got to finish this job and get us another one. Can't do that carrying those two." She wonders how, when he's so warm and loving with her, he can be so cold about this. Zoe, even though she agrees, steps in to defuse it. "Captain didn't make them fugitives." Kaylee's not so easily dissuaded: "But he could have made them family! Instead of keeping Simon from seeing I was there, when I carried such a torch, when we could've... We're going on a year now, I ain't had nothing twixt my nethers weren't run on batteries!" Mal is, of course, horrified: "Oh, God! I can't know that!" It's sweet. Jayne mumbles, "I could stand to hear a little more," but as usual, Kaylee ignores this altogether. "If you had a care for anybody's heart..." Mal's tired of it, and goes for the kind of gut shot he'd never give Kaylee if she weren't pushing his current buttons as hard as possible. "You knew he was gonna leave. We never been but a way station to those two. And how do you know what he feels? He's got River to worry on, but he still could've shown you" -- beat -- "if I truly wanted someone bad enough wouldn't be a thing in the 'verse could stop me from going to her." FOUL! Total foul! But Kaylee's got it covered, angry now and wanting to hurt him back. "Tell that to Inara."

She takes off back up the stairs, and the impressed Zoe and Wash make room for her retreat back to the ship. Fanty and Mingo approach and get all cockney and colorful and shit. "Domestic troubles? 'Cause we don't wanna interrupt. A man should keep his house in order." Mal greets them, and they say he's got their names mixed up, but he doesn't. "He's Fanty. You're Mingo." You're both Badger, only not hot! God! They wonder at his ability to tell them apart, but he admits that it's because Fanty's prettier. They sit and toast to "endeavors," and Mal quietly kicks a bag across the floor, under the table. The twins make small talk, and finally Mal interrupts. "So I'm noticing. Is there a problem we don't know of? You got a sweet take kissing your foot. How's about you take your percentage, we can talk about the job?" They explain that their end is now 40 percent, "precious," and Jayne swears by his "muscular buttocks" that it is not. They disagree, as of now.

River walks into the bar as the argument continues. The twins discuss how the Serenity crew is a "sorry lot" that most people won't even deal with. River's attention is caught by a Fruity Oaty Bar commercial, staring up at the television. "You're unpredictable, Mal. You run when you ought to fight. Fight when you ought to deal. Makes a businessperson a little twitchy." On screen, the commercial goes like this: "Fruity Bars make a man of a mouse / Fruity Oaty Bars, pow! / Make you bust out of your blouse / Eat them now, bang!" It's pretty awesome. There are these weird little Powerpuff nuns with bindis, and at one point an octopus comes flying out of a woman's shirt. Things go silent and there's a bluish glow on everything, River brightly lit in the darkness, consciousness fully altered. Images of her torture, of the Reavers, flash across the screen. She whispers: "Miranda."

And yeah, "brave new world with such people on it," but also, "daughter of a wizard who controls the whole world, playing everyone like chess, because he's trying to teach them how to think." To elevate them from their sinful, base impulses, to a life of pure reason and control. It was on Ariel that River died away, locked in a cloven pine, and reawakened with her powers, as a tool of the Alliance, restored. Where Jayne revealed himself again as a creature without higher purpose, without self-forged belief beyond the acquisition of pleasure and riches, not honored with a human shape, a creature of the world, a savage without the nobility of his fellow savages, and was nearly judged with death by the Captain, and earlier, by his victim River herself.

River freaks out, all silence but the sound of her destruction, as she proceeds to take down everybody in the place. The light is too bright, too harsh -- but in the action of a kick, both the sound and color return to normal, brilliantly. Jayne notes the melee ("Hey, a tussle!") and Mal pushes back the large fan that serves as a privacy curtain. They watch for a second or two, and one of the twins asks if he knows the girl currently ripping the bar open from one end to the other. "I really don't." River continues to do amazing, beautiful, terrible things to more and more assailants that are nearly impossible to describe on paper. Mal signals Jayne to get into it as the twins take off, and Jayne grabs her. She fights like a creature possessed. "Gorrammit, girl, it's me!" He gets a kick to the nuts, because it's Jayne, and she beats the hell out of him as Mal runs to the weapon lockers. Mal picks the lock as guns start firing, and they pull on each other in the same instant, in a standoff, staring at each other silently.

Simon appears, speaking a phrase loudly into the chaos, and River immediately goes limp, dropping to the floor. A beautifully composed wide shot from above shows her, just a girl again in a lovely dress, lying in the middle of her wreckage. Mal grabs her and takes off, Jayne and Simon following.

On the Operative's ship, he reads Mal's file, smiling as he sees descriptions of his various crimes, and his history as a Browncoat volunteer. Seeing the outcome of the Serenity Valley battle, knowing he was there, the Operative puts it together slowly, learning piece by piece the kind of man Mal really is.

On Serenity, Mal shackles River to the floor inside the kitchen pantry. Outside, Simon's worried for her, but Mal's worried full stop. "I believe you've got some storytelling to do. What in the hell happened back there?" Wash laughs, begging him to start with the part where Jayne got knocked out by a 90-pound girl. They all agree that it's likely people died in the fight: "I know she meant to kill me before the Doc put her out," says Jayne. Simon explains the phrase he shouted: "It's a safe word. The people who helped me break River out had intel that River and the other subjects were being embedded with behavioral conditioning. They taught me a safe word in case something happened." Kaylee asks for clarification, and Simon obliges: "It's a phrase that makes her fall asleep. If I speak the words..." Jayne jumps up. "Don't say it!" Zoe rolls her eyes. "It only works on her, Jayne." I love how they don't even think twice about compensating for what an idiot he is.

"In case something happened," shouts Mal. "You feel to elaborate on what that 'something' might be?" Simon says they never explained, and Mal, upset about the fact that he never asked, grabs him. "Eight months. Eight months, you had her on my boat knowing full well she could go monkeyshit at the wrong word. You never said a thing." Simon tries to equivocate: "I brought her out here so they couldn't get to her! I don't even know what they..." But Mal's been smacked in the point yet again: "My ship! My crew! You had a gorramn time bomb living with us!" She wakes in the pantry as his tirade continues. "Who we gonna find in there when she wakes up? The girl? Or the weapon?" Simon's sheepish. "I thought she was getting better," he says, and Jayne is back on the horse: "...And I thought they was getting off! Didn't we have an intricate plan how they was gonna be not here anymore?" Kaylee responds that they can't carry through on that now, and Jayne snots, "No, now that she's a killer woman we ought be bringing her tea and dumplings." Mal doesn't respond to questions about why he followed his impulse to bring her back onboard himself, but he does look at Zoe. I like Zoe-as-conscience, because it's a realistic role for her to play, given the fact that she's the only person he actually trusts.

Mal, stricken, steps aside to let Simon investigate her. Outside, Jayne submits that if she "goes woolly again, we're gonna have to put a bullet to her." Split-screen Mal and River, both speaking the line: "It's crossed my mind." There's a significance to the Watcher/Slayer relationship here that brings the Gollum stuff back in, which is basically that she serves as an anima projection that carries the shadow. I promise that I won't bring up the Jung stuff after this, but it's another angle on the central conflict of the movie, which is that the violence of Mal's anger at the shackles of the Alliance is expressed wildly through the outward violence she implies, the "meddling" that she, and her brother Reavers, embody. Like Giles, he exists at cross-purposes to the prosperous governing body, the wizards, who only want to send her out like Ariel, lion of God, to do their bidding -- but he doesn't agree with that either. So what do you do with a tool you're bound to protect, if you can't use it the way you're supposed to? From the First Slayer on, it's the girl -- the super-powered girl -- that carries the demon, so that the Watcher doesn't have to. But if she becomes a danger to the society she exists to create/patrol, where does that leave the Watcher? He can't kill her -- she's part of his soul. She's the psyche, the butterfly. This is a story about how they're inextricably bound, and about how Mal has to protect her, without controlling her. To hold the butterfly in his hand without crushing it. Not because he hates the Alliance, but because he loves her. If he can make that work, he'll know salvation, but if he ever figures out that balance within himself, he will know grace.

...Not to mention finally getting to fuck Inara. End of lecture. Wash quips angrily, "Can I make a suggestion that doesn't involve violence? Or is this the wrong crowd?" Jayne smiles at what a pussy Wash always is, and Zoe -- monitoring Mal as she always does, without even thinking about it -- cautions him with a simple "Honey." Wash shakes it off, because he's not being bitchy. "We're flying a lot blinder than usual here. We need to get our bearings. I think we need to talk to Mr. Universe." Mal looks down at him, and we cut immediately to a small moon, surrounded by layers of coruscating blue electricity, and in each level as we drop, we hear static and radio voices. Below the ion cloud, we zoom across a landscape of satellites.

Inside his world of television screens, Mr. Universe (David Krumholtz from Numbthreers and everything that is good: Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared and the whole thing) has a tiny little orgasm at the video of River's Miranda freakout. "Oh, this is good. You guys always bring me the very best violence. You think you're in a hot place?" Mal says that's what he's wondering: has it hit the news yet? Will they have the fresh and new experience of being on the run from the Alliance? "There is no news," Mr. U. intones, "there's the truth of the signal." In a surveillance culture, everyone's a movie star. It stops being "news," stops being "entertainment," stops being anything but input: all true, all real, all meaningful, all "the signal." And Mr. Universe is the embodiment of this. That's what he sees. "...And there's the puppet theater the Parliament jesters foist on the somnambulant public." There's the true signal, the reality he picks up, and there's the carefully packaged For Only Xenophobes news that the administration doles out carefully. Since River is their very own mutated Bay of Pigs, we won't be seeing her on the news. "No lawforce flags, either. I had to go into the security feed direct," he says, which impresses Mal. "Can't stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere. Security feeds are a traipse to access, and I wasn't the first one in. This has prints on it." Zoe is, in turn, impressed. "Zoe, you sultry minx, stop falling in love with me. You're just gonna embarrass yourself. I have a commitment to my Lovebot." He activates a girl on a couch, who's sitting silently, and she waves. He cues up video of their "marriage," in which he mostly danced around like an idiot and was immensely creepy and lonely. "I cried like a baby. A hungry, angry baby." Zoe giggles as he proudly talks about how he fucked her into submission, the robot he created for that purpose, because it's terribly sad but also very funny.

Mal asks him to scan for anybody talking to River, if there were any obvious triggers, and we see footage of her looking up at the camera/Fruity Oaty bars commercial. "Miranda." Mal tells him to go back further, but Mr. Universe has picked up on it. "No." Mal's perplexed. "...Please?" It's very cute. "Oh Mal, you're very smart. Someone is talking to her." Wash gets it : "The Oaty bar?" Universe runs it back, slowed down, and Mal finally understands: "Subliminal." It's been broadwaved everywhere, to trigger her and draw her out. "I've been seeing this code pop up all over, the last few weeks. It's Alliance and it's high military. They have gone to enormous trouble to find your little friend. And found her, they have." Mal swallows as Mr. Universe asks if they honestly understand what they're carrying. They regretfully do not, even though they just got enough information that a child could put the plot together, and I don't even mean a special one like River. I mean a normal, dull one.

Simon tends his sister's wounds in the pantry, still chained. "They're afraid of me." He apologizes for that, but doesn't explain that it's because she's totally scary. "They should be. But I'll show them. Oh, God," she cries. He comforts her, but she's in a talking mood. Endorphins, you know. The last time I killed a bar full of people, you'd think I was on crystal meth! "Show me off like a dog. Old men covered in blood. Never touched them, but they're drowning in it. I don't know what I'm saying. I never know what I'm saying." It's a nice moment, and a nice nod to the fact that she is crazy. "In the Maidenhead, you said something. When you were triggered." Again, she flashes on the cartoons, on the Reavers. "Do you remember?"

"Miranda. Ask her." She means the planet, the daughter of empire that caused all this, but of course he doesn't know that yet. "Who is Miranda? Am I talking to Miranda now?" Classic. She gives him another "for fuck's sake" look, and he shakes his head, smiling kindly. "...I think when they triggered you, it somehow brought this up. This memory." She shakes her head, scratching subtly at her chains. "It isn't mine. The memory, it isn't mine. And I shouldn't have to carry it. It isn't mine. Don't make me sleep again." She gets more and more panicked. This is the real maidenhead, the memories in the head of this dancing maiden, this moment in which -- though it's scary and seems to be more trouble coming still -- actually initiates them all into the level of the game. Lost innocence traded for power. "I won't. I won't." That's not enough: "Put a bullet to me." Flash on a terrible image, River holding a gun to her head there in the pantry, so sudden and so scary. "Bullet in the brainpan, squish." He shushes her, heartbroken. "Don't say that. Not ever. We'll get through this." She knows better, because she always does, and he wipes away her tears. "Things are going to get much, much worse."

There are two scenes (hereabouts I think, at least basically) that were deleted, and for good reason, but they're interesting. In the first, this scene continues, and River protests that "he has to see what he doesn't want to see," has to force himself through the veil. Simon asks what that is, and it is death. Whose? "Everybody's!" she screams. In the second, which actually falls a bit later but chronologically now goes here, Inara and a woman at the Companion's Training House where she lives talk about how much her students love her, and how stories of her "torrid affair with a pirate" have made the rounds. Inara protests a bit too much, but is stricken down when the woman, Sheydra, suggests that Mal may already be dead. Now, if you're like me, and basically come to this show vis-à-vis the Inara and Mal relationship, the continuing interrogation of how a personally designed system of belief doesn't do shit for you if love or some other disaster comes knocking cruelly on your door, then do what my mother suggested last week, and get the DVD immediately, because as she said, "The movie you wanted was deleted." And so it was. It was. And still...once a Browncoat. My mistake was watching Battlestar all day before we saw it, big jump to make in your head, and anyway, that was work-related.

Short scene to get us from Mr. Universe to Haven, where Shepherd Book has been living for six months or so: Inara greets the Operative at the door, smiling for about one millisecond before her Companion training alerts her to any one of a number of troubling facts about the Operative.

Down on Haven, Book comes to greet Serenity with hugs, Kaylee sweeping a child into her arms, the planet name even more on the nose than usual. It says what it is, for both Book and the crew. It feels like they come back here a lot. I hope that they do. Book's got cornrows, and I can't help but wonder if he put those in because he knew River was coming -- or because he knew she was now a ninja and will stop at nothing to destroy them. They are welcomed home as heroes, and later, as Book prays over the lot of them, Jayne plays the guitar for them by the fire. Book and Mal stand a ways away, gorgeously lit by warm firelight in the darkness. "You got a plan?" And Mal's response: "Hiding ain't a plan?" Book tells him it'll do "for a spell," and "the folks here'll be glad of the extra coin," because Robin Hood is alive and living in the Outer Rim, "but the Alliance will be coming." Mal agrees: "They're after this girl with a powerful will. I look to hear the tromp of their boots any moment." I'm sorry there's so much verbatim transcription, but the language! "You won't. This isn't a palms-up military run, Mal. No reports broadwaved, no warrants. Much as they want her, they want her hid. That means closed file. Means an Operative. Which is trouble you've not known." Just so you know, this isn't the usual "people are looking for River" thing -- Book wants to tell you this is totally different. It's a Big Damn Movie, son! The stakes are... Oh. Yeah. Not funny right now.

Mal complains about that nagging conscience of his, even though Book loves River probably more than anybody besides Simon and Kaylee. And Mal. "I could have left her there. I had an out. Hell, I had every reason in the 'verse." There's a spooky image of him, crouched over her, unconscious in the pantry, thinking of all the ways you could kill a sleeping girl, and what happens if you don't. "To leave her layin' and haul anchor." Book says that's not Mal's way, and Mal laughs. "I have a way? That better than a plan?" Book does his usual telling you stuff you are so not hearing until it's too late: "Only one thing is gonna walk you through this, Mal. Belief." And Mal just shakes his head. "You know I always look to you for counsel, but sermons make me sleepy, Shepherd. I ain't looking for help from on high. That's a long wait for a train don't come." Book is tickled. "When I talk about belief, why do you always assume I'm talking about God?" Because you are a priest? Just a shot in the dark. "They'll come at you sideways. It's how they think. It's how they move. Sidle up and smile. Hit you where you're weak. Sort of man they're like to send believes hard. Kills and never asks why." Mal -- now scared to death, because Book only speaks when he's got a powerful truth -- floats that, as usual, Book's in with the Alliance and its works is powerful interesting, and Book responds, also as usual, that he wasn't born a Shepherd, and that's all you're getting: "Have to tell me about that, sometime," says Mal. "No, I don't," says Book. And that's maybe the bravest thing about this movie: he doesn't. And he won't get to. And we get to suck on that. And that is good, because the point of him is: you can change it. You can be reborn. What he is, is what Mal deserves. And that's only true if we don't get access. It only means anything if we're denied.

Short dream, young River being told she looks tired -- she does -- and that "everybody's a little tired by now. Why don't we all lie down? A little peace and quiet will make everything better." River stares. "River. Do as you're told." River, of course: "No." "It's going to be fine," says the teacher, images of the sleeping and the dead. "Lie down." "No," she shouts, waking in a start. As does Mal, shouting, "What?" They'll neither of them lie down, ever. Not until it's told. Wash, over the ship address: "Mal! You up?" I guess I should mention that Mal is totally naked, blanket across his nethers, at this point. If you're into that. It's not awful to look at, or anything, and the show does have a history of showing him way more naked than we've seen thus far, because frankly, you have a duty sometimes. "I got a wave. I'm gonna bounce it down to you." It's Inara. Yeah! He jumps back like a dork and "fixes" his hair. Oh, Mal.

"I," she stutters, "is this a bad time?" "No," he stutters back, "This...good as any. How's...your world?" She smiles. Weather. "Cold. It's autumn here." He asks if she's still at the Training House, and she smiles at him. He actually tries to lay on the charm. It's Mal, so he accomplishes it, despite looking like he just went through a trash compactor. Albeit a sexy one. "So, what occasions the wave? Not that to see you ain't...well, you look very fine." They talk over each other, but being as how she's currently a hostage of the Operative and this is a big trap, she goes ahead and launches into it: "I guess we're having something of a problem here with the locals. And, I thought maybe..." He offers "a gun hand" and she says she hopes it's not necessary. "I'm hoping not. But if you happen to be close at all, you...the crew could take your ease here for a while. And there'd be payment." He gets excited, then tamps it down. "Well, it would be...I mean, I'd like to. Kaylee's been...missing you something fierce." Downstairs, the entire crew, now assembled in the cockpit and watching, shouts, "Oh, man!" Wash throws actual popcorn, is the level we're at right now. It's hilarious and heartbreaking. Word, y'all. "I miss her, too. I even miss my shuttle, occasionally." He's sheepish. "Yeah, you left, um...got some of your stuff in a trunk. I never did get a chance to drop it off." Lying -- and the commentary has a funny note from Joss about how both actors came to him with the subtext for this -- she says, "I didn't mean to leave stuff," and his response is equally an adorable lie, "I didn't look through the stuff." They talk about how they'll be talking, and he signs off.

In the cockpit, Wash extemporizes, "Inara, nice to see her again." Zoe looks at Mal, cowboyed up. "So, trap?" They have a whole Captain/First Mate conversation in twin language that weirds out everybody else. Kaylee especially, because this is clearly fate and romance happening, is confused. Zoe and Mal agree that they're going in, and Wash is like, "Yeah, but, remember the part where it's a trap?" Mal shrugs. "If that's the case, then Inara's already caught in it. She wouldn't set us up willing. Might be we got a shot at seeing who's turning these wheels. We go in." Kaylee protests that maybe Inara just wants to see him. "But how can you be sure Inara don't just wanna see you? Sometimes people have feelings. I'm referring here to people." His face is firm. "You all were watching, I take it." They all sheepishly assent. "Did you see us fight?" They did not. "Trap." One of the outtakes involved him screaming "TRAP!" at the top of his lungs, disgusted at the ongoing ignorance of his most trusted allies, and then turning swiftly on his heel, and that would have been funny too.

We're coming in low over the Training House, nobody on radar. Mal hands over command to Mal, and cracks wise: "Remember. If anything happens to me or if you don't hear from me within the hour you take this ship and you come and you rescue me." Zoe smiles, fake-affronted: "What? Risk my ship?" He takes off. "I mean it. It's cold out there. And I don't wanna get left." When you're heading into a situation where the actual trained assassin without an identity is the less scary of the factors, the safety of Serenity is important.

Down in the Training House, Mal has donned a ridiculous silky robe, bulky as whatever the Skeksis wore, and makes fun of Inara's prayer as a way of breaking the ice. "Dear Buddha, please bring me a pony, and a plastic rocket, and..." She jumps up, surprised out of her fear and reverie. "What are you doing here?" He shrugs. "You invited me?" She chides him, sexy as ever: "I never thought for a second you'd be stupid enough to come." "Well," he grins, "that makes you kind of a tease, doesn't it?" She gets up, all fussy and worried as usual. "You knew my invitation wasn't on the level." He explains that obvious that equals trouble, and she blows that right off. "I'm fine. I'm giddy." He shakes his head. "For a woman schooled in telling a man what he wants to hear, you ain't much of a liar." She responds, really afraid this time, scared into honesty, "Mal, you cannot handle this man." The Operative enters, politely. "I have to say, Captain -- I'm impressed that you would come for her yourself. And that you would make it this far, in that outfit." He stands, still wearing the ridiculous tapestry. "I can be very graceful when I need to."

Inara drops to the altar, pulling out what's clearly special incense. "What are you doing?" asks Mal, and she sniffs. "I'm praying for you, Mal." The Operative notes how thoughtful Inara is, having figured out their whole relationship as easily as anybody could that is not one of them, and expresses clearly that he's not interested in harming Mal. "I think you're beginning to understand how dangerous River Tam is." Mal agrees that River can be "a mite unpredictable," suffering as she does from "mood swings, of a sort." The Operative tells him it's worse than Mal knows, and he's cocky as hell. "It usually is." The Operative calls her an "albatross" that will "rain destruction down" on Mal and Serenity. "Way I remember it, albatross was a ship's good luck, till some idiot killed it." ["Joss had been saving that one, you can tell. I'd have done the same. Nice turn." -- Sars] The Operative says he knows how Mal must feel "about the Alliance," thinking that's how you get him. "You really don't," says Mal. Which is nice because first of all, Mal couldn't care less about the Alliance. Serenity Valley beat that out of him. He transferred his dreams for independence to protecting his ship and crew. But it's also nice because it ties back to the Maidenhead. As badly as the Operative is reading Mal, that's how bad Mal read River. Which means ultraviolence on its way. "I got no need to beat you. I just want to go my way." The Operative offers him that option, once he has River Tam. Mal calls bullshit and says it's a trap, but the Operative has that covered. "I offer money, you'll play the man of honor and take umbrage. I ask you to do what is right, you'll play the brigand." Either way, fighting. "I have no stomach for games. I already know you will not see reason." Mal buys that, and it's true, but reasons, "The Alliance wanted to show me a reason, they shouldn't have sent an assassin." The Operative offers to blow Serenity out of the sky, and Mal in turn offers to kill his ass. "You do that, you'd best make peace with your dear and fluffy lord."

They chat some more, about how the Alliance can suck a dick basically, and Mal casts aspersions on the Operative's abilities. "Captain Reynolds, I should tell you, so that you don't waste your time. You can't make me angry." Inara rolls her eyes. "Please, spend an hour with him." The Operative, again trying to seem transparent and honorable, says he's unarmed. Of course, Mal immediately shoots him in the chest, and he goes flying. Mal grabs Inara and heads for the door. "...I am, of course, wearing full body armor." He attacks, busting Inara's ass on the way to a tussle with Mal. They fight to a standstill, and Mal asks after his backup. "They'll come when they're needed. Captain, what do you think is going to happen here?" They fight some more, and again Mal eventually goes down. Reach for his gun, the Operative retrieves his sword from outside the room. "Nothing here is what it seems. He isn't the plucky hero. The Alliance isn't some evil empire. This is not the grand arena." And Inara makes a steely face. "And that's not incense." The altar explodes, which: whoa to the imagery, and Mal and Inara take off. From the floor, the Operative tells his men it was just a "flash bomb" and sends them after Mal. Back on Inara's shuttle, they squabble for a second as she gets it ready to fly, then takes off. In orbit, Serenity sends out a bunch of cry-babies in every direction, further obscuring their getaway.

In the Serenity lounge, Inara explains how scary the Operative actually is, even though Jayne maintains that beating up Mal "ain't so hard" (to which of course Mal takes terrible umbrage) -- "Because he's a believer. He's intelligent, methodical, and devout in his belief that killing River is the right thing to do." There's not even hope of a reward. Simon asks if he mentioned "Miranda," and Inara asks what that is. "Don't know who or what, but it's on River's mind," puns Zoe. "Conjure it might be the reason they're after her." While Inara wonders if this directly poses a threat to the Alliance, and Wash wonders whether they even care about that. Jayne still has a problem with the River part: "You dumb-ass hogs, the only people she's a threat to is us on this boat." Mal mentions that they're going back to Haven and will be there shortly, and Jayne complains more: "Oh, yeah. Hiding under the Shepherd's skirts. That's a manful scheme." Mal fronts: "You wanna run this ship?" Of course he does. "Well...you can't." Which nicely bookends the "don't give me orders" stuff with Simon. Simon challenges Mal's command in a way that Jayne doesn't, because Simon and Mal both have a stake in River. Jayne continues: "Do a damn sight better job than you. Getting us lashed over a couple of strays -- no offense, Doc, I think it's noble as a grape the way you look to River. But she ain't my sister." He turns back to Mal: "And she ain't your crew. Oh, and neither is she exactly helpless, so, where's it writ that we got to lay down our lives for her? Which is what you've steered us toward." Mal gets angrier. "I didn't start this."

Jayne moves in for the kill: "No, that's right. Alliance starts the war, and then you volunteer. Battle of Serenity, Mal. Besides Zoe here, how many -- " Mal walks away. "Hey, I'm talking at you!" Inara comforts Kaylee with a hand on her shoulder. "How many men in your platoon came out of there alive?" Soft focus, slowly bringing Zoe into stark relief: "You wanna leave this room." Seriously. I kind of want to kick his ass for that, and he's imaginary. He can't meet Mal's eyes after what he just said. "Damn right, I do." He takes off. Inara takes Mal's arm. "This isn't the war, Mal. You came to the Training House looking for a fight." He looks at her strong. "I came looking for you." She shakes her head. "I just want to know who I'm dealing with. I've seen too many versions of you to be sure." He gets in her face, looking into her eyes. "I start fighting a war, I guarantee you'll see something new." He takes off out of the room as well. Inara looks at the floor, at Simon, then takes off after him. Simon offers to leave the ship, finally -- after thirteen episodes and most of a movie, he's getting it -- and Kaylee tries once more to shush him: "Nobody's saying that." Wash cutely corrects her: "Nobody besides Jayne is saying that."

Inara finds Mal and he turns on her, freaking out. "I got no answers for you, Inara. I got no rudder. Wind blows northerly, I go north." Easiest fucking out in the history of outs. "That's who I am. Now, maybe that ain't a man to lead, but they have to follow. So you wanna tear me down do it inside your own mind." She tries to calm him down; he's not having it. "But you fog things up! You always have. You spin me about. I wish like hell you was elsewhere." He takes off again, and she leans quietly into herself. "I was." All these folk tales where people, or giants or witches or whatever, take out their hearts and stow them somewhere -- what do you think happens when they get them back? I imagine they act like this for a while.

River dreams, now grown in the school tent, looking at her old desk, blood dripping from the spot where the needle goes in. She sees Reavers, bodies, the tired and the dead. A Reaver grabs her face, and she wakes, a look of purpose on her face. Jayne, with his own agenda, opens the pantry door. "No trouble, little crazy person. We're going for a nice shuttle ride." Elsewhere, the rest of the crew hears a gun discharge, and Zoe sees Jayne unconscious or dead inside the locked kitchen. Everybody spreads out to look for her, and Simon looks into the porthole window. River appears inside, opens the door -- and knocks him unconscious with a single blow. She stands over him, Jayne's gun in her hand, looking creepy as hell.

Zoe reports to Mal that she's sealed off the bridge. "I do not like her there," he says, and tells them to check the shuttle, in case she's elsewhere. He enters her shuttle, where she sits at the bridge. She cocks a gun at him without turning around, and he snaps still. "Captain." He holsters his gun and speaks. "The government's man, he says you're a danger to us. Not worth helping. Is he right?" She begins to cry, but won't look at him, focused on the navigation screen. "Are you anything but a weapon? I've staked my crew's life on the theory you're a person, actual and whole, and if I'm wrong, you'd best shoot me now." She cocks the gun. "Or we could talk more." She works silently, gun still leveled behind her, and a planet appears onscreen. She turns back to him, finally. "Miranda."

They all discuss the fact that there's a planet Miranda that none of them have heard of. "Because there isn't one," Mal explains from the screen. "It's a blackrock. Uninhabitable. Terraforming didn't hold, or some such. Few settlers died." Simon massages the throat River hit him in, and River apologizes. "I had to show them. I didn't know if you were going to make me sleep." Irritated: "You could have asked." Jayne is also unimpressed with all this noise. Kaylee vaguely remembers a call long ago for settlement volunteers for Miranda, but Wash is still confused, because the Cortex has nothing on it: "History, Astronomy...it's not in there." This is what convinces Mal, of course. "Half of writing history is hiding the truth. There's something on that rock the Alliance doesn't want known." Inara points out that it's not too far from where they are, and Wash wigs, asking his wife to explain why. "This is us, at Haven, and here's Miranda. All along here, that empty space in between, that's Reaver territory." Everybody gets scared, but they are distracted by what they see on approach to Haven: buildings destroyed, burning, bodies everywhere. "Doesn't look like Reavers."

Down on Haven -- and see what they did there? -- they can't find Book. River stands before a burning child's swing. The little kid that loved Kaylee lies dead. Mal finds Shepherd Book, dying behind a building. "Shouldn't have been you," Mal says. "Alliance should've hit us. Should've hit me." Shepherd smiles. "That crossed my mind." He admits to shooting down the ship, "I killed the ship that killed us," and they smile. "Not very Christian of me." Mal tells him he did the right thing, and Book jokes again that coming from Mal, that means "almost nothing." Book starts to slip, but Mal promises that Simon will save him. "I look to be bored by many more sermons before you slip. Just don't move." Book shakes his head again. "Can't order me around, boy. I'm not one of your crew." Mal almost loses it. "Yes, you are." Book begs him, "I don't care what you believe. Just believe it. Whatever you..." and he dies, his message interrupted.

Jayne wonders why they aren't under attack, if the Operative knew they would return, but Zoe figures it out: "They didn't know we were coming here." She orders Wash to wave everybody -- Li Shen, the Sanchez brothers -- that has ever sheltered them after a heist. "Tell them to get out. Get out now." Security feed, back on Serenity, shows them all, dead. The Operative waves Mal, who looks at him more broken than angry, close to tears, his last refuge taken, and all the others with it. "You should have taken my offer. Or did you think none of this was your fault?" Mal offers that he doesn't murder children. The Operative admits that he does. "If I have to." Mal asks if he even knows what this is about. "It's not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin." So then, Mal assumes, "me and mine gotta lay down and die so you can live in your better world?" The Operative explains that there's no place for him in the better world either: "I'm a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done... Every minute you keep River Tam from me, more people will die." Mal asks if he honestly thinks that at this point he gives a damn, and the Operative smiles. "Of course you care. You're not a Reaver, Mal You're a human man, and you will never understand how..." Mal shuts him off, and leaves the ship giving orders left and right.

"Get these bodies together. Zoe, you and Simon rope them together. Five or six. I want them laid out on the nose of our ship." One of the interruptions finally gets through, as everybody is horrified by what he's saying -- "I won't desecrate these bodies!" -- but he steels himself and keeps going. He orders Kaylee to "muck up the reactor core. Just enough to leave a trail and make it read like we're flying without containment, not enough to fry us." Kaylee nearly freaks, but he orders it again. "Jayne, you and Wash hoist up the cannon mount. Goes right on top. Piece or two of the other ship, stick it on. Any place you can tear hull without inner breach, do that, too. We're gonna need paint. We're gonna need red paint." Zoe steps up on this. "Sir, do you really mean to turn our home into an abomination so that we can make a suicidal attempt at passing through Reaver space?" He looks dead at her. "I mean to live. I mean for us to live. The Alliance won't have that, so we go where they don't follow." Everybody starts to fight him on it, and he pulls his gun. "This is how it is. Anybody doesn't wanna fly with me anymore this is your port of harbor. There's a lot of fine ways to die. I ain't waiting for the Alliance to choose mine." He shoots the last living agent, just now emerging from a ship a few yards away. Everybody screams because he's getting so intense and scary and making such ugly decisions. "I mean to confound these bungers. Take my shot at getting to Miranda. Maybe find something I can use to get clear of this. So I hear a word out of any of you that ain't helping me out or taking your leave, I will shoot you down." He holsters his gun and heads back toward the ship. "Get to work." River watches him go.

The horribly decorated Serenity floats toward Reaver space. Mal won't talk to anybody, goes to hide in a room off the kitchen. (There's a deleted scene here, again for good reason, where he finds Inara there, going through the previously-mentioned truck of "stuff," and they have a brief discussion about Simon handing out overdoses of morphine -- of course, we know Inara keeps one of those anyway, but she's too classy to mention it -- among other things, and ends with Mal's plaintive question, "Why didn't you leave?" and her similarly painful response, "Why didn't you ask me not to?" He, of course, takes off immediately, because even a crisis like this won't force him to tell her the truth.) The whole crew waits in the cockpit with their breath held, as Wash guides her through the wreckage and chaos of the Reaver ships. Scary howling and static play across the radio; River is rapt. Wrongly-engineered ships split apart, entropy is everywhere, debris is scattered across everything. The tiny little Firefly slowly makes her way though the mess. A collective sigh of relief is heaved as they clear Reaver space and reach Miranda.

The Operative, exasperated, on the bridge of his ship: "Define 'disappeared.'"

They enter Miranda space and land, detecting no abnormal readings, tectonic instability, radiation. Down on the planet, in their EVA suits, they freak out about how perfectly habitable the planet is -- cities, land masses, all blank and livable and empty. It's a ghost town, in perfect and clean brightness. They finally find a body, with no visible signs of damage. Mal wonders if it's poison. Jayne sees another one, lying limply in an undamaged shuttle. It's as scary as a horror movie, but the light is so bright. The crew slowly eliminates all possible reasons for their death: gas, poison. There's no explanation. "They didn't fall. None of them. They just lay down." River gets more and more terrified, the camera whirling around her as Simon comforts her. "Make them stop. They're everywhere. Every city, every house, every room, they're all inside me. I can hear them all, and they're saying nothing!" Jayne agrees, but finds the whole thing unnerving. "Everybody's dead. This whole world is dead for no reason!" They make their way to a beacon they noticed transmitting from up above.

In a very damaged building, River activates a recording. My favorite actor probably ever, but Top Five definitely, Sarah Paulson, appears in hologram. "These are just a few of the images we've recorded. And you can see it isn't what we thought. There's been no war here and no terraforming event. The environment is stable. It's the Pax. The G-Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's a million people here, and they all just let themselves die." Crashes sound outside the image, screaming, Reavers. "I have to be quick. About a tenth of a percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased beyond madness. They have become...well, they've killed most of us. And not just killed -- they've done things." The crew realizes what happened. "I won't live to report this, but people have to know. We meant it for the best to make people safer." She holds a gun to her head, but a Reaver appears and drags her out. Jayne begs, "Turn it off." River falls to the floor, vomits. Simon drops to her side, but she protests. "I'm all right." She considers the secret she's been holding, the toxic truth that has made her insane. "I'm all right."

Back in the Serenity kitchen, River healed for now, Mal now has a brand-new mission: hack the planet. "This report is maybe years old. Parliament buried it, and it stayed buried till River dug it up. This is what they feared she knew. And they were right to fear, because there's a whole universe of folk who are gonna know it, too. They're gonna see it. Somebody has to speak for these people. You all got on this boat for different reasons but you all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground, swept clean. A year from now, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running."

He stands, so illuminated it's blinding, the harsh light of Miranda behind him like a halo: "I aim to misbehave."

Even Jayne's impressed, citing Book: "If you can't do something smart, do something right." Mal gives Wash the plan, to visit Mr. Universe and broadwave the Sarah Paulson transmission to every screen on every world. Wash points out the literal truth that between them and the 'verse (Mr. Universe, who transforms now from earhorn to megaphone, polarity reversed; the signal is reversed; the thing that keeps us enslaved, television, entertainment, opiate, now becomes the thing that sets us free, a carrier of pure truth; the signal you can't stop) there now lies a whole Reaver civilization, not to mention the Alliance up their collective ass. Jayne: "That's two armies against our one bitty cannon." Zoe also mentions how they have to know and tolerate Mr. Universe, in their arrogance: they will see this coming once Serenity leaves Miranda. Mal, again lit from behind, from within: "No. They're not gonna see this coming." Serenity takes to the sky.

Mr. Universe greets them on his moon, excited as all get out: "No problem. Bring it on. Bring it on. Bring it on. From here to the eyes and ears of the 'verse. That's my motto -- or it might be, if I start having a motto." He explains about the "ion cloud" that only we have thus far seen, and how it will play "merry hob" (this language!) with their radar, but it's only a few miles of pretty lights down to the surface. Zoe asks him to let them know if anybody else shows up, and he smiles charmingly. He's so dead. "You'll be the first."

Signing off, Mr. U. turns to the Operative: "There. Toss me my thirty coin. But I got a newswave for you..." We don't hear him -- the Operative runs him through, as the Lovebot looks on. The Operative calls over his shoulder to his group swarming the room: "Call in every ship in the quadrant. We'll meet them in the air. Destroy it all."

This bit was confusing, but not because of the movie -- I'm just bad at knowing which ships are the good ones, which are the bad ones...they all look like spaceships to me. I think it comes from not watching football. Serenity makes her way back through the creepy Reaver detritus and toward the ion cloud. Unseen, a smallish vessel detaches and shadows her. Several tense seconds go by, in which we can hear Mal's voice: "Wash, we almost through?" River stares, and breathes. The small Reaver vessel extends ugly pincers, like a crab. "Now!" screams Wash, and Mal opens up, on Serenity's topside, where the gunport has been attached -- he takes out the crab ship like a total bad-ass, igniting rage in all Reavers ever, because they like to get mad and it's shiny.

On the Operative's ship, still in orbit beneath the ion cloud, "activity" is noticed. The crew readies to lock on Serenity once she clears the cloud. "You should have let me see her," murmurs the Operative. "We should have done this as men. Not with fire." Oh, you will. Serenity clears the cloud, and the Alliance gets a lock. Serenity flies straight towards them, and the Alliance crew almost laughs. "Bastard's not even changing course!"

Through the ion clouds burst a million Reaver ships, following behind Serenity, dwarfing her with their poking-out parts and their creepy spikes and whatnot. It's impressive. The Operative loses a millimeter of cool: "Target the Reavers. Target the Reavers! Target everyone! Somebody fire!" There is a huge space battle between the Reavers and the Alliance ships, which, again: not that interesting to read about. It is noted that seeing a billion Reaver ships -- knowing what they know -- in battle with Alliance fighters is satisfying now on several levels. Wash zips Serenity to and fro through the huge battle going on, explosions and casualties and insurance claims and medical co-pays, justifiably proud of himself: "I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar." He soars magnificently.

Wash and Mal have hilarious and overexcited conversations ("No! No! No!" "Yes! Yes!") as they dip further and further through the atmosphere. The Operative's ship is clearly going down as well -- he drops through an actual escape chute into a space pod, and we see his face at many G's, lying in his metal coffin, dropping down toward the surface. The Reaver ships continue to attack, and Serenity is caught in a very excellent-looking EMP laser, shutting down all their shit onboard. Mal orders them all to strap in, as they drop down toward the voice of the universe, little Firefly and little escape pod, every second dropping 32 feet-per-second faster than a second ago. You know? Talk about stress. Jayne grabs Kaylee and straps her into a drop chair. "Check!" Inara. "Check!" Jayne gets thrown. Wash angles Serenity, flying without an engine, gliding her in toward Mr. U.

They crash onto the landing strip -- everybody flies about -- and Volkswagen-sized sparks shoot everywhere as they speed in, Barn Swallowing toward the hangar at Mr. Universe's base. The building itself. An engine, a wing, a fin, everything is torn off our girl as she slides in horrifically toward a wall. She spins, facing the opening of the tunnel she's blasted apart, and comes to a stop. Red emergency lights come on in the stillness. Zoe breathes, Mal breathes. Wash breathes.

"I am a leaf on the wind," he nearly cries, beautiful in relief, lit by the red lights of another crisis averted. "Watch how..."

Zoe falls to him. "Wash, baby. Baby, no. Baby, come on. You gotta go. Come on." It stretches out into forever. "We gotta move. Baby, please. We gotta move, baby, come on." As more bolts fire through the windscreen, Mal grabs her and the rest of them.

The team makes their way into the building. Zoe chooses the inner chamber as the first good hold point. Mal wants to stay together, but Zoe calls it as a good bottleneck for the Reavers -- if they get through the outside door, into the first chamber, they can defend the entrance proper until they're forced to retreat behind the blast doors leading to the elevator up to Mr. U's lair. Kaylee can rig the blast doors to stay closed once they're forced to retreat, buying even more time. "This is the place," says Zoe, cold and military. "We'll buy you the time." The crew begins to stack crates as a trench against the blast doors, so that they'll be as far back as possible for the siege ("Make sure they ain't filled with nothing goes boom," quoth Mal).

Kaylee looks around, panicked, for their always-forgotten brother: "Wait, Wash! Where's Wash?" Zoe strips, loads, cocks. "He ain't coming." Strip, load, cock. Jayne interrupts their eyes on her, telling them to get back to work on the gorramn crates." A bulwark is completed; River and Kaylee and Simon load guns, Zoe and Jayne on the edges. To the sound of Reavers coming, growling, howling, Mal asks Jayne to please admit he "brought them this time." Jayne pulls out his grenades as Zoe continues, focused on the gun.

"Zoe?" Mal turns her around. "Are you here?" She looks at him, solid, still as ground. "Do the job, sir." He searches her face. "You hold. Hold till I get back." She stares at him. He's not talking about the Reavers. Jayne: "Captain's right. Can't be thinking on revenge if we're gonna get through this." She scoffs. "Do you really think any of us are gonna get through this?" Hurt, Jayne hugs his gun to himself. "Well, I might?"

Mal takes off down the blast tunnel, up the elevator, into Mr. U's office. Sees him lying dead, huddled in the arms of his Lovebot. "No." His strength drops, his focus; he crouches to look into Mr. Universe's face. He stands, their deaths -- all of them, Reavers and Miranda and Wash and Kaylee -- on his hands.

The Lovebot speaks. "Mal. Guy killed me, Mal. He killed me with a sword. How weird is that? I got a short span here. They destroyed my equipment but I have a backup unit. Bottom of the complex, right over the generator. Hard to get to. I know they missed it." Mal smiles, touches his arm -- touching him in this moment of last-second salvation. Mal won't ever know that he was sold out, but that's the point -- for him, and for Book, and for Mr. Universe. Redemption, no matter what you've done. No matter how bad it got. That's the thing they can't stop. "They can never stop the signal."

The Reavers beat against the outer doors, with their bodies, their faces. River: "The Reavers. They are all made up of rage." Simon tries to comfort her. "I can't shut them up." But then, that's the point of them, isn't it? Jayne spits. "She picked a sweet bung of a time to go helpless on us." Zoe outlines the mission: "Jayne and I take the first wave. Nobody shoots unless they get past our fire." Kaylee cocks a gun at the door. Their faces against the grates along the ceiling, drooling and enraged. "I didn't plan on going out like this," she says to Simon, scared to death. Proud. "I think we did right, but..." He smiles sadly. "No. I never planned anything. I just wanted to keep River safe. Spent so much time on Serenity ignoring anything that I wanted for myself." She turns to him. "My one regret in all of this," he smiles, in that amazed and quiet way he has, "is never being with you." She smiles, gawky, adorable. "With me? You mean to say, as...sex?" He nods sadly: "I mean to say." She looks at him, at the door. She cocks her gun. "Hell with this. I'm gonna live." Fuck yeah! I feel you, girl. I'd go River on their asses.

The Operative enters Mr. U's chamber again, looking for Mal, looking for the situation, and the Lovebot is activated again. "Mal. Guy killed me, Mal. He killed me with a sword..."

Jayne cocks his gun against the Reavers as they slowly open the door, the grates, pushing each other through one face or head or body part at a time, insensate to the pain, made up of rage. Zoe fires the first shot as one Reaver gets his face through. Pierced, bleeding, animal. This is exactly what will happen in Los Angeles, CA, if Joss fucks up what Grant Morrison did with Emma Frost. I'm just letting everybody know right now: accurate physical demonstration. Not pretty, is it?

Mal enters the generator room, stands across a long, deep shaft, looking at the place in the center where he's supposed to be. "Hard to get to. That's a fact." If you can't picture it: it's like where Luke Skywalker got his hand cut off, but with no way to get there. That's like the only part of those movies I remember.

Outside, Zoe fires at the Reavers finally coming through the door. Eventually, her face a bloody rage, climbs over the trench crates and cocks, shoots, cocks, shoots, stalking closer to them as they pile into the room one by one. She can't even hear Jayne cursing at her to return. She takes one down, stabbing at it over and over and over, destroying its corpse as it falls to the floor. There's no difference -- her grief is rage; she's made up of it. River screams. "Zoe, get your ass back on the line!" A Reaver swipes up her back, dropping her.

The Operative enters the generator room and shoots Mal a little bit. "You shot me in the back! I haven't made you angry, have I?" For two such complexly honorable men, they sure do disagree on the finer points. On the rulebook. "There are a lot of innocent people in the air being killed right now," the Operative says. Mal crossed the line by drawing the Reavers into the ion cloud. "You have no idea how true that is," returns Mal: the Reavers are more innocent than all of us, you and me, River and Mal and Yo-Saff-Bridge put together. "I know the secret. The truth that burned up River Tam's brain. Rest of the 'verse is going to know it, too. 'Cause they need to." The Operative scoffs. "Do you really believe that?" He does. I do too. "You willing to die for that belief?" He really is.

The Operative pulls, Mal pulls faster -- of course -- and shoots at his armor-clad self again and again. "Of course, that ain't exactly Plan A." Mal swings himself all bad-ass up onto a strut, hand-over-handing toward the broadcast board. The Operative -- every bit as bad-ass -- snags a chain, and goes flying toward him, knocking into him.

River continues to freak out. It's rough to have to deal with the nothing inside one Reaver, much less hundreds. Now retreated behind the crates, Reavers at the gate, Simon examines Zoe's back. "Spine's intact." She growls. "Just give me a bandage." There's a fairly hilarious and deeply pornographic prop failure at this point that you can learn about for yourself in the outtakes, because I am not about to describe it for you. Mal and the Operative race exactly like the American Gladiators toward the broadcast board on the central pylon. Mal's gun goes flying as the Operative takes him down, beating him soundly, due to not being shot in the actual self. This editing is brilliant, but it plays merry hob with my paragraph breaks.

Outside, Kaylee takes down a Reaver. Jayne takes a shot but keeps going. I have never seen so many main characters get shot in one ten-minute period except on this show. Kaylee gets some scary-looking darts in her shoulder and goes down. They're dropping left and right. "Fall back! Everybody, fall back! Fall back now!" orders Zoe, and they pull back behind the blast doors, which lie open just a bit. Reavers slavering and boiling, human waste, terribly hungry.

Jayne offers his last grenade. Kaylee offers to close the doors completely -- but can only do it from the outside. "No one's coming back from that," says Zoe. "How much ammo do we have?" Jayne calls it out ("Three, four max. And my swinging cod. That's all." Somewhere, seven thousand people go squee!). Kaylee's losing feeling from the darts. Simon offers to give her a counteractant, then suddenly realizes his bag is still outside. Fucking Simon. I love you, but...are we shocked? That bag is the point of you. He jumps up, unthinking, to retrieve it -- for her, for Kaylee shot and losing vision -- and is shot. River rushes to his fallen body as Jayne fires through the open window. Inara urges her to apply pressure, and Simon stares up at her. "My bag. I need adrenaline. And a shot of calaphar for Kaylee. I can't..." he falls back. "River. River, I'm sorry."

"No." The lights go dead. The sounds of Zoe and Jayne firing into the window become an afterthought. "No," River says again. "I hate to leave..." breathes Simon. "You won't. You take care of me, Simon. You've always taken care of me." She stands, all lit up in the darkness, by a spotlight so beautiful you don't notice it's a conceit. River gives the director and crew -- Joss mentions the gorgeous lighting at every opportunity in the commentary, but especially loves the Expressionism of the River scenes -- license to make you cry with shit like this. "My turn."

She runs, sprints, spots chasing her in the darkness, down the tunnel, flying through the window without stopping. She is being born to a greater purpose. She knows it. She can handle it. In one single movement, River activates the blast door -- no going back -- and tosses the bag through the closing aperture. We see her, pulled like the Helping Hands scene in Labyrinth (again, it's a powerful image, and I can't recap it for you without help) but sideways, into the hell of the seething Reaper mess. The door closes on her beautiful face as she's pulled away, out, down. It's one of the best visual sequences in this or any other fucking movie.

The Operative pulls his huge sword, and Mal pulls...a tiny screwdriver. It's a tiny visual joke on the way to a vicious fight, this way and that on the broadcast platform, before the Operative stabs him (outside the frame, because if we saw him get stabbed as bad as he just did, we'd assume he was dead). "Do you know what your sin is, Mal?" Mal smiles. "Aw hell. I'm a fan of all seven." And Joss makes an interesting point here, which is that this is a literal response, and not a quip: "sin" as a concept is meaningless when the defining authority is as crazy -- and as demonstrably evil by the categorical imperative -- as the Operative and his bosses.

But even then, there's a higher point, which is that "sin," in the sense that the Operative means, and means to enforce here as he did in the beginning, is in itself the most sinful concept imaginable. Imposing their lack, through Pax, through legislation, through signing subjective moral concepts into law, circumvents God's plan entirely, and means taking on God's role and making of oneself an idol. It perverts religion and politics, and all of us love one more than the other. Without pride and the choices it presents, there can be no faith: no assertion that one's relationship with God, against all reason, is imperative and real. Without envy, there is no hope, no comparison, no competition, no dissatisfaction, no reason to try, to succeed. Without gluttony, in a world where greed is eliminated, there is no way to choose charity. Without lust, we all die, and without acknowledgement of lust's universality, there is no fortitude. Without anger, without the holy anger of the proletariat, of the people against the unlawful, there can be no justice. Without greed or sloth, there is no moderation, no temperance or prudence -- we are unable to look at ourselves critically and see long-term v. short-term effects. We stop growing them when the state mandates these lacks, takes away these choices: we all go to sleep. And we don't wake up. And Oceania keeps fighting, and the signal is silenced.

I think I just became a fucking Libertarian. And possibly a Christian. In other news, the Operative gets a screwdriver through the leg. "But right now?" Mal wraps his hands around the screwdriver, driving down: "I'm going to have to go with Wrath." Word.

Jayne listens to the battle outside, the howling and crunching beyond the now-locked door. Again, Ariel is sent to do the work of a man, against demons, impossible odds, while we rest easy. "You suppose he got through? Do you think Mal got the word out?" Zoe, still dead in her heart: "He got through. I know he got through." She's not speaking belief, she's speaking truth. She's talking about their Captain.

Mal drops, blood dripping from his mouth. The Operative watches as he stands, then apologizes, giving him the nerve pinch from the beginning, paralyzing Mal, playing out the scene that already inverted and doubled and manipulated itself so many times once again. He's the only one who sees it, who can take down a government doctor and a holdover Browncoat with the same script. His sin is Pride. "You should know there's no shame in this. You've done remarkable things. But you're fighting a war you've already lost." He comes at him, with the sword, and Mal breaks the act. "Well, I'm known for that."

Mal elbows the Operative hard, in the neck, and then does whatever looks like a half-nelson that also makes a cracking sound. "Piece of shrapnel tore up that nerve cluster my first tour. Had it moved." He picks up the sword. "Sorry about the throat. Expect you'd want to say your famous last words right now." He pauses. "Just one trouble." He runs the sword through the straps in the Operative's armor, pinning him to the railing of the platform, still choking, unable to truly feel he's been beat. "I ain't gonna kill you. Hell, I'm gonna grant your greatest wish. I'm gonna show you a world without sin." He turns on the screen attached to the central pylon, pops in the Sarah Paulson disc. "These are just a few of the few images we've recorded. And you can see it isn't what we thought. There's been no war here and no terraforming event. The environment is stable." The Operative watches -- nothing else to do -- and chokes. "It's the Pax. The G- Paxilon Hydroclorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population..." Philosophy in practice is the science of governance. Politics is the ground from which we take flight, the disposition of the body politic -- a lot of ones combined into the many, a sea of the personal becoming the political as a consequence of sentience -- the highest application of philosophy. Welcome to hell, Operative. Shoulda watched Battlestar Galactica, you cryptofascist bitch.

River takes on one Reaver, slow and then fast, another, two, five, twenty, a beautiful super-exposed choreography, blades, one then two, kicks and twirling, dancing, beautiful and terrible, powerful and vulnerable, small and large, little, big, felling them as they come, all around her, triumphant. One grabs her, taking hold, tossing her against a wall. Through which blasts the grappling hook of the Operative's surviving drones. Like shit wasn't hard enough a few seconds ago against the Hellmouth army.

"We meant it for the best...to make people safer. God!" screams Sarah Paulson, as the Operative weeps. As a Reaver takes her out.

Mal comes back down to the blast tunnel on the elevator, looking like hell. They all do. "Sir?" He nods at Zoe. "It's done." She nods, some bit of revenge, some bit of the signal coming through. "Report. River?" They look at him. They look sadly. She fell. They will all fall, but the signal came through. The 'verse will know.

The blast doors open suddenly on River, standing in a sea of bodies gone beyond the black, holding her hammer and her sickle, her male sword in one hand and her female axe in the other. Oh, Joss. She is beautiful in another scene of wreckage. She made it happen. Her purpose is fulfilled: for the good of humanity, her violence has brought our enemies low. Two hands played against the middle, like a deck of cards being shuffled. The wall behind her explodes -- the Alliance entering again too late -- and she stands for a moment, black dress and weapons, against a wall of orange fire. A million military, their faces hidden, flood in behind her. And, of course, they do their usual.

"Drop your weapons!" "Do it now!" "Weapons down!" "Let it down, now!" "I want to see your hands in the air!" "Stand down!" "Do it!" She turns around, her face lit again by that spotlight, by the holy light of her destruction. The Alliance point man -- prudently -- checks in with his senior, the Operative. "Targets are acquired. Do we have a kill order?" Through the blast doors, our crew. "Do we have an order?" Blood drips from her sword, from her axe. From her hands. River and Mal look at each other silently, unendingly. She's been sane since Miranda. That doesn't mean she won't take these bitches out too. The Operative, over the walkie: "Stand down. Stand down. It's finished." They do so. "We're finished." She turns back to Mal. They are as one.

Open on three holographic grave markers: Shepherd Book, of many mysteries, himself offered salvation by a whore, offering salvation to all comers. Mr. Universe, the ear and the mouth of all truth, his dying breath the voice of all truth, all humanity. Hoban Washburn, secret heart and lynchpin, husband, lover, Joss Whedon look-alike. A clown become a lamb. Compass, finder, seeker. River places a rocket on a stone. Zoe approaches in a beautiful white dress. The color of mourning, and of clarity. You can't stop the signal.

We stand at the graves, silent: Jayne, with his cigar, with his tears, whose muscle has finally learned to protect, to shield. Inara, beautiful, unchained, giving peace, giving sanctuary, giving earth's first and final blessing; healer of the soul, and of the body. Kaylee, the heart inside the politics of location, speaker for the ship, for the family, eternally body and eternally soul; eternal beautiful mind; the final reality of womanhood held up against the sun. Simon, the Alliance redeemed. River, the victim bathed in grace and strength, the low brought high, the downtrodden become the all-seeing, at peace. Mal, the prince of pain, of destruction, now the bearer of the truth. Transmitter of the signal. Zoe, reliant, the embodiment of trust, the bearer of loyalty. Soldier of the unit, holding the line. Wife. Lover. Mother. They stand, and they look, and they remember. And their rocket, small and made of paper, in memoriam to those that gave their lives -- not for freedom, not for politics -- but for this: for simple truth.

The moon of Mr. Universe. Zoe repairs part of the ship with a powerful soldering gun. River repairs a complicated mass of wires, communication of voice or electricity. Inara repaints the "Serenity" on ship, consummate artist, consummate bringer of Serenity. Mal and Jayne, together, War and Liberty, remove the gunport from their home. Down below, in the engine room of course, Simon and Kaylee pretend to work as they make out, dropping to the floor, sweaty and oil-smudged, Anglo skin lit as beautifully as anyone could do, browns and oranges. River watches them make love, unnoticed, from the hatch above, and somehow it's funny, not creepy -- she's a fracking psychic. She's gonna know either way. Her investigations continue. Humanity is a whole other ballgame, post-Maidenhead. She's got a lot to catch up on.

In the rain of the Universe moon, his ship and family finally repaired, Mal loads his final crates. I wonder if ion clouds make for different rain? They certainly fuck up the lighting in this scene. But in a good way: the Operative appears, darkness across his face, the brilliant blue rain behind him, in the window of the hangar bay. "It's not over," he says. "I can't guarantee that they won't come after you. The Parliament. Your broadwave about Miranda has weakened their regime..." He pauses. "They are not gone. And they are not forgiving." Mal spares a glance, even though he is ever so busy. "That don't bode especially well for you giving the order to let us go, patching up our hurt." It's not that the Operative is apologetic. He gets it, Mal gets it, there's no need to discuss. He's broken. His system has faltered on a basic level. Redemption, no matter what happens. No matter the cost to the redeemed. "I told them the Tams were no longer a threat. Damage done." I like that line, even though he might be wrong: the idea that in the Alliance bureaucracy, there's no room for the kind of petty attacks that would lead the teller of truth to expect further attacks, exposure. Score one for the Alliance, in the real-world parallel: sometimes, they realize, the weapon of truth -- once discharged -- cannot be un-fired, no matter the ugly desire for revenge. "They might listen but I think they know I'm no longer their man." His face completely in darkness, blue ionic light and rain behind. He's nobody's man now, and has never been his own. Not like the good guys.

"They take you down, I don't expect to grieve over much," says Mal, in a busy-busy, businesslike fashion. "Like to kill you myself, I see you again." And he would, and it's okay. "You won't. There is nothing left to see." There's a resemblance, uncanny, to Mal's face when he discovered Mr. Universe dead: Oh, I didn't get it. It's worthless. It's over. The Operative vanishes. Awesomely, in a deleted scene, as Mal enters the hangar to check on Zoe, he murmurs to himself, "What a whiner."

Inside, Zoe is the same first mate as yesterday, as five days ago, a month. As far back as Serenity. If you thought she didn't react properly, if she didn't break your heart, I haven't done my job. "Sir, we have a green light. Inspection's poz, and we're clear for up-thrust." He considers her, his opposite, his other, his sister, his best friend. Artemis to his Apollo. "Think she'll hold together?" She swallows, and tells the truth, answering his real question, and not the question he's pretending to ask. "She's tore up plenty. But she'll fly true." He looks at her with more love than you've seen on his face. More than Inara, more than Kaylee, more than River, she is him. He responds to "him," whether it's another person, or a whole family. "Make sure everything's secure. Could be bumpy." She heads out, funny as ever. Strong as anything. "Always is." They clean up. They reload.

Mal finds Inara in the quarter corridors -- which is, I hasten to point out, just off the common area, the family location, and nowhere near her shuttle, where "Inara the renter," the faintly appalled, better-than-this Companion, belongs. "Taking her out. Should be about a day's ride to get you back to your girls." She nods, searching his face, even though this is one of those rare times where he's asking. "Right." He almost smiles. "Ready to get off this heap, back to civilized life?" She looks at him, long, and hard, and bravely. "I, uh...I don't know." He smiles. And I mean he smiles. If you've got her back, for yourself, if she's willing to fight it out, that is one thing. But if she's back in the family, in the crew? "Good answer." She smiles back. He turns to leave, and she watches him go, smiling to herself. She is full of joy. Morena Baccarin, you know, is the kind of pretty that gets bored when you tell her she's pretty, because she already knows, dude. Perfect body, perfect skin, perfect smile, perfect eyes, perfect beauty. You don't get to thirty still giggling about that shit. You take it as a compliment and you keep walking. So when I tell you she is beautiful in this moment, really beautiful, I want you to know what I mean. She is lit by a light less harsh than Miranda. She has found her place, a healer like Simon but better, and she has found her heart. And she has knocked on the door, and the answer is good. She is beautiful in this moment.

Mal seats himself in the cockpit, in Wash's seat, surrounded by Wash's toy dinosaurs. He looks out of place as he flips switches, pushes buttons, gets her ready to take off. "So," he smirks to his left, to the other pilot's station, "you gonna ride shotgun with me? Help me fly?"

Across the cockpit sits River, flipping switches and pushing buttons with the abandon born of insanely fast mental calculation. "That's the plan." He watches her. "Think you can work out..."

Serenity takes off into the rain, angling up into the sky, toward the sun. "Okay. Clearly some aptitude for the..." Outclassed again, he gulps. "It ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross." She spares him a glancing grin. "You know what the first rule of flying is?" he asks her, and she looks at him seriously. "Well, I suppose you do," he nearly chuckles, "since you already know what I'm about to say." She smiles at him, full of love, those places in her head and heart formerly occupied by secrets and ugliness and too much razor truth now empty, now filled with love for all the things he has done that she couldn't drop the act and acknowledge. They've already done the work, in the action and in the protection, in the love. She smiles at him, completely lucid, completely cogent.

"I do. But I like to hear you say it."

He nods. "Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds."

She pulls up her knees, resting, like a girl. Like a daughter. "Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down tells you she's hurting before she keels. Makes her a home."

They look, together, through the windscreen, at the rain. It's coming faster as they rise. "Storm's getting worse," he notes, finished with speaking. And it is. Their mission now makes survival look like a child's game. The storm only gets worse once you've made that call. "We'll pass through it soon enough," she says, not taking her eyes off the road. She's right, too.

The music gets sweet, sweeter, becoming majestic as Serenity flies through the rain, through the turmoil, through a moon off balance, its ion clouds and rain and thunder coming down, chaos and nature and the things you can't watch out for. And as the music goes apocalyptically beautiful, she breaks through the clouds, and into the sun. And then into the black. A piece flies off her nose, toward the camera. Fade to black.

Mal: "What was that?"

End.