“The Message”

A day at the post office. When Jayne gets a hat with pom poms from his mom and Zoe and Mal get a dead buddy of an old war buddy…well Jayne gets the better of the deal.

The Message is a solid episode, with the normal Firefly humor (Jayne), entangling relationships (Simon-Kaylee), intriguing notions of undisclosed pasts (Book), and a ship chase.

Simon and Kaylee open the episode and their relationship is very intriguing. The high class, very polite, but ultimately very socially awkward doctor with the down to earth, very blunt, but always cheerful grease monkey. Par for the course, the doctor says something stupid, which insults Kaylee who storms off.

The mystery is what happened with their buddy, Tracy, and why was his dead body was sent to them. A recording, left with the body explains a bit asking Zoe and Mal to take his body home.

It’s when an Alliance official comes after the body and Mal orders an autopsy theorizing someone must have put something inside the body, that the action begins. Especially when the dead body jumps back to life.

It seems that Tracey had his organs replaced and he’s transporting the organs to a buyer that would give him enough money to get his parents off their barren world.

The Alliance ship runs them to the ground to the point where they had no choice but to allow the Alliance aboard. Unfortunately Tracey jumps the gun, and literally holds everyone hostage.

The tension of past life friendships vs. current situations is a typical fare in television, but it’s handled right in character when Zoe doesn’t hesitate one second before shooting Tracey.

Book, showing again that there is more to his past than we know about seems to know about Alliance protocols. Noticing that their pursuer has yet to call in for back up although a station is less than eighty miles away, Book alerts the crew that this is no on-the-book operation.

Easy come, easy go, but the Alliance was merely a plot device anyways. The true test comes at the end.

Tracey dies from his wounds and even still Mal and Zoe show their loyalty and friendship by delivering the body home in a very touching end sequence. Kaylee and Simon make up wordlessly as they should and the slow motion and touching music really help the episode end on a powerful note.

Although, this episode has a little bit of the aimlessness of the last episode and a bit of the plot device syndrome, overall it is a fine tv experience and worth a view.

B

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