“Heart of Gold”

Firefly is always at it’s best when it combines it’s action with its relationships. Then add a touch of morality, a dash of humor, and you got a good episode.

Inara gets a distress call from an old friend. A former Companion who left companioning to run a whorehouse on a distant planet. Mal agrees to help without hesitating…and without payment. Although Inara won’t let that happen. They have to keep this business.

Mal makes it specific that it’s not an ordered mission, it’s purely volunteer. Of course, Jayne isn’t going to do something charitable…until he finds out they’re whores of course.

The colony is like the old west and one bad man is in charge. Having a barren wife, he has made a child with one of the prostitutes. He wants that child, and he’ll do whatever he needs to to get it.

It’s great to see the different reactions from the crew as they fix up to protect the brothel. Jayne of course is in heaven. Kaylee is her usual positive, if slightly odd self, wondering if she could have one of the boy prostitutes, Wash and Zoe are unusually isolated within themselves, while Book almost seems shocked that a few of them want to pray with him.

Mal is the most awkward, though and it’s obvious that Inara is at least somewhat on his mind. He compensates by being focused on the mission. However eventually Inara’s friend, Nandi and he begin talking during the night and although Nandi can see how munch Inara is on his mind, she has no idea that the same is true.

The next morning, Inara sees a dressing Mal coming out of Nandi’s room and they have the loudest non-confrontation I’ve seen. Soon after, we see the truth as Inara finds a solitary place and sobs. The slowly developing relationship between Mal and Inara makes some serious headway here and as usually it is done in good timing.

The action sequence is almost secondary to the humor and character advancement, but it is well done. Lasers flying, bullets shooting, and the death of Nandi to further cement an emotional attachment for Mal and Inara is all exceptionally handled. I am further impressed how Firefly takes a TV budget, and simply makes do with what they had to make some genuinely believable sequences.

The crux of this episode though comes at the end. Instead of Mal and Inara getting together as you might think, Inara decides to leave Serenity. It works as frustrating the audience, but in a good way. Both are so stubborn, they can’t admit what’s right before them.

B+

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