Open casket.
By Matt Fowler
We’re doing the impossible, and that makes us mighty. IGN wasn’t covering TV back when Joss Whedon’s beloved space western Firefly was airing on FOX (infamously out of order, incomplete, and with little fanfare/support), so we’re spending this summer taking a loving look back at the 14 shiny episodes. We’ll be reviewing Firefly episodes on Thursdays; follow along with us by watching the episodes on Netflix, Amazon, Blu-ray, DVD or on iTunes.
For more on IGN TV’s summer flashback reviews, click here.
I’ll say this for the unaired-by-FOX episode “The Message.” I enjoyed my viewing of it now much more than the first time I laid eyes on it. I remember being rather unimpressed. Sure, it’s still not the greatest of chapters, but I think this time I more appreciated the structural aspects of it and how Private Tracey’s faked death, which included his very own faked self-eulogy, morphed into his own doomed fate. Because, well, Tracey was a Grade-A nincompoop.
And I think that’s what I didn’t like about “The Message” during my first go-round with it. I wouldn’t call it retconning, per se, but to all of a sudden meet a huge part of Mal and Zoe’s past, an entire character they considered to be the official third of a trio, felt strange. Especially coming off a big episode like “War Stories” that specifically dealt with their shared history. Here, it was odd that no one had heard of Tracey, as if the two of them had decided to keep the guy’s existence a total secret.
Jonathan M. Woodward – of Joss projects Buffy, Angel, and Dollhouse – played Tracey and, for the most part, was great as the slackadaisical jokester Mal and Zoe had to basically carry across the finish line time and time again. It mostly worked. The problem was, for a guy who our two heroes supposedly bent over backwards to keep alive on a regular basis back during the war, he was unnervingly unlikeable. Which fit toward the end when he was putting the movies on Kaylee and it was clear that he was out cause way more trouble than he was worth. Even if he was doing it unknowingly.
So yes, the biggest problem with “The Message,” aside from insta-learning about Mal and Zoe’s secret court jester, was that Tracey simply bugged. Even before he popped up, still alive, and wound up pointing a gun at everyone. He was annoying even in flashback form. But the cyclical nature of the story, and the fact that Zoe was the one to shoot him down, resonated well. The guy she tried so hard to keep alive wound up forcing her own hand. And within all of this was the devastating theme of soldiers not being able to adjust to life back home. Though Tracey wasn’t very good during wartime either.
Elsewhere though, things were pretty kickass actually. Not only was this the episode that delivered unto Jayne, via mama’s boy care package, his orange “cunning” knitted hat, but it was also a nice showcase for Book who proved himself rather useful and assertive on the Alliance front when he stood toe-to-toe with Womack (Richard Burgi) and made him back down. This episode also held quite a bit of nifty special FX-driven action sequences. Something of a novelty for this series actually. Even the opening shot of the space station containing the “cow fetus” attraction looked above average.
“The Message” introduced us to an inherently ill-fated, somewhat grating character from Mal and Zoe’s days as big damn war heroes. Tracey may not have felt like anyone worth saving as many times as he was, but the theme of those not cut out for battle or life back home was effective. As was the irony behind Tracey’s last ditch effort to cheat death being the thing that got him killed. By his biggest supporters in life, no less. Plus, JAYNE’S HAT IS EVERYTHING!
