Why it didn't catch on.

U

Uncle Rory

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When Firefly first came out I was not a Buffy geek nor did I know who Joss Whedon is so they would have had to grab my attention based on merit rather than reputation and they just didn't do this. As a matter of fact, the exact opposite happened, I saw an interview with Joss about the show and he totally turned me off of it. Here's why -

In said interview he stated that he wanted to make a Sci-fi western. That was about all that he said. Well to me that was MASSIVELY SMUG. When Gene Rodenberry launched Star Trek in the 60's that was more or less his explanation of his vision for Star Trek.

After seeing Firefly I get it, Joss' vision was that these newly colonized planets on the outer rim would have very rustic, western style civilizations. However his explanation sounded like a copy of Star Trek, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I think credit was due and the fact that he didn't give any credit turned me right off.

I'm not saying that any TV show in the sci-fi genre where a bunch of folks fly around in a space ship and have adventures needs the nod from the entire Trekkie nation but it surely wouldn't hurt as far as ratings are concerned.

Any other opinions on why it flopped? Anyone else catch that interview and see the similarity between Gene Rodenberry, (bowing now in suplication) and Joss?

Uncle Rory
 
My opinion? Total lack of advertising. I caught maybe two ads for it before it aired, and then heard absolutely nothing. I forgot it was supposed to come on until after it was over. In fact, I saw Serenity before Firefly, and I didn't even see it in the theaters because I didn't know it was there.
 
I think that Roddenberry referred to the original concept of "Star Trek" was "a sort of 'Wagon Train' The Stars," but he had to make quite a few concessions to the studio Powers That Be in order to get it on the air, and even then there was a continuing battle over characters and content. I always sort of got the feeling that Joss' attitude was more, "This is my story, this is the way I want to tell it, and you can take it or leave it." Maybe if he had been more willing to compromise a bit, Mal and Zoe might have at lasted as long as Kirk and Spock did.
 
U
Uncle Rory
Thanks, I was trying to remember that wagon train thingy. Kudos for memory chip.
There is only one reason; negative reports. The same reporters that blasted it after a few episodes as 'not working' and a 'flawed' concept were later congratulating it after the damage was done. The reviews of it damned it; pure and simple.
 
I think part of why it flopped was in part due to the airing order of the episodes, and the fact that Joss Whedon as of yet seems unable to really make a first episode that explains all you need to know so that your grandmother could watch it and get what's happening.

Example: Star Trek: Voyager. The Caretaker I and II. Aired together, you now know what the show is going to be about, and a little bit about each of the characters. Premise: Starship lost 70,000 light years away from home, won't make it back for 70 years.

Buffy did a bit better with Welcome to the Hellmouth I & II. Teenage valley girl has to fight demons, she has a Watcher who's a librarian, and two unlikely sidekicks.

With Firefly, not even the Serenity I & II episode does a whole lot to provide backstory. Now, Out of Gas provides way more backstory, but even just watching that, you wouldn't understand what was really going on. What you really need for Firefly is an episode (or two-parter) that lets you know who Mal and co. are, why they're below radar, etc., and what the premise of the show will be about.

IMO, this is the main reason that Firefly flopped. In the order they were aired in, it was hard to figure out what was what right away. Even watching them in "chronological" order (how I did), it still takes a couple episodes to decide whether you liked it and/or got it. This is a very dangerous thing for a show to do, because the first episode can decide whether viewers will stay or not. For instance, Seraphim and I watched the first episode of "Crusoe" and despite Sean Bean being in it, we decided it wasn't worth our time. Haven't watched it since. Maybe it's unfair to the show, yes, but this is the way a lot of people operate. They need something that has a hook to drag 'em in right away, in a way that they get everything that's going on.

That is Firefly's biggest failing.

Now will they get on with reviving it or something already? Surely dvd sales have been good. 😉
 
Skanky Vamp
Skanky Vamp
but the 'first' episode did just that.. but fox never gave it a chance to air because it was not 'space cowboy' enough.. or some such.
yellowcrayon said:
With Firefly, not even the Serenity I & II episode does a whole lot to provide backstory. Now, Out of Gas provides way more backstory, but even just watching that, you wouldn't understand what was really going on. What you really need for Firefly is an episode (or two-parter) that lets you know who Mal and co. are, why they're below radar, etc., and what the premise of the show will be about.

IMO, this is the main reason that Firefly flopped. In the order they were aired in, it was hard to figure out what was what right away. Even watching them in "chronological" order (how I did), it still takes a couple episodes to decide whether you liked it and/or got it. This is a very dangerous thing for a show to do, because the first episode can decide whether viewers will stay or not. For instance, Seraphim and I watched the first episode of "Crusoe" and despite Sean Bean being in it, we decided it wasn't worth our time. Haven't watched it since. Maybe it's unfair to the show, yes, but this is the way a lot of people operate. They need something that has a hook to drag 'em in right away, in a way that they get everything that's going on.

That is Firefly's biggest failing.

Now will they get on with reviving it or something already? Surely dvd sales have been good. 😉
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Really? I thought Serenity was the single best Pilot episode (well, episodes) that I've ever seen for a show. It grabbed me from the beginning and managed to set up the characters sufficiently well enough for me to enjoy the main arc of the story. I can't really say the same for the story of WttH/tH. City Of was much stronger than WttH, for the obvious reason of there not being so much to establish, but Serenity started from scratch and was better than both.

However, that wasn't aired first, was it? It's a shame.
 
Skanky Vamp
Skanky Vamp
I agree; I was the best pilot episode that was never actually a pilot episode.
I think lack of advertising was a big contributor, as was the time slot (that's not called the "death slot" for nothing), but I think the *biggest* reason for which it flopped was that the shows were aired out of order! I cannot for the life of me figure out why any network would air any series out of order. That robs the show of its own internal logic and arc and leaves audiences scratching their heads.
 
Really? I thought Serenity was the single best Pilot episode (well, episodes) that I've ever seen for a show. It grabbed me from the beginning and managed to set up the characters sufficiently well enough for me to enjoy the main arc of the story. I can't really say the same for the story of WttH/tH. City Of was much stronger than WttH, for the obvious reason of there not being so much to establish, but Serenity started from scratch and was better than both.

However, that wasn't aired first, was it? It's a shame.
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Okay, I think the reason I wasn't that big of a fan of Serenity was because it didn't have quite the same cowboy-esque feel that the rest of the show did. I definitely agree that City Of was much stronger than WttH. I wasn't a fan of WttH, but it did do it's job in letting you know who the characters were and what the show was about.

With Serenity not being aired first, everything was just messed up, and the episodes were jumbled.

Serenity was definitely interesting and it did help with the characters. My "dislike" for it comes after having seen everything and not thinking it was as really cowboy as the rest. First time through, though, it wasn't until "Shindig" that I was definitely hooked.
 
I just think it was released at a time when sci-fi and fantasy shows did not gain much respect or attention. It was marketed as a spaceship show, and that's a hard and risky concept to pull off, without a lot of eye-rolling from some snobbish critics. Or people unwilling to watch it because sci-fi is for nerds. Gob-shites.
To me to have a successful sci-fi show, you gotta follow two rules, well in America anyway. Get your show on the sci-fi network, like battlestar, stargate, it's right there in the title. This is science fiction, deal with it. Then the other way is to go the JJ. Abrams route, Alias, Lost. Make it very much about interesting characters, with small hints of fantasy, and then when you get a large following, go nuts, teleporting islands, holy grail stuff. So people don't have to admit it's a sci-fi/fantasy show. There will always be a snobbery that goes with show's like this.
 
To be honest I'd never HEARD OF, let alone seen Firefly before I was an obsessed Buffy geek. And even then I'd already watched the show through tonnes of times before I knew Joss had done anything else other than Buffy and Angel. And still now, I've never seen it. I'm looking into watching it, though I never have, my friend has seen it and she said it really wasn't very good, so that puts me off a little. But, yeah, I just think it wasn't well-known or publicised, so it didn't really catch on too well.
 
I think Firefly had everything working against it.

It aired on fridays which has been Fox's deadest night for awhile.

I cant remember but I dont think it had a lead in or a good one at that.

It was barely promoted. I didnt even know when to watch it or when it was on.

It was aired out of order.

They kept airing new episodes, skipping several weeks without one, then airing a new one. Constant on and off, noone knew it was on.
 
E
Edmund Blackadder
It was crap.
I remember it being advertised a lot, but as a western comedy in space, which seemed corny to me. Wasn't a big fan of westerns, and a funny western? In space? Really? :uhh:

Add to that that it had a bad timeslot. For me, being a working stiff, on Friday evenings I was out either doing the grocery shopping and picking up the dry cleaning, or catching up with friends and family and making weekend plans, or I was out having dinner and just taking it easy. If I was home, I was cooking and looking for a movie to watch on cable.

Anyhoo, I DID actually make an effort to record the show and watch it later, but what I saw was really confusing to me. All the pilot-type expositionary stuff about characters and setting was not present. And it seems like I might have taped the show one night, then watched it later and it was instead a baseball game or something? I just remember that it seemed like it was not only confusing to watch, but hard to even catch. Then all of a sudden, I had watched an ep, then taped the next week, and it was just not showing anymore and I had no idea why.

So... yeah, that's about the sum of my viewing history with Firefly.

Just recently, though, I got the DVDs from a friend and I'm watching the show in the right order, without all the annoying breaks for baseball and bad advertising, and I'm REALLY enjoying the show. I'm enjoying it so much that, now just having finished episode 5, I'm grieving that I don't have several more seasons of this wonderful show to watch after I finish this one.

What the HECK was Fox thinking?! *shake head*
 
It was the ECW of it's time. It was shown to see if a show like that would air on that kind of network. Not to mention as already stated the episodes were shown out of sync didn't help either.
 
Although i can't speak for "the public at large" as to why the show never became popular on a wide-enough scale to last beyond one season, i can say for myself personally why i never wanted to watch it again after seeing the full Firefly season, in the correct order the first time out, on dvd, and then the Serenity movie, even though still i re-watch both btvs and ats all the time when i'm at home and want something on the TV (to the exclusion of most other things). I'll also mention that i was prepared to give it a major chance since i already admired Whedon's work with the Buffy and Angel series, so i was going to watch the whole thing without having to be "roped in" by it.


1. It's way less funny than btvs and ats. Although it has some wonderful comic gems sprinkled throughout (the Jasmine-actress-character's interactions with Mal, calling him Sir after insulting him, come to mind), on the whole it has much less comedy than either of the other two shows. And it doesn't really start becoming a little funny until several episodes in, so there was nothing to hook people in during the first few episodes on the comedy front.

2. It is extremely violent, and not in a cartoony "bad monsters are being turned to dust by a superhero" way, but in a gory, bloody, 'was-it-really-necessary-to-show-all-of-that-literally-when-you-could-have-shown-that-they-live-in-a-frontier-without-showing-all-the-people-bleeding-to-death-on-screen?' sort of way. That made it very unpleasant to watch.

3. The character development and emotional arcs of the characters did not get as highly developed in the early shows as on, for example, btvs or ats, where from the first episodes the emotional arcs for the seasons are set up early and then supported often throughout. Firefly did have some good emotional character arcs that i eventually got into, though not until the season was well underway (around episode 5), unlike the other two shows, where they were presented from the beginning.

4. More so than in btvs and ats, the plots of the stand-alone situations seemed to dominate more than the character and emotional arcs, even though the latter were the most interesting (to me) in all three of the shows. Firefly seemed to focus much more heavily on the 'isn't-this-a-cool-concept-to-combine-space-travel-with-frontier-western-culture?' and seemed to emphasize that aspect much more heavily than btvs emphasized the various monsters, vampires, etc.. In firefly, the setting was often the focus, while in buffy and angel, it seemed to(rightly) play more of a backdrop role against which the emotional and character arcs could play out.

5. The firefly characters were largely less sympathetic overall - e.g. making their whole living off of stealing for hire. Yes, they did return the medicine that one time when they realized what they were stealing and what effect it would have on the people who needed it, but on the whole, they didn't usually bother to find out about or think about or care about the consequences of what they were doing.

6. Sometimes when they did have a supposedly funny joke, they would have the characters say it in Chinese without subtitles, which creates a feeling of in-crowd among the writers mocking the viewers that they can't be a part of this funny joke that they just wrote, thus alienating the viewers in a way that btvs and ats never did (e.g. they used subtitles when it made sense to have characters speaking other languages, and used it to funny effect - e.g. buffy's roommate in college telling her parental figures that she is 3000 years old, when are they going to stop treating her like she's 900, in a demon language, emphasizes the universality of that complaint among teenagers, etc.). I'm sure the writers probably came up with some funny jokes on firefly, too, but by saying 'ha ha, we came up with something funny but we won't tell you what it is', they certainly alienate the audience that was on "their side" against the network, up until then.


So those were some of my reasons for not enjoying the firefly series enough to watch it more than once, despite repeatedly re-watching the buffy and angel series on dvd. I don't know how universal those reasons are, but it is why i never became a fan of the show, despite being a Whedon fan from the start. I can imagine if other members of the public who weren't already buffy/angel fans watched it, they might not have given it the 5-or-so episodes that it took to start caring about the emotional arcs of the characters for the reasons mentioned, and even then the other issues (e.g. gory violence) might have impeded a more full enjoyment.
 
I'm currently really enjoying firefly. But I'll admit the first episode wasn't the greatest. But I saw Serenity and then decided to check out firefly. And oh, god I'm back to babbling again, but hey, you're used to that. Anyway! I thought the characters were interesting, the story was interesting. There were some truly hysterical moments, what was the question? Oh, right. Well, I think there was a supreme lack of advertising and the first episode was pretty crappy, and rather confusing too
 
Blondie Bear said:
My opinion? Total lack of advertising. I caught maybe two ads for it before it aired, and then heard absolutely nothing. I forgot it was supposed to come on until after it was over. In fact, I saw Serenity before Firefly, and I didn't even see it in the theaters because I didn't know it was there.
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I agree with everything you pointed out Blondie Bear, but also I have to note that one of the the reasons why Firefly flopped was because it was just well, too intelligent for people. You have to think with Firefly. It's not Smallville, you know? There is subtext. And obscure references. And people swear in Chinese.

Not to mention that fact that, as palabra pointed out, FOX never even aired the pilot AND they aired the episodes out of order. If people are forced to say, "Wait? What's going on"? They're likely to not continue to keep watching.

Sigh. Not a day goes by where I don't wish that Firefly hadn't been cancelled.
 
U
Uncle Rory
Agree 100%. Why watch a horror when you want a soap opera? Firefly was something different but maybe TOO much for the Whedonverse fans.
Joan the Vampire Slayer said:
I agree with everything you pointed out Blondie Bear, but also I have to note that one of the the reasons why Firefly flopped was because it was just well, too intelligent for people. You have to think with Firefly. It's not Smallville, you know? There is subtext. And obscure references. And people swear in Chinese.
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What utter piffle.

There are plenty of good shows out there that are intelligent that succeed.

Talk about coming across as pretentious (I hope and doubt that wasn't your intent) but this entire comment smacks of 'well everyone who isn't me is stupid because they didn't understand the show'.

I am far from unintelligent and I just plain disliked the show.
 
Edmund Blackadder said:
I am far from unintelligent and I just plain disliked the show.
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Well we all have our opinions.

I think Joan is right though. Not necessarily that you had to be intelligent to understand it but just that you needed an understanding that it was a little deeper than the average show.

Still, i dont that was the number one problem, just a factor. It was the kind of show that needed a chance to get on its feet, to 'develop' a fanbase and hold them. Again, ill point out that plenty of other shows manage this but they need full support from the network... something your just not gonna get with FOX. At fox its a throw it out there and see if we get any bites kind of attitude. This is why they go through a lot of new shows each season. Short-sighted versus Long-sighted network decisions.
 
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