Firefly

Okay, so here is a thing about actors. I'm coming to the series Firefly about eight years late, so I'm backing in with a lot of post-production knowledge - aware that Summer Glau is a big deal now, the frustrating short life of the series, all that.

I like the show. It's an interesting conceit, to take Roddenberry's idea of pulling off the cowboy hats and setting a western road story in space - and put the cowboy hats back on. There are aspects of just how (literally, not metaphorically) "earthy" things get which distracted me at first, but Willing Suspension of Disbelief is my friend, and I've certainly WSD'd worse entertainment than this without questioning it. I like the scripting mostly, it's an engaging show, ingratiating even.

What's interesting to me is that one of the MOST engaging aspects of it - characters - is not the one who earned the most attention for it. Jewel Staite is a ludicrously appealing actor - pretty, but like an actual person, fully fleshed out, and playing the role of a character of winsome charm, Kaylee. Next to her, we have Summer Glau, who has gone on, as far as I can tell with what I must admit is limited geek-cred ("hi - backing into Firefly almost a decade later ...") to by far the greater share of the nerdly adoration.

Glau gets to play the difficult, and frankly INCREDIBLY irritating and sketchily understandable River - a part, to be sure, fraught with the daunting challenges of getting an adolescent actor to scream and play almost psychotic recalcitrance - and a part, I can just smell it, people are impressed with by its nature.

Here's Staite, able to embody a clear and full character, with actual lines - and some good ones - whose experience is mercurial and emotional, acute and very vulnerable; and here is Summer Glau - still, at episode TWELVE, barely verbal with anyone beyond her brother, and even with him largely still All About the Riddles. There've been opportunities galore to develop the character (her relationship with Kaylee, actually, has been quite the missed opportunity), but as much as I love Whedon, this is one of those areas he insists on being infuriating: he has *such* a thing for his Have-A-Secret characters. Oh, he likes the mature and mysterious black man, to be sure, but his near-creepy relationship to his youthful female players is hinted at here in ways that kind of came to a head with Dollhouse so much later. Glau isn't a person, she's a fetish in a box (for those who don't know: *literally* the way she is introduced in the series). He likes ever-so-slightly Asian-appearing mixed-race actresses, the younger the better, the more his cameraman can highlight the intense clarity of their beautiful skin the better. Why that didn't creep me out in Dollhouse, but does so badly here ... well, there's probably a dissertation in that, or at least a women's studies research paper, but I'll stick with this: these two are VERY young, and Dollhouse wore its exploitation on its sleeve, *and* played its creepy aspects with a lot of sophistication. Here we're treated to a broken doll, and a vulnerable one, and the broken one getting as much attention as she does makes me feel queasy.

Staite's role (here's where I finally remember that "thing about actors" - thought I'd forgotten, didn't you?) is not uncomfortable enough to get the same level of attention. Her considerable attractions, surprisingly, seem to have been no match for Glau's River, damaged and crying out to the male urge to protect - and, if I were a women's studies major, I might frankly say, to exploit. River is a repellant character, in the end, and as I say, twelve episodes in, I find her unpleasant to watch. The performance is good, and Summer Glau is likeable in a way that only layers the creep onto the harrowing nature of what we know of River's problems, but she has no relationships, even with her brother, and she's only waiting around so we can be shocked by her, so Whedon can perform those acrobatics for which we rightly love him, and for which right now I'm about ready to strangle him. I find myself watching Staite, knowing what I know - and NOT knowing what I don't (remember where I am in the series) - and almost resenting the extent to which she's going to become irrelevant, or at least a side dish to whatever it is Whedon's put under the silver cover on the platter of River's next shocking steps to come.

In a way, it's not so much an actor thing as it is an auteur thing, in this case. But it's all sorts of people. Great performances that don't involve Meryl Streep and a dead child, extremes of volume, behavior, or challenge-to-the-viewer are never as well noticed as they should be.

Jewel, you made something beautiful when you took the role of Kaylee. I could watch her show and be most contented.

Still interested, sure, to see what's coming next. Just interested, too, how funny people's attention is.