And now for something controversial!

I’m glad they only made one season of Firefly. (In which I’m including the movie, of course.)

I realize that, by Internet Law, you all are now supposed to come after me with torches and pitchforks. Anyone with even a single drop of nerd blood in their system is supposed to view Firefly‘s cancellation as a high crime against humanity. I should be crying for the mountaintops for more of this series. I should be supporting fevered letter-writing campaigns and hanging my hopes on dubious Internet petitions.

It’s not that I dislike Firefly. Exactly the opposite! It’s one of those rare series where I love each and every member of the cast. The series is only about a dozen episodes long, but there aren’t any clunkers; every episode is worth watching multiple times. I love the quasi-western sci-fi setting — so much, in fact, that I bought the overpriced Serenity roleplaying game. I even played it this one time!

Still, though, I’m really glad it’s just the one season.

There’s something to be said, I think, for a self-contained story. Something with a beginning, middle and end. For better or worse, that’s what Firefly is. All the characters, plots and subplots come to a resolution. The story finishes. Perhaps ghettoizing the wrap-up in a single feature film rather than a span of twelve or twenty-four more episodes isn’t ideal, but it works. It’s done.

To put it another way: if the show hadn’t been canceled and there had been no pressure to wrap up the whole mysterious River plotline over the course of the movie, it would have been done over the course of however much show was left, instead. It would have gotten dragged out, another choice tidbit or two doled out every few episodes. Or, you know, maybe not. The first season doesn’t even really address the River plotline outside of “the government screwed with her head and she is kind of a weird girl and maybe a sorceress”. When would it have progressed? Season two finale, maybe? Season four premiere? Once it’s resolved, what do we replace it with? Shepherd Book’s mysterious past, perhaps? But oh, let’s face it, he’s not a cute barefoot teenage girl. And, of course, speculation on characters like Book are part of the fun! He’s a better character because we don’t know everything (okay, anything) about him… but if the series had gone forward, they would have had to fill the blanks in.

Meanwhile we’d have to contend with an extended will-they/won’t-they subplot concerning Simon and Kaylee. That was already wearing a little thin by the penultimate episode. The Mal/Inara angst probably would have been even more painful. Pencil aside one episode per season for Jayne to re-learn his lesson about betraying the crew, too — until it all comes to a head after three seasons and Mal has to kill him in the gutwrenching finale. He would, of course, get replaced by a less popular mercenary character the following season. Who are you for: Original Jayne or New Jayne? Put this stamp on your DeviantArt page.

The movie was able to get away with things the series never would have. I won’t mention the great big one, the one everyone always mentions, but here’s number two: in the movie Mal is able to deal a devastating blow to the Alliance he so despises in one swift, sure stroke. The game changes after he does this. Whatever Mal’s life on Serenity is like after this event, it’s a different formula. It wouldn’t be the same show. No matter how incredible the “show every citizen in the Alliance the truth” episode would have been, every former fan would point to it as the precise moment the show jumped the shark. Shows have to remain safe, but movies don’t, and this movie was made better because it didn’t.

While all this is going on, of course, we’re dealing with constant dips in quality. Even the best shows, on a long enough timeline, have junk episodes. It’s inevitable. Firefly didn’t get to live that long. Short as it was, no one can say it didn’t stay at the top of its game.

I loved the first season of Heroes. It told an intriguing story and had cool characters. The plot was self-contained, for the most part, and the conclusion of that plot was satisfying. It wasn’t until the first episode of the second season, when they undid everything that happened at the end of the first, that I realized the whole damn series was going to be like that. More shows should be planned as one-season deals; get in, tell a great story in twelve or thirteen episodes, take your bow. Leave the stage. Firefly wasn’t planned like that, originally, but that’s how it turned out. I’d like to see it emulated.

So now you probably still want to torch-and-pitchfork me, but hopefully I’ve made my case. A great series always leaves you wanting more, but sometimes I think it’s the wanting that makes it great.