Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Jason Heller

Firefly didn’t last long enough to have a chance to grow terrible. But even at the series’ scant 14-episode length, there’s room for a weak link—and “Safe” is it. Granted, the haughty, reserved Simon Tam is the one Firefly character I always had a hard time connecting with—which was sort of the point, only he never really got the chance to evolve. He certainly doesn’t do it in “Safe.” After being captured by villagers from a Salem-in-space-like sect, Simon and his psychic-warrior sister River are more or less abandoned by their reluctant smuggling-ship captain, Mal Reynolds. There’s more behind that abandonment, of course, but not much, which makes the eventual cavalry appearance feel less like an inevitability and more like a crutch. Worse, though, is Simon’s ultimate heroic gesture (and accompanying mini-speech), which he somehow manages to make more about him than her. It’s partly due to a wooden script and partly due to a wooden performance on the part of actor Sean Maher. Combined, they make for one of Firefly’s few glaring, jarring false notes, not to mention its lone sore-thumb episode.

Will Harris

Only the most devout Whedonites would be willing to claim that there’s no such thing as a bad Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode, but there’s a vocal group which likes to pretend that their man Joss got all of the dross out of his system during the show’s first season. Don’t you believe it. Even as late as season six, there were still occasional craptacular segments. The evidence: “Doublemeat Palace,” which slaps one of the most powerful female characters in recent television history behind the counter of a fast-food restaurant. Whedon has said in the past that this storyline ultimately fell by the wayside because the network was skittish about taking on a concept that highly resembled some of their major advertisers, and if that’s true, then we owe a big thank-you to the Golden Arches for keeping a potential long-term plot arc down to only one hard-to-watch hour. There’s dark comedy to be had out of the hamburger industry, but this silly storyline was woefully out of place in the Slayer’s world.