Yang and I have been watching every episode of Firefly together for the past few evenings when Hannah was napping. Truth to tell, I didn’t think much of it after watching its first episode. Thought the captain was boring to watch and the crew’s acting wasn’t engaging at all. So I quipped to Yang that it was no wonder that the series didn’t continue on for another season.
Well, I have to eat my words.
See, the characters blossomed from the second episode onwards. They got interesting :) The captain was humourous in his own way and together with all his very diversified crew members the show was entertaining indeed. The crew survived on thieving with their own brand of morality. It’s like Robin Hood la.
Characters aside, the Chi-na undertones added another dimension to the story-telling. Initially I was not used to the idea of the Chinese being a superpower and domineering the world. Come on la, it’s just so unlikely. (Ya, I’m a Chinese I know.) I think they tried too hard to infuse a bit of Chinese essence in the language, costumes, furniture, etc. And my jaw dropped when Kaylee held an opened paper umbrella and sitting on a foldable Chi-na looking plastic chair in this sci-fi show! Hello, paper umbrella? Are we playing dolls? Doesn’t it seem a bit salah (wrong in Malay)? Anyhoo, the funniest part of it all is when the characters speak Chinese. There aren’t hanyu pinyin in the subtitles all the time. So for the most part, we were left to guessing. The fun part isn’t how bad their Chinese sound (yes, it is terrible). It is Yang and I turning to look at each other and give the ‘huh??!!’ expression. :P And when we could make some sense out of their blabberish, it was great fun too!
Speaking of blending languages into our daily lives, I think Singlish has done it. This is something Firefly can learn from. You can’t just cut and paste one language into another and say that the two cultures have merged. It doesn’t take into account the evolution of the spoken word. Still, this show is enjoyable enough to while away one’s evenings. :)
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