(Recorded on July 14, 2024) Up this week is “Safe,” the fifth episode of Firefly. If you were wondering what the Serenity crew was going to do with that cattle from last week, this is the episode for you. If you love Zac Efron, this episode for you. And if you were wondering what Shepherd looks like without his shirt on, this episode is definitely for you. We kick off the episode with some Simon and River backstory and get more throughout. This is all to set up how far Simon would go to protect his sister (a little heavy handed, but we did ask for more backstory, so that’s on us). Moving on! Serenity has landed on a backwoods planet to unload the cattle; unfortunately they didn’t check their source box for any travel advisories in Jiangyin. While half the crew stay back to offload the cattle, Kaylee, Inara, Simon, and River head into town. At a shop Simon, proceeds to unintentionally insult everything Kaylee likes which obviously upsets her! Inara and Kaylee leave and River wanders off and finds herself a local LARPing community. Back at the OK Corral, the cattle sale goes awry when the local police show up to arrest the buyers. In the melee, Shepherd gets shot (by who, it’s not clear). River’s spidey senses are tingling, but before her and Simon can leave Shakespeare in the Park, they’re kidnapped—by the people that the travel advisory was warning about! The rest of the crew can’t wait around to look for them and take off to find Shepherd help. Unfortunately, Simon and River see Serenity leave them, ouch. The Serenity crew seek help at an Alliance station, but before they can be turned away Shepherd pulls out his Obamacare card and they rush him to treatment. Simon is just settling into his role as Doc Hollywood (is this thing on?) when his sister is accused of being a witch! Before the town can get out their s’mores kits, Mal and the rest of the crew come to rescue them. If only Joan of Arc had been so lucky.

George comes to the realization that if he gives up on a coherent story line he enjoys the show; Meaghan doesn’t understand why we’re making up new words to describe things that already existed; and we say goodbye to our girl, Shannen Dorehty. (Original network air date November 8, 2002)

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