Trash

_****½

While catching up with an old friend Mal runs into an old enemy in the form of his treacherous wife Saffron. Soon, the two are forced to work together to perform a high-paying heist, though both run the risk of being betrayed by the other before their payday arrives.

The review for "War Stories" can be read here.

Mal (Nathan Fillion) tends to cut himself off from his feelings in an effort to keep a distance from newcomers, but in interacting with old friends, such as Zoë (Gina Torres) or Monty (Franc Ross,) it's clear that this was not always the case. Mal considers his friends his family, and anyone that threatens them is an enemy to him, so it's no surprise that his first reaction on seeing Saffron (Christina Hendricks) among friends is to draw his pistol.

In her new found lucidity, River (Summer Glau) states that Jayne (Adam Baldwin) is afraid that she and Simon (Sean Maher) know what he had tried to do to them during the events of "Ariel," leading to Simon taking her predictions more seriously. While Simon doesn't go out of his way to pump Jayne for the truth, he does use Jayne's injury as an opportunity to make his stance on the issue clear, temporarily paralyzing him on the operating table with the threat to torture him for information. Instead, Simon gives a speech, as is his fashion, making it known that the two of them need to work together, need to trust each other, otherwise the toxicity of their relationship will cloud their judgement. Simon assures Jayne that, as long as he's on Simon's table, under Simon's knife, he's safe, acknowledging that neither one wants to sleep with one eye open, and, as such, bygones will be bygones and past sins will be forgotten. Simon's attitude here is perfect, as he's much more of a thinker than a fighter, and he provides a fantastic threat in order to prove to Jayne that he's just as dangerous, just in a different way. The point is later driven home by River who assures Jayne that, should he cross either of the Tam siblings again, that "[she] can kill [Jayne] with [her] brain."

Mal and Saffron's heist is going fairly smoothly until, predictably, they are caught by their mark, Durran Haymer (Dwier Brown,) who, in a good twist, is revealed to recognize Saffron as his wife Yolanda. The number of ploys that Saffron has to balance at once is absolutely staggering, and very seldom does she slip up, though here her ruse is destroyed, as Mal recognizes, because she has genuine feelings for Durran. Saffron could simply have walked into the building, welcome by the owner and staff due to her circumstances, but instead she tried to avoid encountering Durran because she didn't want him to know that she was there. Were he to see her there he would understand who she really is, what she had done to him, and avoiding him, she believes, is the only way to spare him the pain of feeling betrayed and spare herself of having to hurt him. When she instead is caught in her lies, she begins telling Durran the absolute truth, pulling no punches, so that he will fall out of love with her, so that he won't shed any tears over what she's about to do; ultimately, Durran proves wiser than Saffron had thought, having called the feds as soon as he had seen her, not trusting her, and this act, in hindsight, breaks her heart, because she had hoped to have him love her forever as she does him. Mal notes later that she had known for six years the kinds of treasures that her husband was holding, and told herself that it was a job she'd never take unless times got too hard, a last ditch effort to save herself, and even that didn't work here. Saffron laments that "[she] thought [Durran was] a decent man. The genuine article," adding that "[she] thought if [she] had everything [she] wouldn't want" to run anymore. Saffron is a multi-layered character as presented here, and it's almost as though she's being set up either to redeem herself in the future or to continue to fail to change, to always be the woman with the wasted potential for good.

In order to make off with their loot, Kaylee (Jewel Staite) and Zoë are forced to race against the clock to finish their work before the automated retrieval unit crushes them to take the garbage bin. Considering Kaylee has a working knowledge of how the bin works, and understands how to reprogram it's functions, one would imagine that she could simply have disabled the retrieval beacon until they were finished. The only reason she leaves the beacon running is either through the writers not having thought through that small detail or to ensure that the scene is more exciting and dangerous.

It seems disingenuous, given their history with Saffron, that anyone among the crew of Serenity would have left her alone on the ship long enough to tamper with the engine, and while it's true that Mal caught her spying on Inara's (Morena Baccarin) conversation with Zoë, that, too, was revealed as part of Mal's ruse, so for her to have been out of sight long enough to damage anything isn't likely. She had been brought aboard in a crate, I imagine Mal would have kept her there were he not in the process of interacting with her.

Hendricks does fantastically playing a deceptive character of multiple roles here, and Maher proves that there's a threatening side to his character as he looms over the paralyzed body of his betrayer. Baccarin also gives a great performance, and, as usual, the rest of the cast is great in their roles as well.

Directed by Vern Gillum, this episode opens at the close, showing Mal sitting alone in the desert, naked, musing "yeah, that went well," then flashing back seventy-two hours. There's a good mixture of humor infused in the drama to cut the tension, starting from Monty introducing Mal to his new bridge Bridget/Saffron only to have she and Mal draw guns on each other as Monty notes that they've clearly met. The meeting between Inara and Mal in her shuttle is very well done, especially in hindsight, as he's immediately suspicious of her motives, already worried about his dealings with Saffron, and an argument between the two breaks out with Inara accusing Mal of not having looked for any serious work since his run in with Niska (Michael Fairman.) Ultimately, it's Mal's discussion with Inara that convinces him to pursue Saffron's job, though, later, we see that Mal had revealed everything to Inara and they had created a plan off-screen to counter Saffron's eventual betrayal. Inara's appearance at the end of the episode, explaining to Saffron what had happened and beating her to the rendezvous, is the perfect end to this story.

Ben Edlund and Jose Molina team up to write this episode together, and they have a yen for character development, turning Saffron from a one-note villain into a very real person and adding small moments for the crew that really add to who they've been shown to be so far. Despite knowing she had made an enemy of him, Saffron still blatantly attempts to seduce Mal in order to get a ride to the nearest habitable planet, acknowledging that he had had a better hand of cards this time, in regards to his relationship with Monty, but that the next time he might not be so lucky. What's interesting about Saffron's approach is that she makes no effort to conceal what she's doing, being very upfront about what she wants, what she needs, and what she's likely to do to get it, under the assumption that brutal honesty will lower Mal's defenses and he will be more likely to think she's changed.

This can't be the last we hear from Saffron, as now Inara has made an enemy of her too, and while it's unlikely that she will manage to ally herself with the crew of the Serenity again, there's a small glimmer of hope that she might reform in some way and make a life for herself. Simon may think that he's cleared the air in confronting Jayne as he did, but it strikes me that Jayne is likely watching his back now, worried that, should he step out of line in any way, the doctor and his sister will find him and destroy him.

The review for "the Message" can be read here.