Firefly

So I get halfway through watching Firefly on Hulu.com, and I find this link that basically says "don't watch Firefly on Hulu," because of the Writer's Guild strike, you see. But since hte strike has been resolved, and since even before it was resolved, I didn't like people telling me what I should or shouldn't do based on their politics, I went ahead and watched the rest.

I've never been a Browncoat, I've got to say. I enjoyed Firefly when we aired it on Fox, and I really liked Serenity, but I'd never been a big enough fan of Westerns to really appreciate the melding of SF and Westerns that Firefly was.

But watching the series again, I was really struck by how good it was. How the crew really seemed like a family, so that I could feel sentimental about people who are, when you come right down to it, awfully unsentimental. When I got to the end, I immediately went over to Hulu's feature film section to see if "Serenity" was there, but alas, no. So I may end up buying the DVD of that soon to watch it again, although I'm not sure I can take seeing what happens to Wash again.

One thing that surprised me: I thought there had been at least one other episode where River showed off her talents in a big way (other than the one where she shoots the three guys with her eyes closed). There's a hint of it in the final episode, but I thought there had been more than that. Memory playing tricks, I guess.

Oh, and speaking of mixing entertainment and politics, try reading this, and you'll see what I mean. A radical feminist (self-described as such, lest you think I'm name-calling) rips Firefly for the woman-hating bile it really is.

Hulu

I decided to try out Hulu, given all the fanfare of its debut, and I was pleasantly surprised to find Firefly among the television series it includes. The entire series, mind you (not difficult, since only one season was produced).

So I ended up watching the entire run of Firefly over the weekend, along with random episodes of The Tick (the live-action series starring Patrick Warburton), Night Gallery, and It Takes a Thief. In order to provide these copyrighted properties without charging subscription or download fees, Hulu shows commercials during the breaks (about 2 minutes total per show). It works out okay, because in any given break, you're not having to wait more than 30 seconds to get back to the show. Also, since the shows were designed to break for commercials, they don't really break the experience.

The problem is that there is a very limited number of advertisers, so you'll be seeing the same commercials over and over again. The other problem is that they do the same thing during feature films, which were not designed to break for commercials. This means that they break the films at odd random places, sometimes in the middle of a scene, which does sort of ruin the experience.

So I'd recommend Hulu for TV series watching, not so much for feature films. They have a fairly long list of series available now, including old shows that don't see syndication, like I Spy and the aforementioned It Takes a Thief. However, since it's still early days, they only have the first seasons of those classic shows available, so if there's a particular episode you're dying to see, it might not be available yet.

I'll get back to Firefly tomorrow.