Serial Serenity: Jaynestown
Serial Serenity: A recap with a bit a trivia thrown in for good measure
Episode: Jaynestown
Original Air Date: 10-18-02
Written by: Ben Edlund (& Joss Whedon)
Directed by: Marita Grabiak
Mud Buyers
So Jayne is kind of a Neanderthal. His first scene opens with him destroying the medical bay looking for some tape, much to Simon’s chagrin. Mal informs the crew that they will be setting down in the town of Canton for a pick-up of some contraband and that they are to bring no guns. This unsettles Jayne who had been to Canton a few years back and feels that he will need some extra protection. Inara, meanwhile, has drummed up some business outside of Canton: the 20-something son (Fess played by Zachary Kranzier) of the local magistrate, Mr. Higgins (Gregory Itzin). She is to “make him a man” at the request of his father. This should be interesting. Inara takes her leave of Serenity via her shuttle.
Canton is a company town where they manufacture mud (clay, really). The people live in squalor and, to make matters worse, it really stinks. Literally. The crew’s plan is to pose as a rich mud buyer (Simon all upper class and prissy like) and entourage so they can all get though the surrounding work site (and watchful eyes of the magistrate and manager) to their contact in town. The main thing is to keep a low profile. Too bad they happen upon a heroic statue of Jayne smack in the center of town. Huh?
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The Statue
Jayne, flabbergasted by the statue, admits to the crew that the last time he was in Canton, he stole a bunch of money from Magistrate Higgins and escaped. The crew is staggered by the statue: “This must be what going mad feels like.” As a side note, after filming the episode, Adam Baldwin (Jayne) stole the Jayne statue’s head as a souvenir.
Back on Serenity where Book, Zoë, and River have stayed behind, Book finds River “fixing” his Bible. Well, it IS broken… she says it just doesn’t make any sense as she writes in the margins and rips out pages. As e tries to rescue his precious book, he explains that it is not about making sense; it is about believing in something.
The Ballad of Jayne
In the local Canton bar, the gang is still trying to figure out the statue as they drink “Mudder’s Milk,” a protein, vitamins, carbohydrate, alcoholic drink that is pretty much liquid bread. Nasty. They make contact with a man who informs them of the hiding place of the contraband merchandise just across town. Again, they just need to keep a low profile to get it to Serenity. Too bad some musician starts up “The Ballad of Jayne,” a great little ditty about Jayne and his Robin-Hood-like status among the Mudders.
Jayne finally comes clean and confesses that as he was escaping, the ship got weighed down and he had to unload what he stole from the Magistrate (strong boxes with $60,000 inside). The Mudders must have thought he was stealing from the rich and giving to the poor because the money rained down smack in the middle of the town square.
Couples
River comes to Book to give back some of the pages she ripped out of his Bible. “I tore these out of your symbol and they turned into paper.” Book, washing up, has let his hair out of it’s normally tight ponytail and, man, is it crazy looking. River freaks out and runs away while Zoë has a good laugh.
Mal decides to make the whole Jayne thing part of the plan. The Mudders have recognized him anyway, so why not have “Jayne’s Day” tomorrow as a diversion while they sneak out the merchandise? So what to do tonight? How ‘bout we all get drunk and couple-up? Jayne goes off with a lady of ill-repute and Simon tells Kaylee she’s pretty. Hmmm. Mal and Wash go back to Serenity to tell tales of the “Hero of Canton.”
[nms:Firefly Serenity,2,0]
Companions Choice
On her shuttle, Inara tells a brow-beaten Fess that Companions choose who they are with and that his father, who is very overbearing and rude, would not have been a client. She talks of how having sex does not “make him a man,” but the choices he makes and how he acts make him a man every day. He needs to stand up to his father and be the man that Inara knows he can be.
Armed and Dangerous
Jayne learns from the locals what happened after he dropped the money and escaped. The workers resisted giving the money back to the magistrate and in the end, he wrote it off as a bonus. When the magistrate demanded the statue be torn down, the Mudders had a riot. Jayne starts to feel like the hero in the song, even though we all know he’s not.
When the magistrate hears that Jayne is back, he goes to the local “prison” and lets out Jayne’s accomplice who had also been thrown out of the escape ship to lighten the load. After four years of hating Jayne, the Magistrate thinks that Stitch (Kevin Gage) is the perfect person to take out Jayne.
The next morning, everyone still passed out in the bar when Mal arrives. When asked if Simon and Kaylee… you know… Simon says “No, no, no… not with Kaylee!” This makes Kaylee mad and she tells Simon to stay behind in the bar.
Getting the Goods
Jayne goes to the town square for the Jayne Day celebrations while everyone else gets the goods. Back on her shuttle, Inara learns that Fess has to attend a criminal hearing of an outlaw that showed up in town the night before. She thinks it’s Mal and is shocked to learn it’s Jayne. Fess tells her that the Magistrate has put a lock on Serenity… when the crew returns, she won’t be able to take off.
Jayne Day
At the bar, Simon is confronted (read: beat up) by Stitch. He wants Simon to take him to Jayne. At the celebration, the crew drive by with the merchandise as Canton security closes in on a somewhat choked-up Jayne. He really feels like he made a difference in the lives of the Mudders, no matter how ill-conceived it was.
No Heroes
Stitch shows up with his hostage, Simon. He tells the Mudders the truth about what happened; about how Jayne was not a hero but a coward. He aims his gun to shoot Jayne but a young Mudder (Daniel Bess) jumps in front of gun and saves Jayne. Jayne kills Stitch and knocks down the statue in his anger at the death of the young Mudder.
The crew (including Jayne and Inara) makes it back to Serenity in a very somber mood. We learn that Fess went over his father’s head and took the lock off Serenity so they can take off in peace. “You wanted to make a man out of me.”
Easy Mark
Kaylee and Simon make up. She tells him that being proper “don’t mean nothing out here in the black” to which he responds “it means more… it’s all I have.”
Mal consoles Jayne who is feeling awful about the boy’s death. He ask Mal why the boy did that. He responds that it isn’t about Jayne, “it’s about what they need.” Canton needed a hero to believe in, and they found that in the ideal of Jayne.
Sources
Firefly – The Complete Series
Fireflyfans.net
Internet Movie Database
Serenity Official Visual Companion
You Can’t Take the Sky: A Firefly Site
Whedonesque
Rachel, originally from Oregon and currently living in Arizona, is a grant writer and consultant for non-profit arts organizations. She hopes to one day renovate an old theatre somewhere and turn it into an art house cinema joint. Rachel has a BA in Theatre and Media Arts and an MFA in Arts Administration. She enjoys movies, writing, using her label-maker, guacamole, and the Oxford Comma. She has been married for almost seven years to a self-proclaimed Zombie Cinema expert who enjoys the occasional Lego, and has been the mother to a self-proclaimed 3-year-old for, you guessed it, 3 years. She is also currently incubating a little girly-girl that will join the family in January of ‘08. She hopes it turns out better for her than it did for Ripley.
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