#1.07 Jaynestown

[Gin]

From imdb.com and fireflywiki.org

#1.07 Jaynestown

Original air date: 10/18/02
Written by: Ben Edlund
Directed by: Marita Grabiak
Episode Cast
Nathan Fillion ... Captain Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds
Gina Torres ... Zoë Washburne
Alan Tudyk ... Hoban 'Wash' Washburne
Morena Baccarin ... Inara Serra
Adam Baldwin ... Jayne Cobb
Jewel Staite ... Kaylee Frye
Sean Maher ... Dr. Simon Tam
Summer Glau ... River Tam
Ron Glass ... Shepherd Book
Gregory Itzin ... Magistrate Higgins
Daniel Bess ... Mudder
Kevin Gage ... Stitch Hessian
Zachary Kranzler ... Fess Higgins
Jordan Lund ... Foreman
Bob McCracken ... Well-Dressed Man (as Bob McCraken)
Ronald Craig Williams ... Busker
John Jabaley ... Bartender
Laura Niemi ... Woman
Simon Brooke ... Prod
Clement Blake ... Mudder Elder (as Clement E. Blake)

Summary
Serenity lands at the town of Canton on Higgins' Moon, a settlement dedicated to making mud. The crew's bound to pick up some merchandise for a buyer but the local magistrate and his prods are suspicious types who are more than likely to cut off your hands and feet than let strangers walk about, unless you're looking to do legitimate business. Also, Jayne's twitchy because the last time he was here, he wasn't exactly doing legitimate business. In fact, the magistrate is out for his thieving blood.
At Kaylee cum Mal's suggestion, Simon takes point, being the fancy-man on the ship who looks like he's got money to burn, and they all head into town. Only when they get there, the crew discovers the local Mudders have turned Jayne into a folk hero.
One with his own theme song.
They've got to retrieve the merchandise, keep their hands and arms attached to their bodies at all times, and figure out how to work Jayne's newfound fame to their advantage.
Probably the funniest Firefly episode!

[Gin]

From wikapedia.org

Plot
The show opens with Kaylee expressing disbelief that the always-proper Simon never uses swear words, despite his protestations that he does whenever they're "appropriate." Inara departs for an overnight meeting with a client. A noise in the infirmary brings Kaylee and Simon to find Jayne trashing the room in a search for bandages to tape concealed weapons to his body. It seems that Jayne is concerned about enemies he made in the territory a few years ago.

As they arrive at the Canton factory settlement, Kaylee suggests to Mal that Simon join them on their expedition to recover some hidden loot. Mal considers that having the well-dressed Simon pose as an upper-class buyer of Canton's special ceramic-making mud is a useful strategy. Shepherd Book reassures the dismayed doctor that he will watch over his sister. Simon ineptly plays his role before the unconcerned foreman, then the crew wanders off to locate their contact. Mal comments on Jayne's absurd attire — a heavy coat with a hood and goggles during an apparently hot day. When Wash remarks that he doubts anyone will remember Jayne, they come upon a life-sized mud statue of Jayne. An astonished Simon remarks to himself, "Son of a pregnant dog...."

While an alarmed Jayne fails to break his compatriots away from their admiration of the statue, Inara is meeting with the local magistrate, Higgins — the man Jayne crossed years ago. The officious slaveowner has hired Inara to bed his timid son Fess, who is 26 and is not yet "a man." Higgins reveals a penchant for dominating his son's life by attempting to rush the ceremony, but Inara intends to give Fess a proper Companion union and politely but forcefully shoos the father out of her shuttle. She reassures the naïve Fess that he need not be like his father, only to be himself, which will make him stronger.

Book enters Serenity's commons area to find River "fixing" his Bible by cutting, pasting, and marking up the pages. Her erratic patter alternates between logical analysis of its contradictions with oddly connected streams of thought. Book tries to explain that "you don't fix the Bible," but she complains, "It's broken. It doesn't make sense."

Book explains that faith isn't a matter of making sense, but a matter of allowing a belief to change one's life for the better. Book tries to retrieve his torn Bible pages, however River refuses to let them go. Book reluctantly lets her keep them.

In a bar, the crew "enjoys" the local beer, "mudder's milk." Simon explains that it's similar to the beer that ancient Egyptian rulers fed their slaves to keep them healthy enough to work and sleepy enough at night to prevent unrest. A well-dressed gentleman arrives to tell the smugglers of complications to their job — namely, the brutal death of their middleman Kessler. The contact suggests lying low until they come up with a way to move the loot past the foreman, but a troubadour suddenly strikes a chord and sings "Jayne / The man they called Jayne." [1] Their jaws dropping, Serenity's crew listens to the entire bar singing "The Ballad of Jayne Cobb." When the song mentions money falling from the sky, a stunned Jayne realizes what happened to the missing cash he and a partner had stolen from the magistrate, and had been forced to jettison in order to escape from anti-aircraft fire.

Back on Serenity, River brings the wrecked Bible back to Book, but when he rises from his sink with his white hair untied and sprouting from his head in a wild mop, she shrieks and runs off. Zoe chuckles as Book vainly tries to coax the frightened girl to come out of hiding.

As the crew leaves the bar, they find a huge crowd cheering for the beloved "Hero of Canton" outside. Trying to escape the crowd, Jayne runs back inside, only to find himself offered the best whiskey and accolades from all. The smuggling contact is horrified by Mal's supposed idea of "lying low," but Mal soon develops a plan around this considerable distraction. While Jayne carouses with the admiring locals, Mal heads back to Serenity with Wash and tells Zoe how this unexpected celebration of Jayne is exactly the cover they need to sneak the stolen merchandise past the foreman and his "prods." Unfortunately, the foreman has learned of Jayne's return, and reports this to the magistrate. The official then releases a man from a cramped prison box and gives him a loaded weapon. The freed prisoner's surprise is increased when he learns about Jayne's return. The man happens to be Stitch Hessian, the partner Jayne abandoned four years ago during his flight from Canton.

Mal returns to fetch Kaylee and Simon, the befuddled doctor, who finds the engineer draped over him on a couch. He tries to explain to Mal how "nothing happened," takes it overboard and once again manages to insult the frustrated woman. Collecting a tipsy Jayne, they head off, but Kaylee stops Simon in his tracks with her scorn. As the doctor eats breakfast alone, Stitch arrives. The scarred criminal brutalizes him in an attempt to locate Jayne, but the roars of an approving crowd outside give away his location instead. Stitch drags Simon along as a hostage to confront Jayne.

Back in Inara's shuttle, Fess expresses disappointment in not feeling different after losing his virginity. Fess's self-discovery, however, is interrupted when he finds himself summoned to a criminal hearing for a villain who the magistrate plans to capture.

Mal, Zoe, and Wash haul the cargo on their buggy and load it onto Serenity, while Jayne, warming to the idea of positively changing the mudders' lives, gives a moving, if not particularly literate, speech before the adoring crowd. Suddenly a shot rings out and Stitch appears, dragging the doctor along. After tossing Simon aside, Stitch addresses the crowd, telling them what really happened, and how Jayne's Robin Hood-like act was just a mistake. Stitch moves to shoot Jayne, however a young mudder leaps in front of the "hero," blocking the shot. After Jayne kills his former partner, he runs to the mudder boy and yells at his lifeless body, unable to accept his sacrifice. He shouts to the crowd how he is no hero, that there aren't any people who'd ever be willing to help them, just "people like me." Jayne knocks down his statue in disgust.

When the crew reboards Serenity, Wash attempts to take off, but finds the ship "land-locked" per the magistrate's order. It is quickly released, however, as Fess has decided to prove himself a man by defying his father's attempt to capture the "Hero of Canton." Kaylee has a heart-to-heart talk with Simon and briefly makes him worry about his propriety after the previous night's party.

In the cargo bay, Jayne broods about the mudder's selflessness and how it eats at him that, despite Stitch's telling them the truth, they're probably going to put his statue back up. Mal attempts to reassure him by pointing out, "Ain't about you, Jayne; it's about what they need."

Jayne, heartbroken and confused, looks down to the empty cargo bay. "... Don't make no sense."

[Gin]

From imdb.com

Trivia
* Adam Baldwin admitted to swiping the Jayne statue's head as a souvenir after filming the episode. Later on, additional shots were needed for the episode (scene where the crew first sees the statue) and the crack where the head was broke off then reattached is visible.

Goofs
* Continuity: Jayne is wearing his goggled hat when confronted by cheering Mudders. After the cut when he ducks inside, the hat is off.
* Continuity: Simon's cup jumps away from his mouth while he's drinking with Kaylee.
* Continuity: The mud left on Simon's shoulder by the foreman slapping his back has disappears soon after, despite him having had no opportunity to change or clean his jacket.

[Gin]

From fireflywiki.org

Quotes
KAYLEE: Bye now. Have good sex.

SIMON: All right. Fine. I'll go. Just... stop describing me.

WASH (watching Simon play his role... poorly): Who is this diabolical master of disguise?

SIMON: This must be what going mad feels like.

MAL: Jayne?
JAYNE: Yeah?
MAL: You wanna tell me how come there's a statue of you here, lookin' at me like I owe him somethin'?
JAYNE: Wishin' I could, Cap'n.

JAYNE: Instead of us hanging around playing art critic till I get pinched by the Man, how's about we move away from this eerie-ass piece of work and get on with our increasingly eerie-ass day?

RIVER: Bible's broken.

WASH: We gotta go to the crappy town where I'm a hero!

MUDDERS [cheering]: To Jayne!
JAYNE: To me!

SIMON: I reattached a girl's leg. Her whole leg. She named her hamster after me. I got a hamster. He drops a box of money, he gets a town.

SIMON: To Jayne! The box-dropping, man-ape-gone-wrong-thing.

RIVER: They say the snow on the roof was too heavy. They say the ceiling will cave in. His brains are in terrible danger.

RIVER: TOO MUCH HAIR!

JAYNE: The living legend needs eggs.

MAL: Let's go get our wayward babes.

JAYNE: You think there's someone just going to drop money on you?! Money they could use?! Well there ain't people like that... There's just people like me.

RIVER: Just keep walking, preacher-man.

MAL: It's my estimation that every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sumbitch or another.


Chinese Phrases
* Je shr shuh muh lan dong shi!?
"What is this garbage!?" (Wash, referring to Mudder's Milk.)

* Yeh-soo, ta ma duh... {"duh" was cut}
"Hay-soose (Jesus)-mother-of-jumped-up--" (Jayne, as Hero of Canton song starts.)

* shiong mao niao {Bartender sounds like shung mao niao}
"panda urine" (Bartender, about Mudder's Milk being unworthy of the Hero.)

* Hoo-tsuh. {Zoe sounds like Ho-tsuh}
"Shut up." (Zoe, shocked at hearing from Wash that Jayne's a folk hero.)

* (guh jun duh) hwoon dahn!
"(a real) jerk!" (Jayne {off-screen}, Jaynestown, referring to Boss {Magistrate} Higgins.)

* Gao yang jong duh goo yang. {Wash sounds like Go yang ... goo yang.}
"Motherless goats of all motherless goats." (Wash, as notices land-lock.)