Get in touch with the inner geek.

Amaryllis and I spent the last several evenings drilling through episodes of Firefly. For those of you not familiar, Firefly was a space western that didn't even make it through a full season on Fox. A lot of it had to do with running up against the nascent reality TV craze, where execs questioned spending 10 million an episode for a sci-fi show when they could get idiots to provide more dysfunctional drama than you ever saw in high school for free (Yeah sure, I guess someone technically wins a prize, but we all know the "entertainment" comes from the psycho that makes it 75% of the way through the show. That or you get to marry Joe Millionaire).

The sad thing was that Firefly had one of the best ensemble casts I've ever seen (when you compare to Star Trek spin-offs and Sci-Fi channel fodder where there is always one or two characters whose acting completely gets under your skin, and you wish would just put on the red shirt and DIE ALREADY!). Considering there were only 14 episodes made, its telling that you actually cared about the characters at key dramatic moments (Spoilers: Jayne betraying River and Simon, and how Mal dealt with it; Inara deciding to leave the ship; etc...).

The show also catered to my quirky style humor, and the timing was dead on. After the series was cancelled they made a pretty accessible feature film called Serenity (named after the ship). It's one of my favorites in the genre.

Amaryllis and I have very different tastes about some things, but share some interesting likes that highlight what eclectic people we are. One of our shared likes is Firefly, but I will also pop a bowl of popcorn and watch the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice with her (ironically, because I like Colin Firth).