Hmmm....Mal.  Not sure what to think about Mal.  He's not a very likable character, and yet he is exceptionally compelling, and very easy to identify with.  I find that I am more rooting for the good within Mal than I am Mal himself.

Mal, short for Malcolm Reynolds...but more significant than that. Mal from Latin, meaning bad. The basis for Malus...the word for evil. Mal is a man in his own special kind of hell...the self-created one. He's got survivor syndrome, he's got fallen faith, he's got that kind of deep-down soul-sickness that only a truly good person can get when life turns them in on themselves and convinces them they are damned.

Mal is not a nice man. Mal hates himself, and he really wants to believe that he hates everyone else as well. He's got this brilliant inner light that he is willfully trying to smother. He believes he is only fit for hell and death, and he's trying desperately to go there, but he can't...because theres that small, bright part of him that just won't let go.

I watched the thirteen episodes of Firefly yelling at Mal. Just wanting to smack him and shake him, and wake him up, and knowing that there's nothing you can do for someone like him...until he comes to grips with the fact that, hard and painful and heartbreaking as it is, he can do nothing else but be the supremely good and decent man that he is.

Mal is trying so hard to slide into hell because he thinks it will be easier, that joining the darkness inside him will stop the pain...as much as he rages against the surviving of the light...ultimately he's got to come around, and that's the pay-off I'm waiting for.

I want the light to win in Mal, and I want him to be everything that we see in him...and everything he thinks he's not.

I also want to know exactly what percentage of the budget they spent on tailoring to get his pants to fit him just exactly the way that they do.

When we got to the end of the thirteenth episode, we looked at each other and thought..."There's no justice in this world if that's the end of Firefly".

And lo and behold, the world rewards our faith. Firefly lives again, and long may Serenity fly!

I can't wait! Eeeeee....happy jumping up and down!!!