But not necessarily aboard the Serenity. My cousins are part Chinese, but you wouldn't know it to look at them. Their last name is the only give away.
Side note: Since Weyland-Yutani exists on FF, is it possible that this show takes place in the Alien universe?
I love Whedon's dialogue, and I love the way he conceives and writes characters. Examples of any wit at all other than smarmy banter are still difficult to find in skiffy entertainment. I haven't yet seen a skiffy tv series other than possibly B5 (which was itself a great disappointment) which is set in a competently "designed Universe" so that kind of thing sure isn't a showstopper. The differences between plausible worldbuilding in skiffy TV and supposedly less well thought-out backgrounds proceeds from the viewer's enthusiasm rather than forming the basis of it. The old saying "no text can stand up to a hostile reading" applies here.
But we didn't see people of Asian heritage anywhere in Firefly except in a few crowd scenes. And I have a branch of cousins who are half Chinese - and you can plainly tell despite their Caucasian last name.
The world building wasn't all that great, it's more than a stretch to think all those planets were in one solar system. And you'd think there'd be more the Chinese than mere curses. The dialogue was snappy and there was a great chemistry among the character, but the storylines were pretty cliched and not too original.
But we're talking about the crew of the Serenity and if a Chinese crewmember is needed for the crew to use Chinese curse words. I happen to agree that a larger Chinese presence would have been better when seeing the Universe at large. Though do we know if a large Asian/Chinese population actually made the migration from the "Earth-that-was" to system Firefly takes place in or was it just parts of their culture? My cousins are a quarter Chinese, which might be closer to the type of "mix" one might find in the Firefly Universe (and the Tams in particular) Even with actors like Keanu Reeves and Dean Cain their asian ancestry isn't apparent.
So in your book, sitcom writing is necessarily crap? I'm inclined to believe you've never seen a quality sitcom at all. To clarify, I found FF's writing to be pretty good for an adventure show with a sitcom flavor; but that's just not a genre that much appeals to me.
I remember back when Babylon 5 was running on TNT, somebody in a chat room said it was a lame show, based on the one episode they'd seen. I suggested they watch a few episodes in a row, since it had an epic running storyline. I checked back a week later, and they said, "Hey, thanks for the suggestion!" There's no accounting for taste, though. You could take any nice, sweet movie, like one of Pixar's, and there's somebody out there with a violent hatred for it. I've really given up trying to "convince" anybody to like anything. I might ask, "What are you comparing it to?" when somebody says how "cheesy" ST:TOS is. See, I compare it to Irwin Allen's shows which aired at around the same time, not the latest & greatest CGI extravaganzas.
^ I've become so hooked on Corner Gas (which has no laugh track) that I can't watch a show that has one. (Studio audiences don't count. At least then, the laughter is real.)
Good question. Not true at all. Buffy is my favorite TV show. I could live without Angel. And I think Firefly is mediocre at best.
Explain? A studio audience is, by definition, real laughter, not a machine-generated laugh track. Unless you're drawing a distinction between a studio audience that is watching the shot live, vs. one that is shown the material later and the resulting laughter is edited into the show?
I always found FF to be overrated by its most ardent and vocal fans -- but then again, what isn't? The thing is, FF was a good show which ought to be a blueprint for how to create camaraderie within an ensemble cast ... but it was flawed, uneven and though it had a great deal of potential, and despite popular opinion, its cancellation wasn't an outright travesty.