I watched Firefly last night... and it was good!

[Shadowdancer]

A couple of points:

1) The last 6 episodes of this show were PHENOMENAL. They had just hit their stride when they got cancelled. To me, it was a tremendous loss, especially now with only Angel on the air. A lot of the initial criticism seemed to vaporize when they got as far as the episode titled "out of gas," as well as when the pilot finally aired, which was good enough for me to say it REALLY should have been on first - the first couple of episodes would have gelled better, IMO.

This is one of the major problems with cancelling a show during it's first season. It usually takes a few episodes for everything to gel. The actors get into their characters, the writers know what the actors are capable of and start tailoring the characters/episodes to their strengths, the production people get a better feel for what everything is supposed to look like, etc.

I watched "Firefly" from the beginning, and I liked it, but I admit part of me was wishing it was better. Then, as you said, with the "Out of Gas" episode and those that followed -- it was better. It became what I was wishing for.