It figures that the last episode of Firefly (according to the story, at least) would be the one that would finally bring River Tam into the foreground. River is such a memorable character and such a fan-favorite that it's easy to forget just how little she factors into the series. She barely even appears in most of the 14 episodes and in the case of "Our Mrs. Reynolds" she doesn't even have a single line outside of one justifiably deleted scene. "Objects in Space" suggests that River would have become a far more prominent character in the second half of the first season, though she didn't get the chance to be so central until 2005 when Serenity hit theaters. Tragic as it is that such an interesting character spent most of the series on the sidelines, "Objects in Space" also demonstrates just how distracting River could be.

Insane characters usually are distracting. That's pretty much the point. Mental illness, when depicted properly, is unsettling and difficult to process. Firefly was never meant to be a show about people taking care of a schizophrenic teen, so River got benched whenever adventure and traditional human drama had to take center stage. Sometimes she was little more than comic relief or an indicator that something intense was about to happen. The opening scene in "Objects in Space" is a beautiful depiction of exactly why River couldn't really function much beyond this capacity.

That opening scene follows River as she wanders around the ship, showing us the world from her addled perspective for the first time. Casual conversations are incomprehensible to her. She hears people say what they're expressing with their body language more than what's actually coming out of their mouths. She even hallucinates leaves and twigs on Serenity's deck, mistaking one of Jayne's guns for a broken tree branch. This dream-like sequence is one of the most gorgeous in the series and the gem of this Joss Whedon directed episode. It also makes it clear how difficult it was to work River into the story on a regular basis. If this is how she sees the world, making her anything but a background character would have simply been too taxing from a directorial perspective, at least without muting her mental quirks.

River's tendency to complicate the story is why Jubal Early is such an excellently crafted character. Really, it was inevitable that a bounty hunter would end up on Serenity looking for Simon and River. The beauty of his character is in the way he justifies a discussion of River's strangeness by being similarly strange. Early is a rotten version of River. He's clearly a little bit insane, highly intuitive and mechanically proficient. Whereas River's scenes are awash in light and nature, Early's are dark, empty and punctuated by machinery. Even his gun looks like a technological perversion of a natural form, all bumpy with metal knots like bone and sinew. He's a precursor to the figure Chiwetel Ejiofor would strike as The Operative in the film Serenity. Jubal Early is fundamentally alone while River is surrounded by people who care about her. This is perhaps the only reason River isn't more dangerous than she already is and it's certainly the only reason she avoids being captured in this episode.

Best Moment: The opening scene. Joss Whedon really is a masterful director and Summer Glau is a talented physical actress.

Notes: Once again, Kaylee=Victim. I really wish she would have been given a chance to be a hero at some point in the series.

Episode Rating: 5/5- If Firefly had gone on, this would have been a pivotal episode. As it stands, it's a paragon of what the show was capable of. Next week we'll be concluding our Catching Up coverage of Firefly with a quick look at 2005's Serenity.