Went to my uncles cabin in the woods for a few days to relax, he's got the box set of the show and decided to give it a rewatch, was a pretty big fan in college. Got through like 3 episodes and shut it off.
Yes, Whedon is a creepy and maybe knowing that affecting my judgment, but honestly does feel like I'm noticing things my younger brain didn't. A lot of the dialog seems overwritten, some of the "quirky" shit the characters do comes off more obnoxious than endearing, also the story is giving me weird AnCap vibes. I mean yeah the Alliance clearly is pretty evil but we never get much explanation as to what the Brown Coats political program is, why did they want to succeed? Them being confederate coded sure as shit doesn't help.
Also, it almost leans TOO much into the whole western asethic sometimes, to the point I find it unbelievable. Okay, sure, humanity hastily colonized some planets and now some have regressed into SciFi Deadwood, I can dig that. But like, people on horses with cowboy hats seems a bit too comic for me.
Idk, just some random observations.
Edit: oh yeah and the intro song fucking sucks. That was something I thought even back when I liked the show.
I should watch it again. I'm curious how I'd perceive it now. I recall it having a very libertarian idea of space, and that mentality depends on the endless new "free" land we don't have any more of. I probably would think the characters are pretty reactionary. The core planets have that strange evil psychic experimentation with zero ethics thing and otherwise seem pretty nice, but our main characters are clinging to that as proof that civilization is fundamentally evil and that's why they prefer to hang out in the outskirts, never mind that they're run by violent crime syndicates that are always trying to double cross them and murder them.