Blog 19: Article/Episode

Firefly "Bushwacked"

In this episode while the crew is looking upon the "abandoned" ship Shephard says that they should do the right thing and check to see if anybody is okay on the ship.  The rest of the crew seems against checking it out but Mal obliges to take a look.  Why does Mal do this?

Mal does this because as we often see, he appears tough and sarcastic on the outside, but he almost always does the right thing.  Like in the previous episode, "the Train Job" when he returned the medicine that he originally stole from the citizens of Paradiso.  Mal likes to make the crew think that he does't want to do the right thing, like in this case after Shephard asks if he should tell the story of the good samaritan Mal sarcastically says, "i'd rather you not. But we'll check it out."  The rest of the crew seems surprised by this statement but Mal just mislead them by the way he started his opinion, but then agreed to check it out because he truly cares. He even says that they should take a look around and see if there are any survivors.  Of course, Mal also sees this as an opportunity to potentially gain some possessions if everybody on the ship really is dead.

While on the abandoned ship the crew come across the ships logs and see that the lifeboat left about a week ago.  Mal says that he thinks everybody is okay then, but then Zoe points out that there is no way all of the people could have fit on the lifeboat.  Mal says that he knows.  What does this speak of his original decission to further investigate the ship?

When Mal says that he knows all of the passengers couldnt have fit onto the lifeboat, he has already sent the rest of the crew around the ship to check for valuables.  This shows that his original decision to investigate the ship was not based on his caring and that the true purpose wasn't to check for survivors, it was to scavenge for goods.  This does not speak very well of Mal's moral character because it shows that he is getting a little greedy, starting to care more about items than of the well being of other people.