The Parable of Book’s Dreadful Locks reminds us what we need more than anything from a holy man, especially if he wants to be taken seriously: Credibility. It was as if seeing him wild and wooly, unkept and unkempt – or perhaps in recognizing that Book had one face that he presented to the public and had another behind closed doors - Book had become (unfairly unreasonably) threatening and unsafe to a confused, unbalanced woman searching for clarity and order. She wanted to have nothing more to do with Book, at least in this episode. Disillusioned and spooked, she went back to correcting his Bible. His kinky salt and pepper locks stood on end as if zapped with electrical current, and the sight freaked River. Seeking out more of his allegedly sage counseling, River happened upon Book with his normally pulled-back hair unrestrained. But I liked the cute, clever comedic turn of the Book/River clash. Regardless, the line, as scripted, didn’t sound like something a legit preacher man of a specific denomination or belief system would really say. That’s why they let their belief sway and shape their thinking and actions – because are intellectually convinced that the claims and promises of their holy books are wholly legit, empirically and historically. Many of the ones I know think that the “something” they believe is objectively true, if not The One True Thing. Would Book’s interpretation of faith find approval among most holy book-believing people? I don’t know. Watching it anew on The Cable Network Formerly Known As Science Channel (it’s just “Science” now awkward), I appreciated again the debate invited by its passionately pouty point of view… even if I didn’t agree with the perspective itself. Firefly was a show that had some real fire in its belly - that was animated by a deep anger about The Way The Things Are. I enjoyed the episode, even if its metaphorical whining had a whiff of preachyness about it. “Jaynestown” – the Firefly version of Glee’s “ Grilled Cheesus” (which, coincidentally, was repeated this past week) - was an irreverent romp about misplaced faith and misguided hero worship, spiritual and secular. At best, Firefly seemed willing to allow the individual the freedom to believe in any kind of bulls–t, just as long they didn’t push it on people as God’s Truth or hurt anyone with it… unless they deserved to be hurt. Then again, Firefly didn’t give a gorram about religion, and regarded most forms of faith as iterations of a bad joke: The need of people crippled by self-consciousness or wounded by damaged self-esteem to believe in something outside themselves for strength and direction, even if that something flies in the face of sound logic and scientific learning, common sense and basic human decency. ![]() That’s a heavy reference for a mostly light-hearted affair that fleshed out Adam Baldwin’s cartoonishly tough Jayne. The clever pun of the title “Jaynestown” – the seventh episode in the Firefly canon – winked in the direction of a tragic bit of recent human folly: Jonestown, where gone-crackers cult leader Jim Jones totally lost his nut and tricked 909 followers into mass suicide.
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