"Our Mrs. Reynolds" - Firefly

I hope skipping over episode 5 doesn’t make me miss anything, but it expired on hulu.com so I had to. I watched Episode 6 of Firefly. One of the things that caught my attention was when Mal was giving his “new wife” some advice. He said something like: You’re no one’s slave. You don’t need to let people boss you around or treat you like a slave! If someone tries to hurt you, hurt them first. If someone tries to kill you, kill them first.

In the end of the episode, he did not kill his “wife”, Saffron when he had the perfect chance to. Does he not take his own advice? Saffron wasn’t having a hard time or sympathetic with trying to kill Mal, the crew, and Serenity. What made it okay to kill Crow in “The Train Job” but not Saffron in this episode? They were both against the crew. Is it because Saffron was a woman? In my opinion, Saffron did more damage than Crow ever had the chance to do. What if Saffron appears in later episodes? Why didn’t he kill her before she has another chance to do it again?

Another thing I wanted to point out in this episode was the beginning of it. A tiny village celebrates Mal killing a criminal that was causing tons of hectic in their lives by stealing. Even though it was an unpaid job, the village throws a party and gives him a wife even though he didn’t know they were going to do that. How come Mal is allowed to be a thief and steal people’s cargo, but is willing to help out catching other criminals? He basically has the exact same job. Except in cases like this, he knows when to help out. I just don’t understand how he is able to have that job and not see the wrong in it.