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Ahh yes, "Firefly/Serenity," the Fox network braintrust (and I'm definitely using the term sarcastically) really missed the mark on this one. Here was a series with with a longterm future (penned by a guy, Joss Whedon, who already had two hugely successful series—Buffy and Angel—to his credit). So what did Fox do? First they refused to show the two part introduction (a great episode), because it supposedly didn't have enough action (instead, it was shown at the end of the series run). This forced Joss (and his co-producer/writer Tim Minear) to have to write "The Train Job" in course of a weekend. Then they preempted shows for the baseball playoffs and World Series. At the same time they ran shows out of order. Anyone vaguely familiar with Joss's other series would realize that Joss always writes with a longterm arc in mind, but not the idiots at Fox. So 14 episodes into the series (3 of which were never aired), Fox canceled the series because of low ratings/network incompetency. A true shame since this was a series that hit the ground running; the cast meshed right from the first and was getting better with every episode, the writing was consistently good (with about a half dozen great episodes out of the 14 and a couple that were as good as it gets), and the show was just beginning to delve into the mysteries that permutated within the group and the greater "verse" they inhabited.
A couple of years later, along comes "Serenity," in which Joss tries to wrap up the series arc in 2 hours rather than 10 (or perhaps 100). That the movie is as good as it is (would that any of the Star Wars oeuvre had writing of this caliber or acting this good) is a minor miracle (though perhaps not given someone of Whedon's talents). Since he had only 2 hours to wrap up the story to some degree of satisfaction, certain characters were shorted in screen time and relationships were truncated (Mal and Inara's, Zoe and Wash's, Book's with the crew). Yet for all this it is still a great movie. To get the most out of it watch "Firefly" and then "Serenity."
SPOILER ALERT
As for Wash's death near the end of "Serenity," Joss has never been hesitant to kill characters. It was probably partly to show that anyone could die, and that maybe everyone would, as well as for a real world consideration (I think Alan Tudyk, "Wash," refused to sign a 3 movie commitment). Anyone familiar with Joss's work should know that while his characters inhabit strange "verses," they act like real people (albeit with amazing adventures and sometimes superpowers) and occasionally die for no apparent reason (as happens in life).
A great, if too short, arc of what could have been the best science fiction series ever. Here's hoping we will return to the "verse" sometime in the future (if Joss ever is freed of what is becoming a "vapormovie," the seemingly endless preproduction work/writing on "WonderWoman").
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