You guys are right, there was a short of half assed introduction, but I didn't feel it was enough for new viewers. Also Serenity was completely different inside, that bugged me alot since I too watch it back to back with the TV series. And they crammed the whole River Tam mystery into a two hour movie, when it was obvious from the TV series that it would be a slowly unraveled side story. I think the Western idea was brilliant, and it was ashame they tossed it out for the film. Perhaps it wasnt that it was too over done in the first few episodes, but that it took me a time to get used to it. Too me at first it felt very exagerated and unbelievable, but over all it works. This show is another example of Fox screwing a show over. They didn't even show the pilot episode until the very end. It is like they wanted it to fail. This was the same way with Futurama, it seems they killed it on purpose too.
Oh, and one last thing I really liked about the show. The camera work, it was brilliant. I love the variation of static cameras in all the alliance scenes, and the more unstable hand cameras for all the other scenes.