C3PX said:
V, are you really from parts of the world that spell ass a-r-s-e? I always had you pegged as an American, but of course it is always hard to tell on the internets.

Personally, I never found much of Buffy to be all that great to boot. Friend of mine was always really into it though. There have been occasional episodes I'd have the pleasure of seeing that I found to be downright fantastic, but all in all, nothing special IMHO. Firefly on the other hand, I felt was brilliant. Of the existing episodes, they were kind of hit or miss, but it really had a lot going for it. The fact that it was cancelled is truely ashame, I think it could have made it really great.

I don't think a very good argument can be made for it being canceled because it lacked heart or the ability to connect with the characters. The bottom line is I used to watch Fox quite a lot. I only had seven channels at the time this show was on, and Fox was one of them. Yet somehow I never saw a single commercial for this show (because there really were none to speak of) and I didn't even know of its existence until well after it was canceled. Interestingly, I have many friends who really like Firefly as well, yet not a single one of them ever knew about the show while it was on. The only thing I ever saw of Firefly prior to the DVD release, was a black and white ad in a TV Guide. And from that, I assumed it was some unwatchable bull like Andromeda and didn't give it a second thought.

Had I known about it then, I would certainly have been watching every week.

Buffy had heart and soul. Firefly didn't. It lacked emotional depth. It was all about trying to be cool and flip and posing at being clever and it got too caught up in doing that to bother with meaningful feeling. I don't doubt that that played a part in its lack of success.