I avoided this story before seeing Serenity due to the presence of spoilers. You have been warned. However, skip the first paragraph that contains the spoiler material, and the rest of the story contains some interesting comments from Joss Whedon, writer/director of Serenity. Of particular interest is this quote, which says as much about his movie as it does about TV in general, and why I really don’t watch that many TV shows. Not that I don’t like questions, but I don’t like the lack of direction in TV shows, where an answer one day is a question the next, all subject to change at any moment.
[T]he difference between TV and movies is that TV shows are a question, and movies are an answer. And so in this we had to have a definitive statement about freedom and humanity and what we need and what we should be allowed to have as people, which is all our flaws. And then I answer that. I make a definitive statement. I put a period or, hopefully, an exclamation point on that, as opposed to just sort of pursuing the question for years, which is what a TV show would do.
