Serenity

I watch very little TV. "Baseball Tonight," "The Daily Show," and "The Colbert Report" are pretty much it. When it comes to narrative entertainment, I prefer films - they're a fully self-contained experience.

So I never saw "Firefly" when it aired. I never saw it on cable. I saw it only when a friend was certain I'd like it that he drove to my home, dropped off the series DVDs, and told me to call him once I'd seen them all. And you know what? I liked it. I really liked it.

I liked the creatively imagined solar system of "Firefly." I liked the blending of American and Chinese argots. I liked that fact that, finally, here was a show about transport guys!

So I was happy to fire up SERENITY when it arrived at my door. I'm sorry to report, however, that it found it to be, well, just pretty good. While the movie tickled my imagination, it didn't quite capture it. There are too many "big moments." The resolution of the mystery surrounding the kung-fu psycho chick wasn't particularly satisfying, and I thought that these people had gone to all this trouble merely to uncover the scandal of the week.

Hey, "just pretty good" isn't all that bad. Catch SERENITY when it shows up on cable. But don't go out of your way for it.