I'll admit it: I only managed to catch one episode of Firefly during its brief 11-episode run. It was a pretty good episode ("War Stories"), but I found the mix of spaghetti western and science fiction a little off-putting.

But with the Serenity movie coming out, I figured maybe I should give it a chance. So I rented the first three discs from Netflix (because you can only get three at a time) and Karen and I started watching the backstory.

About three quarters of the way through the two-hour pilot, Karen said "I haven't even finished watching the first one, and I'm mad they canceled it!" I'm kind of glad I didn't get into the series when it was on, because I would have been royally pissed when it was canceled. It was smart, it was funny, it was touching — all the things Fox hates, apparently.

Yesterday, when picking up a new router to replaced my dead one, I bought the series on DVD, and last night Karen and I watched the last six episodes that we hadn't seen. I'm glad we watched the whole thing before seeing the movie; the film would still have made sense, but some of the events wouldn't have had the emotional resonance they had after coming to know the characters and what they meant to each other.

What a great series. What a perfect cast. I now understand what would move its fans to take out full-page ads trying to save it. And I'm glad the movie came out, otherwise I might never have seen such a jewel. Or had the experience of seeing Adam Baldwin play a character I actually liked.

And the movie itself? Definitely worth seeing. But I won't describe why, as I don't think I could do so without spoilers.