REGULAR CAST

• Nathan Fillion as Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds
• Gina Torres as Zoë Alleyne-Washburne
• Alan Tudyk as Hoban “Wash” Washburne
• Morena Baccarin as Inara Serra
• Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb
• Jewel Staite as Kaywinnit Lee “Kaylee” Frye
• Sean Maher as Dr. Simon Tam
• Summer Glau as River Tam
• Ron Glass as Shepherd Derrial Book

GUEST CAST

• Christina Hendricks as ‘Saffron’
• Franc Ross as Monty Reynolds
• Dwier Brown as Durran Heymer

CO-STARRING

• John Eric Bentley as Police Sergeant

SYNOPSIS

Mal is naked and alone in a desert. Flashback 72 hours earlier to Mal running into an old acquaintance named Monty as they were both part of a smuggling run. Monty is eager to introduce Mal to his new wife Bridget. But when she appears she recognizes Mal and he recognizes her as Saffron and the two pull guns on each other. They end up fighting as Monty looks on confused and shouting till he physically breaks the fight up. Mal tells Monty that this woman isn’t his wife because she’s his wife too. When “Saffron” goes to deny this allegation, she calls Mal by his full name, which Monty hadn’t told her yet so Monty leaves her there in the middle of nowhere on this planet with Mal (who is waiting for his crew to return). Mal is very weary of her and tells her to just start walking, but she begs him for a ride because she would die if she were left alone there. As he continues to aim a gun at her she beings to walk a little and tells him of a perfect heist she has lined up. He is persistent that she keeps walking and she is persistent that he hears about this heist idea.

Serenity lands to pick up Mal, who walks on board, looking beat up and unhappy. The crew is a bit confused. He is told that Inara wants to see him. After cleaning himself up a bit from the fighting he goes to Inara’s shuttle. She offers him a seat and tea, but he is still skittish about womanly wiles after running back into Saffron. He keeps his space and tells her to talk plainly. She does as he suggests and gets to the point. She is wondering why they haven’t been anywhere recently where she could find work. Mal asks if she is accusing him of intentionally sabotaging her finding clients. As usual he ends up calling her a whore and she points out the lack of good jobs Mal has acquired recently which results in her calling him a petty thief, which she seems regretful of.

He leaves her shuttle and goes down to the crates the crew had loaded when they picked up Mal. He opens one that is holding Saffron and shows interest to her in her heist plot.

The crew, minus River, Simon and Inara, are assembled around the dinner table to hear Saffron’s plan. The heist mark is named Durran Heymer. He is a collector of “Earth-that-was” artefacts. The piece she is going after is an original hand laser gun known as the Lassiter. She also tells the crew of Durran’s past; he did dirt work for the Alliance which is how he made his wealth and now is living on his own floating island home on Bellerophon. They can get on his island and Saffron has the access codes to the house. The trouble is in getting the stuff out of the house because all of it is tagged so that if it goes out the door alarms will be set off. Inara walks in to get something from the kitchen and is warning them not to listen to Saffron because she will only trick them in the end. But Mal explains that this is the only non-petty crime that he could get so he doesn’t have much choice. Zoë is also weary, but after slapping Saffron (who had made a play for Wash and knocked him out when he resisted) she is on board for the heist.

Jayne is packing in a room with River and Simon and reminding the pair to stay out of sight of Saffron because she would turn them right on in to the feds. After some conversation between River and Jayne about liars and girl’s names, Jayne leaves the room. River then tells Simon that Jayne is afraid, and has been ever since Ariel, that they will know what he did. Simon realizes it was Jayne who tipped off the feds when they were at the hospital on Ariel and nearly got them killed.

Saffron listens to a conversation between Zoë and Inara. Inara tells Zoë that she has some work lined up where they are going and whenever Zoë begins to mention something about the heist Inara stops her, insisting that she doesn’t want to know. Inara expresses her concern once again about Saffron before they go on their separate ways.

Back around the table, Wash explains to the crew how Mal and Saffron will go to Durran’s floating island home and easily blend in with the help that is there preparing for a function. Saffron uses her codes to get in the house itself. Kaylee came up with the plan to get the Lassiter out: throw it in the garbage shoot. This leads to a bin that is taken away, at the push of a button, by a drone. Kaylee with have the drone reprogrammed to take the bin, not to be incinerated, but to a deserted area where they can easily go pick it up.

Mal and Saffron make their way to the Lassiter with ease and Mal is working on bypassing the direct security on the object. Tethered Kaylee and Jayne are outside of the refuge bin trying to reprogram it. She gives him the board to put into the bin to set the coordinates and it has some “dyna-ram” on it to cause a little explosion. Jayne doesn’t get it put on time and it zaps him so that he falls, unconscious, on Serenity‘s hull.

Inside Durran’s house, Mal is still trying to not set off anything when he removes the Lassiter from its stand. Then someone enters the room; it’s Durran himself. When he sees “Saffron” he hugs her, starting to thank Mal for bringing his Yolanda back to him.

Book and Zoë help get an unconscious Jayne inside Serenity and deliver him to Simon to care for and he promises that he will.

Durran and “Yolanda” have been talking about how he didn’t know if he would see her again. He didn’t know what to think when Heinrich went missing too, but then they found him dead, and the pair go on about how they missed each other. Durran leaves the room to get Mal some reward for bringing her back. Mal goes back to trying to free the Lassiter as he tells Saffron he is not surprised so much by this development as he is by the fact that she actually seems to care what this guy thinks and that she didn’t kill him. He frees the Lassiter as Saffron pulls a gun on him (he aims one right back) and Durran walks in. “Yolanda” backs down upset that Durran is seeing this and Mal explains to Durran that they were there to steal the Lassiter, nothing more. Durran is somewhat appreciative of Mal’s honesty and is more concerned with dealing with his wife. The two have a discussion as Mal slips the laser gun into the trash shoot.

Kaylee is back outside the bin with Zoë. She gets the new reprogrammed coordinates in the bin just in time as the collector drone comes in. Now the bin with the gun is headed for a particular isolated desert area.

Mal pulls out one of his guns and aims it at “Yolanda” and gets her to drop her gun. She continues to talk to Durran; he tells her how he feels sorry for her, but she points out she’s not the one being robbed and that he should have called the feds as soon as he saw her. He replies that he did, as sirens approach. He tells her he loves her, but he isn’t stupid enough to think she was there for him and he wants her to get help. She knocks him out. Mal and Saffron make a run for it as the feds make it into the house. With little direct confrontation with the feds they get into their shuttle and take off. During the flight, the two sit and talk. She tells Mal that she really did try to make things work with Durran, though she also thinks she should have killed him back there. Mal figures she isn’t a great and moral person, but she doesn’t kill regularly, only leaves people in situations where it’s easy to die. He also thinks Durran was the only guy who didn’t deserve to be killed by her. She tears up and Mal comments that he’s seen her without clothes, but not naked before. He moves to sit next to her with somewhat comforting, though honest, words. She asks if he won’t mention that she broke down a little and in return she won’t tell how she easily got his gun from him while he was sitting next to her. She stands, aims it at him, thanks him for the inspiring words and orders him to remove his clothes.

On Serenity, Wash, Zoë and Kaylee find that Saffron rigged it so they can’t turn and they are forced to land, delaying them from making it to the goods. Meanwhile Saffron has left a naked Mal somewhere in the desert and she has gone to look through the trash bin to find the Lassiter. She is having no luck as she goes through the bin. She looks up to find Inara, well dressed and sitting, aiming the Lassiter at her to try it out. She finds it doesn’t work, but she has her own gun, and she pulls it on her. Inara tells Saffron that the crew had been playing her all along. Inara then closes the lid to the trash bin, trapping Saffron inside to wait for the authorities to find her.

Jayne wakes up in the infirmary. He finds, at Simon’s prompting, that he can’t move his legs. Simon explains that he gave him medicine to do this so he wouldn’t strain anything and actually permanently harm his spine, which will be fine. Simon continues to talk, asking Jayne how much he was offered on Ariel to turn him and his sister in, letting Jayne know that he knows now. He also lets Jayne know that he is safe on his medical table and that he will act responsibly as his medic and otherwise. He suggests Jayne behaves as well because there are enough problems out there for both of them to deal with already. Finally, Inara and a naked Mal board Serenity, to the crew’s bewilderment, and the crew heads off to fence the Lassiter.

TRIVIA

CONTINUITY

GOOFS