We open with Kaylee and Simon arguing about swearing. I agree with Simon, excessive swearing defeats the purpose of profanity which is to shock. Once you've developed a reputation for never swearing, you'll get a lot more attention when you do swear.
They land on a mud producing planet which is a pretty funny concept in and of itself. Kaylee assures Simon that mud is very useful and that Serenity itself has quite a few ceramic parts. Considering how often ceramics are used in our society today, it makes sense to think that they will remain important in the future.
With Simon playing the part of a wealthy mud buyer, our intrepid anti-heros blend in with the population. The foreman also assures Simon that his specially kilned mud is, "ten times stronger than steel and half the weight."
"Jayne. You wanna tell me how come there's a statue of you here lookin' at me like I owe him something." -- Malcolm Reynolds
The dialog where they discover Jayne's statue is wonderful. confusion reigns since no one is quite sure why anyone would raise a statue to Jayne when all he did the last time he was here was rob the local magistrate. Things get cleared up when the mud farmers start singing a song about Jayne's exploits. When Jayne robbed the magistrate, his ship got strafed by anti-aircraft fire and he had to ditch his cargo -- which included a huge box of money -- over the mudders' town. Naturally the mudders were pleased and assumed that Jayne was some sort of Robin Hood character who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.
Meanwhile, Inara has business with the local magistrate and River has decide to "fix" Book's bible. The former plot eventually hooked into the main plot but the latter one did not. Inara must deflower the magistrate's son and the way she goes about it is pretty interesting. It seems that the companions have taken a page from organized religion by cloaking their craft in mysticism. The part with River being spooked by Book's hair was cute but it was more silly than anything else.
"To Jayne! The box-dropping, man-ape, gone wrong thing." -- Simon Tam
It seems that Jayne was quite an inspiration to the mudders. They even had a riot on his account. But the magistrate is unhappy about his return and decides to free Stitch Hessian -- Jayne's old partner in crime who has been imprisoned since that failed robbery. As expected, Stitch immediately seeks out Jayne with vengeance on his mind.
Shows up at a town ceremony honoring Jayne. He tells the mudders the whole story of their botched robbery. It seems that when he and Jayne made off with the magistrate's safe, their ship took a hit and they had to dump everything -- "the fuel reserve, life support, hell we even dumped the seats!" It came down to Stitch, Jayne, and the money and Jayne dumped Stitch before dumping the money. Having said his piece, Stitch tries to shoot Jayne but a mudder jumps in front of him and takes the bullet. Jayne manages to stab Stitch but the mudder who took the bullet was killed instantly.
Jayne angrily screams at the mudders and knocks his statue off its pedestal. There's a brief scare when Serenity can't take off because it has been placed in a "landlock" but it is suddenly released and they take off easily. We find out that it was the magistrate's son who released the landlock as an act of defiance against his father. Jayne feels broody about the mudder who sacrificed his life to save him.
There were a lot of little character developments here. Simon's insistence on maintaining proper behavior even out on the edge of space to the point where he offends Kaylee while trying to explain that he would never take advantage of her is a logical extension of what we've already seen from him. River's supposed genius is starting to filter through her looniness. And I think we're getting an idea of how the companions became so respectable over the centuries -- by adding a degree of mysticism and spirituality to sex, they seem to be tapping into the same part of humanity that makes us seek out new age religions.
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