“Jaynestown”
In this episode: Jayne Cobb (14), Simon Tam (10), Mal Reynolds (8), Wash (6), Kaylee Frye (6), River Tam (3), Inara Serra (2), Book (2)
[Simon and Kaylee, both drunk, chat during the town's toasting of its hero, Jayne.]
I— I reattached a girl's leg. Her whole leg. She named her hamster after me. I got a hamster. He drops a box of money, he gets a town.
Hamsters is nice.
To Jayne! The box-dropping, man-ape-gone-wrong-thing.
[A drunken Jayne stumbles down the stairs, entwined with a local girl.]
[singing] "The hero of Canton, the man they call 'me'." [speaking] Eggs! Living legend needs eggs!
[River is hiding from Book, freaked out by his enormous unbundled mane of white hair.]
They say the snow on the roof is too heavy. They say the ceiling will cave in. His brains are in terrible danger.
River? Please, why don't you come on out?
No! Can't. Too much hair.
Is— is that it?
Hell, yes, preacher. If I didn't have stuff to get done, I'd be in there with her.
. . .
River, honey, he's putting the hair away now.
[Book starts to tie his hair back.]
Doesn't matter. It'll still be there. Waiting.
[Jayne learns what extent the mudders went to show their devotion to Jayne]
[overcome by emotion] You guys had a riot... on account of me? My very own riot?
So, that's where the little "Jayne Day Celebration" we got planned comes in. Should give us enough time to get the goods back onto Serenity.
I don't know. You think we should be using my fame to hoodwink folks?
You better laugh when you say that.
No, really, Mal, I mean, maybe there's something to this. The Mudders? I think I really made a difference in their lives. You know, me, Jayne Cobb.
I know your name, jackass!
[Inara's client, Fess Higgins, tells her about an upcoming hearing for a criminal.]
He stole a ton of money from my dad and gave it to the poor, to my father's workers. He's become kind of a folk hero in Canton.
Go on.
Well, he's back. Apparently, he landed here yesterday.
Yesterday? [to herself] Oh, no. [to Fess] I-I know this man. He's... He just has this idiotic sense of nobility, you know? He can never just let things go. He thinks he's this hard-hearted criminal, and he can be unrelenting, but... there's a side to him that's just so...
You mean you actually know... Jayne?
[Long pause.]
Jayne? Jayne Cobb? You're talking about Jayne Cobb?
[Addressing the collected Mudders] Far as I see it, you people been given the shortest end of the stick ever been offered a human soul in this crap-heel 'Verse. But you took that end, and you... [pause] Well, you took it. And that's... Well, I guess that's somethin'.
[Jayne's ravaged former partner, Stitch Hessian, confronts him at the celebration.]
For six months, we run together. He turned me out 'fore I could scream!
You'd-a done the same.
No. Never. You protect the man you're with. You watch his back! Everybody knows that! Well, except the "hero of Canton".
[Jayne is horrified after a young Mudder's sacrifice to save him.]
All of you! You think there's someone just gonna drop money on ya?! Money they could use?! Well, there ain't people like that. There's just people like me.
[A tidied-up Book stops by to talk to River, who is still "fixing" the Bible.]
Just keep walkin', preacher-man.
[Simon tries to explain himself to Kaylee.]
I mean, my way of being... polite, or however it's... Well, it's the only way I have of... showing you... that I like you... of showing respect.
So, when... we made love last night—
When we what?!
[Kaylee grins.]
You really are such an easy mark.
Hell, there weren't a-one of them understood what happened out there; they're... probably stickin' that statue right back up.
Most like.
I don't know why that eats at me so.
It's my estimation that... every man ever got a statue made of him was one kind of sumbitch or another. Ain't about you, Jayne. It's about what they need.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Firefly pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
