Sorry for coming to the party late. I didn’t realise this thread was here and posted the below in the thread for podcast 209. Hope no-one minds the X-post.
Re the whole Mal Bully conversation. I can see where you guys are coming from, but I can also see why people don’t agree quite vehemently.
For me, while he exhibits some dubious behaviour, Mal is not at his heart a bully. A through and through Bully is someone like Biff from BTTF, who is a git, enjoys being a git and doesn’t care how it impacts other people. A true bully wouldn’t have given the medicine back in Train Job.
Mal isn’t like that. At heart he is a good and courageous person, but at times he does stuff which upsets others. I don’t think he in any way revels in this, and for the most part I think he either regrets or doesn’t realise what he’s doing. I think he’s also broken, thanks to Serenity Valley, and I suspect that is a large part of it. Possibly this would have been explored more if the series had continued. I think what I’m trying to say is that he acts as a bully sometimes but isn’t inherantly one. (if you’ll pardon the split hair).
To go into some specifics. I see three places where he really shows this stuff off.
- When he orders people around as if he and they were in the millitary.
I totally get what Chuck was saying about leadership, and in the opening scene in the episode Serenity Mal very clearly has that. However, one of the key ways the millitary differs from civilian life is that while great leadership is desirable, absolute discipline is a fundamental concept and must be upheld at all costs. This harks back to when men were lined up and ordered to march into fire in formation and operate in a coordinated way following orders (e.g. Zulu). Or to Naval combat in the age of sail. The millitary cannot afford for individual soldiers to start questioning orders, even if they are right, or the whole thing falls appart. This isn’t fun if you are at the receiving end of the orders, but that’s probably why Shaun should never be a soldier 
The way Mal behaves would be completely appropriate and legal within the confines of a millitary campaign, especially a desperate losing campaign such as he fought in. Incidentaly, Mal’s unswerving loyalty to his people is another aspect of this.
Where Mal falls down (and I’ve seen this with real ex-millitary people) is that he can’t get his head round civilian life, especially having been on the losing side. The way he behaves is appropriate in the millitary, but not outside it. Something that the show is clearly aware of and lampshades via Wash and his frequent comments to Zoe.
I think the reason for this, which harks back to Chuck’s comments on leadership, is that Mal has lost his faith.
[i]“A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him.”
Mal believed in independence and had his faith crushed when they abandoned him and ultimately lost. He has been left adrift in a verse he struggles to deal with and not beleiving in anything beyond himself. So he falls back on what he knows and is good at, the millitary way of life. This is a failing of his, a weakness. You can call it bullying, but to be honest I think it over-simplifies what is going on. I think the way the other characters put up with this behaviour indicates that they see this as well. He isn’t at heart a bully, he’s just broken and adrift and getting by the only way he knows how.
- The way he speaks to Inaria.
This is a lot easier to explain. He loves her and cares for her, but struggles to put his faith in anything after what happened last time, especially given what she does (which he likely privately sees as a snub to him). It’s hardly an uncommon reaction for people to react the way he does to something they desire but are afraid of. It’s not particularly nice, but it’s very human. Again, to me this doesn’t show him as a to the core bully.
- The way he speaks to Kayleigh (especially in Shindig)
To me, this is the least excusable, but also the most obvious. He’s just being a boorish bloke who shoots off his mouth before he thinks. You could probably also make some argument that he sees Kayleigh as ‘one of the guys’ and assumes she’ll be cool about this sort of thing in the knock about way small units can be. I think that’s a bit of a reach though. TBH, I struggle most with this as there is no obvious backstory explanation for it. If you contrast how he reacts to Jayne being rude about Kayleigh to how he talks to her in Shindig, it makes him a hypocrite. (I know the way he speaks to Inaria already does that, but there’s a reason there). Mal is lots of things, but he’s genrally true to himself. I’m inclined to put it down to poor writing and not build a larger story out of it.
So, in summary I think Mal displays some behaviour which can be classed as bullying, but I can’t see him as a bully himself. To give another example, I can’t picture a bully behaving as he did with his ‘bride’.
