Following on from the comments in this weeks cast about how Simon is nice on the surface but has ‘issues’ below, do we agree?
Personally he strikes me more as ignorant and naive, as opposed to bad. He’s had a priviledged and sheltered upbringing and is simply oblivious about some of the things he says and does.
I think the crucial difference for me is that when he is made aware of his gaffes, he feels bad and wants to correct it. Someone who was genuinely classist or nasty wouldn’t care.
Can I go with pompous prig? If not, I can downgrade to Dim.
He’s a dim pompous prig. A brilliant physician, though. He doesn’t do it on purpose, but that’s how he is.
Regarding his interest in Kaylee, there’s definitely a class-ist element to it. If she wuz all hoity-toidy, he’d be on point in her presence, and I don’t think he’d hold back like he does.
As they said on the cast, he’s not a bad guy. And he does sacrifice everything for his sister. But he’s got issues.
What issues are we talking about?
It’s Simon. What issues you got?
Guess it depends on how you define issues. Wish I could listen to the cast right now. Workin for ‘the man’ really screws with your priorities sometimes.
I would say not really Dim just out of his element, much as we see in shindig Mal and Kaylee being clueless in high society (despite the advantage that is inherent in imitating a group with fixed established rules of protocol they still luck out with some common charm rather then actually following the rules especially kaylee) we see Simon having difficulty understanding the interpersonal system or lack there of in the wide world and Serenity.
That combine with what seems to me to be a feeling from Simon that he is still between rescue and escape and pausing his life for the sake of his sister so not really settling where he is at but waiting for when he and she will have to run means he doesn’t pay attention to certain signals because he isn’t really considering that they may exist.
He’s obviously not dim and I think I might surprise a few in saying I don’t even think he’s a prig or even that much of a classist. Whaa?
Aight. He’s not dim but he acts awkwardly but let’s have a look at his baggage. Simon’s been uprooted from not only his home and everything he knows but also from everything he had set out to do with his life. Keep in mind that at some point in very recent history, Simon not only came to the conclusion that his sister’s future had been borked by that he would have to bork his own plans (wife, family, career, etc.). That will mess you up and probably make you more then a little resentful of the 'verse.
Now let’s look at where Simon is the day he buys a ticket on Serenity. He’s essentially posing as a respectable individual with not-criminal cargo to move. No sir, nothing weird in that crate, why would the authorities be after me? Simon also doesn’t benefit from our narrative point of view knowing that Mal and crew are the good guys. To his point of view these are criminals that could as easily take his stuff and vent him out an airlock or sell him back to the Alliance. Sounds paranoid? Keep in mind, no one on Serenity is wearing their ‘crook with a golden heart’ badge.
Finally, Simon is the ultimate fish out of water. He hasn’t been trained as a social chameleon like Inara or to be unnoticeable like Book. To him ‘normal’ is the life he left behind but ‘normal’ is still what he’s accustomed to interacting with. Notice how when he looks down on things (the souvenir shop, the freak show alien) he always does so in a commiserating fashion that includes a member of Serenity’s crew. He’s not intentionally putting them down but trying to include them in his dialogue. He just fails at it.
Simon is to his sister what Mal is to his crew and while it doesn’t sit well with us how he treated Kaylee in order to evade the Alliance and did nothing to endear him, we wouldn’t think twice about Mal shooting someone to protect a member of his crew, even Jaine. Speaking of which, it’s worth noting how unfair it is to ask that Simon accept Serenity’s crew when there are obviously elements hostile to him in that crew until very late in the series. This is all disregarding what was said in the cast: someone like Simon isn’t just smart in a ‘knowing more things’ kind of way but also in a ‘brain wired differently’ way.
In my opinion…
depends on which simon really; dude in the plan overrided programming and sacrificed himself so he’s pretty cool by me, the others well that’s what toasters with machine gun arms are for.
Excellent point. If Simon were in his world, he’d be a smooth young prince. To quote John Cleese from Silverado, Simon is not “from around these parts.”
Welcome, new people!
i’m getting confused between the BSG Cylon Simon and the Firefly Simon…
he is always well meaning, but lacks street smarts and social experience to fit in to his new surroundings at the edge of the system.
I think Simon and Jayne both clash with Mal repeatedly for the same reason. they don’t think of the rest of the crew as apart of the family. For Jayne it’s all about himself, but for Simon the safety of River is above everyone else. He has already given up everything he cared for to save his sister, so for a while nothing else is important enough for him to be overly concerned.
Mal on the other hand, thinks those who is a part of his crew as family and no one is expendable. And actions and thoughts coming out of Simon and Jayne angers Mal. But towards the end of season 1, both Jayne and Simon are picking up what’s important to Mal, and adapting that philosophy for themselves.
He would be comfortable because he knows the rules, but outside of the hospital he wouldnt be any better in social/romantic interactions. The guy just hasnt had the time. Hes brilliant, a member of the financial elite and has spent all of his time either studying, doctoring or getting his sister away from a group of sadists. He didnt spend his teenage years going to parties or asking girls out to the movies. Is it any wonder that he is a total failure when it comes to reading women? This issues business is an unfair characterization. He is who he is. The one with issues is Mal. You can see who he used to be in his more uncontrolled moments (the cheerfully unflagging optimist), the rest of the time hes Captain Mal(hard nosed, do the job, leave me alone). Frankly Im surprised hes not an alcoholic.
I just think Simon doesn’t know how to treat women he’s into - if you notice he’s only awkward and weird around Kaylee - because he likes her. He always seemed fine around Inara and Zoe. I would imagine he had very little time for a social life while he was studying to become the best doctor ever - he just hasn’t had that much experience with women and dating…
I think you’re right. Not just because he likes Kaylee though but also because she is so different from any other women he has likely met. I suspect he would have got on fine with the girls from ‘Shindig’ who were catty to Kaylee. Not necessarily because he liked them, but because he knew how to behave around them.
Interesting thing to add to the discussion, in my re-watching I’ve got ahead of the cast and just got to Aerial, where they return to a core world. It’s interesting to see that pretty much the moment they get back to his society, he is transformed into someone able and with it who takes charge and gets things done. Ok, he has an agenda, but I think there is a large dose of him regaining confidence on home turf.
Maybe “issue” is more applicable than “issues.” By which I mean what I’m interpreting on his class-ism against Kaylee.
But, to be fair, plenty of dudes turns into morons when we’re talking to somebody we like.
very very true. and at the same time, everyone else became unsure of how to proceed things on the core planets. Not just because they were unfamiliar with the hospital stuff, but if it hadn’t been for Simon, the rest of the crew probably won’t even venture out of the ship. even if they did, they’d seem more like tourists than anything else.