Filk Friday: Hero of Canton from "Jaynestown"

It's been an odd week , so I haven't gotten around to mentioning my planned theme for the next few weeks. Since I spend most of my time on fantasy topics, I thought I'd spread some fan love to SF, since the SF stories I do enjoy, I enjoy as much as the fantasy ones; there's just fewer SF stories I can sink myself into.

One of the series that sucked me in is Firefly. (If you couldn't already tell by my gleeful choice in Wednesday's video) Characters, setting, everything about it felt fresh, or in this case, dust and engine fumes. It is a space western after all. The first episode I saw was "Train Heist." Even though I knew nothing about the actors, characters, setting, or themes, just the combination of an old fashioned train heist combined with space ships made me stop flipping channels and watch to the end. After that, I deliberately tuned in to find out what they'd do next.

One of the middle episodes, "Jaynestown," took the crew to an out of the way planet to deliver a bunch of cows. But when they got there, Jayne remembered that he'd been there before for a robbery that went bad, prior to joining the rest of them. Expecting trouble, they were all surprised to find a statue in Jayne's honor. He was the Hero of Canton with a song and everything. The townsfolk believed that the strewn money from the robbery had been him distributing it to them on purpose, a modern day sort of Robin Hood, even though it had been an accident. You should watch the episode for the contrasts between normal character traits and trying to live up to the hype of a different view. Jayne surprised himself the most.

Here is Adam Baldwin, who played Jayne on the show, singing "his" song: The Hero of Canton. He even wears Jayne's hat. You can really tell how much he enjoyed the character, especially when you see his grin at the end.