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A numbers game

How's this for strange?
Firefly has more viewers than Buffy or Angel, but it is also Whedon's most vulnerable show. That's because it airs on Fox, which has higher viewership expectations than UPN and the WB.

Firefly has struggled. It opened Sept. 20 with a respectable 4.0 rating and 8 share, attracting 6.2 million viewers.

The show dipped after that, reaching its lowest point on Oct. 11 with just 4.3 million fans. But now that baseball is over and the season schedule is finally unfolding, Firefly is inching back up. The Nov. 1 episode drew 4.7 million viewers.

Maybe it's too soon to call the show Fireflop, as one reporter did recently. For the season, the show is attracting an average of 4.9 million viewers.

Asked to describe the show's health, Whedon said, "I think Firefly has a little sinus thing."

Yet the series has had problems that gallons of antihistamine could not remedy, beginning with Fox's pronouncement that Whedon's $8 million, two-hour pilot episode lacked the action and adventure its executives were looking for. So the pilot has been pushed back to December, and some reports hint that the series could exit shortly after that.

Whedon did not agree with Fox's decision to shelve the pilot.

"I still don't agree," he said. "I never will agree. But that's a punch you roll with . . . It's their call, it's their slot, it's their money. All I can do is turn out episodes I think are worth seeing."

He has been working backward from that decision ever since, however, because the pilot set up the entire season, describing how the crew of the renegade spaceship banded together.

"We do our best to make every episode clear enough that somebody who's never watched it will understand what's going on. We have had some people who are confused; there are a lot of characters. I think once the pilot has aired, some of that confusion will go away.

"It took us awhile to find a paradigm that the network agreed with, that had the adventure they were looking for and the meaning we were looking for. But we seem to be meeting in the middle and turning out episodes that I think are kind of spectacular and that they're really responding to."

Meanwhile, the show is stuck in a "death slot" -- 7 p.m. Fridays, Fox/Channel 26 -- a place where Millenniums and Pasadenas before it have died premature deaths. There are rumors the show will be moved to Wednesdays or Mondays.

"If they (Fox) have any plans in that respect, we don't know what they are," Whedon said.

He's optimistic.

"I knew the show was something of a risk and not every person would come out and say, 'Yeah, finally, at last, a space western. I've been waiting for it all my life.' But I think it's starting to find its audience; we've definitely found its tone, and Fox is very comfortable with that."

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