On Friday evening a group of friends gathered at my home in anticipation for the most talked about new series of the past twelve months. While anticipation was in the air, we also had a tinge of worry that we’d hyped up our expectations to the point where they simply could not have been met. Even still, we gathered with offerings of pizza, chocolate brownies, carrot sticks and a gluten-free dessert. If the show was terrible, at least we’d have each other for comfort.

This brings to question, “What makes a good show?” I recall the review I read of Underworld III, where the movie was lambasted for daring have a storyline. Are we truly so jaded that we can only appreciate big explosions and monstrous special effects? I found my answer (though a day after the TV show) in my CWC class yesterday, during our discussion of the novel, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” We talked about how it is more than just a novel about a seagull, and what deeper message the author was trying to offer. At the end of the discussion I left my class with the question, “Was Jonathan alive and passing into Heaven ... or was he dead and passing into Life?”

This was exactly what Whedon offered all of us on that Friday night before. He made us look deeper within ourselves, at the question of, “What is a soul?” Are we just a bunch of meat sacks walking around with electrical impulses controlling our motions - or do we have a more existential existence that is unique and irreplaceable? If it is the former, then it should not matter whether we live or die. Our personality is just a matter of the right mixture of hormones and impulses firing randomly to external stimulus. But if it is the latter, if there is a deeper meaning to who we are, then we must ask that question: when does that begin? Is it only when we are adults and have life experience, or is it when we are teens and exploring a rapidly changing body, or when we are toddlers taking in those first experiences? Or does it go earlier, when we are even in the womb, before we can speak for ourselves?

Bravo, Whedon. This group of Whedonites were not disappointed, and thought that the show delivered exactly what TV is so desperately needing.