TVSquad

"Shindig"

Mal and Jayne are playing pool with what turns out to be a transporter of slaves while Inara looks on. Mal decides to serve a little justice by lifting the fellow’s cash, confident that it will be a while before he notices the missing money. It turns out the slave mover notices a bit sooner than expected, and before Mal can get Inara out of the bar and to safety. As usual a brawl ensues and as usual Mal looks like he’s having the time of his life being in the middle of it. Cue opening credits.

The crew is headed to Persephone again and Inara is making plans of her own. She and Mal have one of their wonderfully written verbal sparring sessions. As the rest of the crew hauls their cargo down the street Kaylee is smitten with a frilly dress she sees in a store window. Mal manages to offend her by pointing out the idea of Kaylee, the tom-boyish mechanic in a dress seems kind of ridiculous. She and everyone else save Jayne storm off just before Mal feels a rifle in his back.

Badger is back and wants Mal to pull a job for him. Seems a third party has some property they want moved off world but the guy won’t deal with Badger. It’s a high-class world this guy moves in and he feels Badger is beneath him, so Badger appeals to Mal’s sense of superiority to line him up for the job. Mal needs an escort, though, so he enlists Kaylee by getting her the very dress she was ogling earlier. As fate would have it Mal and Kaylee are supposed to meet the guy with the contraband at the very same party Inara is attending with a gentleman who…let’s just say he’s a jackass.

While that’s going on Book, Jayne and Simon are playing cards and River is, well, being River. Wash and Zoe are getting, to quote another Whedon series, “groiny” so everyone else is keeping themselves occupied. 

Mal meets up with the guy who wants to get his goods off world and spys Inara to boot, who he eventually asks to dance. She tells him her date has offered to keep her with him permanently and Mal, while obviously hurt, admits he has no call to stop her. When Atherton starts acting like more of a jerk than usual Mal hits him, which constitutes a challenge to a duel. Mal and he will fight with swords at sunup the next day.

Badger takes his men to make sure the rest of the Serenity crew don’t rabbit off while Inara visits Mal to try and prepare him for the next days duel. When the time arrives Mal acquits himself in mediocre fashion but catches a break and gets Atherton at sword point eventually but refuses to kill him as custom dictates. He threatens to blacklist Inara in social circles but she points out that it’s the Companions who choose who they see, not the other way around. Mal’s performance gets him the business he went to the party to line up

He and Inara make their way back to Serenity, where we later see that Kaylee has saved the dress from the party as something pretty to hang in her room. Mal and Inara converse and we finally see what the property was that he brought on board: A herd of cows.