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| Credits | ||
|---|---|---|
| Written by | Helen Eaton | |
| Read by | Helen Eaton | |
| Edited by | Helen Eaton | |
Even when Mal and Jayne are playing parts - and there are soft cotton dresses and pretty floral bonnets involved - one aspect of their relationship remains constant: conflict. Pick a scene between Mal and Jayne at random and there is a fair chance that you will come up with one in which the two men are somehow in disagreement. Take Serenity the pilot episode, for example. As Mal, Jayne and Zoe walk away from their unsuccessful meeting with Badger, Jayne voices his displeasure that they didn’t leave Badger in a pool of his own blood. Mal tells him, “Jayne, your mouth is talking. You might wanna look to that.” Mal appears not to respect Jayne’s opinion in the slightest, although he does admit during the same exchange that he is at least partially right on this occasion.
Later in the same episode, Mal and Jayne come into conflict again, as Jayne makes a crude remark about Kaylee’s interest in Simon:
It is clear from this incident who holds the upper hand in the relationship between the two men. Jayne may be slightly more imposing physically, and appears to be the older of the two, but Mal is the captain and that’s what counts. This is a situation which Jayne appears keen to change. In The Train Job, for example, he is quick to grab the “chain of command” when Mal is out of the way. And in Serenity the film, Jayne makes his feelings as clear as can be:
It is rare that Mal and Jayne agree on anything. A couple of exceptions can be found in Bushwhacked and Shindig. In Bushwhacked, they express similar views about reavers, considering them something other than men. And in Shindig, they put on a unified front as they deal with Badger. Their default state though, is most definitely to be in disagreement.
One major area of disagreement for Mal and Jayne is the concept of loyalty. They are very much opposites in this area. On the one hand, we see Mal considering Simon to be a part of his crew after a relatively short time and going back to rescue Simon and River in Safe. On the other, we hear Jayne’s former partner Stitch describe how Jayne turned on him after six months of working together and pushed him out of a plane in mid-air. Stitch’s view that, “You protect the man you're with— you watch his back” is clearly not one which Jayne holds, but it describes Mal very well.
That Jayne’s loyalties are easily bought is clear from the earliest exchange we witness between Mal and Jayne, which takes place in one of the flashback scenes in Out of Gas. Mal convinces Jayne to betray his current gang and come over to Mal’s side by offering him more money and his own room. It’s not surprising that having taken Jayne on to his crew in this way, Mal has no illusions about Jayne’s loyalty to him, as we realise when the two men talk at the end of the pilot episode:
Mal asks why Jayne didn’t betray him, revealing his belief that Jayne needs a reason other than simply loyalty to his captain. Mal’s warning to Inara about Jayne as the crew prepares to abandon ship in Out of Gas sums up well how he views him:
Mal and Jayne’s conflicting ideas of loyalty are the focus of the most dramatic scene between them, when Jayne finds himself the wrong side of the airlock doors, after he has betrayed Simon and River on Ariel:
Was Mal really going to let Jayne die? Jayne for one seems to think so, and this prompts him to voice what appears to be a genuine concern that the other members of the crew not find out about his betrayal. It seems that this glimmer of a conscience is what Mal is looking for, as he relents and closes the ramp.
Jayne offering Mal his precious Vera in exchange for Saffron certainly does not lead to Mal taking Jayne seriously, but in the very next episode, Jaynestown, we get a rare example of a serious conversation between the two men:
After hearing so many exchanges between Mal and Jayne which are characterised by either humour, conflict or a mixture of both, this scene stands out, for its seriousness and for the fact that Jayne genuinely wants Mal to help him understand.
Had the series not been cancelled, perhaps we would have seen further growth of this kind in the relationship between Mal and Jayne. As it is, by the time we get to the film, we are back to a focus on conflict and Mal asserting his authority over Jayne. The latter’s desire to take some grenades to the heist on Lilac, for example, is swiftly quashed by his captain. Mal’s days of not taking Jayne seriously still seem to be very much stuck in the middle, as evidenced by the following comment to Zoe:
Jayne continues to be a thorn in his captain’s side, questioning why he brought Simon and River back on Serenity after the fight in the Maidenhead and later why his only plan is to return to Haven. Jayne also takes matters into his own hands, when he is tired of waiting for Mal to act, and tries to take River for a “nice shuttle ride”.
This all makes the moment when Jayne is the first to respond to Mal’s call to misbehave all the more powerful. The time for questioning is over and Jayne is prepared to follow his captain no matter what the cost.
In Out of Gas, when Jayne thinks he is probably saying a final goodbye to Mal, his parting words to his captain are, “Okay. Well”. Perhaps he is saving precious oxygen, but I think it is more that at this point in their relationship, there simply isn’t enough respect or understanding between them to warrant anything more. By the end of the film, however, something has changed. Mal is not the only one to have found a belief worth fighting for. The final words we hear from Jayne suggest that he too believes that it is right and necessary to expose the truth about Miranda:
After all their conflict, Mal and Jayne are, at the last, united.
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