Firefly: People: Jayne
This is a big, tough thug. He’s been billed as thoroughly unpleasant and who the hell can blame him!? This poor, ruthless, mercenary, thug-geezer has a girlies name! I mean, yer hardly going to grow up to be effeminate with a name like Jayne are you? It’s like Fred in Angel, she’s hardly masculine.
If you were to meet Jayne in a pub you might feel tempted to ask if he’s any relation to the Boy Named Sue that Johnny Cash likes to sing about. Or possibly something like, ‘What’s a big rough-and-tough girl like you doing in a place like this?‘ But, you’d probably just move to the other side of the bar.
Before the show started, Jayne was promoted as being a mercenary. And this he certainly is. He is supposedly big, tough and unpleasant….. but personally, I think he’s GREAT! He is that sort of shallow talks-before-he-thinks character that has some great lines and funny comments (usually at someone’s expense).
He also fancies Kaylee like mad! – yes he does! In the first few shows we’ve seen Jayne chastise Kaylee and bear a grudge against the object of her affection, Simon.
IN the pilot episode when Kaylee was inquiring about Simon’s profession, Jayne said, “Ol’ Kaylee here is just wishin’ that you were a gynaecologist.” A completely uncalled-for comment that made most of us gasp.
He is very good in a battle and it is for this reason that Mal has him on board. He’s a hired gun and always accompanies Mal (and Zoe) on missions.
There is some speculation about Jayne’s trustworthiness. I haven’t actually seen Jayne do any traitorous deeds, he did come close to it in the pilot episode when a lawman tried to bribe him, but I don’t think he succeeded.
Herc on the other hand (from Ain’t it Cool News) thinks that Jayne is one of the better characters of the show (he was lucky enough to see the pilot before us) something that we wont actually see until well into the first season (?!?!)) and rates the acting talents of Adam Baldwin very highly.
And others think so too! Adam has been in such films as Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” (1987) and “Guilty by Suspicion” (1991), as a goon purporting to be an FBI agent. He also appeared in Lawrence Kasdan’s “Wyatt Earp” (1994) and the blockbuster hit “Independence Day” (1996). He has also gone on to participate in numerous other roles in TV and film.
Adam Baldwin is absolutely not related to the seemingly huge Baldwin acting clan. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. He’s been in lots of stuff before, most notably…. Hmmm, well, near enough any big, rough and tough geezer in many films and TV shows. This poor sod is, because of his hulking figure, unlikely to be cast as the ‘little gay bloke’ in Friends.
He’s also exactly 6 feet 4 inches tall and did you know that he is an Alumnus of New Trier Township High School East, Winnetka, Illinois? If you were to ask him what his proudest moment is (he probably wouldn’t tell you) but he may just let it slip that he won the Celebrity Golf Association Tour’s Orlando Classic in February 1997.
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