However loving his parents may have seemed, he [Simon] knew that, scratch the surface, and they’d scream and run away. And here he’s confronted with a guy who is just everyting he thinks is wrong about a person, who comes back for him when the chips are down because he’s on his crew. To me, that’s a  real parent, and that is an extremely beautiful thing to get to, and I think it’s very real… But the most important thing about ‘Safe’ was that relationship.

Joss Whedon, Firefly: The Official Companion, Volume One

“Here we have ‘the hero shot’, and I have never used that term more literally in my life. We designed the entire set, and the entire sequence, for this moment. It has been pointed out to me, that I have a problem making fiction that doesn’t have super powered adolescent girls in it. I don’t care. I think that’s one of the sweetest things that I ever shot.”
Joss Whedon (Serenity, 2005) commentary