Episode: Trash

In a wasteland of shattered rock, a naked Mal looks at his surroundings and mutters, "That went well." Our story begins seventy-two hours earlier. On a dusty planet Mal meets with his old friend Monty, a bear of a man he hasn't seen in a long time. Monty introduces Mal to his new bride, Bridgit…who turns out to be Saffron, the hustler who married Mal several months earlier and then attempted to swindle him.

The moment Saffron sets eyes on Mal she draws a weapon, as does Mal. They both freeze, face-to-face, gun-to-gun. As Mal and Saffron circle each other Saffron suddenly gets the upper hand, but she doesn't shoot him. The two punch each other, then grab each other's throats. Monty separates the pair, then listens to Mal as he recounts the way Saffron scammed him and almost stole his ship. Monty trusts Mal more than his own wife. He and his crewmen fire up their ship's engines and set course for outer space, leaving Saffron behind with Mal.

Saffron attempts to seduce Mal, but her efforts go nowhere. She then claims to have the perfect, big-time scam ready to go. She was going to cut Monty in on the loot but-she claims-Mal spoiled everything. Mal returns to the Serenity by himself with only a couple of crates in tow.

Later Inara complains that Mal hasn't been accommodating her client schedules, and business has suffered as a result. She then belittles Mal's recent attempts at scoring Alliance cargo, all of which failed miserably. His ego bruised, Mal returns to the cargo bay where he opens a crate…revealing Saffron curled up inside.

Saffron outlines the scam she mentioned earlier. The target is Durran Haymer, a big collector of Earth-That-Was artifacts. The most valuable of his possessions is called the Mexican, an original hand-held laser pistol. Durran lives on a private, heavily-guarded estate, but Saffron has the security codes for the entire area. Later Mal tells the rest of the crew about the heist, but Inara is certain the whole thing is a plot Saffron concocted to double-cross them.

The crew, except for Inara, agrees to assist Mal in pulling off the heist. They study a schematic of the Bellerophon estates where Durran Haymer lives. Later Mal and Saffron pilot the second shuttle to Bellerophon and land near Haymer's floating estate. Posing as flower delivery workers, the pair make their way to the back entrance where they use an enabler to open the door. As the estates use an automated garbage drone disposal system, the plan is to steal the gun and then toss it in the trash, then recover the gun once the disposal bin has been reprogrammed to dump it in a safe location… Isis Canyon, to be specific.