Re: Re: "As You Were" (DEM)

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DEM wrote:

>[Joss] directs SMG better than Petrie does. Sarah came off far too
much like her earlier "no-yes" Buffy self.

Exactly. If this is the Big Change, there should have been a firmer
demarcation in the performance. Particularly because Buffy hasn't been
correct in any of her prior evaluations of B/S, if she's Finally Figured
It Out, then I needed to see a difference in the performance.

I think Petrie's direction of SMG in "Flooded" was pretty flat, too.
I'm not a big David Solomon booster, as many may remember, but in "After
Life", there was a nice build in Sarah's performance, as Buffy gradually
recovered from total disassociation, to the point where her "happy" act
when she "thanked" Willow was believable. Then in the final scene,
Solomon got SMG to convey pain and depression (and a hint of anger)
without replicating the earlier "dazed" Buffy, either in energy or
style.

However, she's very one-note in "Flooded", and in fact at a lower energy
level than at the end of "After Life".

(OT, he didn't do such a good job with Aly Hannigan, either. While
she's her delightful self most of the ep, Willow's "supervillain" line
in the kitchen is so out of tone with the rest of the scene, many people
thought she was possessed or schizoid, not power-mad.)

>Perhaps she was going for quiet resolve

What makes this annoying is that the directors of the last two eps have
pulled off great "quiet resolve" moments for Buffy--James A. Contner in
"Faith, Hope, and Trick" and Michael Gershman in "Passion" and
"Consequences".  

Frankly, I think the directing assignments have been kind of botched.
What on earth is Nick Marck, who excels at fast-paced stuff ("Something
Blue", "Fool For Love", "Life Serial") doing stuck with an atmospheric
creep piece like "Doublemeat Palace"? That one screams for Solomon and
his love of classic horror. Give Marck "Dead Things" or "Older and
Far Away", instead.

Of course that's the problem with writer-directors: you can't give
Petrie a different ep than his own to helm. Okay, so Joss directed
"Untouched" and David Greenwalt did "Bad Eggs" and "The Wish" from other
people's scripts, but mostly writer-directors do their own stuff.

Is David Grossman directing Rebecca Kirshner's script again this week?
He hasn't really had to deal with the Season 6 Buffy yet ("Bargaining",
"Tabula Rasa"), so we'll see how he handles it.

Dan