Re: B/W season 3 wallpaper (& "DMP" 'shippage)

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

Cas,

I think of all the not-in-the-script B/W moments, the "Dead Man's Party"
hug is the one that has to be most credited to Sarah and Aly (or
possibly Joss). Because one of James Whitmore, Jr.'s big failings as a
"Buffy" director is that he DOESN'T consider what his blocking says
about the characters and their relationships.

Cases in point: In "Dead Man's Party", he has Buffy (the superhero,
Ms. Responsible) LEADING the rush upstairs, abandoning Cordy, Oz, Devon,
Jonathan and various extras to the zombies below. You could at least
have had her herding the gang upstairs and then rushing after Joyce or
Willow to protect them.

And in "Beauty and the Beasts", he has Xander deliberately lay his head
on the textbook and nap during Oz-watch, rather than nod off from
exhaustion as Marti's script states, and then reinforces with the later
dialogue. Xander's excuse about "resting his eyes" looks just awful
when Whitmore had him choose to sack out, but that's not what the script
intended.

Since in both cases, Whitmore's direction focused more on moving the
plot (getting the gang upstairs, letting Oz-wolf possibly run free) than
considering the characters, I think he's an unlikely candidate to come
up with character-driven blocking, as in the B/W hug. So I'm giving
props to the actors.

Dan