Joss Whedon's Greatest Hits

In honor of the 6^th biennial Slayage Conference now taking place in Sacramento, I have decided to name my picks for the top ten things Joss Whedon has personally done in the Whedonverse.  These are movies or TV episodes that he either directed, wrote, or co-wrote with his name on the credits.  Jane Espensen once said in a commentary that the frustrating thing about working for Joss Whedon is when someone says to you they liked the episode you wrote and they then mention their favorite line, it is always one added by Joss Whedon.  So he contributed to a lot of things, but these items are ones he put his name on.

  

1)         “Once More With feeling” episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Joss Whedon wrote the script and the lyrics and the music for this, considered by nearly everyone to be the best musical episode of a TV series ever made.  The songs are wonderfully written, the script makes several major revelations for the characters, and the cast all perform well (except Nicholas Brendan, who has no musical talent but is a real trooper).

2)         Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog

Whedon won an Emmy for this webisode that was so popular, downloads of the third installment broke the internet.  Neal Patrick Harris is wonderful as the title character, a wanna-be super villain always thwarted by Captain Hammer (a marvelously cheesy Nathan Fillion).  More excellent Whedon-penned songs and a third act that will rip your heart out.

3)         “Epitaph One” episode, Dollhouse

Yes, the Whedon project most people consider a failure produced one brilliant episode that, ironically, was never seen on TV as it was a season 1 series finale but the show was inexplicably renewed.  Whedon only contributed the story (screenplay was by his brother and his brother’s fiancé) but it is a griping tale of what would happen if the Dollhouse technology was taken to its logical conclusion.  Logical and harrowing.

4)         Serenity

Whedon’s first shot at film directing (and only one until The Avengers) is one of the best science fiction films of the past ten years, a homage to fans of the TV series Firefly yet accessible to non-fans as well.  The excellent cast (Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, and now-iconic SF actress Summer Glau) reprise their roles from the series. The movie resolves a major plotline from the series and explains much that needed explaining. 

5)         “Hush” episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Whedon got his first Emmy nomination for the screenplay of this episode, which is amazing in that there is none of Whedon’s trademark dialog for half the show!  Demons arrive in Sunnydale and take away everyone’s power of speech, which merely draws attention to the lack of communication the characters had been experiencing.  Plus the demons, known as “The Gentlemen,” are super creepy.

6)         “The Body” episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

A gut-wrenching episode about the aftermath of the unexpected death (by natural causes) of a central character.  There is nothing supernatural involved, just dealing with paramedics, funeral homes, and death.  Whedon should have gotten Emmy nominations for script and direction, and Sarah Michelle Geller’s acting is breathtaking.

7)         “Graduation Day parts 1 & 2” episodes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The culmination of the epic Season 3, when Buffy faced her most charismatic foe, the Mayor of Sunnydale who wanted to turn into a giant snake and devour the town.  Buffy has to deal with stopping him, saving her vampire-love Angel, and going mano-a-mano with another Slayer.  Oh, and graduating from high school.  Harry Groener was delightful as the Mayor; totally evil, but affectionate toward renegade-Slayer Faith and really, really concerned about the city’s infrastructure.

8)         “Waiting in the Wings” episode, Angel

Angel and his fellow demon-fighters take an evening off to see the ballet Giselle, only Angel realizes that the dancers are the same ones he saw a hundred years earlier.  Summer Glau, a classically trained dancer, plays the lead ballerina who has been forced to give the same performance over and over for a hundred years; “I do not dance,” she bemoans, “I echo.”  Throw in a couple of major plot revelations between the characters and some vintage Whedon humor and it is a classic episode.

9)         “Welcome to the Hellmouth/The Harvest” episodes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Whedon had to write a pilot episode for his series that made people forget the bad movie with the same name; mission accomplished.  The two-part pilot introduces the characters, sets the tone for the series, and creates Buffy’s first “Big Bad” in The Master.  The pilot demonstrates all of Whedon’s strengths as a writer; great plotting, excellent characterizations, and most of all his trademark dialogue (“Gee, could you vague that up a little?”).

10)       The Avengers

Who can argue with a worldwide gross of $1.5 billion?  Ok, you can.  But Whedon was given the helm of a $220 million budget despite only having directed one previous movie because no other writer in Hollywood could possibly integrate the stories of the various superheroes that make up Marvel’s The Avengers other than a comic book geek like Whedon.  The result may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but on a degree-of-difficulty scale Whedon nails the landing (the film is also better than both of the recent Hulk films, Thor, and Iron Man 2).