although I agree the commentary on "Hell's Bells" is the worst.commentary.ever

I just saw this yesterday and IT WAS SO BAD. They should have taken lessons from Tim - commentary for the blind is better than nothing. I was disappointed because normally I love writer's commentary - they almost always provide great insights.

The only thing I got out of the Hell's Bells commentary was that 1) Joss, as usual, wrote my favorite scene and 2) I like the idea of mirrors, which I hadn't picked up on before. That's not much for 40+ minutes.

1) Joss, as usual, wrote my favorite scene

Which was that? I must not have been paying a lot of attention. I was tired.

The scene between Buffy and Spike about her pain at seeing him with skank-girl. It just seems so real to me and I love how well both of the actors deliver the lines.

It turns out disc 2 of my S6 set is defective, and since I got it from Amazon I have to send the WHOLE THING back :-(.

I wouldn't bother except that's the disc with OMWF and "Tabula Rasa" on it.

So, I won;t be watching the commentaries for a while...

Can't you get a replacement and send the defective one back when the good one comes? That's what I did with a similar problem with a SImpsons set. I think I just e-mailed Amazon and they suggested it.

I dunno. I didn't email them, just went through the steps on the web site to get the return label. I'd rather send the bad one back first anyhow, to make sure I don't forget to send it back and end up paying for two sets.

1) Joss, as usual, wrote my favorite scene

What kills me in the commentary is that there is no information on why Joss wrote that scene, or what RRK had written in place of it. I do remember reading around the time the episode came out that Joss re-wrote the scene, but I can't remember if the actually filmed the original scene and re-shot Joss' scene, or if the re-write came earlier.

Information of that nature is what commentary tracks are supposed to be for, IMHO.

Jeff - I couldn't agree more. I'm always hoping for some insight or point that I missed the first time around. I think one of them says at the beginning of the commentary that Emma was supposed to be there that day. It made me wonder if maybe the two that showed up were hoping that she would have planned something to say.

If there's no insight to be added, then skip the commentary and do another one for another ep. instead.

I do remember reading around the time the episode came out that Joss re-wrote the scene, but I can't remember if the actually filmed the original scene and re-shot Joss' scene, or if the re-write came earlier.

I think the original scene was shot, Joss didn't like it. Wrote a new one and they reshot. The original scene had Spike and Buffy snarky and antagonistic towards each other. I could be wrong about the reshoot - Joss might've just disliked it in the script phase - which kind of seems more likely to me, since he does see each script before shooting.

I don't know if that scene was reshot, or not. I know the end of S7's Beneath You (a Petrie script) was rewritten by Joss and reshot. In that case, I also remember that everyone hated the blue sweater on James, so we had to suffer through him shirtless. Skin smoldering as he leaned against the cross...
*cough*
Where was I?