One of the big things that bothers me about revisiting Stargate: SG-1 is the way it utilises its guest stars and day players. It often feels like actors are specifically told not to listen to or respond to anything the protagonists do, which makes them feel a) all the same and b) like animated blocks of wood around which the protagonists act as opposed to people in their own right. Part of the reason this bothers me is because of the implied inhumanity, in which our heroes are the only real people with stories and inner lives and everyone else is an object to be moved around, and part of the reason is that I end up feeling sorry for the actors, who have very little acting to actually do. I find a lot of my other least faves have this same issue; NCIS is one that particularly bothers me for some reason. I once saw an episode with David Rees Snell that incensed me because of how little he was given to do, something that was particularly galling knowing that episode would have been filmed shortly after the finale of The Shield. Also, they gave him a shitty haircut.

What are TV shows you like that really utilise their day players? I’ve always admired Arrested Development for the way every single actor is given their own joke to play with that fits into the overall ensemble. Many people before me have noted how there are no real comic foils in the series – everyone, regardless of their importance to the narrative, is telling a joke, and that means giving every single person a role to play no matter how in the back they are. The most spectacular example of this is when Lindsey takes the staff of the Bluth Company on a field trip, and the underlying joke is that they all act like sheep being herded about. On top of the fact that all of them do act a little dazed and apathetic, there’s one bit of stage direction that’s always killed me: whenever they’re moved about, there’s always one guy trailing behind them trying to catch up, mirroring an early shot of sheep doing the exact same thing.

This also a positive quality of Joss Whedon shows, I find. The funny thing about his infamous dialogue is that it’s at its most effective applied to these spear carriers – not just in the sense that it conveys plot-critical information in a way that’s entertaining, but in that it conveys a whole world and character outside that moment. These are people with lives and opinions who will be doing things when we stop looking at them, and the actors all find fun ways of reading Whedon’s twisty dialogue. It makes it upsetting when a redshirt dies.