Bad director, good writer. Generally people either love all his stuff or hate all his stuff.

What do you think makes him a bad director?

Aside from Serenity, I think he's only directed selected episodes of his tv shows (plus a couple Office episodes). I've always found his episodes to be among my favorites on all his shows (plus I loved Serenity). Restless, The Gift, The Body -- three Joss-directed Buffy episodes that might be my top three in the show's run. Also Hush, Once More With Feeling, Prophecy Girl, Becoming, and Graduation Day. He directed A Hole in the World on Angel, an episode that made me hate him for what he did. He directed Objects in Space, my favorite Firefly episode.

I'm not saying your opinion is wrong or anything, it just seems so odd to me to see someone who enjoys his writing say that they hate his directing. On the plus side, you're prompting me to think more closely about his directing, separate from his writing.

He seems to be a fairly deliberate director. He knows what feelings or connections or ideas he wants his shots to evoke or work with, and he crafts his angles, his focuses, his movement, and his actors to meet those goals, shot after shot. Personally I find it enjoyable. Everything fits together and works together. Plus I enjoy his occasional fun "oner". I like his style. But I suppose the things I described might annoy others for some reason?

Personally I love the very specific things he goes after in all of his shots. Whether it's the symbolic freneticism and dynamic dream-sequences of Restless, the touching grace of Buffy's fall in The Gift, the painfully real reactions of every actor in The Body, or the epic oner that leads off Serenity, I always come away satisfied.

When I think about it, these are also things I enjoy about M. Night Shyamalan's directing, and most people seem to hate his stuff (I love it all except for The Happening, which was crap). That same deliberate sense of style, where each shot is constructed with care and purpose. That sense that each shot is saying, "Wait. Stop. Look at me. Think about this. Appreciate this." -- the fact that each shot is saying that in a medium (tv/movies) that does not allow you to stop, to look, to think, in a medium where each shot is soon followed by another and another, and yet still, despite this, still each shot is crafted with such care.

I dig that shit.