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Writers Ranked by Taste

This page ranks writers based on the average quality of their episodes according to Loyalists and Jumpers. Writers who wrote or co-wrote only one or two episodes each are combined into the "Other Writers" category. Teams who write with each other exclusively are treated as if they are a single writer. All data below take into account when an episode aired and whether it was one part of a two-part episode. More detail is on the Writers Ranked page.

The Joss bonus represents how many more points an episode that this person wrote would get if Joss Whedon wrote it instead. High numbers suggest that Joss Whedon could have done a much better job with the episodes that the writer wrote. Lower numbers suggest that the writer is almost as good as Joss Whedon. A negative number means that people with that taste regard the writer as being even better than Joss Whedon. By definition, Joss Whedon gets a 0 on this statistic. This interpretation assumes that the writer of the episode is the main cause of the episode's quality.

Rank Loyalists Jumpers
Writer Joss
Bonus		 Writer Joss
Bonus
1 Joss Whedon 0.00 Joss Whedon 0.00
2 Drew Goddard 0.21 Drew Goddard 6.64
3 Other Writers 24.82 Other Writers 18.09
4 Douglas Petrie 27.81 Jane Espenson 22.87
5 Steven S. DeKnight 27.87 Douglas Petrie 25.55
6 Marti Noxon 28.79 David Greenwalt 26.05
7 David Greenwalt 30.53 Marti Noxon 31.21
8 Jane Espenson 31.88 Dean Batali & Rob Des Hotel 32.71
9 Rebecca Rand Kirshner 33.60 David Fury 34.76
10 David Fury 36.29 Steven S. DeKnight 35.76
11 Dean Batali & Rob Des Hotel 39.18 Rebecca Rand Kirshner 38.27
12 Drew Z. Greenberg 43.46 Tracey Forbes 45.09
13 Tracey Forbes 44.73 Drew Z. Greenberg 46.24

In general, Loyalists and Jumpers are similar in the writers that they like or dislike. Both like episodes written by Joss Whedon, Drew Goddard, and by writers who worked on only one or two episodes. Both tend to dislike episodes written by Drew Z. Greenberg and Tracey Forbes.

The data above show that Loyalists prefer Steven S. DeKnight episodes (especially "Seeing Red" and "Dead Things"), Drew Goddard episodes (especially "Lies My Parents Told Me" and "Dirty Girls"), and Rebecca Rand Kirshner episodes (especially "Touched," "Hell's Bells," and "Help") more than Jumpers do, and Jumpers prefer Jane Espenson episodes (especially "Band Candy"), writers of one or two episodes (especially "The Pack," "Halloween," and "The Zeppo"), and Dean Batali & Rob Des Hotel episodes (especially "The Puppet Show") more than Loyalists do, although Loyalists prefere Espenson's "End of Days" more than Jumpers do.

Overall, the writer of a particular episode explains 14.4% of episode quality for Loyalists and 13.3% for Jumpers.

This page was last modified on June 6, 2005