Whedon, himself, has stated on numerous commentaries that while he enjoys the gimmicks and playing with narrative styles - he knew that he had to focus on the emotional arcs of the characters, whenever he veered away from that - he would lose the story.

At the start of every season - he would plot out the emotional arc for each character - focusing on the title characters - and have the supporting ones echo that arc to some extent. And according to Espenson, Doris Egan, and Ken Levine's blogs this is screen-writing 101. You need to ask yourself - would the character say that? How does this push their arc forward? Does this push the overall story forward?

In Dirty Girls - they had a complex mystery they were writing, Whedon came into the room, erased their outline and told them to focus on how each character was dealing with Faith's reemergence into the story - and then focus on the mystery - how did it reflect on Faith and her relationship with Buffy. (At least that's what they said in the commentary, not entirely sure I saw that onscreen.)

RE: Project Runway, I'm afraid that Kenley may win. Which will annoy me, because she does not deserve to.