voices—cracks, rises, and whispers—more prominent to the audience, to close the distance between the actors and the viewer. Conversely, the scene in which Dawn is told of Joyce's death was shot through a large classroom window, muffling Dawn's emotional reaction, to isolate Buffy and Dawn from the class and the audience. Several moments of silence follow this scene. Whedon shot the conversation up close several times, filming over-the-shoulder and reaction shots, but eventually went with a more distanced point of view. Michelle Trachtenberg later said of this effect, "obviously you know in the end result there was no sound and I thought that was actually one of the most brilliant ideas [he's] ever had because it allows everyone to sort of attach their own emotional plug into whatever might have happened in your life. I think it allowed the audience to really connect with Dawn for the first time." Presenting the episode without any non-diegetic music was Whedon's way of denying the audience any comfort, forcing them to discern their own meanings from the characters' actions and words. As two musicologists write about this absence, "Without music's acoustic balm, all our empathetic attention is on the characters and their state of bewilderment ... Music would provide a conceptualization and a catharsis ... but a catharsis at this point would in some measure trivialize the loss." Television critic Gareth McLean writes that this decision is "a move that makes it more courageous than, for instance, ER. There were no soaring strings or plaintive piano to trigger an emotional response. Instead the soundtrack took in the ambient noises of wind chimes, doors squeaking, footsteps on carpets. Conversations were stilted and awkward, but the spaces in between always mattered." Reception Critics praised the episode, and have continued to count it as one of the finest episodes of television ever broadcast. David Bianculli in the New York Daily News commends the acting abilities of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Michelle Trachtenberg, Alyson Hannigan, and Amber Benson. "The Body", according to Bianculli is "Emmy-worthy ... It also will haunt you—but not in the normal way associated with this still-evolving, still-achieving series." Television critic Alesia Redding and editor Joe Vince of the South Bend Tribune write, "I was riveted by this show ... This isn't just one of the best Buffy episodes of all time. It's one of the best episodes of TV of all time." Redding adds,