Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D - Hope springs eternal, we're all Tantalus here

[Jerol]

As fucked as this show is, this is patently untrue. They have referenced the movies in every single episode except two. Are you saying they should keep doing this? - because I grew tired of that shit after like episode 3. Either they up the ante and actually get Scarlett in that catsuit and red wig, or they start making the references fewer and more meaningful.

I figured I would either be happy or disappointed by finally knowing what happened to Coulson, but now I'm mainly confused. I have no idea if it was just resolved or not. During the conversation with Shepherd Book, I kept thinking "are we building towards a revelation here, or is this just some sort of denouement?" What do people think? Was this just the first hint of what happened to him, or was it the pay-off?

I can concede that they do make references to the movies far too often but there's still this huge dancing around the elephant in the room. If there was one time that the name of the Black Widow was to be invoked, it was this one. Yeah, the references to Thor's big arms or Stark technology are just pandering fan services. But when the plot crosses something that could benefit from a reference (I know we'll never get a budget-busting cameo) they drop the ball.

I guess I should have been more explicit in saying that they have barely scratched at the Marvel SHIELD universe at all. It's like a poor man's Gotham Central at this point but with even less Batman. This show seems to be confined to the barest edge of that universe and it is very frustrating. Maybe if the acting and writing were better I wouldn't be thinking about these things. Maybe if this had one fraction of the humor, smarts, and pathos of big brother Whedon's better shows I wouldn't sit and dwell on these things. Maybe I'm better off on Tuesday night just not turning on the TV until Supernatural and Justified are on.

[The BlackBear]

Didn't she say 'her best interrogator' Is it not fair to assume Black Widow doesn't work for her? She could very easily work for another senior member of SHIELD or even Fury directly.

[Sci-2]

Maybe if this had one fraction of the humor, smarts, and pathos of big brother Whedon's better shows I wouldn't sit and dwell on these things. Maybe I'm better off on Tuesday night just not turning on the TV until Supernatural and Justified are on.

Watch Brooklyn 99 instead.

[denstorebog]

Wasn't Dr. Strange a neurosurgeon, btw?

[Winterfell is Burning]

Watch Brooklyn 99 instead.

Yep, just do that.

[Werthead]

Here in the UK, Channel 4 made a big deal about buying this show and showing it only 4 days after the USA to encourage people not to download. However, they've now given up and won't be showing the rest of Season 1 until mid-to-late February. Very odd. The viewing figures have gone down from 4.5 to 2.0 million, which is a big drop, but 2 million for Channel 4 at 8pm on a Friday is still pretty good.

[Jaxom 1974]

Clearly a hint. They never said anything other than he was dead for days and worked on. We have no idea what he "became" or how they did it.

I think SHIELD made a tactical error focusing on Coulson's resurrection. I don't think many of us cared.

Finally caught up. It was decent. It had the potential to be decent.

I'm suddenly caught up in the idea that, yes Coulson is important...the why is the mystery and while they tried to deepen it, layer the mystery, it's just a stretch. If they're going to play this mystery, it's hurt by not having Fury, not having Hill, not having a true (beyond talking about them) tie to the movies.

Right now, it's as if this whole Level Seven thing with Coulson, him picking his own team of misfits and being given this huge plane (something Fury made a big deal about in his two minutes on screen) is to keep Coulson busy and active. His team isn't out there fighting the good fight, they're a distraction. Their mission statement takes them to small fry assignments. Centipede isn't that big of a deal, supersoldiers not withstanding. Really, think about it, Hand says they've been neutralized all over the country, even if we didn't see them get taken down. It feels like a front. A lot of men and material moblized to find Coulson, though Hand doesn't seem to understand why this is happening as she thinks it's about Centipede too, but it's also about protecting the secret of why Couldon was resurected.

Mind you, again, this house of cards and need for deception really only holds togeher if you've got pieces in place to help make it seem more real, Fury, Hill, Stark, et. al. But since this is television, instead you can't have the nicer play things so you get what looks like an piecemeal, slipshod series of stories that wants to seem bigger than it is, but instead looks just poor.

(By the way, does a two second image of Sam Jackson in costume count against his contractual appearances to Disney/Marvel? :p )

[Warg Arry]

Here in the UK, Channel 4 made a big deal about buying this show and showing it only 4 days after the USA to encourage people not to download. However, they've now given up and won't be showing the rest of Season 1 until mid-to-late February. Very odd. The viewing figures have gone down from 4.5 to 2.0 million, which is a big drop, but 2 million for Channel 4 at 8pm on a Friday is still pretty good.

That happened here in Australia too. They made a big deal about it being direct from the US. Just hours after America has seen it. Announcing that their website will be something of a transmedia link to the show and all that is happening in the Shield world.

It kept up until the break. But now there isn't a return date up. All the channel is providing on their "discovery/transmedia" page is old interviews from the first half of the season. In fact it was put out there that episode 10 was the season finale. From what I can tell it wasn't doing too well here but still better than other shows that are still on air.

So what's the go with that? I guess it just wasn't making the money that they banked on.

[Werthead]

Agents of SHIELD stole some background graphics from Mass Effect 3.

What the hell?

Also, a fine rant from the comments:

How is it that a show that costs a reported hundred quadrillion pounds per episode is so technically inept? Every scene is lit like a cheap catalogue shoot. Every fight is edited in the laziest simplest way imaginable cut, kick, cut, punch, cut, kick again. A fight is meant to be a little story, they’re meant to flow. They’re not just a series of disconnected actions. I know that there are people in that cast who can handle a fight scene and make it look good. It’s painful to see them so utterly wasted.

Lets see what a Super-Soldier fight scene looks like in a show with roughly 10% of the budget of Agents of shield: http://youtu.be/nj3JLlxiVlU

That stamp to back of the knee at the midpoint is cooler than anything Agents’ has ever done. This is not a surprise of course, Arrow has slowly evolved from typical CW garbage at the start of season on to one of the best, most confident action shows on TV. Arrow seems to get Superheroes in a way that Agents just doesn’t. It’s propulsive where Agents is tediously slow. Every character has a storyline, driven by their character, and every time those characters appear their storyline moves forwards. The result is that Agents got through less plot in eleven episodes than Arrow gets through in eleven minutes.

Crucially, Arrow isn’t ashamed of being part of the DC universe and manages to mine the impossible breadth of the comics source material for interesting character conflict and of course entertaining fanservice villains. Appearances by The Huntress, Deadshot and of course Manu Bennet as Deathstroke have been series highlights. Managing to give the universe a sense of size and scope while also serving the stories of the central cast.

I could go on and on about this. About how the characters in Shield haven’t been developed at all after ELEVEN episodes! Seriously if anyone can answer me these simple, basic questions about Simmons I’ll recant my whole position. What does she want? What does she need? What is she willing to do to get what she wants? Why is she a Shield Agent rather than some other science job?

And on: Why is the blocking so bad? I mean, this is like, the thing you learn before you learn tv 101. But you don’t just have your characters all stand in a line you’re making a fucking poster. The reason being that it looks ridiculous because no one ever does that. Ever. You can do it in slow motion if and only if you’re Reservoir Dogs.

And on: Why is this show so dull! Nothing happens! There’re no stakes, the plot never moves forward. Even the Coulson reveal was a nothing reveal. They essentially revealed that he had been dead and returned to life. Which we knew. We still have no idea, how, why or crucially what they actually did to him. Eleven episodes, go to hell.

And on and on and on: Where’s the sense of fun that makes the Marvel movies actually work? Why does a show this expensive feel so cheap? Why is previously unflappable, understated Coulson always yelling? Why is Agent Grit Rockhard, Beef Manslab, Slab Meatchunk, Chest Chesterton, Scowl Borington even in this show? Why, for gods sake, in 2014 are we still treating “hacking” like computer magic? How about some cool real life hacks? Why is the pro privacy group mentioned in the pilot seemingly no longer around? Don’t they care that Shield is monitoring every phone, camera and e-mail? Well, I guess we don’t care about that in real life so why would they care on TV? (Person of Interest is a better show than anything else you’re watching right now). Why are Shield so incompetent? They have thousands of Agents but the big idea that lets rogue hacker Skye outsmart them is “follow the money trail” and the money trail isn’t even complicated it’s just a bank transfer from the guy they’re investigating direct to the main villain. Shield couldn’t do that level of detective work? *I* could’ve managed that!

Here’s a two minute clip from the Man from Uncle to close. http://youtu.be/22MXmzSRHcE

A spy show should should feel like that.

[red snow]

Here in the UK, Channel 4 made a big deal about buying this show and showing it only 4 days after the USA to encourage people not to download. However, they've now given up and won't be showing the rest of Season 1 until mid-to-late February. Very odd. The viewing figures have gone down from 4.5 to 2.0 million, which is a big drop, but 2 million for Channel 4 at 8pm on a Friday is still pretty good.

I think it's mainly because UK viewers don't really respond well to the "one week on, two weeks off" scheduling. Plus it's a pain in the arse for Channel 4 to fill that timeslot with anything other than reruns of shows. I think they'd have been best to stick it on E4 whenever and then go for a weekly schedule when they have enough episodes on C4.

Losing more than half the viewers must still worry channel 4 as well. Maybe they are assuming people don't care that much to bother downloading it. I can see the logic in that as there can't be that many rabid viewers around (and if they are they probably can't wait 3 days for the UK broadcast as is)

[Jon AS]

Agents of SHIELD stole some background graphics from Mass Effect 3.

What the hell?

That's my first reaction, too. But when you think about it it's not all that surprising that the show's art department can't even be bothered to design an office building as a backdrop. It's pretty much in line with the lazyness exhibited by the rest of the show.

And that rant is nice. While Arrow]/i] isn't quite what SHIELD wants to be it is definitely the superior show, even if it has its own flaws.

[Jaxom 1974]

Hey! At least Clark Gregg is an optimist...

They had strong ideas. They have the giant lexicon of the comic book universe and all these materials to gradually play into, and the really fun part for me is we saw a bunch of apparently standalone episodes with various “bad guys of the week,” and it’s all connected. It’s all part of a vast anti-S.H.I.E.L.D. conspiracy that’s going to be revealed and, I have a feeling, connects very deeply into the cinematic universe, to some of the stuff that might be involved in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (hitting theaters April 4).

[WeirwoodTreeHugger]

I thought tonight's episode was pretty good. It might be the first time I've felt invested in the show. It's certainly the first time I've had any craps to spare for Skye. We'll see if they keep it up.

[AverageGuy]

I thought tonight's episode was pretty good. It might be the first time I've felt invested in the show. It's certainly the first time I've had any craps to spare for Skye. We'll see if they keep it up.

I agree. I actually enjoyed the main storyline, though the Coulson/May plot was kind of underwhelming. However, that might be because I couldn't even get halfway through last week's episode, so all I know about Coulson is what they showed during the flashback at the beginning with someone operating on his brain. He's angsting because Shield brought him back to life and messed with his memory of dying? I'm not really sure what's so bad about that it's so much more traumatic than what he went through before putting this new team together, but I'm trying not to be too judgmental because I know I'm missing a large part of the story.

[Jon AS]

I agree. I actually enjoyed the main storyline, though the Coulson/May plot was kind of underwhelming. However, that might be because I couldn't even get halfway through last week's episode, so all I know about Coulson is what they showed during the flashback at the beginning with someone operating on his brain. He's angsting because Shield brought him back to life and messed with his memory of dying? I'm not really sure what's so bad about that it's so much more traumatic than what he went through before putting this new team together, but I'm trying not to be too judgmental because I know I'm missing a large part of the story.

No, you got exactly why Coulson was acting the way he did. Yes, it's really that lame.

That said, the episode was the best they've managed so far (I think I've said before that the one advantage of the low quality is that they have plenty of room for improvement), though Coulson's speech at the end was cringeworthy. "Big Brother is always protecting you!" Is this show sponsored by the NSA or something?

Also good to see that our team has managed to help create another potential supervillain. Maybe this special assignment Fury's got Coulson on is actually about creating future threats to help justify SHIELD's existence in coming years?

As to Skye: I think I joked she'd have to turn out to be an alien for her background to be interesting, and now she's at least an "0-8-4". Though how she was identified as such and not just as a random baby girl with unknown parentage (something presumably not that uncommon in China) is something the show will have to explain.

[Leofric]

I agree, this was their best episode so far up until the speech at the end. Even had a couple laugh out loud moments , such as May blurting out about Ward at the end of Coulson's no more secrets spiel.

I think Coulson angsting is partially wondering what other memories they may have removed beyond those related to his death. May tries to reassure him that he hasn't lost anything else.

[Mexal]

I agree with the general sentiment. This was definitely the first episode where I cared about anything and it was mostly related to Skye's story. That being said, what a HUGE monumental coincidence that they stumble on to her and she happens to have been protected by SHIELD as a 084.

I also enjoyed learning about the different SHIELD facilities and finally getting some kind of background on Fitz and Simmons.These might just be characters after all.

[Jon AS]

I agree with the general sentiment. This was definitely the first episode where I cared about anything and it was mostly related to Skye's story. That being said, what a HUGE monumental coincidence that they stumble on to her and she happens to have been protected by SHIELD as a 084.

To be fair: they didn't pick her up at random from the street, she had been targetting SHIELD and put herself in their crosshairs through that.

[Mexal]

To be fair: they didn't pick her up at random from the street, she had been targetting SHIELD and put herself in their crosshairs through that.

True.

[Madfunkymonkey]

I just read an interesting theory that Skye is Hela born on Earth. It would be funny if true.