It should have everything going for it — direct ties to the highly popular Marvel Cinematic Universe … Agent Phil Coulson in the driver's seat … Joss (and Jed) Whedon in the executive producer slots …
But, honestly, while I've enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than anything I've seen advertised during the commercial breaks on whatever the hell network it runs on, it's tended toward … well, the amusing, the somewhat interesting, the bit intriguing, the promising, the … mediocre.
Tonight's episode, "The Magical Place," was a tick upwards, distinctly. We got deeper into the Coulson / Tahiti subplot, a major villain was involved and dealt with, there was a portentious epilog … it was all fun and interesting and entertaining.
Just not as much as it could or should have been.
The "Coulson's team vs Victoria Hand's by the book methods" major conflict was weak. The team seemed to be going through the motions. Skye had some nice moments, but even her subplot just didn't have the tension and element of fear of actual failure that it should have. The Coulson stuff was powerful, yes, but as much expository as anything else — it didn't have the punch in the gut, slap to the face aspect, that it should have had (or, to the extent it did in a couple of scenes, it should have had so much more).
It wasn't bad by any means. It was just good … and not great in a way that an episode with so many pay-offs should have been.
I really don't know the answer, if I were the showrunner. Swapping out/in cast members feels like a desperation move, even though one of the problems is that the "team" still doesn't feel like one. Amping up the suspense and "Who can you trust?" vibe is a tricky move that might simply be an un-nuanced cranking of the volume to 11 if not handled well.
One thing that might help is more vigorous ties to the Marvel Universe. You still have to explain what's going on to the straights, but, honestly, aside from some Avengers name-dropping, references to the "Avengers" movie, and, of course, Nick Fury and Phil Coulson, this could be "ABC's Agents of SECRET" and you'd never know the difference. Why "Centipede" instead of "Hydra" or "AIM"? Is the Clairvoyant someone we know (and, if so, why be so coy; and, if not, why not)?
That kind of thing won't make up for other flaws in the writing and acting, but it will at least generate a bit of buzz. And maybe the answer to the other is to get Joss to take a few weeks off of whatever new project he's on and focus some creativity on this show.
On the other hand, this was only episode 11 of the show. I've been doing a "Babylon 5" rewatch of late with my daughter — and, honstly, the first dozen-plus episodes of the first season are a hot mess, with some glimmers of goodness but lots of awkward ensembles, dubious newbie acting, and contrived plots. Sometimes it takes a while for things to gel, for actors and writers and producers to see what works and what doesn't — even (or perhaps especially) if you have a master plot in mind.
I'm still willing to go along with the show. Heck, even at its current level, I'm happy enough to plot along. Clark Gregg could just come on and read the phone book and I'd be sufficiently entertained. But I definitely want more. I want this to be a show I hear people talking about excitedly, not one I hear people complaining about or being bored by. I don't know how much patience the network (ABC, of course) has, but I'd be getting worried about now, or considering when I can ratchet up whatever my master plan is.
I've likewise been disappointed by the show. I can't seem to care much about the characters & the plots are forgettable.
Yes, and yes.
The characters are the most disappointing. Fitzsimmons should be endlessly entertaining, but he's being jerked around into a he-man and she's still doing the clueless academic. May remains one-noted, even if that's a nice note. Ward is a retread of Rigsby on "The Mentalist," but less interesting. Skye is being pushed too heavily as the outsider-you-can-relate-to, and ends up coming across as petulant and Mary Sue. The only one I really give a damn about is Coulson, and that doesn't make an ensemble show.
It's all about as awkward as — well, that picture.
I agree with a lot of your points here and, regardless, I'll keep watching. If, for no other reason, I remember how weak the first couple of seasons of Buffy:TVS were and how much I went on to really enjoy the show. (as well as Angel )
My main gripe is the deus ex machina , I mean Skye. It seems that a lot of the episodes have focused on her saving the day…for whatever reason.
I'm not sure if it's some sort of veiled jab at law enforcement in general, the NSA, the CIA, or whomever and saying, "Hey look, a street hacker can come in and do your monkey jobs."
Or, I could just be reading waaay too much into it.
Either way, I still feel she's the weakest character in the group and wouldn't mind, in the slightest, if Galactus came in as a guest star and stepped on her.
Just don't bring her to Tahiti ( It's a magical place )
I actually thought Skye was the most interesting character of the bunch, because she was the only one that wasn't one-dimensional.
I think, so far, she's the one they've put the most development into, yes, but I can still do without her.
+Mark Means Actually, I think all the characters have had their deus ex machina moments. Skye did her hack-fu and figured out the bad guy plot! Fitzsimmons built a widget (literally ex machina ) and let them do what was needed! May and/or Ward were able to punch out the bad guy of the day!
But, yes, Skye has gotten most of the attention this way — and I think it's less political than her being the "fish out of water / free spirit / only one not suborned by the system" character, and thus having the agency (so to speak) to go outside the rules and fix things.
Well, we like it a lot at our house, if only for the opportunity to shout “Crazy Ivan!” and giggle uncontrollably.
Heh. Yeah, we shouted “Crazy Ivan” last night, too.
Basically sums up my feelings on the show. I was prepared to love it… but I just like it, and I still can't put my finger on what's missing.
Like you mentioned, casting could be an issue, or it could be a writer issue. When Fitzsimmons was introduced, I expected the duo to become the break-out characters of the series, even eclipsing Coulson, But now it's like the creative team doesn't know what to do with them.
I also think they either need to strengthen the connection to the Marvel universe or let it go… aside from the name of the show. It's almost cruel. I'll be watching, fairly entertained, and then someone drops a reference to Thor's hammer or something. And then I remember the movies. And then the series seems even flatter.
This Q&A with the creators — http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=50103 — was done before last night's place. It's largely content-free, but it's clear they are hearing the criticism; whether or not they can or do act on it (or should) is another matter.
Skye is Chloe from Smallville, Claudia from Warehouse 13, Felicity from Arrow, etc. Everything about her character is lazy writing…she's a cliche.
NOTE: I haven’t watched last night’s episode, so one or two points here may be invalid or have been addressed a little bit (but I doubt it).
When they first announced Agents of SHIELD, I thought, “Who the hell cares about mid-level agents running around cleaning up super hero messes? I want to see super heroes MAKING the messes!” But we’re not even getting that.
What makes SHIELD interesting at all is its duplicity. It is so totally the NSA that it’s not even funny…protecting people so hard that sometimes (a lot of times?) they cross the line. We get a tiny smidge of that with Hand, but it seems less like SHIELD and more like a rogue element that Coulson’s crew is going to fight against…when it should be the other way around. Coulson’s crew should be the rogues fighting, like Captain America, to steer the helicarrier away from its dark path.
On top of that, give me some super-powered villains–not poor schmucks who accidentally or are tricked into using some alien tech to maybe do something bad even if they didn’t intend to be bad. The agents could spend all kinds of quality time chasing down bad guys and putting them in the Raft or the Cube or (heaven forbid getting that far into FF territory) Negative Zone Prison Alpha. Then watch them all escape for a big season finale.
Or something. Pardon me while I go watch Arrow.
@Solonor – Yeah, the disconnect from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is disheartening. Part of that, I get the impression, is that the MCU is actually a lot narrower than most folks think — as the showrunners note in the interview I linked to a few comments above, at the time of “The Avengers” there are only two super-powered humans known in the _world:_ Cap and the Hulk. The rest is tech (Iron Man, Hawkeye), skill (Hawkeye, Black Widow, Hydra), or alien (the Asgardians, now the Chitauri). That’s it. So there’s not as rich a background as one might like to draw from — and apparently the folks running the MCU are keeping the show on a short leash in that fashion. I understand that, though I think it’s a mistake.
(The Spidey-verse of movies, in any iteration, doesn’t apply here. Alas.)
I do think that, tied to what we’re probably going to see in Cap 2, SHIELD is going to be reflective of a lot of the darker side of the (intern)national security regime. Some of that came out in last night’s ep, though not shockingly so given some of what we’ve already seen and know. I think one possibility is you’re going to get Coulson’s team as the rogue good guys against a dark (or murky gray) SHIELD. That’s fine, and certainly needs a slow build-up — but it’s also well-trodden ground in both the comics and in eleventy-dozen spy movies.
+Thom Miller I actually thought she was a scosh better last night, both in some of her actions (the training is finally paying off), her planning (getting around the bracelet problem), and in her approach (not everything is tackled by keyboard). I had problems with it, too, but I thought it showed some improvement from "Untrustworthy but lovable hacker girl and non-SHIELD audience perspective avatar" Lass.
Dave, I’ve been really disapointed in AoS, I keep waiting for it to pick up and do something…anything.
It really pales in comparison to Sleepy Hallow, which has done a WAY better job of character development, working old tropes into new the show in really interesting ways. I mean, the Sin Eater was about the best done bit of that trope I have seen, and the writting has been all sorts of fantastic.
It is all the things that AoS is not, and that is very sad for a show headed up by Whedon, with whom I am even more disapointed in for not making the show something other than “what stupid thing will Skye do this week”.
@bd – Agree fully on “Sleepy Hollow”. They’ve created a vivid backstory, they’ve been visually creative, they’ve developed some excellent characters, they’ve had a hell of a lot more tension and uncertainty and sense of risk than MAoS has.