Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread

You mean them secretly sleeping together just to show Fury how it feels to have something important kept from him?!

Anyway, the show seems to get better. And I hope the Biscuit's character will be a recurring one.

 

I think "Old Mixer" has it closer to the mark with where I suspect those two story arcs are aiming. They may find the same kind of "bad secret-keepers" at the root of their respective troubles.

 

Here's a thing I hope to see, inspired by something Ward said to Skye.

It was something to the effect of every agent having a defining moment. Something that crystalized why they wanted to get into this line of work in a general sense. And we've now seen why Ward wants to protect people. I expect we'll see something of similar nature for each of the other members of the "Coulson Squad" in due time.

The next logical thing for each cast member in turn is this: why SHIELD specifically?

Each of these five agents could excel in their own way in some other organization in their own countries of origin. So why SHIELD instead of any of the other options available to them?

 

Skye will discover Coulson's secret and Coulson will discover Skye's secret (thus revealing both to the audience) but they will mutually decide that some secrets were meant to be kept and not reveal them to each other.

 

Maybe they don't wanna yield. They just wanna back SHIELD.

As for the forest ranger, I saw him as traumatized by the apparent death (or at least injury) of his friend, and that he was from a place where violence and vandalism is rare.

With Wonderland, the acid trip is the good part; it's the writing that's a little shaky.

There you go.

It's also on On Demand, for those who have that.

 

I would say it's worse. This episode was a mashup of, for example, a couple of Supernatural episodes. There wasn't a scene in it that wasn't predictable because the plot has been in other genre shows too many times.

So what might have made it worthwhile would be if it was executed better, with spot on acting, and clever dialogue. Those elements were missing.

More and more this series reminds me of Enterprise. High production values, generic characters, recycled plots. I want a show like this that is good, the way I wanted another good Star Trek series, but it just doesn't have anything going for it other than the Copyright.

 

She may have already had a variation on that moment via "The Girl in the Flower Dress". For "secret" in this instance, though, we'll substitute "private citizens' right to confidentiality should remain intact". It won't be difficult for Coulson or May to make the analogy/scaling-up work, though.

 

For Canadian viewers, try ctv.ca first for online viewing. It's what I do to avoid stomping on the ratings of the Rick Mercer Report. A good show in its own right that I've enjoyed for a long time.

 

I think one thing that's making it tough for me is that it seems that you have to have quite the understanding of the comic book characters to really understand what's going on.

I'm not a comic book guy, so maybe that's why I'm not impressed thus far.

 

Not from the UK.

And I find it doesn't bother me- none of the characters have grabbed me, and I'd put on about the same level as Atlantis, in that I'll have it on as fun background, but I don't feel compelled to watch it.

Whether that's because it's just a weaker show than the likes of Orphan Black or Sleepy Hollow (which I do make the effort to watch), or part of the whole being too depressed get excited about even my favourite things (such as Dr Who's anniversary), or because I haven't seen all the Marvel movies (in particular I haven't seen Thor, Thor 2, Iron Man 2 or 3, or Avengers Assemble) so maybe I'm missing something... I don't know. Some combination of all three, perhaps.

 

But none of the main characters on Agents of SHIELD are from the comics. Coulson was created for the movies (though he's recently been added to the comics universe), and the other five are original to this show. The only comics characters we've seen in the show so far have been guest stars: Maria Hill, Nick Fury, Franklin Hall, Jasper Sitwell, and Victoria Hand are the only ones I can think of.

Indeed, that was the whole idea -- to make a show that fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe but was standalone enough to be accessible to audiences unfamiliar with the comics and not necessarily familiar with the movies. That's why they created a whole new cast around Coulson rather than adapting existing comics characters. Their recently announced slate of comics-based shows for Netflix (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders) is taking advantage of a subscription service that allows a more niche-targeted show to work, but since this show is on commercial TV, it has to be designed with a more general audience in mind.

 

OK, thank you.

So, the bad guys are the comic book characters.

I guess that's a pretty smart way to present it.

I got the impression that characters like Sky and May had some sort of comic book history.

 

No, so far Franklin Hall is the only bad guy who's been from the comics. All the other comics characters I mentioned are SHIELD agents. Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) was the agent who introduced Ward to Coulson in the pilot and got teased about her art skills. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is the head of SHIELD who made a cameo at the end of episode 2. Victoria Hand (Saffron Burrows) was the agent in charge of "The Hub" and the one Coulson challenged about sending his people on a suicide mission. (She is a more antagonistic character in the comics, but seems more ambiguous in the show so far.) And Jasper Sitwell (Maximiliano Hernández) is the bald SHIELD agent that Simmons tased in the same episode. All of them except Hand are veterans of the Marvel movies; all of them were in The Avengers, Fury was also in the first two Iron Man films as well as Thor and Captain America, and Sitwell was in Thor and two of the Blu-Ray exclusive short films.

 

Exactly. It's a spy series set in the same universe as the Marvel movies, but it's not an adaptation of any of the comics, except to the extent that SHIELD as an agency has been a staple of the comics for decades. None of the main characters are from the comics and neither are most of the villains.

Most of the comic book references are just "easter eggs," cute little bits of name-dropping that comic fans will pick up on, but which are hardly essential to the plot.

Like the throwaway reference to "vibranium" this week. Comics fans know that's a rare metal from the BLACK PANTHER comics, but, the way they used it, it was just a random bit of technobabble. If you didn't get the comic-book reference, the scene played out just the same way.