Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread

Actually two Chinese-American actresses. Ming-Na Wen is a native of Macau who's lived in the US since she was four, and Chloe Bennet is a half-Chinese native of Chicago who lived in Beijing for several years.

 

Fat S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents are not allowed in the field.

 

Seemed like Wen was making use of her own language skills in last week's installment. This hints at something of her character's career track history.

Skye, we know less about, but it looks as if we're being led to expect that her training in languages beyond English and computer programming has yet to begin.

 

By the by, found this stuff on Coulson over on Flickr. Might be of interest for what few backstory details there are...assuming that it's stuff that was actually worked up for the movie as props.

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/73658408@N04/7255574108/

 

I thought that trucker in "The Asset" episode was believable. Why not have Shield agents that don't look like Shield agents?

 

Agent Mack?

Oh yes. Betting that there are more like him scattered across the planet.

Also, he's part of the "Logistics" in the acronym.

 

The worst accusation that was made til this point was a charge of bad taste. This lunatic version of logic comes across as projection. Poor Ming-Na is indeed an experienced actress but on this show she's playing bitchy ninja, when she gets any lines at all. How many times does her character interact with Nerd and Nerdette and Sky, even Squarejaw? If you have really been watching the show but haven't noticed the best actress is only used as a prop, it's only because you're the one whose already dismissed her.

 

"We're diverse! We have an Asian! Look how diverse we are!"

I enjoy the show but to make the argument that this is a diverse cast is insane.

A good example is Grey's Anatomy. It's melodramatic nonsense but when you look at the cast you can see that the producers made at least a tiny amount of effort at diversity in age, race and body type. I wouldn't call any of them "unattractive" and they convey a sense of realism when it comes to the people you encounter in the professional world.

Square Jaw, Hacker Babe and the Wonder Twins all look like they just stepped off the runway. There's nothing inherently wrong with that when it comes to casting a TV show but I just don't see how you cannot notice a lack of diversity.

 

Depends on how you're defining diverse.

Age? Two older characters and four younger.
Sex? Three women and three men.
Ethic/Nationality? Two Brits and four North Americans.
Race? One Asian. Five Europeans.

 

Two Asians.

 

You've obviously never watched any of the CW show. Talk about ridiculously attractive casts.

 

Heh, that's what I've been hearing a lot of other people compare the SHIELD cast to.

 

One and a half Asians and Three and a half Europeans?

 

Chloe Bennet speaks Mandarin. I wouldn't be surprised if they gave her the chance to use it, as they did with Wen's Cantonese here.

You know... we weren't originally talking about ethnic diversity at all. We were talking about whether or not the whole cast was uniformly young and pretty. I was pointing out that Ming-Na Wen and Clark Gregg are a generation older than the rest of the cast. Diversity can be defined in diverse ways.

Two Asian-Americans, please.

 

Geoff drew a line between Nationality and Race that seems plausible despite some messy overlap, otherwise why would he call the rest of the team European in stead of European American?

Fitz and Simmons are probably predisposed to murder anyone who calls them European.

 

I think people are reading too much into Skye's blouse button.

The cast is somewhat diverse, but it could be more diverse. Maybe they'll add a token black, Hispanic, or LGBT character in Season 2.

 

Guy is correct. Five of the team's members have European ancestry and two have Asian. None, as far as I know, can trace their "racial" origins to the Americas. Since I'm unsure of the national origins of May, Ward, Sky and Coulson, I listed them as North American to cover the US and Canada.

Fitz might want to kill me for calling him a Brit.

 

Oh, I admit I probably got carried away. I'm a Star Trek fan.

 

Why? It's not like you called him English.