Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread

God no! That would wreck it for me. It's nice to enjoy a blond-free show.

 

Don't worry.. i don't. I'd just like to be pleasantly surprised once in a while by mainstream shows to take a risk and not cast hot, sexy young people but normal looking people (heck.. way back in Buffy about the only really attractive people were Gellar, Boreanaz and Carpenter, the rest were pretty much average looking people which i find preferable when it comes to heroes).

Yep, that was Zoolander. A movie so bad that it's actually good again.. i love it and friends and me occasionally quote the movie or give each other "The Look"

 

Well, Vampire Diaries is on the CW whose known for these kinds of shows which is why so many people are not-so-jokingly comparing SHIELD to a CW show.

 

At this point, probably most of it.

But I find it's best not to assume that the first half-dozen episodes represent the creators' true intentions for a series. I've just managed to get the DVD set of the 2007 Flash Gordon series, which has a reputation as a terrible show, but is actually a mostly excellent show that just had a bad beginning and drove most of its viewers away before it got good. The problem there was that the networks' conventional wisdom was that audiences only responded to Earthbound shows, so the early focus was mostly on Earth instead of Mongo where it belonged; but about 1/3 of the way through the season they shifted the focus increasingly to Mongo and it just got so much better and richer and had wonderful worldbuilding and compelling intrigue and moments of utter brilliance, and it felt like this was what the producers had wanted to do all along but had been pushed to avoid doing in the early episodes.

The problem is, network suits have their own narrow preconceptions about what works in a show, so showrunners often have to appease the suits to get a show sold, compromising what they want to do and instead making the early episodes conform to the kind of standard, formulaic mold that makes the suits comfortable. And then, over time, they gradually sneak in more of the real meat of the show and let it assert its true character at last. See also Dollhouse -- the first few episodes were in the vein of a standard case-of-the-week show, but as it went on, that gave way to a more intricate and serialized arc. Although by that point, many viewers had already decided that the show was too episodic to be interesting and had given up. The same goes for CBS's Threshold, another show that was decried for its dull, episodic early episodes even though it soon unfolded a really deep and intricate arc after most viewers had already given up on it. For whatever reason, the network suits can't figure out that their narrow expectations about what makes a show work actually hurt the popularity of a lot of shows, particularly genre shows, which suffer even more from the pressure to conform than a police procedural or medical drama would.

So I've learned that it's a good idea to be patient with a new genre show -- to expect that the first, ohh, half-dozen episodes are made to appease the network and it's the later episodes that are made to satisfy the audience. We may not have seen the true potential of this show yet.

I think you're giving Anthony Stewart Head too little credit. I recall hearing that female Buffy fans found him quite the sex symbol; and before BTVS he was known for appearing in a popular series of romance-themed coffee commercials.

And what about Seth Green, James Marsters, Juliet Landau, Amber Benson, Emma Caulfield, Marc Blucas, Michelle Trachtenberg, Clare Kramer, Eliza Dushku, Alexis Denisof, Mercedes McNab, etc.? There were a lot of really good-looking people on that show.

 

The problem isn't that us fans aren't giving it a chance, but that the suits will the ratings plummet and... well, that's that.

Can't say I found any of those three particularly attractive - Landau, Dushku, Hannigan, yes...

 

Except that "the suits" work for ABC, which is owned by Disney, which owns Marvel and has a lot of money invested in the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Besides, the ratings plummet because the audience stops watching. If the audience sticks with the show and gives it a chance to improve, then the ratings don't plummet. What I'm saying is that if the fans were more patient, if we understood that the early episodes kind of have to be written off as an exercise in network appeasement and that the really good stuff tends to come later, then maybe fewer good shows with slow starts would get cancelled.

 

It was always Alyson Hannigan for me, but it's a matter of personal preference...

 

I'd keep Chloe Bennet. She's an interesting character and too much of a focus to drop at this point.

 

Juliet Landau is now (audio) Romana III.

A face for radio?

 

Marvel fans will give it a chance, genre fans might, ordinary TV viewers... staying away in droves.

 

It's the name.

What could have been better?

Coulsen's Howling Commandos?

Who want's to kill a Superhero?

Spies Vs. Capes?

The Magic Bus?

The Grand World of Marvel?

S.H.I.E.L.D.? Fuck Yeah!?

 

Wonder if anyone from SHIELD is going to cameo in The Dark World? I'm guessing if so, at least Coulson.

 

That may be the problem with her character. I agree that she's interesting, but the series tries to paint her as an unfortunate, unlucky person when that is clearly not how she's portrayed. She's lived all this time in a van? Not buying it. She's all by herself? Tell that to the guy she knew so well that they literally had sex in less than a minute upon seeing each other.

Skye is really starting to come off more as a "Creator's Pet" that everyone involved with the show wants us to like, and they're going out of their way to make us like her. It's a bit too much, especially since everything that's sad and unfortunate about her isn't conveyed well at all.

 

Coulson is still dead to level 6 and below.

Having him in the movie while trying to "stay dead" could be funny.

 

Unless "Tahiti" was really the Asgardian healing room.

Hey it saved Fandral after he'd been stabbed through the heart.

 

"Tahiti is a magical place."

 

The people who want a serialized arc have had plenty thrown to them by this show. Maybe other people are no more interested in Coulson's metaphysical status than I am? Maybe the (to me invisible) specialness of Sky just isn't enough to make Rising Tide real, much less threatening. The only real representative after all is Sky. If she's just a bimbo, then Rising Tide doesn't matter. But the dead/alive and Rising Tide arcs have been there from the beginning. Really, the extremis doctor reappearing withing five episodes isn't much of a wait either.

Threshold is not a good example because it didn't start with a big audience, then rapidly lose it. It never had good enough ratings (for CBS, at least.) Flash Gordon does seem to be the better example, although it just may have looked too cheap. I quit after the "Hawkmen" appeared, from sheer embarrassment at the thought someone might walk into the room and catch me watching. That happened once when River was mad-libbing on Firefly and I really don't care to repeat that kind of experience.

 

That's my thinking.

 

So your suggestion is to watch everything on the off chance that it gets good if it stays on the air long enough?