Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread

[Guy Gardener]

AIM "seemed" to originate without any stoking from Hydra.

Fall of Hydra seemed to be an indicator to merit the end of World War 2, more so than it's specialized collapse predating or postdating the fall of the Third Reich.

It's just a question of if Hydra persisted past the death of the Red Skull and Captain America.

 

[theenglish]

Except Hydra is (apparently) gone. In the second episode, Coulson's ex made a reference to the fall of Hydra. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out the just went underground, but as far as anyone knows they're not an issue anymore.

HYDRA is already set to appear in the Captain America movie, so they are far from gone.

 

[Guy Gardener]

One. Just because it fell, it doesn't mean that it couldn't have bounced.

Two. Cut one head off, two more grow back.

 

[Trekker4747]

One. Just because it fell, it doesn't mean that it couldn't have bounced.

Two. Cut one head off, two more grow back.

But enough about your sex life!

 

[Nick Ryder]

I'm kind of hoping that eventually we'll start to see more of the groups and organizations from the comics just obviously adapted to fit the MCU. I suppose they wanted a few episodes to let the cast have a chance to get their feet wet before they start devoting screen time to building up the bad guys - after all with only what? About 120-ish minutes of screen time to get the main cast introduced and give them some time to do something - if they would have started building the bad guys up too much too early, we'd be getting like 20 minutes of bad guys and about 20 minutes of the good guys to try and like them.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I'm just waiting for the Season 3 episode that follows around a Hydra team trying to grab the Alien tech before Coulsen's squad.

 

[sojourner]

^"Cops" shaky cam style?

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I'm just glad it's not as bad as Torchwood.

 

[Forbin]

So what the two of you are saying is that if someone else who is not the two of you wants to make a constant 60 minute block in the week to have a steamy extramarital affair, all they have to do is show the wife Marvel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and that they are sorted with 60 minutes of complete abandoned freedom to play around inside of?

Really?

really?

Because that's not cool.

Well, I'll still be in the house. Just downstairs in my workshop watching. So you'll have to be vewwy quiet.

 

[Vendikarr]

Don't know if somebody's already brought this up, but regarding the Coulson/LMD theory, wouldn't it tie in nicely with the established MCU (and his fixation with old things) if he turned out to be Phineas Horton's synthetic man...?

Post 442

 

[DEWLine]

^And there could be a connection as soon as the upcoming episode, what with those guys in the red masks....

Been wondering about that.

We still don't know where/when Schmidt vanished to towards the end of The First Avenger, right?

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

^And there could be a connection as soon as the upcoming episode, what with those guys in the red masks....

Been wondering about that.

We still don't know where/when Schmidt vanished to towards the end of The First Avenger, right?

Right. Caps said he is dead, but I think he was mistaken, since Thor and Loki use the cube in a similar way to go back to Asgard.

Just watched the Marvel One-Shot "Agent Carter".
That was a fun film and is related to the show in a minor way.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Skull has been hanging out in Asgard, finds some golden apples and stops ageing?

The Skull has been hanging out in space (on planets in space.) takes space vitamins and his life expectancy is quintupled?

Hmmm...

Remember Rama Tut finding Doom in the Timestream, thinking his armour is cool and becoming Kang?

 

[Turtletrekker]

Or the Red Skulll transferred his mind into Robert Redford's body.

 

[Forbin]

^Damn, Guy, I've been reading marvel since the 60s and I don't remember half that stuff.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Have the retconned Nathaniel Richards being Dooms secret father?

Because that really messed up Kang's back history.

 

[gblews]

Shorter seasons work well for seriels or shows that are strongly arc based. I don't consider well-written stand alone episodes to be filler at all. Many shows have used season arcs but also included outstanding individual episodes.

Season three of Buffy is the gold standard for this kind of thing, IMHO, with the main season arc existing mainly as a slow burn in the background of some early episodes, interspersed with the occasional pivotal episode and undergoing a gain in momentum as the season progressed. As such it made a virtue of the season length (22 episodes). I'll be surprised if this approach isn't taken in Agents Of SHIELD.

Yeah, Buffy set the standard that has been followed with others in a quasi-serialized setting (notably with the new Doctor Who, but also with shows like Burn Notice that usually had a more overt ongoing plot at the beginning and end of episodes before a stand alone episode in the middle).

For the record, the X-Files actually set the gold standard for this approach. X-Files was doing it better and before Buffy. No offense to Buffy. Just binged the entire 7 seasons for the first time, on Netflix and I liked the show. But credit where credit is due.

 

[Reverend]

I'd say that X-Files is probably the worst possible example for this sort of thing. If you want to do a slow burn over arching plot then it's helpful if the writer has more than just a vague notion of what that is and how they're going to execute some kind of endgame. The likes of Lost also suffered from this nested mystery box syndrome which seems compelling at first but it quickly becomes apparent that they're just making crap up as they go along. I'd say post season 2 BSG and Heroes also sort of fall into this category too.

Indeed the only examples I can think of that did this well are Buffy, Angel & Babylon 5. The former two were more compartmentalized within each season while the latter played the long con.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I'd say that X-Files is probably the worst possible example for this sort of thing. If you want to do a slow burn over arching plot then it's helpful if the writer has more than just a vague notion of what that is and how they're going to execute some kind of endgame. The likes of Lost also suffered from this nested mystery box syndrome which seems compelling at first but it quickly becomes apparent that they're just making crap up as they go along. I'd say post season 2 BSG and Heroes also sort of fall into this category too.

Indeed the only examples I can think of that did this well are Buffy, Angel & Babylon 5. The former two were more compartmentalized within each season while the latter played the long con.

Yeah Buffy made Season Arcs an artform.. contempory shows like Docor Who and Arrow (to the degree that we can tell so far) follow this format successfully it seems. Smallville did it less successfully.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Shorter seasons work well for seriels or shows that are strongly arc based. I don't consider well-written stand alone episodes to be filler at all. Many shows have used season arcs but also included outstanding individual episodes.

Season three of Buffy is the gold standard for this kind of thing, IMHO, with the main season arc existing mainly as a slow burn in the background of some early episodes, interspersed with the occasional pivotal episode and undergoing a gain in momentum as the season progressed. As such it made a virtue of the season length (22 episodes). I'll be surprised if this approach isn't taken in Agents Of SHIELD.

Yeah, Buffy set the standard that has been followed with others in a quasi-serialized setting (notably with the new Doctor Who, but also with shows like Burn Notice that usually had a more overt ongoing plot at the beginning and end of episodes before a stand alone episode in the middle).

For the record, the X-Files actually set the gold standard for this approach. X-Files was doing it better and before Buffy. No offense to Buffy. Just binged the entire 7 seasons for the first time, on Netflix and I liked the show. But credit where credit is due.

X-Files was exactly what I wasn't talking about. X-Files would use whole episodes devoted to the mythology and then nothing related to it elsewhere. I'm talking about throwing hints at the season long arc (X-Files wasn't a season per arc either) in each episode while devoting more to it in finales. Sure, the X-Files had stand-alones in addition, but the existence of stand alone episodes isn't sufficient by itself to be what I'm talking about.