The first and quite possibly only Mandarin story I read was from the very early '90s and had Fin Fang Foom in it. I don't recall any racist stereotyping in it and in the end the Mandarin had lost his memory and was turned into a mere peasant working the land. I thought it was a pretty story and it had Stark and the Mandarin working together to beat the dragon.
Agents of SHIELD - Season 2 Discussion Threads. (Spoilers Likely)
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The first and quite possibly only Mandarin story I read was from the very early '90s and had Fin Fang Foom in it. I don't recall any racist stereotyping in it and in the end the Mandarin had lost his memory and was turned into a mere peasant working the land. I thought it was a pretty story and it had Stark and the Mandarin working together to beat the dragon.
Just now seeing the finale... I thought it was excellent BUT I was disappointed in how overtly evil Jiaying and Gordon turned out to be. Right down to the life sucking vampire bit. I wish the conflict had been more borne out of misunderstandings and tragic bad timing than her premeditated attempt to wiping out SHIELD. It would have made it more tragic, especially for Skye.
I was also really expecting Gordon to join the good guys once he learned everything. He didn't seem to be a bad guy before this, just gruff and cynical.
Agreed with the great use of Mister Hyde and Kyle's performance. That being said, I don't want to see the character needlessly overused without a good story for him, COUGHSWARDCOUGHS.
They really should have killed off Ward in this episode. His story was done at the end of Season 1 and now he's just dragging and dragging along. I don't want to see him as the new head of Hydra. It's the same problem that Buffy had with Spike. The character was kept around far longer than he should have been within the internal logic of the story just because the writers/fans liked him. I didn't realize Ward had any kind of following though, I know everyone hated him pre-Winter Soldier...
Coulson getting his hand chopped off warranted a huge WOAH! from me
I was also really expecting Gordon to join the good guys once he learned everything. He didn't seem to be a bad guy before this, just gruff and cynical.
Agreed with the great use of Mister Hyde and Kyle's performance. That being said, I don't want to see the character needlessly overused without a good story for him, COUGHSWARDCOUGHS.
They really should have killed off Ward in this episode. His story was done at the end of Season 1 and now he's just dragging and dragging along. I don't want to see him as the new head of Hydra. It's the same problem that Buffy had with Spike. The character was kept around far longer than he should have been within the internal logic of the story just because the writers/fans liked him. I didn't realize Ward had any kind of following though, I know everyone hated him pre-Winter Soldier...
Coulson getting his hand chopped off warranted a huge WOAH! from me
I watched the finale for a second time tonight and found it every bit as enjoyable.
I do hope that when we return, in whatever span of time it is that passes, that we open by finding out just who else Coulson has placed on his "Anonymous team of Powered People". I prefer Secret over Anonymous but I digress. I'd really like to see another name from the comics show up next season as part of Coulson's Powered Team. Starting with Valkyrie as a liaison with Asgard to deal with the Inhuman situation. Then go from there.
I do hope that when we return, in whatever span of time it is that passes, that we open by finding out just who else Coulson has placed on his "Anonymous team of Powered People". I prefer Secret over Anonymous but I digress. I'd really like to see another name from the comics show up next season as part of Coulson's Powered Team. Starting with Valkyrie as a liaison with Asgard to deal with the Inhuman situation. Then go from there.
When it became obvious he knew what happened to Gonzales and was prepared to cover it up, I knew he'd be staying with Team Jiaying.
Heh ... I innocently used that term when I was about ten years old after picking it up from Tom Sawyer. Got an immediate lecture from my mother about what it meant and have been wary about using it ever since.
Fing Fang Foom is a giant dragon looking alien.
Please tell me it is not done in the style of a "Chinese dragon."
I'd say sort of a blend of Western and Chinese. Head and neck of a somewhat Chinese-style dragon on a green, scaly humanoid body with a long tail. In purple shorts.
And yes, there are some unfortunate elements there, but it could be worse. Wonder Woman used to have a foe called Egg Fu, who was a giant Humpty-Dumptyish egg-shaped entity with a prehensile Fu Manchu mustache and a Charlie Chan speech pattern. Apparently the character's still active in the comics, but in a less racially caricatured form (though the name itself is pretty problematical).
Currently he's called Chang Tzu and doesn't have mustache. He still looks like egg, though.
Only the hardboiled ones are any good at kung-fu. 
I'm sure he and MODOK have lots to talk about^He looks like a reject from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
It would be interesting to see a realistic version of MODOK adapted for television. The comics version of his appearance could be seen as a computer avatar sor something similar.
^It'd probably be handled kind of like Arnim Zola -- they'd feature George Tarleton as an AIM chief scientist, maybe with some experimental mental enhancements, but wouldn't go full giant-head-with-baby-limbs.
If they were to do MODOK as a full giant-head-with-baby-limbs thing, I think that's the sort of grotesque creature that would be better served on a film budget than a TV budget.
So in Season 1 they introduced a lot of new characters, and we saw brief glimpses of some minor characters from the comics. We had heard that the show had a list of stuff they were allowed to use, but that large portions of the Marvel catalog were off limits.
In Season 2, we saw a few more known characters from the comics, and introuced the whole darn concept of Inhumans. The introduction of the Inhumans really felt like a major coup for the show. It seemed like the show was trusted with some bigger ideas.
For Season 3, will they be given even more free rein over the Marvel universe? We're expecting Skye to have her little Secret Warriors team, presumably full of some new faces and some recognizable ones. Will we get some good characters from the comics?
I wonder if they've seriously considered a 1 episode Daredevil appearance? DD will be filming later on this fall, so they might be able to coordinate something. And let's be honest, DD really is something that Shield or Maria Hill or Fury should be looking into. That's kind of their job.
In Season 2, we saw a few more known characters from the comics, and introuced the whole darn concept of Inhumans. The introduction of the Inhumans really felt like a major coup for the show. It seemed like the show was trusted with some bigger ideas.
For Season 3, will they be given even more free rein over the Marvel universe? We're expecting Skye to have her little Secret Warriors team, presumably full of some new faces and some recognizable ones. Will we get some good characters from the comics?
I wonder if they've seriously considered a 1 episode Daredevil appearance? DD will be filming later on this fall, so they might be able to coordinate something. And let's be honest, DD really is something that Shield or Maria Hill or Fury should be looking into. That's kind of their job.
On some level, I don't really want Daredevil to cross over with Agents of SHIELD. It's much more overtly an example of synthesizing the superhero genre with highbrow, HBO-style prestige drama, whereas Agents of SHIELD is quite proudly middlebrow. It would feel as incongruous to me as a crossover between, say, True Detective and Castle.
But, assuming they were to cross over...
... do we know when Daredevil Season One takes place relative to Agents of SHIELD? As near as I can tell from the references to the Battle of New York, DDS1 seems to take place some time in around spring/summer 2014. I'm gonna guess some time before April, simply because I find it hard to believe that the fall of SHIELD and the revelation of Hydra and its nearly successful attempt to murder more people than World War I in a single day, somehow wouldn't be a 9/11-level event that would dominate all of the news and everyone's conversations.
(No spoilers please -- I'm only about halfway through DDS1.)
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