Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E22 – Review

By: Marissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon (story)

The Story: The end and beginning of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Review: I’ve come to a crossroads with S.H.I.E.L.D. While the show has seen marked improvement in the second half of the season, it hasn’t really left much of a mark. S.H.I.E.L.D. has learned to be dependably entertaining, but without reaching that addictive quality that keeps viewers—well, me, at least—attached. And with new comic book shows being greenlit by the day—Gotham, Constantine, Agent Carter, The Flash*–attachment is necessary to keep our attention from wandering elsewhere.

I’m afraid even to the very end, S.H.I.E.L.D. has proven to be a very small-minded, closed-off sort of world. Arrow‘s first season finale ended with a city in chaos and half-ruin, two major characters from both sides dead, and everyone else reeling from the disaster. This guaranteed that the Arrow that would return in the fall would have to be a very different beast than it had been, and so its second season has proven. S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s season finale, however, reveals a show that’s still extremely resistant to such big waves, reveling in changes that are more cosmetic than substantive.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E17 – Review

By: Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen (story)

The Story: The team discovers who has a Hand in the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The Review: At the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, with S.H.I.E.LD. in ruins, I wondered what this would mean for Coulson and Co. My theory was since Hydra hadn’t been eradicated along with S.H.I.E.L.D—”Cut off one head,” and all that—Coulson’s team would be left to clean up the mess the Avenger left behind. They’ve done it before, but there’s much more glory to their janitorial role this time around. The show’s needed a big, overarching threat, and Hydra goes right up that alley.

For that matter, the fallout of Winter Soldier addresses a lot of what the show’s needed, most crucially in enlivening several of the core characters. Never will you complain about May being relentlessly cold again, as she emotionally lets herself go to an almost alarming degree, allowing Ming Na to marshal all those acting chops she usually has to keep under wraps within May’s frosty exterior. But this level of passion is necessary to keep her from looking totally callous once the extent of her deception comes to light. Winter Soldier showed firsthand the destructive nature of secrets, or “compartmentalization,” even when the purpose is good, and May suffers that lesson quite bitterly.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E12 – Review

By: Monica Owusu-Breen & Jed Whedon (story)

While Buffy the Vampire Slayer was hardly the first to use the monster-of-the-week format for its episodes, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it popularized the format for a whole lineage of WB/CW shows: Angel, Charmed, Supernatural, and Smallville, to name a few.  Almost all the episodes that fell into this format followed a certain pattern: strange phenomenon appears; heroes investigate; the culprit turns out to be the socially stunted featured character.

There’s a reason why so many shows crutched and continue to crutch on this formula despite how recognizable it’s become to TV audiences; it just works, especially for any show that simultaneously plays on mystery, action, and drama, all with a supernatural twist.  It’d be unreasonable for S.H.I.E.L.D. not to make use of the format sometimes, especially since it seems naturally suited to the team’s mission statement.  For those reasons, while “Seeds” may be the most conventional of the show’s episodes thus far, it’s also the most watchable, something the show can potentially emulate in the future.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E09 – Review

By: Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon (story)

The Story: If you think oil and water don’t mix, try romance, religion, and science.

The Review: Each time I watch an episode of this show, I can’t help imagining what the pitch meeting was like.  I see a generic executive’s office, all mahogany, plush carpet, and glass, a pristine city skyline in the background.  An unnamed businessman, with excellent hair and a gray suit from Brooks Brothers, reclines in his leather spinny chair, his fingertips pressed together.  In front of his desk, a member of the Whedon family, perched eagerly on the edge of his seat.

“It’s a tie-in,” Whedon says, “a ‘spin-off,’ if you want it in TV talk—to the Marvel movies.  You know, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America…”

“Oh, right,” says the exec, checking his gold-plated iPhone for texts from his hooker.

“Well, anyway, it’s about a group of people with special abilities who come together to save the world from crazy, superpowered threats.”

“The Avengers?”

“No—S.H.I.E.L.D.”  Upon the exec’s unblinking stare, Whedon goes on, “It’s that group of government agents who help the Avengers.  See, they won’t have superpowers, but they’re pretty good at fighting and shooting things and sometimes doing science.  Most of the episodes will be about them flying around in a giant plane investigating things that might have something to do with superheroes but mostly won’t.  When they’re not doing that, they’ll pretend that they’re a cross between Firefly and Mission: Impossible—not the movie, but the show.  And Clark Gregg will kind of be like the Peter Graves character, only with less impressive hair.”

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E03 – Review

By: Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen (story)

The Story: The best part of being a secret agent?  The undercover island beach parties.

The Review: I just did some cursory research into the show’s numbers (by which I mean Wikipedia, of course) and they don’t look too great.  The premiere didn’t fetch the kind of ratings you might have expected from an Avengers spin-off, clocking in at 12.12 million viewers.  These were still attractive figures compared to the steep drop into the second episode, which landed at 8.66 million viewers—a near 30 percent loss.

I’m at once surprised, yet also not surprised—both for the same reason: so far, the show has been less than stellar but far from terrible.  I would have thought that the Marvel connection had enough redemptive power to stave off the worst of the blowback from the show’s mediocrity, but I suppose even branding has its limits.  It does make me curious what kind of response the show will get after this episode, which continues S.H.I.E.L.D.’s precedent of following formula with only superficial attempts to defy convention.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E02 – Review

By: Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, Jeffrey Bell (story)

The Story: The team that fends off Peruvian soldiers together, sticks together.

The Review: The pilot had plenty of good things in it and accomplished what every pilot should do, which was demonstrate that it had enough potential to make a season’s viewing worth it.  That’s nothing to sneeze at; plenty of pilots, even ones that make it on the air, don’t manage to do that much.  At the same time, the episode also suffered noticeably from great deal more conventionality than you might have expected from such a highly publicized project.

That remains the case here, but if anything, this episode conceals it less successfully than the pilot, perhaps due to Joss Whedon’s absence from the script.  To be more accurate, the episode not only fails to disguise how thoroughly conventional its plot is, it practically calls attention to it.  It really only takes you about fifteen minutes to realize that the episode is about bringing this scrappy team together, but the writers seem to feel that you won’t get it unless they address it directly—and loudly.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E01 – Review

By: Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen (story)

The Story: Introducing the heroes’ heroes.

The Review: Given the enormous popularity of the Marvel movies, you can be easily forgiven for getting inordinately excited about the prospect of a weekly TV series revolving around the Marvel universe.  Why should DC have all the fun?  But allow me to be the voice of cautious optimism.  Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. should be viewed as a colorful supplement to the Marvel cinematic canon, not a way to have a summer blockbuster come into your home every week.

Still, a smaller medium in no way puts a cap on the entertainment possibilities a show like this can have.  Only a lack of imagination can do that.  And although a pilot obviously doesn’t determine the fate and direction of a whole series, it’s still concerning when the first episode seems so dependent on predictable and safe television conventions and is riddled with some awkward bits of writing besides.  Agent Grant Ward’s explanation of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s purpose—to Agent Maria Hill,* of all people—captures both of these defects: