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XboxPants posted:You joke, but that is absolutely the SHIELD mentality. They kinda are arrogant assholes who think that they know what's good for you better than you do. Remember that SHIELD's plan in the movie-world was to use the Abomination on the Avengers team instead of the Hulk, and it's really only because of Tony Stark and Coulson that that didn't happen. That's not really accurate though. The World Security Council, the shadowy guys in suits who wanted to nuke New York, are the ones who wanted the Abomination for the Avengers. Nick Fury thought it was stupid and terrible. It wasn't like SHIELD was all on-board with that plan but whoever the World Security Council are, they have the authority to override Nick Fury on matters like that.
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Oct 23, 2013 05:22
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Those aren't mutually exclusive reasons.
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Oct 24, 2013 08:21
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If we were supposed to think that Skye was working for Centipede then that flew right over my head.
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Oct 25, 2013 04:06
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Metropolis posted:Though I took Fitz being hurt that Skye didn't say anything about her boyfriend as a sign he has a bit of a crush on her. Though this would be the first suggestion of that which I can remember. He had a sort of goony moment in the second episode where he talked about how the only bunk left on the plane was the one next to his. I think that the "he has a crush on her" interpretation is the one we're supposed to get from that scene but, as you say about the whole "how could she betray us?" thing, it feels kind of unearned.
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Oct 25, 2013 06:13
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xeria posted:DivisionPost and I talked at some length on IRC about SHIELD earlier this evening and we both came to the same general conclusion: drop Ward entirely and make May the SO/mentor character to Skye. I can kind of get behind this, but Ward has shown glimmers of being entertaining here and there...the whole "Seduce Him" bit in Eye Spy was actually well done. I think there's something like potential to be had from the actor but as it stands he really is being shoehorned into a very uninteresting role. Speaking personally, I'd cut FitzSimmons and find someone more interesting to take the role of techie, because as two-dimensional as Ward has been up 'til now FitzSimmons seem even more devoid of personality. They're both one-note characters, that note being "rapidly spout technobabble in an excited voice." That's just about all they do and it never gets any more interesting or memorable, they've done nothing cool in five episodes...they really do strike me as somebody's cynical attempt to engineer a pair of characters designed to appeal to people on Tumblr or something. If we're trying to offer up constructive criticism of the show so far, beyond what everyone else has mentioned, one of the things I've noticed over these first five episodes is the writers have a bad problem telling instead of showing. The big offender here is Coulson's secret. We keep hearing other characters tell us how different Coulson is since he got stabbed and recovered. Presumably we keep hearing them tell us this because otherwise not even the most obsessive MCU fan would know that Coulson had changed. He's the same character that was in five movies and if the writers didn't keep reminding me that "he's different now" I honestly wouldn't know that was supposed to be a thing. How is he different? Well he is, just take our word for it. There was the bit where he had trouble taking apart the handgun...but again, that had to be explained to the viewers as Coulson being rusty because "expert handgun disassembler" isn't exactly one of the most prominent aspects of his character I can think of off the top of my head. It's kind of the same with Melinda May too, though they at least do try and show her beat up a dude once an episode to reinforce the whole "Melinda May is super-badass" narrative that we keep being told about, but it still feels a bit more "tell" than "show." She's a legendary agent that even tech nerds like FitzSimmons have heard of, she has a nickname and everything, but the fight scenes so far have been pretty generic TV fare where she beats up one dude and strikes a pose. I absolutely think Ming Na has it in her to play an incredible badass one-woman army, I don't think that one's her fault so much as the writers', but it's still a case of the hype outstripping what's being delivered. 404notfound posted:If they had the balls to go ahead and kill the character that they've been building up to be the lead (or keep him in the show as a turncoat villain or something), then that would instantly seal the deal for me and I'd have to watch the rest of the season just to see where they go with that. I actually suggested this in the last iteration of this thread ("Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Killed and Resurrected More Often Than Jean Grey") but I would absolutely be over the moon if they revealed Ward to be a Hydra agent in deep cover and the actor had a chance to just chew the hell out of the scenery. That would be legitimately amazing and I would forgo any other complaints just for that. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Oct 27, 2013 |
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Oct 27, 2013 08:00
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xeria posted:There's pacing issues too, I think. I don't think they should have held off revealing the bit about Skye's parents and SHIELD until episode 5 when it's such an important driving piece of her characterization. Rather, that should have been revealed in episode 1 or 2 instead of trying to play coy about whether she'll betray them just for kicks or if she's playing SHIELD for some other reason, or what have you. I get the feeling, as well, that they want to hold the ultimate Coulson reveal for closer to the season finale but if they do that, it'll start to get tiresome (to me) to keep having characters talk about how different he is or what his secret might be. The thing about the Skye reveal is that the whole arc of her character so far just seems really awkwardly handled. For a reveal like "I'm interested in SHIELD because I think they have something to do with my parents," that feels like something that should be either established up-front as a driving character motivation or as a shocking twist after a suitable period of build-up where you've led the audience to suspect that Skye might be a nefarious double-agent. Episode 5 is too late for the former and way too early for the latter, especially when episode 5 also has the other characters expressing shock and betrayal over someone they've known for, like, a week or two. The same goes for making her a SHIELD agent. That feels like something that ought to have come after a decent bit of character growth, not started midway through episode 2. Like, she's a super-hacker...okay, that's cool, that's definitely a reason to want to bring her along. And she has an outsider's perspective which Coulson values, double cool. But all at once Ward, the guy who was adamantly against her inclusion in the first place, wants to train her to be a SHIELD field agent because ???
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Oct 27, 2013 09:34
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Oasx posted:All of the shows that Shield has been compared to these last few posts all had relevantly slow starts, and when they were in the fifth episode had threads where people complained that they weren't moving fast enough. I wasn't here for when Person of Interest first started airing but I did watch PoI from the beginning and frankly I found it to be better paced and better constructed than SHIELD has been so far right from the outset. It is fair to give a show some time to find its feet...poo poo, apparently Revolution has actually become halfway decent after an entire season's worth of meandering?...but I think SHIELD's problems are more than just the usual new-show shakedown hiccups. None of them are insurmountable, no, but five episodes in and one third of the cast (FitzSimmons) has yet to move beyond "one-dimensional technobabble dispenser," the pacing seems off on a lot of beats and plot points...all of which are individually fine things to have but seem assembled oddly...and the secondary characters seem vastly more interesting than the main cast so far. Every time someone in these threads brings up Firefly the response is always "well you can't expect something like that every time" but, y'know, why not? This is a show being bankrolled by a billion dollar entertainment conglomerate with an established setting laid down and helmed by industry veterans. Is it really unfair to expect them to have their game a bit more together than this? I want this show to be awesome, I don't think it can't be, but right now it still feels off in a way that has me wondering what they're going to do to improve it.
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Oct 27, 2013 10:16
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I actually thought that episode 4 was the best one for Ward and I think you just helped me figure out why. In the pilot Coulson looks over his records and talks about how he has the highest marks in espionage "since Romanov," but Eye Spy was the first episode past the pilot where we really got to see him put that to use rather than just being Generic Action Guy. It helped that it was both a clever sequence (infiltrate the facility but don't look at any mirrors or your hands or your cover is blown) with a genuine moment of comedy ("Seduce Him") and a nice bit of action at the end (backscatter X-ray shooting through walls). Thinking about it some more, that's how I'd maybe work to differentiate Ward from May in terms of giving them distinct areas of expertise. Make Ward the espionage guy, give him frequent excuses to sneak around, dress up, talk in different languages, and then maybe have some punching or shooting because this is an action show. Melinda May, on the other hand, is the nuclear option. Ward can get into a brawl with two or three mooks or one really skilled guy and come out on top, but May can take out an entire compound and level the building behind her. Otherwise she's content to hang back and do pilot-y general SHIELD stuff.
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Oct 27, 2013 13:55
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Rarity posted:I think people are ignoring the fact that May was purposefully ignoring combat roles for the first three episodes, which meant Ward had to take on those roles in her place. Since taking a more active role the two major combat moments (confronting Akela and aiding Coulson with Scorch) have both gone to her. At the same time, none of the big fighty moments she has been given have been especially impressive (all my opinion of course), and in the Akela fight Coulson has to come bail her out (seriously, what ultimate badass can't fight in the dark?).
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Oct 27, 2013 22:58
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They could have product placement like Chuck 
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Oct 29, 2013 11:23
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GreenNight posted:They didn't care for the last episode of Person of Interest either, so I'm not sure what's gotten up their butt lately. They gave this latest Agents of SHIELD a D+, it's kind of reaching to say they didn't care for the latest PoI when they gave it a B. Fair's fair, the reviewer basically slammed this episode hard. I definitely don't think this was that huge a step back in quality especially compared to some of the earlier episodes, though I also don't think it was as good as some of the episodes prior to this. I'm still not entirely sold on Agent Grant Ward's traumatic past myself, and the antagonists of the week were just sort of...there. A bunch of generic angry Norwegians collecting the berserker staff to smash poo poo up seems pretty  to me, I dunno.
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Nov 20, 2013 14:25
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Onean posted:Dude, his oldest brother pushed him down a well, nearly let him drown and wasn't even the one that helped him out. His oldest brother even threatened pushing his other brother down if he helped. That's pretty loving traumatic. It's heavily hinted that this isn't the only event, though it seems to be the worst one. Yeah I know, there was the time that his brother ate his birthday cake too. Look, I'm sorry, this was definitely a step up from "my brother ate my cake once" in terms of actually being something traumatic, but it still feels kind of, for lack of a better word, fanfiction-y. It's there because it needs to be there, because he needs a traumatic past to have requisite broody moments and/or ragestick-induced freakouts over. It's still not making me feel like the character has any more depth than he did before. I thought the moment in the electric virus episode where he pokes fun of himself in a goofy voice was a lot better at that, personally.
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Nov 20, 2013 14:56
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The episode's aired so I'm not sure about spoiler policies, so spoiler'd just in case. May kicks the blonde woman's rear end then sets the staff down seemingly much better off than Ward was from just handling one piece. Ward asks her if she saw anything when she held it, then asks if so how she was able to set it down so easily. "Because I see it every day." Coulson's hand-in-chest first aid is enough to save the Asgardian, who says that since everyone is going Asgard-crazy he's probably going to find somewhere else other than Europe to chill for a while. Coulson recommends Portland Oregon. Coulson also considers picking up the staff to see if it'll show him something about his resurrection but decides not to. Everybody gets to spend the night at a hotel for a little R&R. Skye and Ward have a broody/mooney-eyed chat, then when Ward heads up to his room May extends him a silent invitation to spend the sort of night with her you need a "Do Not Disturb" sign for and he takes her up on it. The stinger is Coulson having a dream about getting a massage on a tropical beach, the masseuse mentions that Tahiti Is a Magical Place, he wakes up in a sweat. ThatPazuzu posted:I think you have it backwards. It was his brother's birthday cake and he got the poo poo beat out of him for eating some. Yeah it's pretty silly and not that traumatic but its not that bad. I will fully admit that I may be wrong about who ate who's cake in Ward's traumatic past, I honestly couldn't remember, so I'll apologize if I got it wrong.
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Nov 20, 2013 15:27
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This is just a reminder that Ming-Na Wen is 50 years old and looks that good.
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Nov 20, 2013 17:00
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It just occurred to me that unless I missed something at no point did anyone try shooting the angry Norwegian youths with the ragestick. I mean, I would expect someone riding a massive, car-flipping adrenaline high to maybe shrug off a bit of gunfire sure, but J. August Richards was mainlining designer superpower-juice and the science twins seemed convinced that shooting him in the head would still put a pretty quick stop to things. It would have been nice if the show maybe tossed a line or a scene out or something explaining exactly why this whole berserker staff thing was dangerous enough to call in the super-special extragovernmental mystery squad instead of, say, some police snipers and a HAZMAT team because this really did feel like the lamest problem of the week, especially compared to things like the extraterrestrial maglev flu and  the Overkill Device
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Nov 21, 2013 11:53
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I think that there is some validity to the criticism that this episode was hyped as something that was going to tie in to the aftermath of Thor 2 and it turns out that the story of the week has virtually nothing to do with Thor 2 save the fact that Asgardian stuff is involved. From the outset I've said that Agents of SHIELD doesn't need to be the Marvel comics shoutout appreciation station to be a good show and trying to cram in all sorts of callbacks and references isn't necessarily an unvarnished good idea, but I really do feel like there was a big opportunity for some fun crossover potential here and it was completely ignored in favor of a painfully bland antagonist of the week.
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Nov 22, 2013 04:49
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The upcoming preview for the episode led off with a narrator dramatically stating "The epic adventure that began in Thor: the Dark World continues in Marvel's Agents of SHIELD!" Also the "TV Guide description" for the episode reads:quote:In the aftermath of the events chronicled in the feature film Marvel's "Thor: The Dark World," Coulson and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. pick up the pieces--one of which threatens to destroy a member of the team which is kind of disingenuous since the MacGuffin of the week isn't one of the pieces picked up in the aftermath of Thor 2...it's something completely unrelated to any of the events of the movie. If you cut out the first five minutes of the episode then you could have aired it in any order and nobody would be able to tell that it was supposed to come after Thor 2.
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Nov 22, 2013 05:22
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Sure, but having both interesting characters and an interesting antagonist/challenge of the week aren't mutually exclusive, and beyond that is the fact that I don't think this show's cast at the point of development where the writers can phone in the threat of the week and just let the show coats entirely on the strength of the characters. The two episodes prior to this one, with the alien virus and the Russian rebels building a nuke-detonating mad science device, were better at mixing character beats with interesting stuff happening.
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Nov 22, 2013 06:12
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jivjov posted:The MCU is a lot....smaller than the comic universe its spun off from. So far the MCU has shied away from having anything be straight up magic or paranormal, its all science or super science or alien science. Telekinesis, in the context of the show and the MCU at large, doesn't currently have any kind of scientific principle behind it. Neither does pyrokinesis but that didn't stop them from having a character who could create fire out of nothing because something something radiation.
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Nov 28, 2013 00:54
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Wandle Cax posted:It's a network television show so I would assume the budget is far from astronomical. Very few TV shows can afford the luxury of extensive location shooting in far away locales, or have the time and budget for many CG effects. Having one main standing set, such as the plane, being where most of the scenes take place is par for the course in TV land. Same with all the exotic locations looking very similar and very much like the surrounding area of LA or Vancouver as the case may be, it's just something you have to accept. Even still, there's a certain "cheapness" that permeates the show that can't be waved off by noting that it's a network television show, because other network television shows that have come out this same season don't have that problem, at least to my eye. Sleepy Hollow's creatures of the week are largely made using practical effects instead of CGI, but thanks to good lighting and cinematography (and some good monster design in general) it takes what could easily be something laughably bad and instead delivers something top-notch. And then on the other side of things there's Almost Human which is using a fair bit of computer effects but also manages to "feel" higher-quality than SHIELD has so far. I don't know what it is exactly...whether it's the design, the camerawork, the editing, I can't quite put my finger on it...but there's just something about it that feels threadbare. And it's not like "feels a bit cheap" is some unforgivable televisual sin, but combined with the rest of the show being as aggressively average as it's been and it sticks out a bit more.
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Nov 28, 2013 12:00
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redshirt posted:All that's missing to make this a great 80's show is a wisecracking robot or alien. But they already have Coulson.
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Nov 28, 2013 16:57
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I still haven't watched all of Fringe because I made it five, maybe six episodes into the first season and holy jeez that was boring. I guess I could just skip the first season entirely, but it's still not my idea of a great time even though plenty of people gush about it. Yeah, John Noble's a cool dude, but he's one dude and not enough to really make me want to sit down and try to power through the cruft to get to the creamy nougat center. And I'm kinda in the same boat right now with SHIELD. Clark Gregg is a good actor who's playing a neat character, but right now he's about it. Ming Na Wen is also a good actor but like 90% of her stage direction is "be silent" and "roll eyes" with occasional bland fight choreography. Maybe in a season or so Agents of SHIELD will get the same shot in the arm Fringe got and Revolution supposedly has and become amazing TV, but right now I think I'll just wait to watch the first season once it's complete if I feel like watching it.
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Dec 2, 2013 11:07
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Blazing Ownager posted:EDIT: Also I think the way they introduced and utilized the Skye character is so far.. not good. I don't dislike her like I disliked the lead from Dollhouse or anything, but I don't really get how she fits in with the show really. Everything they do to try to involve her or treat her like a.. family member I guess seems so forced and out of the blue I don't know what to say. SHIELD's whole premise is it's a huge Men in Black kind of place, except generally on the side of good, but so far it seems like they take anyone off the street and make them full freaking field agents at random. No, I completely agree, Skye's character feels very "adrift" for lack of a better word. She gets recruited by Coulson because she's an incredible super-hacker...yet she's rarely done any hacking in the show, mostly her job is to do internet searches and offer exposition around the big smartscreen (and make moony-eyes at Ward). The writers try to portray her as a dorky nerd who's been living in a van...and by the third episode Ward is training her to be a field agent for a super-spy espionage organization. Then when she slips info to her then-boyfriend everyone acts hurt and angry and betrayed...despite the fact that they've known her for maybe a few weeks by that point and she's an obvious security risk. In the latter two cases it's like the writers want the payoff of things like "Skye's character steps up and becomes a SHIELD agent" and "Skye betrays the team!!!" only without all the buildup that usually precedes such moments, and as a result it feels shallow and forced. In the former case it just feels like the writers were casting about for some sort of defining trait to give the character, someone went "how about...she's a hacker?," and then everyone shook hands and took the rest of the afternoon off. I don't think the solution to making the character better is to have there be a computer hacking scene in every episode, but it feels like there's a lot of potential going to waste in the idea of a super-hacker and anti-establishment activist being brought on-board a Men in Black squad.
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Dec 2, 2013 13:23
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Speaking of Leverage, I'd borrow a page from their playbook and how they handled the various skills of the group by not fencing them off into exclusive niches to give Skye some more stuff to do. Skye's "the hacker," but that's rarely been a big deal since the show started and more than once the writers have had her basically twiddling her thumbs going "well what can I do? What do I do now?" And that's a terrible way to handle a character. So broaden out her repertoire of shady skills beyond sitting in a van and hacking the planet. She had a rough time growing up and lately she's been living in a van so you have plenty of justification...give her pickpocketing skills, make her handy with lockpicks, with grifting, say she can whip up cover IDs in hours that would take the SHIELD home office days, give her an extensive list of contacts and people who owe her favors, stuff like that. Ultimately it's the writers' job to make characters active and not passive but if part of the problem is that they can't figure out something for her to do in every episode then the quick and dirty solution is to give her more stuff she can do, and it provides more justification for Ward to think "hey, maybe she's got what it takes to be a field agent."
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Dec 2, 2013 15:34
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I think that people are putting too much stock in the importance of the show draping itself in Marvel universe trappings. Yeah, I agree that it feels like the show is currently nestled awkwardly somewhere in an out-of-sight corner of the MCU somewhere, but even if they were using all sorts of Marvel characters and organizations that wouldn't really address the fundamental issues stemming from the writing and direction. Like, Almost Human is practically Police Procedural Cliches With Robots: The Show, nobody's ever going to mistake it for something original or wildly creative, but the two leads have a better chemistry together than any two main characters on SHIELD and their rambly, dorky tech guy is a better rambly, dorky tech guy than either Fitz or Simmons. It has its other issues...the designated love interest is so cardboard she puts Ward to shame, it flirts with the idea of saying something meaningful without really devoting a lot of time or attention to doing so...but the positives are still enough to put it higher up than SHIELD. Bringing in Zodiac or the Wrecking Crew or whatever wouldn't really fix the show's real problems, and if they fixed those problems then it would be a good show even if they just stuck with Centipede and Asgardian ragesticks.
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Dec 3, 2013 23:47
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BrianWilly posted:I think the show has issues but there really is a lot of weird overblown scrutiny directed at it. Do other harmless procedural shows like NCIS or Law and Order get a dozen or so nerd articles on Yahoo.com written about how to "fix" their so-called gaping problems? Those shows don't usually ring the dinner bell by going "Hey nerds, check it out! It's a TV show starring that one guy from the Marvel movies taking place in the same universe as the movies, it's gonna be awesome!," so no they don't. They wanted people invested in the show so mission accomplished. It just turns out the show isn't very good, so this is the result.
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Dec 4, 2013 04:05
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I highly doubt the show's going to be abruptly cancelled unless it turns into a complete Homeboys In Space level disaster...Marvel/Disney have enough invested in it that turning around and dropping it so soon after it debuted would be embarrassing, plus they, y'know, own ABC which helps. If it doesn't manage to rise above its current level I could completely believe Marvel/Disney telling Jed Whedon "okay, time to start penning the DRAMATIC CONCLUSION" by, say, the end of S2 however.
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Dec 5, 2013 16:18
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I'm still holding out for Ward being a super-secret deep cover Hydra plant. I know it won't ever happen but it'd be glorious.
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Dec 7, 2013 03:10
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Also Shaw's "death" lasted like ten seconds, it was entirely a fake-out that had the groundwork laid earlier in the episode where Reese talks about how to counteract the poison. I'm pretty sure "died...only kidding!" in the span of a single episode doesn't count for anything when discussing character death.
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Dec 7, 2013 05:06
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If anything, SHIELD is making me think I need to revise my earlier judgment of Arrow and give it a shot. I freely admit I passed on it in the wake of Smallville and while I have no problem with Buff Shirtless Dudes: the Show, it didn't really seem like my thing based on early promos. But enough people have said that it's doing the sort of thing SHIELD wants to do but better that I'm curious enough to see for myself.
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Dec 11, 2013 15:49
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AbsolutelySane posted:I think its obvious by now that Arrow and AOS are trying to be two very different shows. Its more like Arrow is what some folks wanted AOS to be more than what AOS is meant to be. Arrow is a full-on superhero show, featuring superheroes doing superhero stuff. It seems like AOS was going for more of a 'X-files/Fringe in the MCU' sort of vibe. Unfortunately for AOS, it isn't as dark/atmospheric as X-files, nor is the cast quite as fun as the Fringe cast was (complaints about Season 1 Anna Torv aside). Well, by that I meant "a good actiony show set in a superhero/comic-book setting." Anyone who expected SHIELD to be a full-on superhero show about superheroes wasn't paying attention to any of the promo material, but I'm sure a lot of people hoped that it would be a better show in general than it is now, and I think a lot of the complaints about why the show isn't bringing in this or that Marvel character or organization or whatever wouldn't be nearly as numerous if the show was ponying up better writing, acting, and action. Meanwhile Arrow looked like a forgettable exercise in brooding and shirtlessness but apparently it's actually good, so I guess it's time for me to set some weekend hours aside and give the first season a shot.
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Dec 11, 2013 17:08
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Yet another show Jeph Loeb was involved in.
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Dec 12, 2013 18:13
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Asimo posted:But you don't understand, the show's just not living up to its potential unless it shows us the exciting adventures of That Guy with the Funny Costume or the nefarious deeds of that Evil Dude with the Huge Head and Tiny Limbs! The show's not living up to its potential, period. You want to know why people keep clamoring for SHIELD to show more Marvel universe stuff and superheroes and guys in beekeeper outfits? Because it isn't delivering anything else, and if you can't cough up good writing, good action, or compelling stories, then all you've got left is novelty and spectacle.
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Dec 20, 2013 09:17
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I've tried to keep my posts in this thread at least marginally constructive but god gently caress that stupid rage-stick. Like, seriously, in a show that's had plenty to criticize I think that may be the one thing that I irrationally dislike the most. Not only is it something like a dumb D&D magic item ("You must assemble the three pieces of the +5 Staff of Anger...") but what loving space viking Norse alien god-culture is going to give its berserker warriors a staff? An axe, a sword, make it a spear, that's almost like a staff if you're really married to the concept. I don't know why but that one just bugged the poo poo out of me.
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Dec 20, 2013 10:03
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Setting aside the argument over "It's Agents of SHIELD, not Superheroes of SHIELD," the thing is that whether you have a show with a cast of mundane, normal agents or whatever, the universe itself is decidedly not something that's supposed to be mundane or normal or blase. This is a show taking place in a setting where the nightly news has stories about a billionaire playboy in a suit of power armor, where radiation turns people into huge green monsters, and where aliens have now invaded not just once but twice, and yet nothing about it feels that exciting or bursting with "oh man" moments. The show doesn't need costumed superheroes all over the place, I've argued as much multiple times in this thread, but it needs something. Generic death-rays and rage sticks, you could watch Warehouse 13 and get that plus Saul Rubinek.
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Dec 20, 2013 10:19
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Scorch was pretty boring though, if he comes back I'm not sure that's really a bonus. I'll give the show credit, I wasn't expecting to see such graphic immolation on a show that exudes "family TV hour" from every pixel like this one does.
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Dec 20, 2013 10:33
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A Big Dark Yak posted:Except that Mean-Seeming SHIELD Lady actually smiled because she secretly knew all along that it wouldn't be a suicide mission and that Coulson would get his people out because that's what he does so there was no need for an exit strategy on a high risk mission like that and she and SHIELD can be completely clear of any uncomfortable gray area that would have produced, thank goodness! I still, after having watched that episode twice over, can't figure out the angle the writers were going for. Was Victoria Hand happy that Coulson and his team defied official orders to extract Ward and Fitz? If that was her intent all along then why not just say "sorry, we can't spare an extraction team, you'll have to handle that on your own" instead of hiding it from him? Was it a test, to see which way Coulson would jump? If so, did he pass or fail or what? Like, I know I'm not the smartest person in the room but I can usually keep up with a television show...this one has me well and truly stumped though. Asimo posted:Honestly this is why I have a sneaking suspicion that the show is laboring under some bullshit restrictions by ABC/Disney, with too many concepts restricted to the movie lines, for whatever dumb reason. Not that this is an excuse, but it'd explain a lot. If that is the case then even if it explains it you can't really blame people for being unhappy that the show doesn't have stronger MCU ties or isn't doing anything interesting with the toys in the toybox that have already been established. It also might be that this is the root of people wanting to see more different Marvel stuff, because if they can't do anything with the MCU stuff that already exists and they won't do anything with Marvel stuff that hasn't been shown yet then it's not really much of a Marvel anything.
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Dec 20, 2013 11:33
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:These discussions are infinitely more entertaining than the show itself. The most damning indictment yet.
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Dec 20, 2013 14:07
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:tl;dr: AoS is trying to fit three different genres into the one show and it's not doing any of them right. Skye's whole character has been really, really weird. She starts out as a super-hacker free information activist working for an organization that opposes SHIELD. Within three episodes she's decided she actually wants to be a SHIELD field agent, then within another two or three she "betrays" the team and everyone acts like it's a shocking blow. Within that span of time and beyond her super-hacking skills don't always even come up in a given episode, that is to say the skills that led Coulson to wanting to recruit her in the first place. Most of the time the writers box her into being a very passive-seeming, reactive character rather than the radical, free-spirited sort of person the show wants to sell her as being. And she's a POV character for a show that's coming on the tail of a half-dozen hugely successful pieces of established worldbuilding, making a POV character far less relevant.
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Dec 20, 2013 16:15
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 21:48 |
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I really want to post the panel you're talking about because it's basically the craziest poo poo ever but I know it would make Deadpool sad and the holidays are a depressing enough time as it is. Just Google "Nick Fury Motorcycle" and you'll see that Metal Loaf's description doesn't really do it justice.
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Dec 23, 2013 15:16
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