What I'm Watching: Agents of SHIELD
Continuing along with the premiers I give a crap about, and fit vaguely with this site (The Blacklist is fun but predictable, by the way!), Marvel has finally done it, and made a prime time live action tv series, Agents of SHIELD.
Anyone who has listened to me for awhile has heard my rant how I long for a comic based tv show way more than I want another movie. I'm not going to ge into THAT rant here.
The question is, does SHIELD fit the bill?
Well...it comes close. See, I'm gonna be THAT guy. I'm not in love with the show. It's good, but I didn't quite connect with it from the pilot. But hey, the same thing happened with Fringe, and that became one of my favourite shows of the last few years, so initial impressions, ESPECIALLY of a pilot are always dicey.
Still, I was hoping for a little more, and I suspect its the expectations that hurt more than anything. After the Avengers, the bar was set pretty high, and the show doesn't reach them. But, it doesn't have to, does it? It's a tv show.
And one of my biggest problems isn't even the show's fault, but the marketing. I've been hearing about the show all year, seeing clip after clip, and even though I didn't even WATCH most of them, I *still* felt like I'd seen most of the show.
The other thing was, I was hoping for a little more comicbooky stuff. I get wanting to use original characters for the team, it allows them free reign to do what they want, they won't be ruining say, a future appearance in the movies of Agent Carol Danvers (For example), and they have no expectations with the fans of what the characters might do. But it still felt more like it's own universe more than anything TOO Marvel related. There were moments though, and they did exactly what I prayed they would do with Lola.
It's funny that another problem I had was that there was TOO MUCH comicbooky stuff. Not actual content, but the references were getting to be a bit TOO cutesy. "Ready to joing us on our Journey Into Mystery?" Iiiii see what you did there.
I hope they get stuff like that out of there system, because while I do actually like cute stuff like that, doing it too much can become too annoying with the constant winks to the audience.
The story itself in the pilot was decent enough, building on the movie universe's tech already, and each character has a bit of mystery and questions to explore, although nowhere near as with Sleepy Hollow.
Now, I say I didn't love the show, but I did absolutely like it. I was mildly entertained, I enjoyed it more on my second viewing when I wasn't in critic mode, although still a few bland bits, but it was mostly solid for a pilot, and that's what I judge it on.
The first episode was not a home run, knock it out of the park affair, but it was good, it did what it needed to do, and I absolutely see the potential there. I am just as sick of 'getting the team together' stories, as I am of origins, I guess.
Now, the second episode that I just got done watching? A definite step up in quality, and they did a really good job of mixing the cool action with some solid character moments that really made these people more real in the context of the show. It can be tough to strike that balance of action and talking, and this episode more or less got it right. I'm not entirely sold on some of the directions they're *going* with the characters, but hey. It's there show.
Overall, while I wasn't immediately grabbed, the show has potential, and I'm sure things will pick up. The second episode made that pretty clear.
And I'll admit it, classifying the plane as SHIELD 616 made me grin huge.
