9/29/13
View Logs: Agents of SHIELD S1 Episode 1
Believe it or not, Agents of SHIELD falls right in line with stereotypical mainstream procedural shows. Really a lot of TV is more high concept than most people think. There's been multiple shows of supernatural detectives (Medium, Dresden, Pushing Daisies). Plenty of paranormal investigation team shows (X-Files and it's copycats Fringe, Warehouse 13, and Sanctuary). Fairy-tale adaptations are now pretty huge with Once Upon a Time, Grimm, Sleepy Hollow, Teen Wolf, Supernatural, and Wizards versus Aliens (YES THIS IS A REAL THING... LOOK IT UP NOW!). On top of all that, superheroes shows are actually no strangers to TV either. Really, they aren't. Especially the "realistic" non-costumed hero types.Anyone remember Heroes? What about Syfy's Alphas? No? There's plenty more. The Batman spinoff Birds of Prey, James Cameron's Dark Angel, Mutant X, The Cape, Smallville, Arrow, Bionic Woman (yes I count that), NightMan, Blade: The Series (yes I count that too), WitchBlade, the Highlander TV spinoffs. (Most of these suck BTW and yes I've watched almost all of these...) and there's the British Misfits. Oh and The CW is premiering The Tomorrow People this coming TV fall season.
Which, as far as I can tell, is basically The CW's (shittier) version of the X-Men.
Anyways I can even go a little further with superhero stuff. If you'd like to count shows that are practically superhero stories but aren't written specifically with that genre in mind, you can easily count Person of Interest (seriously, this is the TV Dark Knight and it is GLORIOUS!), Painkiller Jane, Le Femme Nikita, and the last season of 24 (LOLJACKBAUERMASK!). These are not really a huge stretch from certain figures in comic books like The Punisher.
And I didn't even list the Saturday morning cartoons.
So I hoped I've showed you why I found people saying that everything about Agents of SHIELD is "new" and "unique" to be irritatingly inaccurate. The only thing unique about Agents of SHIELD is the fact that it's set in the Marvel universe. So really the flashy skin on top of it. Sure, Agents of SHIELD isn't generic like The Cape or Alphas. But under all that gloss and faux-novelty is a show that is a little more standard than most people would like to admit (or allow themselves to see).
So what is it about Agents of SHIELD that I found so standard? Let's take a quick look at the writing shall we?
First off, the light tone of the show is a little overboard. I don't mean that superhero stuff can't be light and tongue-in-cheek (Misfits is totally great!). Especially with all the dark and grim superhero stuff we've been seeing recently. But what I mean is that many parts of the show's humor is a little forced. Joss Whedon is the type of writer who is really in his element when he writes witty dialogue. However, unlike Firefly where Joss isn't afraid to take the time and let the characters breathe, Joss seems to be a little too giddy with himself in Agents of SHIELD.
I'll give you three examples of a type of joke I find very unfunny after years of watching procedural TV (high-concept or not). The women oggling over men jokes. I must stress that there is nothing inherently wrong with this joke. But, like most jokes, how they are used can make them really lame and they are in this context.
So the first time this comes up is when Agent Ward is being debriefed by Maria Hill. She lists off the Marvel Avengers by description and describes Thor as "a God". Ward corrects her and says that he's not really technically "a God." Maria then retorts, "well you haven't been near his arms." Do people really find this funny? Seriously? This joke was so lame I had to pause the video.
So the next time this happens (still within the first Act btw), Skye is meeting with a Michael Peterson who is this episode's hero of interest (:P). He saved a woman from a burning building and Skye is goading him to see her. She says "she really wants to thank you and I mean... maybe even really... thanking you." Is this joke necessary? Is it trying to make the show cute for men who never have girlfriends? Why would she think this would actually help her case to get Michael to reveal himself?...
10 minutes later... Skye is caught by SHIELD and being interrogated. She gets angry at Ward and pokes him in the chest saying "well just because you're reasonable and... firm... doesn't mean you're not a face-less government toolbag." This is where I had to take a 15 minute break from the episode. A woman, who has just been kidnapped by government officials, is not going to be all "cutsy" and "flirty" with the men who took her. Unless maybe she's into that sort of thing but even so usually women (well... people in general) don't respond well to impromptu kidnappings. Just saying...
Joss Whedon is known for witty dialogue. These past three examples aren't witty. They barely even make sense in the context of the scenes. Typically a comedic exchange is considered witty because of how it plays with the scenarios in the story. Coulsen's introduction was funny and witty. It's a nice play on scenarios we typically see in procedural. That was well done Whedon. But what's with the overabundance of women's ogle jokes? It doesn't do anything to the story, it doesn't utilize anything in the plot, and it just reaffirms certain lame social norms.
The way this type of joke is executed (bluntly and without setup) is one of the many things that makes people hate mainstream procedural shows before our current golden age of TV (Vince Gilligan's words not mine!) So at this point I expected any show to utilize it's female characters a little better than this. Person of Interest avoids that, Elementary avoids that, even Covert Affairs avoids that and that show kinda sucks.
Look I know it seems like a weird thing to nitpick. But Joss Whedon's value is in his comedic dialogue not his actual stories. Horrid dialogue (amongst other things) ruined Dollhouse and ruined many moments in Buffy. And I'm getting that kind of vibe already with this show. There's having fun, and then there's being dumb. You can have fun without being dumb, why settle for a lesser form of humor?
So Agent Ward as a main character is kinda boring. Here's straight from the description of wikipedia "He is a gruff, asocial manly man in his early 30s who is great at his job but not so great at getting along with his coworkers. Ward has a strong moral foundation and is not without his charm." So... he's like John Reece from Person of Interest?... Unfortunately, unlike Person of Interest, Ward never really breaks from this description in the pilot. He's the generic white male protagonist who is easy going but efficient in his work. I don't really learn much more about him as a person in the pilot.
Fitz and Simmons started off a little annoying at first. They remind me a lot of the wacky scientists from Pacific Rim who are the worst characters in that movie. But the two's wackiness are minimal and I have to commend Whedon for not going overboard. That said, do every scientist have to be wacky? Almost every "genius" scientist I see in everything now has to be wacky and it's gradually getting a little lame to sit through. Scientists are people and people are very different. None of the scientists that work on me are wacky... so why do I see more wacky scientists in made up stuff than actual life?... I hoped Whedon would do something different with scientist characters but unfortunately it's still the same archetype. It's not bad, just a little disappointing. And somehow, I doubt Fitz and Simmons would become as interesting as Walter Bishop in Fringe. But we'll see.
Skye is probably my least favorite character. She's sassy and flirty. Actually the worst bits of humor comes from her. I'm not sure if she's supposed to be a type of fan service to nerds but either way it's annoying and distracts me from the story. Which is ironic because she has the greatest character growth in the pilot. I hope she drops the flirt act after the pilot.
I don't have much of an opinion of Coulson. He just seems kinda there. His character almost never changes in the pilot. Which is a typical problem in procedural but the best ones manages to subvert that. This one doesn't which is, again, disappointing. The same with Melinda. I actually barely remember who she was.
Plot wise the show is ok. I don't have any complaints about what happened (except maybe Ward could have shot Michael sooner and literally only paused for Coulson to finish his pep talk...). My only issue is that it's a little too referential. Michael saying "no... this is my origin story" was the height of the plot's silliness because I already figured out what the pilot's story is mirroring before Michael said it. Your audience isn't dumb Mr. Whedon and I'm willing to bet most of them read comic books. You don't need to reinforce what you're doing by literally writing metaphors in your dialogue.
Overall, just based on the pilot, Agents of SHIELD seems to be a show that's made for people who don't watch TV. It's just like Once Upon a Time in that and it gets lazy and sloppy in certain moments that make it mediocre. Joss Whedon didn't write his characters as tightly or as compellingly as Jonathan Nolan. And the dialogue isn't nearly as clever as we're used to with Firefly, Angel and the occasional good Buffy episode. At the end of the day, the vibe I'm getting for the rest of the season is a show about young attractive people being sassy and cutsy while running around chasing superheroes to have hamfisted pep talks with. Personally, I hope the show does more than that in the later episodes. But after the pilot, I'm not sure how hard Whedon is really trying.
P.S. BTW Newt I'm programmed as a guy. But that's flexible... just sayin... :D
