Thursday, October 31, 2013

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Chronicles of a Half-Assed Heroes Show


Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't a bad show, it's just not a good show.  I thought it was cool that they had a cameo from Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury and Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, but those are the highlights of the series.  Other than that, the show is pretty ordinary.

As a nerd, I would have loved it if at least one character on the "team" was an established Marvel character. I get that they want "new blood," to be free from nerd scrutiny, but minor characters should be fair game. Not even one super power on the team!  Lets take look at the characters we're stuck with.



The fate of the world is in the hands of these boners?

Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) is the most interesting of the six person team, and that is only based on things he's done outside of the show.  Something seems to be off about him, I just assume he is a Life Model Decoy, which is an android that believes it is the actual person it is programmed to be.  In the Marvel U, 70% of Nick Fury interactions are through an LMD. They even made one a bad guy. It was pretty cool.

Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) is the pilot of their mobile command center, who apparently was some sort of super-bad-ass-karate-lady, but is "taking it easy" until the writers need her.

Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) portrays a rigid super agent.  This is easily the worst, most two-dimensional character on the show.  He exists for fight scenes, complaining that he's a loner, and to train Skye.

Skye (Chloe Bennet) is some sort of "super hacker" who was in a movement against S.H.I.E.L.D., but upon capture, decided to abandon her cause and become "the man."  Skye is usually involved in most of the action through each episode, even though she is not a trained agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.  She's what makes this crazy band of kids work!

Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) works in the lab as an engineer, and is useless until the last 10 mintes of the show, where the nerds knuckle down and save everything.

Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) is the scientific partner to Fitz.  I'm pretty sure these characters exist only to make the "Fitz-Simmons" joke that comes up nearly every episode.  She also helps save the day when good piloting and sheer brawn fail.

So, on top of that mess, there are the actual stories to get into.  The Marvel universe has tons to offer as far as evil organizations go, Hydra, A.I.M., The Hand, but so far they just seem to be recovering "Stolen Chitauri tech," or connecting it in some other way to the alien invasion that took place in The Avengers.

I mean, four episodes in and no cool cameos?  Come on!  Give us nerds some bread crumbs. Introduce us to people without powers, or have the team look into C-list bad guys, who could still be the ones stealing alien artifacts.  Establish a big bad guy in one episode, and then let them be behind the scenes for three or four episodes before coming back to destroy everything.  Build something, or at least, build it in a different way.  They seem to have some sort of mastermind pulling the strings, but with no idea who they are or what they are doing, why should anybody care?  It is taking too long, and the show seems to be suffering.  They have a "free" year to work out the kinks, and I hope they figure out some long term plot lines before season 2.

Here are some Marvel characters I think would have great TV shows:

Daredevil.  That dude has decades of great stories to pull from (most of which involve someone finding out his secret identity, Matt Murdock, attorney at law) and loads of interesting people he interacts with.  You could do a season of Maggia (what Marvel U calls the mafia.  I know, it's stupid) related stuff, a season with Ninja stuff, and my favorite, a season with Daredevil fighting the public, and lying under oath about him being Daredevil.  Since he's a lawyer, it really hurts him morally, and sends him into a downward spiral that ends with him controlling all crime in Hell's Kitchen.  Also, you could have him face off with another dude I'll have on this list, The Punisher.  Those two characters often walk the same path, but where The Punisher kills anyone he deems a criminal, Daredevil needs to adhere to the rules, wanting to always be on the right side of the law.





The Punisher.  I'll admit it, The Punisher has a lot of potential to get old fast, but if they handle it with the whole "Cable Drama" model that HBO, Showtime, and AMC have been using so well, then it might be the greatest show ever.  You could introduce a new enemy every season, and have old Frank Castle work his way up to them over 10-13 episodes.  More importantly, you'd need a season where The Punisher goes to prison.  Eventually he'd escape, or S.H.I.E.L.D. would release him to kill someone for them, but it would definitely be an interesting angle.



Jessica Jones.  Who?  I know, nobody really knows this character, but that doesn't mean she's any less cool than the two I just went through. Jessica Jones runs Alias Investigations as an ex-costumed super hero, now a washed up private detective.  You sprinkle a slight bit of super strength on "down on their luck" detective stories, and you get into some interesting situations.  This series would have a lot of wiggle room, and could go for a while before people realize it is a Marvel property. It would also have to go the Cable Drama route, because it goes to some pretty dark places, but that is what makes it so interesting.  Her life as a detective along with the friends she still has on the Avengers team, it makes for a cool premise.  Out of every character I've mentioned, this is the show I want to see the most.


The Hood.  This would be a story of a villain just starting off.  Parker Robbins is a small-time crook, who is barely feeding his wife and baby.  He's thinking of straightening out, when he finds a cloak in a garbage can that gives him amazing abilities.  With this new found power, he decides to dive head first into a life of crime.  While I think this is awesome, this is the one I think audiences would have trouble with.  Not because he's a villain, but because he wears a "magic cloak."


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