More than halfway through the first season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the show is starting to pick up steam and shed some of the harsher criticisms of its opening episodes as plodding and directionless.They’ve also begun to respond to one of the most persistent complaints from the show’s expected fan base: that they don’t actually feel very much like they’re part of the interconnected Marvel Cinematic Universe. It wasn’t just a lack of recognizable superheroes and supervillains (although that was the biggest sticking point for many fans, whom series star Clark Gregg terms “losers”).My problem with the show, in fact, is emphatically not a lack of superheroes. It’s flat, unlikable characters, terrible dialogue, forgettable stories, generic villains and a production that looks like a plastic set because they’re so preoccupied with trying to replicate the look of a $200 million movie on a TV budget.
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- Geeks as Believable Heroes I’d give them a 3/10. Skye and the Science Twins are meant to be this, but all three characters are so annoying that it’s hard to root for them, let alone put yourself in their shoes.
- Stunt Casting So far, it’s nothing impressive but it’s early days. This is one area where “it’s the first season” is a legitimate excuse. You want to set your stage and not bring anybody in that the audience might then try to convince you to keep. A cameo from Maria Hill and one from Nick Fury aren’t really inspired casting; they’re more “the thing you do.” Going forward, it seems to be more of the same: brief appearances by Marvel folks and more from J. August Richards. This one wouldn’t be fair to judge them on until next year, but from what we can see it seems that creative, inspired stunt casting is unlikely to ever happen because when you’ve got that guest star money earmarked, you’re going to spend it on somebody Marvel.
- Character Development Here’s where the show really suffers. A number of fans or critics I’ve spoken to have said variations on “If the Bus blew up next week and all of the principal cast were killed and replaced with new actors, I’d really miss Coulson.”
- Supporting Cast Non-existent as of yet, but understandable because at the moment they’ve got a large cast and haven’t really given many of them time to shine yet. It’s frustrating that the closest thing we have to a supporting cast member is a recurring character they were apparently putting on a long, slow fast-track to becoming a superhero…but it is what it is.
- Twist Endings They’ve only tried it once so far. How did it do? Well, the midseason finale wanted us to believe that one major character was dead and another was captured and may never return. The midseason premiere a month later came back to the lowest ratings yet for the series.
- Fight Scenes It’s not bad, but it’s no Chuck. The fight scenes on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are impressively choreographed, but there’s never any real stakes to them; there has never been one that lasted long enough for viewers to worry “our team” might lose, and they’ve built up Melinda May as basically indestructible.
- Fanservice So far, the show is surprisingly un-sexy considering that it’s a bunch of young, hot people.
- Girl Power 8/10. They do have this down. The next step is making May more fully realized than a tank and Skye something more than a plot device.
- Family Not really applicable.
- The Unexpected This is another area where S.H.I.E.L.D. is really lacking; nobody but nobody believed that Mike was really dead after the midseason finale, and then the very next episode, he wasn’t! Pretty much everybody called the way Coulson came back from the dead. There hasn’t been a single real “Holy cow!” moment yet in the series.
Not all of these things were in place when Chuck started out, but a recent rewatch of the premiere with a friend reminded me that all the pieces were there on the board, just waiting to be used. Chuck got organically better and better without a major retooling as the series went on because all it had to do was grow. It’s not clear that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. can say that yet, but with the fan enthusiasm they had back at the beginning of this season, the money at their disposal, the full-season commitment from ABC and a talent like Clark Gregg’s, there is no reason that show shouldn’t be good now instead of laster
