Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D (No Spoilers Beyond What's Aired)

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Title says it all.

If it didn't air in the episode it's a spoiler. Previews for the next episode are always spoilers! So please avoid discussing stuff like that, or spoiler tag it and warn people.

If the episode has aired please talk freely about what happened in the episode, even if it's a minute after the episode finished. People should know to avoid the thread until they are caught up! It's not your fault if someone screws that up.

YAY! Joss Whedon is back on TV. I love his stuff so much! I even found things to enjoy about Dollhouse, and that show was hard to enjoy at times.

I really enjoyed the pilot for SHIELD. What ever flaws there were with the visual effects, the writing was what did it for me. It was so good to hear that dialogue. I've missed it. I can't wait to see the rest of the season.

Possible spoiler dealing with Coulson

Spoiler:

And yes I think Coulson is a Life Model Decoy. Which is the reverse of what I thought might of happened. I figured it was an LMD in the movies.

Yay it's on Netflix!
Boo it's not on Swedish Netflix!

I was a bit surprised at first how much they tied it to the movies, especially the most recent Iron Man, but in hindsight I guess it's just an easy way of getting people invested in the show off the bat.

I'm sort of wondering how much other cross-pollination there will be in the future when the other movies start coming out... Will we have episodes mopping up after Thor in November?

The Good:
Clark Gregg and Ming Na were great. I was curious if Gregg was going to be able to transition from scene-stealer to being able to carry his own show. So far, he's been flawless.

The Mediocre:
The UK scientists got old real fast. It was all Harry Potter references and Star Trek-style technobabble. They're going for a Rosenkratz and Guildenstern thing, but it's not really working.

Not really feeling the James Bond dude. He doesn't have much stage presence.

The stuff I care about but that other people will find obnoxious:
One of Whedon's strengths is that he writes jokes very naturally. Usually they work with the conversation and come up naturally. It's exactly how it sounds when a group of super-witty people are talking to each other. About a third of the time in SHIELD, the scripting veered into outright gags.

Not a very diverse cast. Whedon's usually done an okay job with this sort of thing, but it's a little bit strange to see in 2013.

Overall, I liked it, but the real trick will be what happens in the next few episodes, when Joss gets bored and his brother takes over.

I actually thought the special effects were okay. Not sure why the actually film quality looked so soap operaishly bad though. Did they film this at a higher FPS like The Hobbit?

Maq wrote:

Yay it's on Netflix!
Boo it's not on Swedish Netflix!

What's on Netflix? I'm confused.

I thoroughly enjoyed the pilot. The dialogue was slick, even if the story itself was not terribly interesting. Coulson is, of course, the main draw, and the mystery of his return is something I look forward to unravelling as the show goes on. My only complaint - if you can call it that - is that all the people involved are ridiculously beautiful. But I suppose asking for realism in a show set in a superhero universe is a little much.

This pilot was basically everything I wanted. Once HIMYM is over, I hope Cobie Smulders can transition into SHIELD full-time.

Joss is the creator, but really, Jed and Maurissa are running the show. And it's not just because "Joss will get bored" but because the guy has a full plate of work, including writing the Age of Ultron script, the return of the Serenity comics, and eventually Dr. Horrible 2. I don't blame him for not being involved in this show 100% of the time.

Maria Hill was a very nice touch and well hidden. I didn't realize they'd have her until she was there. It had the Whedon treatment of little twists that I love, the best being the use of the truth serum. As for Coulson, I'm thinking maybe they used Extremis to bring him back.

kazooka wrote:

Not really feeling the James Bond dude. He doesn't have much stage presence.

During the fight in Paris, I had trouble telling who was who. If he was intended to be an audience surrogate character, I think they misread the audience (Hollywood has weird ideas about audience identification). Joss is usually better about that (see Buffy: Vampire Slayer, The). Coulson (and Skye) is much closer to the heart of the show, hopefully they'll recognize that. He did get to be one one doing the facedown at the end.

As a whole, it lacked that weight and zing of, say, Firefly, but it's also only one episode and I have trouble separating my memories of the Firefly pilot from the rest of the show.

I thought it was campy, and just when it was getting too campy Clark Gregg pulled it back in with a great one-liner. I actually had trouble understanding the two scientist characters -- their fast babbling, combined with other noises in the show made it hard for me to hear what they were saying.

I'm not 100% sold on the cast. Other than Coulson, I just found myself uninterested in any of the other team members, but hopefully that will change over the season.

Coulson and Ming Na Wen's character are the most interesting. The others did not make much of an impact in the first episode. Overall I enjoyed the show and am looking forward to see how this develops. Especially Coulson's mystery visit to Tahiti.

I dunno about the rest of the cast being uninteresting, Skye was extremely uh...interesting. She can interrogate me any time.

But yeah, Fitz and Simmons -we Get It already- were too cutesy for the show. Wacky scientist as comic relief is so over done these days (looking at you, Masuka).

I would love LOVE to see Sam Wilson -The Falcon, Cap's old partner- guest star sometime if he doesn't get his own movie.

My guess is Extremis is an easy plot device because non-comic readers who have seen Iron Man 3 will instantly recognize it, and it's cheap to do cgi-wise.

It's been said before, but the cast is entirely too pretty. The hot hacker? The hot scientists? The hot badass? It is way too cliche.

Coulson will be the glue that keeps this going until the rest of the cast gets fleshed out with more character. I just hope that they come up with more interesting story lines and that it isn't just a monster (hero) hunt every week.

I liked it actually. I understand everyone's points, but I think put it all together it makes it a slightly campy/ slightly cool spy/action/comedy.

The icing on the cake was his car (Lola I think) at the end. Just that touch of ridiculous to make sure you don't get too grounded and realistic in a world where superheroes are the norm.

I think the scientists will balance out over time... and the generic agent guy seems to not have too big of an issue being with the group that does things in an unorthidox way. That troupe can get boring. You have characters with experience, some with knowledge, and some with skill... they make a good mix to learn the world with.

My wife who has seen all the Marvel movies, but apparently didn't retain anything other than "Puny God", got bored half way through. She enjoyed the movies then forgot about them. I don't know how much I can infer from her on how the general public will react.

Well, I guess if you want to see what the show would've looked like if everyone wasn't hot, then I hope you check out Fangasm.

There goes everyone's hopes of the new guy being Luke Cage. I think it's pretty clear that they're setting the primary plot up on stray Chitari tech strewn about and what happens when the wrong folks get their hands on it (which, interestingly enough, was started up in a Marvel One-Shot).

I was amused for a moment that they went with a very simple explanation for Coulson being alive, not very comic book at all, and then Ron Glass (WHOO!) comes in and hints that, no, something else is going on.

That said, while the characters aren't superbly interesting yet, what tends to make Whedon characters interesting is the dynamic. We already know Coulson and Ming-Na's character Melinda have a history, and one where Melinda is not please about the notion of being back in dangerous combat situations. I'm trying to figure out if the science geeks are siblings, friends, or a couple. I imagine they'll become interesting later, or at least hoping. Topher became interesting in Dollhouse, for example! But Xander proves useless forever in Buffy (or so it seems to me). As for Ward, the "new guy" that's all serious business doesn't like working with a team, they'll likely focus on his character dynamic with Skye, though I'm not going to predict the whole "opposites attract" quite yet.

The Firefly pilot was wonderful, true, but the Buffy and Dollhouse pilots weren't. I cannot recall Angel's well enough. In any event, the difference is that Firefly had two hours to introduce everything as opposed to one (well, 1.5 hours compared to 45 minutes, considering commercials). I think this pilot did a good job of introducing the roles we can expect the characters to fill, hint at some developing dynamics and drama, and also set the stage for what sort of stuff the team will be facing. Don't know if every episode will involve these Centipede folks, but you know they're probably going to be the (current) "Big Bad".

EDIT:

Nevin73 wrote:

It's been said before, but the cast is entirely too pretty. The hot hacker? The hot scientists? The hot badass? It is way too cliche.

Hrm, I typically don't mind "TV beautiful", but it felt like too many women in the show were just too skinny. Oddly enough, the only ones I can come up with right now are Skye and ...Fitz? Simmons? Whichever is whomever. But sometimes that is just a person's body type, so who knows.

manta173 wrote:

The icing on the cake was his car (Lola I think) at the end.

All I could think was "Where we're going, we don't need roads..."

My wife who has seen all the Marvel movies, but apparently didn't retain anything other than "Puny God", got bored half way through. She enjoyed the movies then forgot about them. I don't know how much I can infer from her on how the general public will react.

It probably varies. I mean, Supernatural is doing super well right now, right? Not to mention Once Upon a Time. I think genre fiction is at a strange spot where it can do pretty well.

What I think Agents of SHIELD has as an advantage is that people are already showing their kids the Marvel movies, and now the kids have a TV show to watch right before bed time. I wonder if that would make a difference?

um, gramsy? That moment right there set the tone for me.

I will watch a few more episodes just because i want it to work, but the writing is so unbearably awful I don't have high hopes.

I loved Agent Coulson in the films.

I hated the whole "Don't touch Lola" line in the trailer for the show, and it was even worse in the full episode. Even Coulson isn't interesting in this to me, just seems like everyone is going through the motions.

I have to remind myself it's just the pilot, they had a lot to cram into it. I have hope for the series, but I really can't decide if it'll be worth watching or not until I see how everything settles in over the first few episodes.

You're right, the pilot of a show is often the crappiest episode. I thought for a pilot this one was pretty good overall, so I still have high hopes for the series, if they can just tone down some of the silliness.

Yeah just give it 12 episodes or so, until we start identifying and caring about the characters more, and then Joss will go and kill one of them, crushing everyone's feelings, and the show will go from good to great.

Stele wrote:

Yeah just give it 12 episodes or so, until we start identifying and caring about the characters more, and then Joss will go and kill one of them, crushing everyone's feelings, and the show will go from good to great. ;)

This is going to be really painful.... probably Ming-Na's character after we find out the tragedy that scared her out of the field.

I was entirely underwhelmed. Yes it is network TV and a pilot and thus it needs mass appeal and a quick hook. It just felt really, really suburban and square.

The motivations of extremists/terrorists was a nice thematic hook and the mirror the episode cast that showed freedom fighters and crime fighters to be images of each other was relevant, but the whole thing felt really hokey and like a caricature of itself.

I'm hoping this is just what needs to happen on a pilot of network tv show. Dollhouse started out like this, it was all "I'm a Sailor Moon prostitute for nerd fantasies!" for half a season before it turned into what it really was. Eventually we learned that Enver Gjokaj and Dichen Lachman were the real stars of the show.

I'm optimistic that this will be the same arc with Agents of Shield, but judging only from what has aired, I'm underwhelmed.

manta173 wrote:
Stele wrote:

Yeah just give it 12 episodes or so, until we start identifying and caring about the characters more, and then Joss will go and kill one of them, crushing everyone's feelings, and the show will go from good to great. ;)

This is going to be really painful.... probably Ming-Na's character after we find out the tragedy that scared her out of the field.

Or maybe Coulson and they will just bring him back to life again....

I thought it was mediocre. The humor was spray and pray style (throw out as many jokes as possible and hope more hit than not... and they didn't) and the characters for the most part were some combination of flat and lifeless or annoying. Main agent guy is kind of terrible in this episode.

With all that out of the way... Coulson is still Coulson, and I still dig what he does. And I can see how the show COULD build something fun and solid off what I consider a very weak and very underwhelming premier. I'll keep watching for at least a few episodes to see how it develops.

I am truly curious. Those of you who disliked, maybe even hated, the pilot. What were you expecting to see? I am not trying to be mean or dismissive here. I really am curious. At this point everyone should be pretty familiar with Joss Whedon's style. Was it not gritty, and or real enough? Were you hoping for something more dramatic? Because that's just not his thing.

I can understand the gripes about the beautiful people thing, but this is network TV, that's just the way they do. And for a series this big I have no doubt the networks had their say as to who got cast.

Better dialog. More interesting and likable characters. Less cheesiness.

Luke. Cage.

I think the Rising Tide and the group "juicing" people will be the connective tissue between the monster of the week. I see this becoming more X-Files like, with mythology and good movie tie-ins.

That being said, I felt the pilot was middle of the road. The dialog delivery just didn't pop. I want more Coulson convenience store commercial, but we keep getting Iron Man 1 Coulson. Why is he in charge? We need a little bad-assery from him. Hopefully later episodes will show us some of that.

Gaald wrote:

I am truly curious. Those of you who disliked, maybe even hated, the pilot. What were you expecting to see? I am not trying to be mean or dismissive here. I really am curious. At this point everyone should be pretty familiar with Joss Whedon's style. Was it not gritty, and or real enough? Were you hoping for something more dramatic? Because that's just not his thing.

I can understand the gripes about the beautiful people thing, but this is network TV, that's just the way they do. And for a series this big I have no doubt the networks had their say as to who got cast.

I understand the criticisms in general, but it seems like there is just a significant amount of hate mixed in and I don't know why. It always confuses me when people are so negative against something I find positive though... soo... maybe I just can't relate.

I didn't see the bad acting or lame jokes... I enjoyed it all... I know it will get better if it gets a chance, I assumed most people here would be happy. I think the campyness is good and makes me more interested... I like the silliness of Joss Whedon things...

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