Well, just finished the first season of Gotham. It’s been...

Well, just finished the first season of Gotham. It’s been a season of ups and downs, to say the least, but it’s a fun show. Finale was disappointing in places, but it’s still a much better series than Agents of SHIELD.

In many ways, Daredevil is basically a lawyer show. A lawyer...

In many ways, Daredevil is basically a lawyer show. A lawyer show with a superhero. And the best lawyer show of the past twenty years is Damages. DD succeeds because all the lawyer stuff in it looks and feels exactly like similar scenes in Damages. They have nailed the tone perfectly. 

In the same way, Agents Of SHIELD is basically a covert espionage show (with superpowers). And the best show in that genre over the past twenty years is 24. AoS fails because all their espionage scenes look and feel nothing like similar scenes in 24. They can’t get the tone right and - consequently - all the dialogue feels like ‘pretend spy talk’. 

Agents Of SHIELD 2.6

Tim DeKay. The Morse/Hunter scenes are fine, but the Fitz/Simmons stuff is terrible. Good action scenes at end. They overplay/overwrite everything with the Grant Ward character, but it still manages to be mildly interesting. Imagine how good it could be, if the show wasn’t so darn juvenile in it’s approach? 6/10

Agents Of SHIELD 2.5

Agents Of SHIELD 2.4

Lots of Clark Gregg in this one. That’s a good thing. Story-wise it’s hard to get overly invested in a search for a painting (even if it does tie into a larger story arc) and it’s a bit tedious to find the team’s plane under attack as a means to give the ensemble cast something to do. 6/10

Agents Of SHIELD 2.3

Dylan Minnette . Most of this episode is devoted to Fitz and Simmons, two characters I intensely dislike. In my opinion, a show about SHIELD should have an adult tone, should have a tone akin to shows like 24 or Homeland (when it was good). Instead, they have chosen to populate AoS with Joss Whedon archetypes. (Skye is basically Buffy to Ward’s Angel!) Fitz and Simmons irritate me because when I sit down to watch an action-adventure espionage show set in the Marvel Universe I don’t want to have to sit through scene after insufferable scene of “adorable” “dorks” being all “cute”.

Any scenes they weren’t in were pretty good. 4/10

Agents Of SHIELD 2.2

Not much story here. Lots of naff dialogue, however. Too much Fitz (who cares?), not enough Hunter (who is cool). 4/10

So… Arrow is marginally better than The Flash. And both...

So… Arrow is marginally better than The Flash. And both are much better than Gotham, which - in turn - is way, way, way better than Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Am I right?

Agents Of SHIELD 2.1

I watched this to see if Season Two would be worth watching. And I still don’t know! Broadly speaking this was a mess. But, unlike three of the four season one episodes that I watched, this one was fun.

• So cool to see Reed Diamond, Lucy Lawless, Neal McDonough and Adrian Pasdar in the show. I love them. Lawless and Pasdar were given good material and a chance to shine. Which they did.


• So cool to have SHIELD agents that I actually liked. Izzy Hartley, Lance Blood, and Idaho was instantly likeable and interesting in ways that the Season One cast weren’t/aren’t. (Yes, I know that they are technically mercenaries. But for all intents and purposes they are agents of SHIELD for the duration of this episode. And I liked them.) And I’m sitting there thinking: well if they make these guys the focus of the show moving forward I’ll definitely consider watching it every week.


• The villain of the episode - Carl Creel - was great. Really well realised.

But…

• Whenever the season one cast appeared I wanted to turn off. Coulson and Skye are fine. The rest suck. It’s a combination of actors who can’t act, and characters who say and do things that cynical network executives think will surely work. But actually don’t. I particularly despite Simmons and Fitz and found there scenes in this episode very, difficult to watch. Especially when - at one point - the shows cuts away from a good scene with Coulson & Talbot in a cell to show Simmons & Fitz instead. From a moment of genuine high drama, to a moment of - I dunno - faux teenage angst?


• The show is still self-consciously self-important. The opening minutes and closing minutes were embarrassingly bad. Dialog and speeches that have clearly been cut/paste from better productions. In these moments, you can clearly feel the hand of the writers/producers: putting in stuff that they think will make the show seem cool. But, actually, makes it seem rather naff.

It was an episode of highs and lows. And, strangely for a season premiere, it totally failed to make it clear what the show would be like moving forward. They successfully pulled two twists in the closing scenes. But neither one felt like it had a point. Yes, it was clever. But, rather than impress me, it left me confused. It made it seem as if things they had spent time establishing were suddenly meaningless. Elements, ideas, and stories that had taken up valuable screentime suddenly seemed as if they don’t really matter with regard to the big story, moving forward.

Almost as if the show is more concerned with being perceived as clever than it is with actually telling good stories.

6/10

Agents Of SHIELD 1.17

Most of the regular characters are still painfully bland, and the show is still too self-important. This mid-season reboot looks promising, but what the show really needs is a completely new cast. And new writers. 6/10

Agents Of SHIELD 1.3

David Conrad. Better than last week. After a shaky start, an ‘average’ episode will be marked down as a ‘win’. But, dammit, the show needs to get better than this. And fast! We need characters to like and care about. This group of cliched misfits isn’t them. The guest stars are stealing the show.

Every week this show seems more and more like what a cynical network exec thinks nerds/geeks will like. “Oh, they’ll go crazy if we do this!” Meanwhile, I’m counting the minutes until Arrow is back! 6/10

Agents Of SHIELD 1.2

Leonor Varela. Show is trying way too hard to be cute. Also: show is trying way too hard. There are a couple of good action scenes here, but the story is embarrassingly pedestrian and predictable. All this self-conscious dealing with the team dynamic isn’t helping either. 5/10

Agents Of SHIELD 1.1

J. August Richards. Establishes the world they inhabit very well. And some of the characters. Funny, too. Loving Chloe Bennet a lot. Will definitely be back next week! 8/10