Review: What Happened to Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D?

It’s pretty clear that most of us were very excited for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Joss Whedon! Avengers! S.H.I.E.L.D! TV! Agent Coulson! So much awesomeness packed into one show, it almost couldn’t be true. After the first episode was screened at Comic-Con this past July, many were calling it the best new show of the whole season. There was so much hype and expectation.

And then it aired. It was nothing like what I imagined. I suppose I expected a masterful Whedon-esque combination of Avengers and Firefly: a team of misfits in a zany, challenging situation, forced to work together to survive and fight the baddies. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. does technically fit aspects of this concept. They are certainly misfits, their situations are challenging, and they fight some bad guys. So while it fits the Whedon requirements, it does not stand on the same legs. I was unimpressed with the cheesy pilot, but I hoped it would get better week after week. Which brings us to now: five weeks in, and just as disappointing as the pilot. 

I hoped Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would be as sleek and powerful as Avengers, as engaging and bizarrely comedic as Firefly, as kick-ass and empowering as Buffy, and as offbeat and heartfelt as Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Instead, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is just…goofy. There were moments in the pilot where I honestly thought to myself, “God, I was Robert Downey Jr was here for this re-write.” So the first problem: Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg). Coulson was endearing in the Marvel film franchise because he was the only ordinary guy in the cast. He alone represented the American everyman, the business behind the party, the ringleader. His blandness was sweet and appreciated amongst a Norse God, a egotistical Iron-crazed billionaire, muscles incased in ice for seventy years, two leather-loving, neurotic assassins, and an explosive green monster. But on his own, around men and women just like him, Coulson barely stands out. Whedon and his team attempt to make Coulson a little less ordinary by shrouding his miraculous Jesus-like rising in mystery. Though he continually says that he repaired himself on a beach in Tahiti, the rest of the team allude to something much darker that even Coulson doesn’t know. What starts as an interesting plot point quickly becomes over-referenced and just plain tired. 

It seems that even Whedon and Co. recognized that Coulson is too boring to lead the show, so they bring in Skye (Chloe Bennet). Skye is introduced as the audience-surrogate. She’s a hacker who is essentially plucked from the back of her van/home and brought onto the S.H.I.E.L.D. team for her computer whiz skills. She is chatty, smart, and quick and guess what! She’s so unbelievably annoying that following her becomes grating and exhausting. We are often meant to sympathize with her, and we’re clearly meant to find her endearing, but she’s anything but. 

Like Skye, the rest of the team are one-dimensional and uninteresting. The only interesting character, Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), the apparently kick-ass pilot with an intriguing S.H.I.E.L.D.-based history, is given little screen time, few lines, and has essentially no personality. These characters are little more than types: the quiet, rule-abiding muscular military man, the interchangeable neurotic scientists who mostly just bicker and spout made-up monster-fighting scientific knowledge (the two have absolutely no chemistry, by the way).

Perhaps Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. could have been redeemed itself if it was as polished and engaging as the Avengers, but instead the show is flat and static. It’s gimmicks are hardly entertaining and instead seem forced and mostly fake. At the end of the pilot, Agent Coulson drives off with Skye in a little red convertible that happens to fly. It was so silly that I actually laughed out loud. The team flies around the world in a clunky airbus that typically looks like it was pasted onto a standard blue sky background. The bad guys are almost always scientists-gone-wrong who’s wrong-doing ways are quickly solvable. The few that actually feature some sort of superpower are hilarious – their powers are not exactly ‘powers’ as they are sloppily-written enhancements. The special effects should never be called “special;” they’re trying and sloppy.

So, clearly there are a lot of problems here. I know I’ve been harsh in this review, but it’s mainly because I was very, very excited about the show’s prospects. I really wish this worked as a television show, I really do, but its ties to the Avengers will always leave me wanting more. The Avengers took two years to complete (and probably plus some). Each Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode is completed in a matter of months, maybe even weeks. Now I’m not saying that the superhero genre can’t make it on television (Arrow proves that it can every single week) but I think Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. proves that this sort of ambitious superhero pilot just doesn’t translate onto the small screen as it does on the big screen. Here’s hoping that Whedon is just putting all his creative energy into Avengers: Age of Ultron!

“I Have Faith in the Narrative,” or Why I Love Television and Film

The King of the Nerds, Joss Whedon, is featured in a fantastic Entertainment Weekly cover article this week. The story covers everything in the Whedon-verse, from Roseanne to Buffy to Firefly to Avengers: The Age of Ultron. I found Whedon’s comments on film and television as media and as narrative most interesting and revealing.

On confidence and narrative:

“But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back. Somebody once asked me if I have anything like faith, and I said I have faith in the narrative. I have a belief in a narrative that is bigger than me, that is alive and I trust will work itself.”

This right here, my friends, sums up why Joss Whedon is the King of the Nerds. Comments like this and essentially everything he says in the article align with the core of fandoms and media love and obsession: we have faith in these narratives. To the Doctor Who or Sherlock or Teen Wolf fandoms, the show is truly much more than a show. Like Whedon states, the show is alive in a way that we might never be able to truly understand. It has heart, it has breath, and it has soul. It even feels sometimes like it loves us back.

Which brings me to my purpose for this post: why do I love television and film so much? What seems at first like a simple question and a simple answer is actually one that I consider constantly and find both a million answers and no truly definitive answer. My first reaction is because I just do.

My second and most honest answer is that television, films, books, and basically any story in any format allows me to live a million lives. The human condition limits us to one life, one story, one trajectory, one narrative. Our lives begin, we live them for the most part through limitations and boundaries and narrow paths, and then they end. We experienced that one life and we filled it as best we can. But as oral stories first told us many centuries ago, our imagination and interest is also captivated by the true and fictional stories of others. Through paintings and oral traditions and books, we found ourselves defying our own human limitation: we got to live and breathe in another narrative.

Film and television took that magical ability to a new level, permitting our visual senses to join the party and creating a more immersive experience. When I sit down in front of the TV and watch The Walking Dead or Star Wars, every part of my mind joins in on the action and the narrative. It’s not necessarily that I feel like I’m fighting the Dark side too (though some times I do feel that way and it’s the best feeling ever) but it’s far more subtle than that. It’s like I’m a fly-on-the-wall; I get to be a part of the action and feel everything as each character does but I do not have to be the one behind the wheel.

While most people seem to watch television and film in a similar manner, I think those of us that are truly fans and identify under monikers like “Whovians” and “Trekkies” find even more in the platform. We get more out of a program than another life: we get that life and we get lessons, values, and insights for our own being. We take these elements and then we do more than just identify and share in a character’s experience – we literally extend the world that we read about or see on the screen. We see every possibility for our main characters and instead of demanding more from writers and showrunners and studios (which we also do), we take it upon ourselves to create more. A program becomes infinite; we don’t just live in new lives with a new film or episode, we literally move in. We live on board the TARDIS, or Serenity, or the Enterprise and we set course for new planets and new universes where we imagine all new species and galaxies. We adopt Tatooine or Asgard as our own planet, and see their entire society and their enemies. We exist here on planet Earth, likely on our couch or streaming from Netflix, and we exist in this other place.

I watch TV and films because it allows me to live a better life: I get my own life, family, friends, job, and home but through these programs, I live in other planets or alternate universes, I travel all of space and time, and I get to step outside of human limitation. Most amazing of all, thanks to the internet and Tumblr and Twitter and the like, I get to share these experiences with people just like me. It seems silly (and somewhat unnecessary) to say but this extension of life and this viewing ability makes me happy. These stories and narratives fill my soul with a greater understanding of myself, my friends, and humans. These narratives make me better and they make our world better: they enrich us, entertain us, and ultimately teach us more about being human and being ourselves.

This is why I watch television and films; this is why I’m at the cinema on the first weekend of a film release and why I pay a ridiculous amount of money to get a million channels and why I countdown for a program release. Just like Joss, I put my faith in the narrative, and let me tell you, it is so worth it.