Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. opened
big last week, but the real test of its staying power came tonight with
Episode 2. How many people returned for "0-8-4"? Was the
episode a success? Did you care about the story and the characters? Did it
make you laugh? Did you enjoy the action-y moments?
Based on a lot of the reviews and feedback I read
about the premiere, I think there were a lot of misconceptions about
what Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to be. A lot
of people, myself included, loved it. But some people thought the show was
going to be similar to The Avengers movie and feature
superheroes, and so they were disappointed when they found out
they're weren't any superheroes. Others were confused
when the series wasn't as "adult" as they'd have liked it to be—which
is not an unreasonable complaint—but being based in a world that
originated in a comic book and airing at 8pm kind of hinted that
would be the case. And still others watched last week's premiere and
came away upset that the series was about a group of people with special
powers, similar to the premise of Heroes. I've had a week
to think about what Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is and what I want
it to be, and I came up with three criteria. "0-8-4" met all three,
so I was happy with the second outing. (However, I don't know what that third
group of people was thinking, because this series is nothinglike Heroes.)
So, what are those three criteria? Well, to be
successful, this series needs to be accessible, it needs to flesh out its
characters and develop its world, and it needs to find the right balance of
heart, humor, and action. I think "0-8-4" did just fine in
accomplishing those goals.
Being accessible means that until it establishes itself as
its own series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. cannot be heavily
serialized. Fans (and potential fans) must be able to enter
this world without needing an encyclopedia of Marvel facts, or a
flowchart to keep things straight. And I truthfully feel that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s writers
have done the best they can in that regard. Is it easier to
understand the lingo if you've seen any of the movies or read
the comics? Of course. But just as Skye was starting to learn
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s lingo this week, you will too, eventually.
If you've seen the Marvel films of if you've read the
comics, then you picked up on Agent Coulson's reference to Thor's hammer, and you
understand what Hydra is, and
why Tesseract-fueled
anythings are no good. But you don't need to have understood
those references to know that Hydra=bad and that the 0-8-4 (an object of
unknown origin) the team found tonight would have been disastrous in the
wrong hands. Those things were explained via exposition from the characters like
they would be on any other series with heavy mythology. Plus, guys,
with the amount of crap on the internet these days, and especially with the
amount of Marvel knowledge you can find out there, if you don't understand
something and it's really bothering you, just Google it. It'll
take you more time to complain about not understanding it than it would to find
the answer.
So the series needs to be accessible. It needs to
follow a formula in which Coulson's specialized S.H.I.E.L.D. team travels
somewhere (like Peru, as was the case in this week's episode) and assesses and
contains any and all threats (like the Tesseract-fueled technology they found,
and then Camilla Reyes and her team when they decided they wanted to
use the 0-8-4 for their own personal gain), and then maybe everyone shares
a beer afterward like any other team of co-workers toasting the end of a long
work day. And also, you know, not dying.
Many of the comments I read about the premiere discussed
being worried that the show was going to be boring if it followed
the same procedure week after week—and that's not a completely ridiculous
fear—but I think many viewers are forgetting that a great number
of successful shows currently on TV are procedurals. Hell, NCIS is
in its, what, eleventh season? It's the most watched show on
television and it's a procedural. It's gotta be doing something right. In
the post-Breaking Bad world, we tend to think that in order to
be good, a series has to be heavily serialized, but that's not the case at
all. Yes, of course there needs to be some sort of serialization happening; the
characters need to grow and evolve and larger story arcs must take place in
order to move the story forward, but being a procedural is not a death
sentence. And I think many Joss Whedon fans are forgetting that each
of his former series began as procedurals themselves, and they had a
hell of a lot of overarching stories and character development over the
course of their runs. Lots of those fans are probably also forgetting that
exactly zero of his shows were born as fully formed success
stories.
The second thing this series needs to accomplish to be
successful is to make its characters more human. We need to get to know who
Skye is, and why Agent Handsome is so methodical and machine-like. We need to
get to know Fitz and Simmons as people beyond their super brains that make the
rest of us look bad. And we definitely need to get the dirt
that is Melinda May's classified file. "0-8-4" made some
big strides on that front. We started to see Skye—who's basically the
audience stand-in—attempt to find her place as a consultant/member of the
S.H.I.E.L.D. team. In fact, we got to see everyone begin to settle into
their roles as members of this team tonight—this was only their
second mission together—and although I get the feeling Fitz and Simmons have
been working together—or have at least known each other—for quite awhile
now, everyone worked together to defeat Reyes and her men and no one died,
so that's got to be a good start, right?
While first impressions are important, they're not
everything, and tonight I felt like I got to know more about who Skye was and
her philosophy on life and why she makes the choices she makes. She likes
social media and how technology is bringing people all over the world
who've never met together, and to hear her talk about 100 people each
having or being 1 percent of the solution, made a lot of sense. And Agent
Handsome even used that logic to help rally the troops when they needed to
find a way to take back the plane, so already we see what an asset she can be.
Skye also helped Agent Handsome bring down some of his own walls
during their conversation on the plane, so we got to know a tiny sliver about
what makes him tick, though I'm concerned about his character's development
more than I am anyone else's. He's got the difficult job of being the straight
man on a team of quirky weirdos, which may or may not lend itself to easy
character development. While we still don't actually know much about these
people—or whether or not we can even trust them—we're starting to learn more
about them, and that's what's important.
Lastly, and just as important to the success of Agents
of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the previous two requirements, this series needs to
find the right balance of the heart, the humor, and the action. Some
people thought the premiere was too quippy, while I myself
found it perfectly adequate on the quippy scale. We all have differing
opinions, but I think tonight's episode scaled back on the humor and still
managed to do just fine.
As for the heart, there was no big meaning of life speech
this week, but there was a moment when the team quit their bickering and worked
together to solve the Reyes problem. Papa Coulson appreciated their efforts and
didn't once lose his cool about the fact his team blew a hole
in the side of his newly renovated airplane (though surprise guest star Samuel
L. Jackson was pisssssssed!). And the action? Yeah, I think they
managed to get enough in to satisfy the fanboys and girls. The shootout in
Peru, the fight sequences on the plane, and then everything that went down
after the massive hole-in-the-plane thing was plenty of action for one episode.
And just for the record? The green screen on this series is about a
million-bajillion times better than Once Upon a Time, so thanks for
all that cash Marvel, the world is grateful.
Whether you liked or loved or hated the premiere, I do
think this was a strong second outing for a series that's got every single eye
in the world trained on it, just waiting for it to slip up or make a
mistake. Tonight's episode was more focused than the premiere, too.
It didn't have to be showy so much as it had to really set the pace and
tone for the rest of the series, and I think it did a good job in that
regard.
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