However, just to whet the audience appetites, the BBC released a mini-episode which is a prequel to the “Night of the Doctor.” And even if you’re not a rabid Whovian, there’s enough in the short to make even me lament the fact that I don’t have cable TV anymore. Click the jump to watch.
Watch before you read on, for spoilers abound abound in this commentary on the latest episode of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, now available to watch on the official website.
Speaking as someone who sometimes has problems distinguishing lyrics in songs, there were many times where the diction wasn’t as great as it was in previous episodes. Hence, I believe I’m going to call the female Agent with the red streaks in her hair Agent What’s Her Face.
Other people have compared Fitz and Simmons to Xander and Willow as the more civilian-like members of the group. When I use that same frame of reference, Simmons’ puppy-dog-like behavior during the packing scene and how her shyness manifests makes sense. It still strikes me as a little odd, though.
I can add “Tahiti’s a magical place” to my list of phrases to be afraid of now.
Fitzward ‘shippers are rejoicing because there’s tons of canon now for them to play in. I like the chemistry between these two characters a lot.
“Did you know there was no extraction plan for Ward and Fitz”? Skye asks. Right now, judging from the non-conversation he had with Agent May while she was doing her exercises, I think he did. And yet, the conversation he has with Agent What’s Her Face proves otherwise.
Judging from the way Ward reacted when he didn’t get a counter-signal from the waiting extraction team, it feels to me like he’s been in this kind of situation before. One wouldn’t expect anything less of someone who’s supposed to be as highly rated in combat as the Black Widow.
One thing that I think Fury knows and Coulson knows but Agent What’s Her Face doesn’t is that when you tell someone the odds and know your people well, they will surprise you into doing amazing things.
If there’s one thing that I dislike about this show is that it keeps saying that Skye is an uber-hacker supreme, but it doesn’t really show it. Tony Stark built A.I.s for his graduate thesis and they had files on him. Fitz and Simmons are brilliant in their fields and they were recruited. Skye is able to hack into a high level clearance server, and yet no one had ever tried to approach her? Why or why not? If there had been some line of dialogue where it mentions that she’d been approached before and run, then I’d be willing to believe that S.H.I.E.L.D. security isn’t leaking like a broken sieve.
Of course, the alternate is more scary and spooky, as Coulson and May reveal in their little scene. My point still stands, however.
I was hoping for a Simmons-centered episode, and I’m so glad that I got it.
Based on her impersonation of Ward alone, I ship Ward/Simmons so hard now.
Oh, God. This dialogue between Skye and Fitz is so cute. I love how he’s trying to establish that she and the hacker from last episode (the Lacker?) are no longer an item, and she’s not having any of it.
As someone aptly noted last night on Facebook or Twitter, I have never heard the words “Have a cookie” sound like a threat before, but now I have.
“They don’t need an audience,” Ward says, while watching Simmons’ brain race against its own demise. And yet, I love his soliloquy. Where in the hell does S.H.I.E.L.D. keep finding these awesome, stout-hearted, and amazing employees? I’m not just talking about Ward, Coulson, and May here, but almost all the other agents we’ve seen so far, including Agent Amador from “Eye Spy” and perhaps even Agent Mack from “The Asset”. I’m staking it right now: a future episode is eventually going to involve a real agent who has gone bad and not just one who is being blackmailed by an outside force.
I believe I’m just going to handwave the idea that organic material from a battle which took place months ago are viable enough to still contain viable antibodies because it’s alien organic material. It’s best that you do the same.
And how awesome was that “brainstorming out loud/accidentally revealing your love for the other person” scene? Bravo to both actors for pulling it off well.
What I can’t handwave is the fact that Ward should have come out with some eye protection on before jumping out of the plane. Just that one bit of extra prop work could have made the parachute jump sequence just that much more believable.
One amazing thing that I keep forgetting to mention is how awesome the actors, cinematographers, editors, and director at at creating those little moments where the emotional tone of a scene can change by just having the camera linger a bit too long on the right person. Nice bit with Fitz at the end there where the expression on his face goes from “Aw, that was nice” to “Aw, I’m brooding about something else now”. I hope he wasn’t thinking that he wished he could have saved Skye in a fantastic fashion or how he needs to let Simmons down gently.
I don’t recognize the Orson Scott Card I see today, but I refuse to believe that the author whose stories helped me navigate my teenage years has disappeared entirely. Others may hate him, but I’m still struggling to understand him. That’s the least I owe him for gifting me with an ethical compass when I needed one. How strange and how sad, then, that Card’s compass pointed me in one direction while he strode off in another. But maybe that’s what he had given me: a gift so sacred that even Card himself could not be allowed to understand what it meant.
You say you want to go “viral.” I’m gonna tell you that you actually might NOT want to go legitimately “viral” and here’s why: About 90% of videos that go viral are a trap for their creators. Tay Zonday made Chocolate Rain, and regardless of the fact that he’s a talented singer and songwriter, he will forever be known as the Chocolate Rain guy. Chris Crocker isn’t known as a smart social commentator and sketch comedian, he’s known as “Leave Britney Alone.” The list goes on. The trap of going viral is that you will forever be compared to your original viral work, and viewers will be largely uninterested in anything else you have to offer. It’s like how Matthew Perry will play Chandler the rest of his life, you don’t necessarily want to blow up super-quickly… better to build an audience with a few really solid, moderately popular videos, and then continue releasing consistently good content within a specific concept or brand.
I have to say that this is the most nicely critical piece of writing I’ve seen in a while. It’s easy to “go mean” when someone comes to you for advice like this; I appreciate that Black went into teacher mode instead.
You can learn more about Brent Black by visiting his website or checking out some of his YouTube videos. (Also, the video on his subscriber page that auto-plays where he explains what his channel is about for new viewers? Why don’t more YouTube artists do that?)
Piggy-backing on my comments from last week, if I were a more ardent fan of the X-Men comics, I’d be rightly pissed off that instead of Kitty Pryde being sent back to her younger self to warn the X-Men of 1980 of a horrific war that would spell the end of mutantkind, they chose to use Wolverine. However, I’ve come to accept that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is its own continuity and it’s okay.
While some of the shots in the trailer look gorgeous, I have to wonder if in order to watch the movie, you need more than just a Wikipedia-fed knowledge of who the X-Men are. There were people in the scenes in the “past” that I didn’t recognize and if I have to watch X-Men: First Class just in order to understand this movie and it’s not available to stream on Netflix, then I’m probably not going to bother.
The iTunes price is $14.99, which to me seems steep for a title that isn’t even in HD. And both Marvel Studios and Fox are crazy if they can’t find a way to bring that price down a bit before the new movie comes out or maybe do a limited streaming on Netflix or somewhere else for a month or two prior to the new film’s release so that the fans they lost with X-Men 3 (like me!) can get back up to speed.
Directed by Bryan Singer, X-Men: Days of Future Past is scheduled to be released in the US on May 23, 2014.
Spoilers abound in this commentary on the latest episode of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, now available to watch on the official website.
Finally, we have an story arc for the first season! In retrospect, they were setting it up from the start with Skye’s weird traitor aura leading us into wanting her to finally blurt out the reason why she wanted to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. It will be interesting to see what the exact deal with her parents are and why the organization would have been involved with them.
In a friend’s Facebook thread about the series, a different friend posited that she would have liked Skye more if the actress playing the character were younger. For this story arc, I can totally see that working if they’d gotten an actress who really looked like she was a young teenager. However, this story about the ex-lover/hacktivist would have been a little extra creepy.
Agent Melinda May continues to be more awesome, and the fact that she used to have more than a passing familiarity with Agent Phil Coulson makes me like her even more. I also wonder if she was using the “Let’s go practice” gambit to try and assess whether or not he was really Coulson.
Does the fact that Chan (no, I refuse to call him “Scorch”) has pyrokinetic abilities open the door for mutant powers in this ‘verse? I certainly hope it does. And that maybe they get to go to Chicago and pick up my favorite teen hacker/sprite/ghost-walker—oh, shit… is my Marvel fangirl showing?
I am still holding out for a character-focused story for Simmons. She and Fitz looked more inept than usual in this episode.
I also have to wonder how far in advance this script was written in order to get the Edward Snowden reference in. And I also personally know several people who do consider him to be a privacy hero as well.
Am I the only one getting shades of the Malcolm Reynolds/Zoe relationship from May and Coulson?
Despite being spoiled for this episode in a minor way, I was very, very pleased with it. This bodes well for the rest of the season; it can only get better from here. Okay, maybe it can get worse again, but I now have hopes!
Anime Fusion 2013
October 18-20, 2013
Bloomington, Minnesota
Ever since I moved to Minneapolis in Minnesota, I have slowly been exploring the geek spaces around me by going to geekish concerts and movie showings. I even have a local gaming store which is three or four blocks away from me where I play in a weekly role playing game campaign and where I’ve begun playing more Magic: the Gathering.
However, when it came to conventions, I just didn’t have the time or the money to attend any this summer, including gaming convention Con of the North in the late winter, Anime Detour in the spring, science fiction convention CONvergence in the summer, or any number of larger group gatherings that take place in and around the Twin Cities.
All of that changed when I noticed from a Facebook post that voice actor (and friend) Taliesen Jaffe was going to be attending Anime Fusion in the nearby suburb of Bloomington, home to the Mall of America. The convention was taking place the weekend after my wedding celebration, so I thought it was a perfect time to get myself back out there and to attend my first anime convention since 2008.
The first thing I’ll say about Anime Fusion is that it was very easy to find walk-in registration information on its website and that for a Saturday pass, the price was very reasonable. Their harassment policy was also easy to find on their FAQs and Policies page, as was the hotel location information and full convention schedule. When you’re deciding to attend a local convention at the last minute, it’s important that all of this information is easy to find because you could just as easily stay home if you can’t find the information you need.
Because I know the area around the Mall of America well, I decided to arrive around 1:00 pm because I wanted to pick up some fast-food to have for lunch on the way down. The problem is that there aren’t any fast food places around that aren’t inside the mall and I also know that hotel concessions are often pretty costly. Later, I would inwardly congratulate myself on my decision when I encountered two attendees who were pouring through a phone book, looking for a nearby restaurant which delivered to the hotel because they’d traveled to the convention by bus and didn’t want to pay for the hotel concessions.
When I entered the hotel lobby, there was an ample amount of signage directing me to the walk-up registration desk. The actual registration didn’t take very long because there were few walk-ins, but waiting for a receipt for my cash transaction took a bit longer as the person assisting me didn’t know how to generate a receipt and the person who did was helping someone else find their pre-registration information in their database. However, once that person became free, generating the receipt was as easy as a few taps on the iPhone with credit card reader dedicated to the task and within minutes, the receipt was in my Inbox.
While I was waiting, I asked some basic questions and learned that Anime Fusion was in its second year and were anticipating that this year, they’d have about 1,000 attendees over the 850 they had last year. I also noticed that for a smaller convention, there were more people in cosplay than I expected, mostly from shows or fandoms that I’m not a part of like Homestuck and “My Little Pony.”
Due to the hotel, the layout of the convention was also something I’ve never encountered before. All of the meeting rooms were located on the second floor, which can be typical. What isn’t typical is that there are also guest rooms on the second floor along long hallways that connected the board gaming, con hospitality suite, and convention operations room to the CCG area and circling back around to the Main Programming and panel rooms and the Dealers Room and Artist Alley in a sort of triangular formation.
Merchandise on display from local guests Studio O.N.Y.
And speaking of the Dealers Room and Artist Alley, the two were combined into one room with one half dedicated to the Dealers and the other half to the Artists. I thought this was a great way of creating a bigger commercial space without slighting either the Dealers or the Artists with placement concerns. There was also a great selection of vendors on both sides and I didn’t feel as if there was too much of one kind of merchandise or too little of another.
While buying some random Magic cards, I had a great conversation with two vendors from Source Comics and Games who let me know about other good conventions in my new convention metro area, which apparently extends west to east from South Dakota to Wisconsin, south as far as Iowa and part of Illinois, and even north to conventions in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They reported that business was pretty good for them with this convention and they were likely to return for the next one.
A badass Rumpelstiltskin from “Once Upon a Time.”
In the Artist Alley, I found that there were more male than female artists, a fact that gratifies my little feminist heart. Many of them had buttons and other crafts for display along with their portfolios; several were even working on commissions at their tables. One of the best moments was when one of the artists squealed over seeing someone in cosplay. The outfit looked familiar to me, and I ended up squealing as well when I learned that she was cosplaying as Rumpelstiltskin from “Once Upon a Time.” As this is a show that I’ve recently gotten into, we had a great time talking about the series and its characters.
As I walked along the Alley, I picked up several business cards from local artists with whom I’d like to work, craft artisans whose work I’d like commission, and other stores whose merchandise was gorgeous but out of my price range for the day. I was very impressed with the friendliness and professionalism of everyone I met and they all treated me well, even if it didn’t look like I was interested in their wares.
Once I’d finished touring the room, I wandered along the hallway with the panel rooms, noting the location of the two panels featuring Jaffe later that day and their relative locations. Unfortunately, none of the panels going on at the time appealed to me, so I walked along the hallway until I found the con hospitality suite. The idea of a con hospitality suite is somewhat new to me because even if they had them, I don’t recall seeing one at the California or East Coast conventions I attended or for which I volunteered.
At the con suite, they were dishing out white rice and offering instant oatmeal and in the room next door, they’d set up tables and seasonings for the rice. The room had several occupants and conversations were lively. Opposite the hospitality suite was the convention operations room, and just as I glanced through the open doors, I noticed Jaffe standing there with Josh Grelle, another voice actor guest.
I went over to briefly say hello and to let Jaffe know that I’d be seeing him during his panels later that day. At the same time, I overheard that Jaffe and Grelle were going to be off-site for a bit as the hotel’s kitchen had closed for the time being and neither had eaten lunch due to being at an autograph session which had started at noon. Speaking as a former guest relations coordinator, I don’t know if that was an error on the hotel’s part for not anticipating the demand for concessions or the convention’s for not knowing that the hotel regularly closes their kitchen for service at that time on weekends and having a contingency plan in place other than taking them off-site for a meal.
Jaffe also would later tell me that the programming department had made much use of his time while he was at the convention and that every day he was rather busy. Both of us also remarked that it was an excellent idea for there to be a 30 minute space before and after each panel taking place in the same room, to allow for speakers who want to go “over” an hour’s worth of time and/or for a panelist to use the facilities between two panels in different rooms.
Since there was over an hour left before the Voice Actor Q & A panel started, I wound my way along the hallways to the board gaming room where I found a group deep into a session of Arkham Horror. I was pleased to be asked to join them, but as I really only had an hour or so of time before the panel started, I knew that I couldn’t play with the group and expect to finish the game. As I looked over the selection, another attendee named William expressed interest in playing a game; we eventually settled on Munchkin using a very large amount of cards from various standard sets, two official level die, and the official Run Away die.
It took a while for us to get going, but since I decided to become a Halfling early in the game, I was able to sell Treasures for levels and get to 9 rather quickly. William took a little longer to get to level 9, and for a while it was touch and go as to who would win. I even forgot that I couldn’t sell Treasures or use auto-level cards and claimed an early victory, but William quickly disabused me of that notion. Instead, I attempted to fight a monster that was Level 18, but using his Transference Potion, he stole the monster from me, easily defeated it, and won the game. I love it when Munchkin games come down to the wire like that.
Who wouldn’t want to attend a panel featuring this handsome guy?
By this time, it was about time for me to make my way back to Main Programming for the panel. One thing I noticed when I got there was that some chairs had placards on them noting that they were reserved for specific attendees. I can only imagine that this was a VIP-level perk for sponsors-attendees and I have to say that it’s a very clever idea that could work for other conventions of this size up to the 5,000-attendee conventions. I found a seat in the second row and settled in to wait. At one point, two of the other guests came in with two beautiful Akita dogs for their panel about the breed and their history in Japan; unfortunately, they’d gotten the room wrong and had to leave, taking the beautiful dogs with them.
Finally, all of the panelists arrived and the panel began with Grelle, Jaffe, and Petrea Burchard introducing themselves. It took me a while to recognize Burchard as the voice of Ryoko from the Tenchi Muyo franchise; when I realized who she was, I could then totally hear Ryoko in her voice.
Since I’ve been attending anime cons and voice actor panels in particular since 2000, I idly sent out this message on Twitter:
Sitting in the audience of my 1st anime con panel since 2008. Shame I didn’t write up the drinking game.
— Trisha Lynn (@trishalynn) October 19, 2013
If I had made up that drinking game, I believe I would have been pretty well-toasted by the middle of the panel because many people asked the same questions that I’ve been hearing at voice actor panels for over a decade. In a way, though, it’s nice to know that there’s still a love and an interest in voice over acting in anime even if subtitled anime is available through legitimate means less than a month after the show is aired in Japan.
Highlights of the panel for me was hearing Josh Grelle’s impression of Vic Mignogna which he had to perform for his role as Kenichi in Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple and that Petrea Burchard once worked with Harlan Ellison and Robin Williams while recording a story called “Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” for an NPR serial. Her description of Ellison as an “interesting” man may have been the best example of Minnesota Nice I’ve ever heard by a non-Minnesotan.
After the usual flurry of post-panel autographs, photos, and schedule-checking, Jaffe and I chatted as we walked to his panel room, stopping once to use the bathroom. And since there weren’t many people in the room at the time, we continued to chat about life and business, right up until it was time for his panel to start. It was called “How the $&(@ Did I Get Here?”, and the format was inspired by our mutual friend and frequent anime con guest Jan Scott Frazier.
Just before the panel started, Jaffe showed me a sheaf of 20 typewritten pages and four or five handwritten pages of notes for the panel. What followed was a long but interesting ramble through Jaffe’s youth as a child actor, his years in Japan as a cultural liaison for the CEO of an import/export firm, and how he got into voice acting. Along the way, I learned many new things about my friend that didn’t come up with I interviewed him back in 2002 for Sequential Tart. He even was sidetracked into talking about the Western Expansion into Japan in the 1800s as well as telling the story of Admiral Perry’s “Black Fleet” and cautioned the audience to do some actual book research into the tale rather than relying on Wikipedia for more information.
When the panel was over, Jaffe and the other guests had to part for dinner, and we agreed to meet at the hotel bar when they were done. I left the convention to pick up my husband for dinner, and when we were done, we waited at the hotel bar for Jaffe to arrive.
What followed was a great conversation with an old friend as the three of us talked for a long time about the sad state of feminism in the comic book industry, his involvement in the “Heroes of Cosplay” reality series on the Syfy network, and potential projects that both of us had in the works. Alas, we had to get going so we parted at the bar, and that ended my Anime Fusion attendance for the weekend.
Looking back, if I were someone attending an anime or other genre convention for the first time, I couldn’t recommend a better experience than going to a convention of this size in this kind of area. It was large enough to attract a good variety of vendors and guests, yet small enough to make you feel as if you could reasonably see and do everything you wanted to do on any given day.
For a long-time con goer, though, I don’t know if there’s enough within Anime Fusion yet to make it an addition to a regular yearly convention schedule. The discussion panels that were scheduled for Saturday didn’t seem to pop out at me, and Saturday is traditionally the best programming day of a three-day convention.
You may say that it’s not fair to judge a entire convention by a single day, but I think that if a convention really wants to put its best foot forward, the second day is when they really need to shine. Anime Fusion has the potential to be a really great small or medium-sized con—but they’re not there just yet.
‘Ware the spoilers for this commentary on the latest episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., now available to watch on the official website.
The show is settling into its Monster of the Week format rather nicely. Good work by guest star Pascale Armand on her portrayal of former Agent Akela Amador; great job by the casting department for casting a person of color rather than casting a default white person.
As awesome as I am finding the alliterative agent names because of how in keeping they are with 1970s Marvel Comics nomenclature procedure, I think it needs to stop soon.
Skye has really stepped up as a character; I find that I’m beginning to like her more. As the audience POV-character, she had to become more likable and she definitely did that during her interactions with Ward during the second op.
Agent May really is a suspicious sort, isn’t she? I sure hope that she starts digging into Amador’s cryptic comment regarding Coulson’s change in personality.
I love how the show acknowledged that May and Coulson are the “parents” of the team.
Speaking of Coulson’s return from the dead, if finding out the secret to that is the main story arc for this season, I think it’s an inspired one.
At least I did get to learn something about Fitz: Like Wash, he is squeamish under pressure, but when the chips are down, he will totally come through for the team. He just needs to get rid of his heebie-jeebies first. Also, he is not above cheating in order to win at games.
I really hope that next week’s episode shows more of this continual growth. Maybe we’ll find out something important about Simmons next week!
Lots of spoilers ahead for this commentary on the third episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., now available to watch on the ABC website.
What I loved about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, what I loved about parts of Angel, and especially what I loved about Cabin in the Woods is the concept that one can’t judge something on appearances alone. Sure, this truck driver is a hick; Agent Mack is also a trained S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and his expertise in transportation is valuable. Major plus points for this continued bit of world-building.
Another thing I loved was that despite Quinn’s grandstanding, he’s not really evil, just opportunistic.
I thought the mentor/bonding moments between Ward and Skye were nice. I can see them becoming friends.
I wish they hadn’t revealed Skye’s duplicity to the audience so soon. Also, since Quinn was able to escape, now Rising Tide has to know that she’s on the fence with them now.
Coulson continues to get the best scenes, to hammer out the best “What moral quandary are we in this week?” dialogue; Clark Gregg delivers it with the proper amount of gravitas, no pun intended.
Now that Agent May is back in the saddle again, can we please have some hot “I’m a better fighter than you” action between her and Ward?
Can next week’s episode please be the “character-establishing” episode for either Fitz or Simmons?
I am totally not surprised that Dr. Hall is trapped in the ball of gooey gravity.
I think the show’s starting to grow on me. Here’s to next week.
Care for a spoilery place to talk about the second episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., now available to watch on the ABC website? Click on through!
The only thing that kept me from yelling at Coulson for letting the Peruvians on the plane is the fact that a) they are part of the official government, even if their leader wasn’t smart and didn’t bring a helmet into a zone with known rebel activity and b) Coulson’s way of trusting competent people to do things competently usually works for him. Note: I said “usually.”
Halfway through this episode during Skye and Ward’s talk in the lounge area of the Bus, I realized during his speech about being “the whole solution” that Ward is the Captain America-analogue, the ideal soldier—or in this case Agent—who always gets the job done perfectly. And Coulson’s reference to Skye being a consultant in the same way that Tony Stark is means that she’s supposed to be the Stark-analogue: brilliant, unpredictable, irreverent. I’m not sure how to feel about that. Part of me feels like that’s a trick that a fanfic writer would use to get someone interested in their “original characters.” Heck, most of me feels that.
I’m not sure I liked the way the camera movements or the edits foreshadowed that the Peruvians were going to do a heel-face from the instant they got onto the Bus. I noticed it as soon as they did the close-up onto the locking mechanism on the weapons case. Same with the foreshadowing of how important the flying investigation drones were. It all seems so obvious.
As lovely as it was to see Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury doing a cameo, I think it was a wasted effort because of how much it was a throwaway scene. Cobie Smulders’ cameo in the pilot episode? It did much to move the plot and felt less contrived.
I’m still trying to get a handle on Fitz and Simmons. She’s definitely the alpha between the two of them, and I kinda like that.
If Ward is Captain America-ish, then Agent Melinda May is very Zoe Washburn. You could hear it in her voice just before she drove the SUV into the lab. I don’t know why I feel better about this character-trait lifting than I do the Ward/Captain America fusion.
Created by Joss Whedon
Directed by David Straiton, Joss Whedon
Starring Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge
Guest Starring J. August Richards, Cobie Smulders, Ron Glass
Like most people, I loved and adored Agent Phil Coulson ever since he started bothering Tony Stark in Iron Man. And throughout the new Marvel movie universe, Clark Gregg’s Coulson has slipped in and out, around, and through dense blockbuster movie plotlines to deliver bon mots, a practical everyman’s view, and a certain insouciance that can’t be analyzed but rather just needs to be enjoyed.
So when I first heard that Agent Phil Coulson would return to the ‘verse in a TV series called “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” as the leader of a small strike force within the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization and that the TV show would be created by Joss Whedon, I was conflicted. Would this be awesome, like “Firefly”? Or problematic, like “Dollhouse”?
Note: There will be spoilers in this review. Oh yes, there will be spoilers.
Having missed all of the pre-show hype at Comic Con in San Diego and other places completely, I went into the episode blind to most of what the rest of the Internet has already known about the series: Agent Phil Coulson would be returning from his movie death in The Avengers to lead a team of non-super-powered humans from within the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization. I didn’t know exactly how they were going to pull off the Coulson-reveal, but I have to admit the way it was scripted and the way Gregg delivered it, I couldn’t have asked for more. And a bit reminiscent of the unsettling nature of Cabin in the Woods and “Dollhouse,” just when the audience could sit back and bask in his triumphant return, Ron Glass’s generic S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor character revealed that there’s even something sinister involved with Coulson’s return to active duty. (Please let it not be Mister Sinister?)
As far as the first episode goes, the formula for the ongoing series seems fairly simple: S.H.I.E.L.D. gets wind that someone is exhibiting supernatural powers, Coulson’s team goes in to investigate, something goes wrong, the team saves the day. It’s a formula which works for many a mystery novel and has worked for cop dramas since those things were invented; as any fan of these knows, it’s the characters doing the investigating which keep viewers and readers coming back for more.
Obviously, Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson is the top draw, but what about the rest of the team? Here are my impressions of them in no particular order:
Brett Dalton plays Grant Ward, a covert ops agent who is assigned to work on Coulson’s new team. It was hard to tell from the debriefing session between Ward and Agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders, reprising her role from the movie) whether or not he was a particularly good agent because while he did get the job done in an action-filled sequence near the beginning of the movie, you could have plugged another competent agent into that job due to the nifty gadgets he used and the end result would have been the same. The character flaw that he’s given is that he has “poopy” people skills; that’s probably why he works alone so often. (Also, he’s supposed to have combat skills on the same level as Natasha Romanov? I don’t buy that for one second.) I don’t think it’s Dalton’s fault that I didn’t like Grant Ward; I’m going to have to blame Joss Whedon and his two co-writers (and family members) Marissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon for not giving him enough pleasant things to do. At one point, though, I did feel a lot of empathy for Ward, and that was when he was being reverse-interrogated by Skye.
Ah yes, Skye. Played by Chloe Bennet, Skye is a social anarchist, a hacker, and currently not a favorite character of mine. Perhaps I’ve been watching too many “NCIS” or “Criminal Minds” reruns, but when I think of competent hackers and other “Fuck the system, man!” character-types, I don’t picture a woman who looks like Skye. I think that the character might have rung a bit more true with me if she’d been styled to be a bit more plain (hoodie, T-shirt and jeans as opposed to stylish preppie clothing) so that she could later surprise me with her brilliance the same way Miracle Laurie did at the end of the Dollhouse episode “Man on the Street.” I also had a lot of difficulty believing that Skye had enough skill to break into a secured S.H.I.E.L.D. communications line; then again, hacker groups have been breaking into lots of supposedly secure systems left and right these days, so perhaps I should go a little easy on her.
The technology team consists of Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Elizabeth Henstridge (Jemma Simmons), who are introduced together. He handles all things mechanical, she all things biological and together their characters fill the roles of both a forensics team and a Q-like quartermaster in one. I’m pleased to note that both actors are from the UK; hence, any ardent cries of “Their accents are so fake!” can be met with equally ardent defenses. In the few scenes they had to show off their characters’ strengths, it’s revealed that Simmons has the cooler head among the two, but Fitz has more genius under pressure as it’s he who’s able to come up with the magical cure to guest star J. August Richards’s “exploding head” problem.
Finally, rounding out the group is Agent Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) who is pulled out of a self-imposed, mind-numbing clerical job and back into action as the team’s pilot. (Did I mention their command center is a gigantic plane? Just checking.) There’s a lot of juicy background to her character as even hot shot Ward is dismayed (or astounded) that they were able to get her to be on the team. I’m actually pretty glad to see that the “One They Pull Out of Retirement” is a woman this time, and Wen embodies the role just perfectly.
As far as pilot episodes go, the plot and story arcs that were introduced were both standard and unique, sometimes at the same time. For example, J. August Richard’s character is first seen as a hero, but then as the investigation proceeds, he becomes the antagonist. A scene with the “innocent bystander” he saved swings him back around into “good guy” territory again, his rampage through Union Station with the captive Skye in tow has him doing another heel-face turn. And by the end, you’re not entirely sure whether or not to agree with Ward’s proposal to kill him with sniper fire or Coulson’s assertion that he needs to be saved. Considering that many of us live in countries who have decided that personal freedoms can be overridden in the name of “national security,” this kind of flexible thinking and plotting is a refreshing change from shows where the line between protagonist and antagonist are never crossed or blurred.
There’s one major problem I have with the plot, and it revolves around Phil Coulson. In the debriefing scene, Maria Hill tells Grant Ward that because the Avengers only have Level 6 security clearance, they haven’t been told about Coulson’s return. I take this to mean that any information about Coulson being alive is going to be severely restricted. At the same time, however, the final standoff between Coulson and Richards’ character takes place in the middle of a busy Union Station. And while I understand that S.H.I.E.L.D. would have cordoned off the area and evacuated all the civilians, when the camera pulls back a little, two civilians can be seen on the second level, watching the scene. And who’s to say that they won’t tell their friends about the Man in Black they saw?
So was this a perfect pilot? Heavens, no. Is there enough to make one want to continue watching it? Perhaps, and for me it entirely depends on how the characters are developed further.
Which means that even though he’s surely capable of doing it, Phil Coulson definitely can’t save this situation on his own.
“Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” airs on ABC channels at 8 pm Eastern/7 pm Central if you have cable TV; if you don’t you can see full episodes (with commercials) on the ABC website and on Hulu.
“Epic game development” – A development process where a lot of important information (location of critical resources, build-in cheat codes, status of some sub-systems) never gets written down, but instead is passed by the word of mouth from developer to developer, like a folk tale. Most game development in Russia is Epic.
That was absolutely beautiful, and actually changed my mind about the Dickwolf shirts.
Internet confession: I was the one who yelled “bring them back”. I didn’t do it because I hate feminists. I didn’t do it because I hate women. I did it because I felt like those shirts were a justified “fuck you” to a section of humans that were rallying, unnecessarily, against a good joke. I didn’t know how wrong I was until right now.
Thanks for helping me straighten that out in my head.
Anime Fusion 2013
