Marvel's Agents of SHIELD Season 2: A Mac Attack review

Remember last Fall when we all waited breathlessly for the premiere of SHIELD? And then the internet was like blah blah blah I hate it or blah blah blah I love it or blah blah blah I only watch things based on DC Comics? But then we stuck with SHIELD and it got really awesome in the Spring after the new Captain America movie? Well, even if you don't remember any of that--the second season of SHIELD has started and ready to weigh in on whether things have improved or gone down hill is Mac Attack. 

Warning: Spoilers. 

Let's begin with the TL;DR. I liked it, but it wasn't amazing. If my cousin is more indicative of the general audience than I am, the changes will be, on balance, positive.

I personally didn't like them. That said, this whole review comes under the caveat that In Joss We Trust, and also that the show is (in my opinion) supported by the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, so there's no question but that I'll keep watching it. In short, it's less "great" and more "good" now. 

Breakdown. 

Director Coulson. What's up with him? He used to be Superman, in that he was the paragon of hope. Nothing could ever change his innate nature, his trust in himself, in his mission, in the ultimate goodness of humanity that had to be protected at all costs. Towards the end of last season he went through some stuff that made him darker for a while, but he seemed at times to be fighting to maintain that belief, even though he admitted it was faith. I sorta wish they'd found drama in other places and let this one thing be the solid foundation of the show, but at least then it was still an interesting conflict. Now... he just seems sorta waffling. He cares about his team, but he wants to take risks, and he'll stay in the shadows but look towards the light... It's more "real", I suppose, but also more boring. They could have achieved the same effect by introducing outside pressure (like from Melinda) that forces him to act that way, while maintaining the interesting parts of him. I'm not saying it's not a valid character choice, but it's a downgrade from what he used to be. 

I know people wanted more shout-outs to Marvel Canon. Here you go. Absorbing Man.

Here you go, canon fans. ... And ladies. 

I actually like how they're doing this. Pick a bunch of D-listers, take the name and power, then do your own thing with it. I would still have been in favor of an even more original, unique take, but if it keeps my cousin happy, I'll take it. I really think they threaded the needle on this one. They're giving the people who want this to be just an extension of the comics 90% of what they want, and giving people like me, who want something new and think the comics are a hot mess, 90% of what we want. Neither side is totally happy, but both sides keep watching.

Anyone who actually thinks Lucy Lawless's character is dead, raise her hand. Sidenote, that was a LOT of trust on Absorbing Man's part that rubber is immune to the Obelisk.

So... big dangerous mission, we're gonna take the risks, we need to win... and they get, what, a cool jet? To replace the cool jet they can't use anymore? We'll risk EVERYTHING to... maintain the status quo.

Seeing Skye in the field doing a good job with guns was a nice change.

Absorbing Man's trick of using the glass to turn invisible and draw in the guards was smarter than I give that character credit for.

Their handling of Talbot was masterful. Saving/kidnapping him, demonstrably wanting to get one thing out of him while secretly getting another thing, playing him like a puppet... add this to the fact that they have the team all doing each other's jobs (Skye's in the field while Trip's running computers) and I'm starting to suspect they poached some of the Leverage writers, which would be a huge positive in my book.

A few things I hate. 

The show has gotten stupider. Ontology is following intent, and that's always a bad thing. Absorbing Man had about a 45 second headstart on Agent Xena. How could he possibly have known where she was going, AND gotten ahead of her? And I don't totally agree with the physics of the crash. Perhaps they'll fix it later, explain that one of the mercenaries was a traitor or this Doctor Evilface dude was tracking them via GPS and somehow had a vehicle for Absorbing Man that was faster than a speeding car trying to go as fast as it could in a straight line on an empty road. If this is not at least referenced in the next episode (how could he POSSIBLY have gotten there in time?) I will be greatly disappointed.

Ward's imprisonment, he'll only talk to Skye, he's got an agenda and will attack psychologically. Skye is initially hesitant to meet with him and acts aggressive at the start. We, the audience, will slowly gain sympathy for him while Skye does. This sympathy will cause conflict between Skye and the people Ward's actually hurt, like Fitz. His ultimate betrayal of Skye's newfound trust results in his escape, while still somehow leaving potential room for his true redemption. Sorry, already saw the second season of Alias.

Absorbing Man's guards see him gone, so they immediately open the door and walk into the room. Because apparently they got kicked out of the Evil Overlord's Legion of Terror. I get that we were supposed to believe they weren't as good at being guards as SHIELD agents would have been, but did they have to be suicidally, mind-numbingly stupid?

A lot of potential. 

A lot of things weren't addressed in this premiere. I'm not against this, I think they did cover a lot, and I can't think of what I'd suggest they give up in order to cover these other things. I am looking forward to them finally being addressed.

Does Skye think of Ward, the man who trained her, when she's out in the field kicking ass with guns now? 

Melinda. We got almost nothing with her, though I love the complexities of her arrangement with Coulson. He's in charge of her and the mission, she's in charge of him as a resurrected half-alien. And they're both good enough at what they do to make this complicated relationship work. Mostly. Check in more often, Coulson. Don't be that trope.

I'm glad they've basically gotten rid of Fitz and Simmons, they were the show's crutch. I liked them as characters, and I'm glad they're still on the show, but they would just magic-science every problem. Now the characters will have to solve problems with skill and cleverness, and not just, "I've analyzed this and here's a magic antidote".

It was awesome seeing Carter's shout-out, odd that she calls it the end of Hydra, yay she's with the Howling Commandos. And interesting tie-in, now we know why "mysterious artifacts" are called 084's. It's these subtle details that really flesh out the world. This is why I will always keep watching.

A Guardians of the Galaxy tie-in was asking for too much; I can't think of a reference I would have actually liked, anyway.

From Risks above; too often, "take a risk" gets translated in TV to "try something that seems dangerous but then win big and get everything." I like that there was sacrifice. Things went wrong, costs were paid, but they got something for it. Tension. Yay.

Predictions. 

"He can absorb the properties of whatever he touches, we don't know how." A foreshadow to the 'age of miracles' from the end of Winter Soldier? Is this the beginning of a tie-in to Avengers: Age of Ultron?

The Obelisk, when activated, has runes on it like Garett and Coulson draw. Obviously a Kree artifact.

Oh, and a female lead changed her hair-style. I think I'm supposed to care about that, it prolly says something deep and meaningful about gender roles. I don't really care.

Wow...what a searing indictment of...um, wavy hair?

Spring show reviews

Every Spring the networks roll out some new shows trying to fill the gaps left by the failed Fall shows. Hope springs eternal--maybe this time they'll find something that catches on! But from what I have seen so far...I'm not sure we have any big hits. Here are some capsule reviews of some of the new shows I've managed to catch!

Resurrection: what would you do if your long dead loved ones suddenly started coming home? Looking the exact same as they did at the time of their death and with no memory of anything since their unfortunate...accidents? This set of circumstance is the central plot of ABC's Resurrection, which is actually not too bad. In fact, it's pretty good, if a bit meandering.

In the small town of Arcadia, Missouri, people are starting to come back from the dead. Not like zombie hordes, but one or two people here and there. They aren't hungry for brains, but just want to get back to their lives. Except they've been gone for quite some time...and their families aren't sure whether they are the same. All the medical tests seem to indicate and they are normal healthy humans, but clearly something strange is afoot.

Well, that's not ominous at all.

I am enjoying this show more than I thought I would, I think in part because it's way darker than I expected. Not everyone who has come back is a good person and the show is doing a nice job of teasing out subtle clues about the how and why of the resurrections. I genuinely want to find out what happens next and to know what the hell is going on. The cast is also pretty great, especially the always good Omar Epps as a US immigration agent (random, I know) who finds himself at the middle of the mystery.

Resurrection airs Sunday evenings at 9:00 EST and you can catch up with all the episodes over on the show's website.

Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge: Syfy's new show is clearly trying to capture the same magic as the fantastic Face Off. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work for me.

In JHCSC, the contestants are challenged to create and fabricate creatures that are Jim Henson-y in style. Human actors/puppeteers bring the creatures to life (usually from inside the large puppet body) and they are "shot" on a soundstage in the Jim Henson studios in front of the panel of the judges.

I like the concept, but the show just doesn't have the same entertainment value as Face Off. Maybe it's because the challenges are a little more limited as they are constrained by the muppet-style of the overall show's conceit, but I just find it hard to get into. I'll give it a few more episodes, but unless things pick up I don't think I'll stick with it.

Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge airs Tuesday evenings at 10:00 EST on Syfy.

Turn: It doesn't really matter if this new AMC show is terrible (it isn't), because I am going to watch it no matter what. There are two reasons:

1) It takes place during the Revolutionary War, a criminally un-represented area of American history in movies and television.

2) The cast includes JJ Feild who played the dreamy Mr. Henry Tilney in the BBC's most recent adaptation of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. You bros might know him as "the English guy in the beret" who was part of Captain America's team in Captain America: The First Avenger.

It takes a real man to rock a cravat. 

The good news is the show isn't terrible, hurray! It is a bit confusing though, so make sure you are sitting on the thinking side of your couch and are paying attention. It's not really the type of show you can just have on in the background while you wander around your apartment picking up and putting away all your shoes.*

The show tells the story of America's first spy ring...which sounds fancy but really just means it's about this farmer (Jamie Bell, sans Billy Elliot dancing shoes, alas) who lives in British-occupied New York and ends up reluctantly spying for the Continental Army. I say reluctantly not because he was a British loyalist, but because he basically just wants to live with his family and grow cabbages or lettuce or something. But you know, these things happen. And I guess he ends up forming something called the Culper Ring and inventing modern spycraft? This is all according to the show's website. After the first two episodes the spies have only just figured that maybe hanging a special petticoat on a wash line isn't the best way to communicate with each other. Baby steps.

Anyway, it's enjoyable if a bit complicated, but the attention to detail in the sets and costumes is nice. Also, JJ Feild. So you should watch it.

TURN airs Sunday evenings at 9:00 EST on AMC. You can watch the two episodes that have already aired over on the website.


*Just me?

Save the Something, Save the Something Something

So, last night, I got caught up on the latest season of Lost Girl, and having affirmed that I am not delusional, and that the show keeps getting sillier at an exponential rate, I turned my attentions to NBC's latest offering, Believe. 

TICKETS TO ONE DIRECTION ZOMG!!!!!

This show was heavily hyped during the Olympics in February, so I figured I would tune in so at least see what it was all about. After all, it's got pretty good cred, having been executive produced by J.J. Abrams and Alfonso Cuarón. I can see why The Peacock wants to get in on the sci-fi fantasy genre, given the success of shows like Orphan Black and True Blood, and the cult following of Joss Whedon. The show overall has potential, but I felt the pilot was formulaic, predictable, and its "touching" moments bordered on trite. 

The basic premise follows the exploits of River Tam, Bo (if this is an obvious reference to Lost Girl's Chosen One heroine, it was not lost on me). Bo has special abilities that she's unable to control, but the pilot was overly vague about what those abilities are. I guess she's some sort of mix of psychic, empathic, telepathic and and Aqua Man.

Take that, whale! That'll teach you to beat up on helpless plankton!

Bo's real parents are maybe dead, or unknown, or something, so she's been shuttled around to different foster families since their demise. Bo and her guardians are, of course, being hounded and pursued by an Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy, whose company may have created her/owned her, but anyway, they are after her. The pilot opens with Bo in a car with her latest foster parents. An Evil Secret Agent Lady (she is unnamed, so I'll just call her Mila Jovovich from here on out) runs the car off the road, and then breaks the necks of foster mom and dad in a really unlikely fashion (Mila's secret power is she gets two improbable neck breaks per day) and Bo ends up in the hospital. Bo befriends a young doctor who is experiencing a lot of self-doubt after he was unable to save the life of someone's grandpa. D'awww. Bo helps him rediscover confidence in himself by telling him he will save the life of a singer named Senga. He finds out later that Bo was right and the singer's name was Agnes. Which is Senga if it's backwads. F'real. For effin' real. Doctor Guy notices this when he sees Agnes's get well balloons (which spell her name) in the mirror and it says, "SEGNA" but when I see и, all I see anymore is a vowel so it didn't have quite the same effect.   

Help me, Bastian! The Nothing is destroying Fantasia! 

MEANWHILE, the good guys, whom I have affectionately named The Multicultural A-Team, because I have no idea who they're working for and why, have hatched a plan to spring OUR HERO, Tate, from death row. Tate has been wrongfully convicted of murder and he's about to be executed, when the MAT's leader, Winter, enters his prison cell disguised as a minister. He offers Tate a chance to escape from prison if Tate agrees to help Bo. Tate hems and haws for a reason I'm not really sure about. I mean, he says he was wrongfully convicted of murder and this guy walks in and tells him he'll help him escape and Tate's all like, "Gee, IDK" instead of "Hells yeah!" Anyway, at he last minute, Tate agrees to help Winter rescue Bo, and Tate escapes with the help of Winter's associates, Channing and a couple of other dudes who die later so I don't know their names. 

My acting coach told me to channel McConnaughey.

So, Bo's in the hospital and Winter arranges for Tate to get into the hospital by posing as an accident victim who has really badly applied and eyeshadow bruises, and he finds Bo in her hospital room. It doesn't take much convincing to get Bo to leave with him, but that's when Mila Jovovitch shows up, posing as a nurse. 

Tate starts to wheel Bo out in a wheelchair, but her rescuer and kidnapper soon see through each others' ruses and throw down on each other in the hospital hallway. Bo shoots Mila in the butt with a syringe she randomly found, and that drugs Mila and gives Bo and Tate time to run away. Undaunted, Mila runs through the hospital shooting at them, but not before she puts a silencer on her gun. Hello? Even if the bystanders at the nurse's station can't hear you shoot at them, THEY CAN STILL EFFING SEE YOU. Mila, you are the worst assassin. Mila realizes she is shooting at people and has wobbly drugged person vision, so she randomly finds another syringe full of something else that will undrug her, and then shoots herself in the butt with that, but it's too late. Bo and Tate have escaped. On the bus. The bus. That's their escape plan. Route 10 at 3:15. I also think Tate had no bus fare, but hey, a minor detail. He might have a metro card. 

ANYWAY.

Winter is the former partner of Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy, and they had some kind of falling out. Car chases in SUVs ensue, and Bo ends up in hiding at this abandoned warehouse/pigeon factory with the MAT. Unfortunately, Mila Jovovitch finds them and she shoots two members of the MAT and makes her way upstairs, where she finds Tate, Winter, Bo, and Channing. They are about to escape, when Bo decides it's a good idea to leave their panic room and go get her stuffed turtle. Which I can kind of understand. I would like to have a stuffed turtle.

I'm NOT Yulia Lipnitskaya! Let me gooooooo!!!

Mila knocks Tate down and is about to shoot at him. This is when Bo remembers that she can summon birds. HOLY SHIT SHE IS GANDALF. 

The pigeons all form this full-on Hitchcockian pigeonado (PIGEONADO!!!!) around Mila and that gives Tate and Bo a chance to escape. The MAT escapes this time, but Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy will not give up in his quest to capture Bo for his own nefarious purposes.Again, it is unclear about what those actually are.  It's also revealed at the end that Tate is likely Bo's father, which wasn't that difficult to guess. As for Mila, our last glimpse of her is her getting a call from Evil Shady Corporate Bad Guy boss, after she's been outwitted by Tate, Bo and MAT.

You had one job.

All in all, I would give the pilot a C-minus. I guess there's potential here, but Believe hasn't done much to set itself apart from the Female Chosen One genre, and I feel at this point the production is taking itself a little too seriously. I get that they are trying to be inclusive with diverse casting choices, but the main characters are still a white male and a young white female. The non-white characters are ancillary to the white characters, so it's kind of feeling like people of color stunt casting/tokenism. The writing is kind of bleh and relies on some already hackneyed plot points. Again, if NBC wants to attract the Buffy crowd, and entice them to watch Believe instead of Orphan Black, they've got their work cut out for them. It's unclear if Bo is a mutant, alien, superhero, or angel and I feel like she needs to have more agency in the coming episodes, because right now she's as capable of saving humanity as the Wonder Twins.

I want to Believe, but the show has to iron things out more in order to attract its target viewership. 

Believe premiered on March 15, with a special subsequent episode which aired March 16. Its regular time slot is 9 p.m. Sundays on The Peacock.

Agents of Snark

Nerds in the know have been waiting for this week with bated breath since just shortly after Robert Downy Jr. and company destroyed New York last summer. The reason? The premier of ABC’s new show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (sidebar, typing out that acronym every time I reference the show is going to get old wicked fast.) The anticipation for this show? Galactic(us). The hype? Hulk-sized. The payoff?

Um. Good? Ish?

Let’s start with the technical aspects. The show is competently written, shot, casted, etc. We are introduced to our heroes, including the cocky super agent, the snarky super-computer expert, the nerd-bait twin British scientists and, of course, re-introduced to Agent Coulson, played with continued understated aplomb by Clark Gregg reprising his role from several of Marvel’s movies. But wait, you say! Wasn’t Agent Colson killed off in The Avengers as part of a cheap bit of plot phlebotinum? Turns out there’s more to that story than that, which gives us another required component of a new action-adventure story – the secret Byronic mystery of what happened to Our Hero. “He can never know the truth,” cameo-ing guest star Cobie Smulders mutters to a S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor. Cue intrigue and the sincere hope by fanboys that Smulders’ Agent Maria Hill returns to the show just as soon as How I Met Your Mother wraps its final season.

Her undercover persona is that of a Canadian pop star who sings about shopping at the mall. 

As for the plotting and the actors, what can you expect? As per usual, we have a collection of impossibly gorgeous people acting impossibly gorgeous while gorgeously thwarting evil and tossing around witty rejoinders faster than Hawkeye could notch those arrows in the movie. The pilot resolves around our nascent team hunting down a man who has inadvertently revealed himself to have super powers after he saves a woman from a burning building. Of course, nothing is as it seems and the burning building, the saved woman and even the reluctant super hero are all revealed to have much more going on.Along the way, the Agents recruit the aforementioned beautiful computer-ista who is also trying to hunt him down, though possibly only so that her blog could get a few more hits if she lands an interview with him or something. Her motivations are a little unclear. 

Nothing says "malcontent government overthrowing computer expert" like an unbuttoned cardigan.

So we have action, some high-falutin’ special effects, a bit of the old trademark Whedon dialogue (“with great power comes…,” intones one of the characters, “…a ton of weird crap you are not prepared to deal with.”), and a hint of mystery. Add to it that this is all Joss Whedon, King of the Nerds, being given mostly free reign in one of the nerdiest of playgrounds ever and it should be a recipe for EPIC nerdgasm.

And here’s the thing: For a lot of people, I think it will be. I was left a little…underwhelmed, maybe? I thought the episode was good, even if I honestly had a hard time paying attention to all the scenes. I noticed after about twenty minutes I was reaching down to play with my phone instead of devoting myself to each scene.  I’m a huge comic book nerd and a devoted Joss Whedon fan, but I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t been approaching this entire series somewhat cautiously since I first heard about it.

Whedon is uniformly smart in his writing, but smarts doesn’t a good TV show make. I didn’t personally find anything about the pilot that hooked me aside from the Marvel pedigree and the creators’ names. It also didn’t help that the one character that I was most intrigued by is the one that lasted the shortest amount of time, dying before the end of the first episode This could easily be chalked up to pilot-syndrome. First episodes are notoriously hard to make and can easily crush under their own weight or fail to adequately capture what the show’s creators are intending to show going forward. Whedon is also a notoriously slow starter; look at any of his shows that made it past one season and tell me that they didn’t really start to find their sea-legs until much later into their run.

I share Coulson's non-nonplussed reaction to the large hyped-up attention ball in the center of everyone's vision.

I’m not ruling out Agentsgoing forward. Joss Whedon has entertained me enough over the years that he’s bought the benefit of the doubt from me several times over. As to whether or not the show will be your new appointment television (there’s going to be an open spot in a lot of dance cards after Breaking Bad goes off the air this Sunday), that will likely depend on how much you’re willing to stick with a hero-less superhero story and the extent to which Marvel and Whedon’s partnership continues to be a productive one. They’re on top of the world right now, cinematically speaking, with several movies coming out in the next nine months and several more planned through 2018. Whether a weekly show is a rainbow bridge to Asgard too far remains to be seen.