Agents of SHIELD

Episode: F.Z.Z.T.
Original airdate: 11-5-2013

I’ve mentioned before that this show keeps improving week after week, and in this episode it took yet another jump in the right direction. While there isn’t very much action, there is a lot of character with very strong performances from Agent Coulson as well as Simmons. There’s also one of the stronger tie-ins to the Marvel cinematic universe with the connections to the Chitauri and what happened during the Avengers. There is also a couple nice reveals at the end that gives a lot while still leaving a good chunk of the mystery intact. There are a couple moments that I couldn’t quite get behind, but the rest of it is so well done that I didn’t care.
Continue reading Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S:01 E:06

Episode: “Girl in the Flower Dress”
Original Airdate: 10-22-13

S.H.I.E.L.D. is back again with another great episode. I think they are doing a great job of starting to build onto ongoing mysteries as well as creating new ones while at the same time building two very strong central characters. There is still a lot of the side characters getting lost in the shuffle and I’d like to see any of them start to develop past their one-note concepts. That said, Skye, Coulson, and Melinda May are interesting enough for me to keep tuning in week after week and I’m sure the others will start to develop some personality eventually. It’s nice to see the villains gain a face, and a name tied into something that we’ve already seen before.
Continue reading Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S:01 E:05

Episode: “Eye Spy”
Original Airdate: 10-15-13

One thing I realized this week about this show, while I do think that the quality and my enjoyment of the show has been increasing from week to week, there is one thing missing from it that I do think turns a lot of fans off. There is a distinct lack of Marvel in it. This episode gets it right in terms of building the mysteries, developing (most) of the characters, creating an interesting, mysterious, and action packed episode. But it doesn’t feel like we’re dealing with superheroes and aliens here, it feels more like a James Bond spinoff than a Marvel spinoff. And that’s not a bad thing for some people. I’m really enjoying the show for what it is, but aside from a cameo, a couple lines reminding you of other Marvel properties, and the fact that Coulson is a major player in the show, there just isn’t a strong Marvel presence in it. I don’t honestly know if it truly needs that strong of a connection, but I would kind of like to see it come into play a bit more often.
Continue reading Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S:01 E:04

Episode “The Asset”
Original Airdate: 10-9-13

After a bit of a hit and miss start with a lot of setup in the first couple episodes, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Finally hits a stride in episode 3 which I thought should have been called “Gravity” especially due to the release of Gravity this past weekend and a lot of the subject matter in the episode, both literally and figuratively. There are plenty of special effects and action scenes, and most importantly there’s a lot of character development as well as some twists and turns in where the story is going. This episode really felt like it was hitting on all cylinders and it kept the humor up to boot. Really the only thing missing, which I didn’t even miss, was any sort of tie-in to the larger Marvel Universe. But an overall solid episode that I really have a hard time finding fault with except for a couple minor nitpicks.
Continue reading Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S:01 E:03

Episode “0-8-4”
Original Airdate: 10-2-13

The first episode had a lot going for it, but also had to give a lot of time for setup and introductions. This is the first episode where we have the full team and we get to see them actually act as a team. There are of course going to be a few bumps along the way, and I felt like the quality of some things didn’t quite live up to the spectacle of the first episode, but I still had a great time and enjoyed a lot of the little things throughout the episode as well as the fun extra at the end. The episode is centered around an “0-8-4” aka an object of unknown origin that has been found in Peru and the team goes on their first mission as an actual team in order to assess and retrieve it. Things of course go sideways when the Peruvian military show up, calm down when it turns out to be an old flame and colleague of Coulson’s, then go sideways again when rebel forces start attacking them both.
Continue reading Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S:01 E:02