Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- Marvel meets Joss Whedon meets...TV!

is this thing on?

Unfortunately. This is pretty dreadful.

Yep.

Really? I have it taped but haven't watched yet

i felt uncertain about dollhouse for most of its initial run but when i went back to watch it all at once it seemed quite a bit more solid, confirmed my confidence in the whedon machine

so as long as there aren't too many countervailing factors i would suppose they can get anything to work given some time to settle in

The script for this felt like it must have taken at least an hour or two of nonstop writing, counting going back and putting in the jokey stuff.

I saw a trailer for the UK showing saying that the US hadn't seen it before us. So surprised to hear they have. UK showing doesn't start until next Friday night, 2 days from now.

Maybe I should be more surprised that they'd bother to make that out in a trailer if it isn't true and if people have it taped already it must be a bit out of sync

Oh right, if it only started last night over there then that trailer was right at the time it was broadcast and its just a question of scheduling. Just watched teh trailer above.

If you're going to commission someone to review it, might as well go big:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/agents-shield-comic-creator-jim-636457

Lol awesome

Agree with the comments about the super-of-the-week guy being black not being even worth mentioning. Wtf, Steranko!

But yeah this show is obvious as hell and boring

"Oh I'm sorry, Mr Peterson, I'm afraid this bus transfer has expired."
"You're right. It was so obvious. Everything's become clear to me now. I'm not a bus passenger any more. I'm... very strong"

repeat x200

didn't know loeb was involved w/ this, put me right off

i know cobie smulders jumped around a lot and shot at stuff and all that in the movie, but i've been re-watching himym lately so it seems pretty weird that robin scherbatsky is hanging out with all these government dudes

I was trying to take all the talk itt with a grain of salt but then I watched it last night and holy
zzzzzz batman that shit was DULL

guh. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, since there's way too many characters to get to know right away and lots of explainy expositiony kinda stuff happening but jeez

Clark Gregg delivers every single line as if it's the final scene of a movie. *dramatic music* *roll credits* I love him, but that needs to stop, like, now.

for a show that was surely very expensive to produce it felt real cheap

that's whedon's MO. the avengers cost 220 mil and its dialogue scenes looked like TV

i sort of stopped paying attention halfway through and just did stuff in other windows, all the talking and fighting and whatever blew past me

old timey comics dude seems to have a point about the setup and the lack of menace, but (assuming this wasn't teased in the second half) i would expect whedon's long game to be aimed at something like a 'the government lied to us the reivers are us' / 'they are using the doll technology to erase people and make soldiers' / 'earth is hell and there is no reward for your selflessness, probably' reveal somewhere at about the end of season 1 or season 2, depending on how much they rush him, and based on this 'the world has ended / this is the new world now' premise for all kinds of omg-astonishment, but i don't yet have a clear idea of what the opposed forces / knowing/non-knowing insiders/outsiders are supposed to be.

(did they reveal what it is that they're keeping from coulson about how he was brought back from the avengers death? i assume that he is a robot or a mutant or a lab experiment or actually living in a computer somewhere or whatever, horror and despair at own existence to ensue at some point.)

Ha I liked this but as I was watching I was thinking ILX was probably shitting on it

that first trailer up there doesn't make me want to watch it. and i can definitely be suckered into watching something after watching a trailer. it looks like a boring mess. maybe they actually got 10 year old kids to write it.

didn't know loeb was involved w/ this, put me right off

Generally a very wise decision, but he's some sort of VP for all Marvel television projects now so he's probably only involved in a tangential way.

Really don't get the hate, this was 1000x better than the Distinguished Competition's effort in Arrow.

Yeah it was fun
I have bad taste in TV tho

Wtf with that Steranko thing
Apparently it's PC to have a black character!

yeah i'm not reading that. felt it was an ok cross of whedon team (ie firefly i guess) and ncis (this merger reaches its zenith in fitz, simmons)(predictably already crushing on simmons). found the superhero aspect a little tedious but loved the goofy spy tech (person i was watching w/ rolled their eyes at flying car but i was like 'yeah fuckit - flying car!'). hoping it will get much better (it's just watchable as is) but also worried that this episode represent the max of whedon involvement. man gina torres would've been great for ming-na wen's part though kudos for having a fifty year old woman be yr bad-ass on a network tv show.

It might get better after the pilot but I forgot how much tv series really nudge and wink repeatedly to get tv viewers on track. I mean, I know they're distracted and have to remember what's going on after commercial breaks but oh boy does that get grating over the course of a one-hour pilot.

"HAH, he has an OLD car" "Oh don't worry it's a CLASSIC"
fifteen minutes later
"Your car is OLD."
30 minutes
"There is NO WAY we could get there that quickly in THIS CAR"
* car starts to hover and takes off flying *

the entire "Do you think he really knows?" and "TAHITI" shit was just about as bad. We get it, he's a robot.

I wonder if Whedon or someone else had a conversation about BOFFINS and the entire reason the science/lab team has accents is so that he can deploy that word at some point

There is no way on earth that Coulson is a robot.

he's a life model decoy

like, one of the main repeated plot points of every SHIELD comics series or Nick Fury plot since Steranko's era is the repeated use of life model decoys, so they're probably going to use it at some point

So either something mysterious happened that's a new plot device that explains why Coulson has false memories, he was replaced (LMD!) or resurrected somehow, or possibly even more likely, Coulson was ALWAYS a life model decoy and there was never a human one during the course of the Whedon movie/tv series

sorry for comics nerdery but it's an obvious plot thing in the SHIELD stories and there's no way they're not going to touch on it in some way

xp you're a life model decoy

if such a thing exists, I could be, I'd have no idea, you see

Life Model Decoys are controlled by the actual person that they represent, though. They aren't autonomous, unless something really changed in the comics, up with which I have not kept.

Life Model Decoys are controlled by the actual person that they represent, though.

I don't remember this being the case in the comics.

LMDs going autonomous is a major storyline in the comic actually. there was an evil nick fury and everything.

the more recent bendis comics have done some work with humans controlling LMDs, specifically hill

anyways the LMD deus ex machina bailout gotcha was always the lamest and it's lame here too

anyways this was bad but not dire and i'm willing to be patient for about four episodes to see if they get super nerdy with continuity, write better stories or find a long form arc that might hold my attention

In Marvel's The Avengers, when Agent Coulson tries to talk to Tony Stark via phone, Tony tells him he's really talking with a Life-Model Decoy of Tony Stark, stating the possible existence of these robots in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

some good stuff in here

http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/62410078391/my-captain-america-thesis

not ewing, quoted there:

Sonya said after reading the current Hawkeye comic that it felt like Matt Fraction sat down and was like, What would someone who chose to use a bow and arrow on combat missions be like in his daily dealings with tech and people? Agents of SHIELD S1E1 plays out like Joss Whedon sat down and was like, if Coulson really was that guy who asked himself What Would Captain America Do the way some people ask themselves WWJD?, what kind of decisions would that drive?

Just started this, and ... hrm, this show isn't so good, but boy can it potentially get so, so, so much worse, very quickly. Minus the micromanaging and budget of Hollywood ... I mean, jeepers, this ep is what they manage with Whedon's direct involvement.

A better move would have been to keep it a limited series - say, the occasional 10 eps - to air as a stopgap between feature films: answering questions, bridging/expanding the narrative, etc.

Maybe, but there's no way would they leave that cash cow so unmilked.

Well, that's a different matter, and indicator that this will get even dumber and cheaper faster.

Roads? Where we're going we don't need ... roads.

Man, you only get one chance to make a first impression, and the impression this show left was not good. I never saw "Heroes," but I bet it was better than this at first.

The general crapness of this show has real potential to devalue the Cinematic Marvel U. enormously.

In its defense, I think the opposite is true: it's crappy enough that people will recognize it as something else.

In its defense, most pilots are bad.

Ain't that the truth. But most pilots written/directed by a guy who understands the medium, respects the genre, and whose last movie and the impetus for this show made $1billion, plus who's generally regarded as one of the best TV guys of his generation, aren't usually this bad.

I dunno, I thought the Dollhouse pilot sucked too

I thought that was a pretty badass episode. Like a well-done mashup of The Thing/The Terminator/The Matrix without being as cheesy and awful as something like that sounds on paper. Pleasantly surprised that anyone else is still watching!

ahaha if anyone's still watching they dropped a MODOK easter egg

I'm still watching, tho it was a close thing after the Ghost Rider half of this season.

Yeah, I'm still on it although I missed the MODOK thing.

Ghost Rider half was pretty awful, the Hydra fake world felt... inconsequential? I thought they should have played the section up where they had no idea who was an LMD and who wasn't for longer as that was possibly the most interesting bit of the season. That said, loved the unhinged ADA in the last ep when she was learning emotions and got dumped.

i have no idea what MODOK is, but i have to say this season has been off the chart bonkers, but very entertaining.

have to be careful not to read too much here, as in the UK we have just got to the fake world part.

i've got a pretty big backlog of these to work through but the promise of any kind of modok-related content is more than enough to get me to get back on the horse

Myself also - we got to the bit in Season 3 where they visit the alien world, and there is much drama and then everyone escapes except everyone escapes - and there are still 12 episodes to go? Fuck a US television season.

the Hydra fake world felt... inconsequential?

Huuuuuuh?!? This does not compute at all, particularly wrt one specific member of the team who I won't mention for the sake of spoilers. But also that story hasn't quite wrapped up yet.

This has been the best season yet, imo.

I am legitimately ashamed of myself for missing that MODOK reference. Sending back my FOOM card as we speak.

Since the other UK people are behind I won't spoiler it either but I was specifically thinking in terms of the one big showmance and how it played out. Once they were back it was just status quo despite what happened out there. The Daisy plot there seemed to be all about the relationship (dodging spoilers there hard beyond that statement) and I felt the relationship between it an the real world was really badly explained - if you died in either world you died in both, except for the people who were already dead who were then alive? And I didn't really like the ADA resolution at all, which again was handwaved by "remember that thing we did?".

Second half of Season 1, post-Hydra reveal and close to Civil War (plus Bill Paxton chewing it up) is the peak I think.

Maybe it's just getting lost in the morass of shows at the moment, with all the CW stuff getting to season finale too, but this season just hasn't stood out for me. Wasn't keen on the Ghost Rider section, LMD had promise but pulled the wrong levers imo and noting it's not resolved yet but Agents of Hydra has been v patchy.

Yeah, man, I feel like we're watching different shows. I'm not usually crazy about alternate/virtual reality storylines because they tend to leave no lasting impact, but they've found some very novel ways to make the trip into the Framework matter on a number of levels (and I wasn't even thinking about the team member who chose to stay plugged in and the effect this might have on said team member). And, yes, it's not over yet (although it appears that Ada's Darkhold machina is not likely to deus ex some of the Framework-related things that I thought it might).

Re: the laws of the Framework, I think it's been relatively consistent but these things are rarely entirely coherent so I just have to let go at a point (see also: any and all time travel fiction). But my understanding is that there are already pre-existing avatars of everyone in the world within the Framework, and if you enter from the real world you'll inhabit your avatar (even if they're unfortunately buried in a shallow grave, say). But if you subsequently die in the Framework, your IRL body also dies.

I felt the relationship between it an the real world was really badly explained - if you died in either world you died in both, except for the people who were already dead who were then alive?

It's virtual reality! Anyone in the simulation, whether they were dead, alive, or never even existed in the real world were completely simulated. That wasn't Ward, and that wasn't Mac's daughter -- they were computer simulations of those people. I'm fine with the "you die in VR, you die in real life" since that's the oldest "I'm plugged into a computer" trope there is. I am not sure why the rest of it is confusing.

And I've botched it by stating it poorly.

Anyone in the simulation who was not a real life person plugged into a machine was simulated.

imo the only real question, which is completely irrelevant to the plot of the show as presented, is whether all of the simulated people were Ada-style artificial intelligences based on all the data the computer crunched, or if they were just non-player characters reacting to stimuli.

xpost Yes. There's a simulated you walking around inside the Framework. When you enter the Framework, you inhabit that avatar. And they suggested fairly strongly that when you leave the Framework, your avatar will continue on without your consciousness to guide it. Except for those instances where, while inhabiting your avatar, either you or your avatar die, in which case it's Game Over for both of you, man.

My interpretation (and this is largely speculative because I don't think it was even necessarily implied) is that the Framework is kind of a hybrid between a virtual and an alternate reality. There's a lot of techie algorithm-ing involved but the thing is also to some extent Darkhold-derived. And that, I assumed, is what accounted in large part for the Framework's ability to so completely replicate an entire world's worth of people without any uncanny valley-ness. Because, for instance, how on earth would you program the complex existence of Mack's daughter such that he can't see right through the simulation?

Like my hunch is that the Framework just exists now, independently of any earthbound hardware. It's a whole separate universe unto itself that can be entered via technological means. We'll see how my theory pans out next week, I guess.

you're linked directly into his brain, just override any suspicions with a strong "it's her" xp

loved the Ophelia claim that it was another world, Fitz isn't evil now.. and neither is she!

whatever, lady

You're both right, this is just symptomatic of how little the show has impacted on me and how little I seem to be able to engage with it.

I'm the guy with decades of Marvel & DC continuity in my head - even the volumes of unbelievably shit stuff over the past 5 years - and still struggle with how leaden the concepts have been here.

Rebirth has stolen your joy, aldo.

kudos to the actress playing Aida having done two distinctly different characters and three versions of the same android/simulation/human character

The two-shot with her and Fitz in the containment cell in the last episode is the highlight of the season.

her "wait... what?" reaction to Fitz saying he only can love Jemma was great

Also, since you brought up the DC shows earlier...I'm so much more invested in this show and the characters and their relationships than I am in any of the stuff happening on the CW. I cannot think of a DC character they could kill off that I'd be at all affected by, but moments like the Fitz and Simmons reconciliation this week...man, that got to me. And I'm all 'they've got to run the Trip avatar through Ada's body-making machine!' and 'we can't lose Mack!' As opposed to 'oh, did [REDACTED DC CHARACTER] just get killed? (yaaaaaawn)'.

kudos to the actress playing Aida having done two distinctly different characters and three versions of the same android/simulation/human character

― mh, Friday, May 12, 2017 11:15 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was seriously going to follow up with this exact comment. I don't mean to overshoot or anything, but her performance has been some Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive, 'wait, is that the same actress?!'-level stuff.

For me the whole ADA storyline has been a kinda boring cul-de-sac of a story

The ada character felt like pure fanservice from the off with her sexy corporate chic attire & quiet smolder oh she might love me oh she might kill me ... the IDEA of this story is a huge eyeroll for me

there have been entertaining parts & i dont hate it completely but it feels like a placeholder story while they figure out a new arc, it just does not interest me

I know it makes me a 5 year old but I dont caaaaaaaare about lady robots & fuckin virtual reality worlds & i just want to see them fight bad guys in a normal marvel way instead of whatever this endlessness is

I think you mean "normal marvel movie / netflix show way"

half of the comics just churn crap in a much worse way than this!

but yeah, the "two guys secretly build a HOT ROBOT in their garage" bit was kind of a red herring for the much creepier reality that a scientist built a robot that looks like his dying friend (?!?) and ends up being the key, along with supernatural shenanigans, to letting the real one keep on living virtually

imo they dropped the ball on showing Agnes living her life -- she was literally kept on an island in the virtual world so she wouldn't find out her permanent home was a fascist wonderland!

i think you know i meant that since i usually dont talk about comic books much

hey lady I don't share all my interests on this board, I'm not going to make any assumptions

i aint reading any of the last posts, but ...
i am glad others are watching it.
they have totally raised their game with this season.
so many LOL moments and !!!! moments.
it's a massive weekly highlight for me and my 13 year old kid.

xpost fair enough lol

I know it makes me a 5 year old but I dont caaaaaaaare about lady robots & fuckin virtual reality worlds & i just want to see them fight bad guys in a normal marvel way instead of whatever this endlessness is

― Yoni Loves Chocha (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, May 12, 2017 12:40 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was gonna say but mh beat me to it. Every fourth Marvel comic you pull out of a random stack is likely to be about lady robots and/or fuckin virtual reality worlds (particularly if it's a stack of Marvel's popular '80s title Lady Robots & Fuckin Virtual Reality Worlds).

good book

The most recent episode with the "it's all too much!" Aida breaking down was the first where I appreciated the actor's ability. Nicely done. And I do appreciate how it may take a lot of LMDzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz episodes, but there's a payoff with the tv MCU gaining a Madame Hydra. Reminded me a lot of the Cap movies working the Purge actor into Crossbones.

sidebar (spoilery?)
I'm not that sad that Mac stayed behind tbh, they've not given him a whole lot to do for a while now.
he just kinda frowns and stands around now.