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

What do you think this show is?

it's on abc at 8pm, not disney xd

do you need me to explain how that's a different audience

true, but at the same time Law & Order doesn't usually begin with the characters looking at a toy store with actions figures of Law & Order universe characters

metaphors are real, do you see

fwiw Star Wars: Clone Wars ran in primetime, probably the reason why it scooped up primetime emmys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Clone_Wars_(TV_series)

if anything it's the model for a tv show that exists in-continuity between movies, majority of movie tie-in shows have been just continuations of the premise of a film

I'm sorry that I didn't recognize that the Marvel comics movies are ADULT MOVIES for ADULT PEOPLE

ANT MOVIES for ANT PEOPLE

http://digboston.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Adam-Ant300.jpg

I'm gonna keep watching. Just dying for a decent sci-fi-ish show right now. I dug Contiuum (and will probably still watch it), but it's pretty goofy, with all of TEH CORPORATIONS! hand-wringing...

Decent-ish: Continuum (lol), Orphan Black, uhhh maybe some other stuff

I keep expecting Broadchurch to go all sci-fi because of Tennant and Darvill

I'm sorry that I didn't recognize that the Marvel comics movies are ADULT MOVIES for ADULT PEOPLE

the point was that there's not a lot of precedent for a prime-time network show that's supposed to tie in between previous and next parts of the one of the biggest movie franchises ever. that there have been animated spin-offs on kids networks is beside the point (also tron: uprising and clone wars are both prequels to films already released).

it's a good point

was i the only one who could barely decipher the eurotwins when they were babbling?

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

LMDs are the worst, if they have any sense they wont infect the movie universe with them

i thought they were gonna remake coulson as the vision which i can cosign but who knows now

while i hope they go full cape they might just have him be the smug countenance of a computer system named vision (like jarvis with attitude) but still call him coulson

http://media.comicbookmovie.com/images/users/uploads/27233/Phil%20Coulson%20evolution%20to%20Vision.jpg

it's a show built around a breakout character of a billion dollar movie and he was just super annoying in the pilot, feels like a case of joss and co losing track of what made people like him

and GOD young hot main character dude was boring

Yeah, for a show with so many characters it totally lacked character.

yep

sort of baffles me that Coulson could be seen as interesting/likeable enough to have a primetime series based around him, but you know, big box office gets folks excited.

that episode 1 ending. so bad. SO BAD.

"Where we're going, we don't need quality writing."

Funny thing is, I believe the flying car is one of the few elements pulled straight from the early SHIELD stories. They should have left it in 1966 where it belonged.

if you thought Ep1 was bad...

Yeah, this is terrible and shows no signs of improvement. Tom Spurgeon's review is pretty accurate and gave it all the bandwidth it deserves --

I know that early-season episodes of a new TV series can be really uneven, but I was still fairly shocked how distressingly generic and cheap-looking and narratively slack Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed. There were very few characters but they still dramatically overlapped; much of the dialogue felt the same to me across the board. You could shove that entire cast into a CSI or a NCIS or some syndicated show about a mutant superteam without blinking, which I suppose is the point. The bad guys in last night's episode could have strolled over from the set of a Burn Notice or a Strike Back and not had to change clothes. Perhaps worst of all, I got no sense of basic physical stakes in any of the action scenes. I don't know. The Marvel universe was a rich, distinctive place for me to spend time when I was a kid and a teen -- I visited for years afterwards -- and I get the sense from today's Marvel comic books when I see them that there's still a feel to the place that keeps those readers enthusiastic. From this, I got nothing.

haven't seen last night's episode yet but I loved the pilot

couldn't bring myself to watch episode 2 after catching a glimpse on-air between dvr'd shows. Will go back if people say it gets interesting but man, sure looks like generic smug detective shit

but without the detection...

or andre braugher...

Well, two apparently shitty eps in a row makes things easy.

dear joss: stop. making. miniature dull action b-movies! please for the love of fuck make a tv show!

ugh i swear if joss wasn't involved I would be SO done with this. awkard, wooden, expositiony & sooo telegraphed. i just wanted the whole show to get sucked out of that plane so we could start over.

but i'm staying signed on. for now. but if it stays this flat I'll kill myself out of sheer boredom.

joss isnt really involved, he just did the pilot and handed it off to his brother... Jed Whedon (not joking)

His brothers have done some really good work on other shows (Southland etc.) but man this second episode blew.

It doesn't help that it looks so shitty compared to something like Strike Back.

i love buffy but i have a really hard time with non-buffy whedon, there was something about that show that balanced out his smarminess... a sort of emotional purity or something... his shtick is super hard for me to take otherwise

the only Whedon show I've unreservedly liked is Firefly; this one seems to be in a similar vein with bits of Chuck painted over the top

i couldnt totally handle firefly

admittedly I wanted to marry pretty much every female character on Firefly so that probably informs my appreciation of the show

There's a lot of shittiness to that pilot that totally goes beyond anything Whedon might specifically have done wrong. Hell, maybe he made it better! Because the show was bad on so many fundamental levels that I have trouble blaming the peripheral auteur, who is neither the showrunner nor even a real driving force of this mess. Starting with the casting: that bland dude and the hacker girl are so not Whedon archetypes. It's like they cast from some Hollywood hack list and struggled to make them convincing dialog spouters, which they were not. "Cabin in the Woods" (and most of his previous work) showed a knack for discovering unknowns and matching them to the perfect character. This one, on the other hand ... those Scottish (right?) twins were the closest to the Whedonverse we got. The rest of the characters were anony-nobodies.

Like, this is the guy who found leads like James Marsden, Alyson Hannigan, David Boreanaz, Nathan fuckin' Fillion...

I don't think they're twins...one is Scottish and one is English

fraternal

immortal hollywood icons like david boreanaz

well, he's been starring in a relatively successful drama for the past 8 years

Also, he was perfect as Angel. Unlike the wooden charisma vacuum in this show.

I didn't mean he discovered great actors, just great actors for his projects.

There's a lot of shittiness to that pilot that totally goes beyond anything Whedon might specifically have done wrong. Hell, maybe he made it better!

I read some story somewhere which claimed he did just that. As in after the fact. As in someone at the network saw however much of the show existed at some point recently and brought him back to do some major patchwork.

He did the same for the new Thor, reportedly.

I could only watch about five minutes of the second episode, maybe I'll try again later