I keep wanting this show to be better. Even as I watch the episode, I find myself asking "Show, why aren't you better?"
The action sequences are dull, dull, dull, dull. No sense of danger to anyone. Crappy fight choreography. And gun fights straight out of The A-Team.
Agent Ward is so goddamn boring. I don't care about him. I don't care about what he thinks. I don't care about what he does. I wish he would get shot more often.
Fitz/Simmons are cute...but treading very close to becoming incomprehensible and annoying.
Agent May is best quality, clearly. Though, I've no idea why she thought she'd only ever be a "bus driver" and not involved in combat. Seriously? How would that even work? The whole team is just one commander, two vets, two lab rats and one civilian. No support staff on the plane at all. No redshirts to be killed. How the hell would the bus driver ever avoid combat? You're one of two people who can actually fight on the team.
And Coulson. Coulson, Coulson, Coulson. Last time, it was a hammer and you brought enough guys to cordon off the hammer from a whole town's worth of people. You had like three dozen techs looking at it and at least as many guards protecting it (including Hawkeye). Stop spending money on the damn plane and start spending it on an adequate field team.
I know the above sounds nitpicky. That's because it is. And that's because that's where my brain goes when it's not engaged or enraptured by what's happening in front of my eyes. In the end, none of the above points really matter. What matters is that the plots aren't engaging, the characters are shallow and the writing is pedestrian.
But, I'll still watch it. I'm still enough of a Marvel fanboy. I'll just keep waiting for a big bad to come on the scene (hint: All Hail Hydra!). Though, I'm certain that the writers' hands are tied by what will or will not happen in the movie 'verse. That's a shame and that may be why this show can't work.
Wei yau is very smart and I agree with everything he says.
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Originally Posted by wei yau
The action sequences are dull, dull, dull, dull. No sense of danger to anyone. Crappy fight choreography. And gun fights straight out of The A-Team.
So much this.
I actually laughed out loud when Our Heroes were "ambushed" by assailants whose opening move was to leave a concealed position and charge into Kung Fu range while holding their assault rifles in front of them like spears.
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And Coulson. Coulson, Coulson, Coulson. Last time, it was a hammer and you brought enough guys to cordon off the hammer from a whole town's worth of people. You had like three dozen techs looking at it and at least as many guards protecting it (including Hawkeye). Stop spending money on the damn plane and start spending it on an adequate field team.
I know the above sounds nitpicky. That's because it is. And that's because that's where my brain goes when it's not engaged or enraptured by what's happening in front of my eyes. In the end, none of the above points really matter. What matters is that the plots aren't engaging, the characters are shallow and the writing is pedestrian.
Exactly. If. You tell me an interesting story about interesting characters doing interesting things, I'll shrug off the nonsensier bits. If you tell me a boring story about ill-defined characters doing stuff I don't care about, my brain becomes a finely tuned nonsense detector.
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
Well, I was calling for a big bad. Didn't realize how big or how bad they were gonna go. But, it looks like they just created Graviton. And he's got beef with Coulson.
The episode itself was better (or I'm getting used to the show's cadence). Fitz/Simmons seemed somewhat toned down. Agent May realized that she's a dumbass for staying out of combat. Coulson is starting to believe that there is something with him.
Unfortunately, Skye seems to have been infected by Agent Ward's ever-spreading boringness. I still don't like either of them.
But, back to Graviton. That man is seriously powerful. Like Magneto-level of powers, but without Erik's sense of restraint. His appearance on the late and lamented "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes" animated series was a good depiction of his character. He is really fucking powerful and really fucking crazy.
Unless and until something happens with or to him, I'm calling him Agent Bored. Agent Whitebored. He's like that one dish at Thanksgiving that sits there all night that nobody touches. Oh, it looks like somebody took some but when you look carefully it was just pushed around the plate. It'd be something if he was even worth disliking, but it's worse than that because I'm just indifferent towards him. Maybe when the Cavalry is out in the field with him he might become something other than what he is. Or I can hope he's forced to babbysit the Fitz-Simmons twins.
I haven't done my rewatch and I was thinking about not even bothering. But I suppose it's worth it for the origin of the Big Bad.
Once again, I agree with wei. Episode 3 is probably the best thus far, but still not great. Characters are still mostly boring, action is still mostly boring, plots points are still mostly telegraphed. Skye is especially frustrating because she could be so much more interesting. She was on the verge of actively playing both sides of the fence and didn't go through with it. Meh.
Also, I'm a bad nerd, because I was wracking my brain for a supervillain with gravity based powers and came up blank. I do want half credit for grousing aloud that throwing people into doomsday devices isn't how you kill them, it's how you give them superpowers.
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
I watched live this week, but haven't gone back for the first 20 minutes I miss driving home from work. I'm not caught yet. Whiteboard is very well named. That was a typo, but I'm going to leave it because he is a wooden actor, so I'll call it a Freudian slip instead.
One thing that bugged me in a way, as you said, that it wouldn't have if I had been caught up in the story, was Skye's dress at the party. I kept thinking, "Oh yes, dress her in hot pink at a party where everyone else is wearing little black dresses. It makes her look so much like an individualist. Good call, costume department."
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
I don't really have anything interesting to say about it. Much like the third episode, it seems that the team behind the show are really finding their comfort zone in putting together competent case of the week stories, and I don't really have anything negative to say, but there's still really nothing that wows me. Some more table-setting for whatever the overarching arc of the season is going to be went on, so that was cool. Dug the Science Twins more than usual, continued to despise just how badly the show wants me to like Hacktichick. Rolled my eyes REALLY FUCKING HARD when they hacked into the "local server", whatever that means.
Arc-related happenings:
What is the mysterious equation written on the blackboard behind multiple layers of security?
Who is the handler's handler?
What did Nicole Fury mean when she asked what happened to Coulson?
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"
What Adams said, p much. More interesting than the Thing that Happened This Week is what is part of the over arcing plot(s). Though I did kinda like Nicole Fury more than Agent Woodbored and maybe even Cavalry.
Interesting that Fitz-Simmons went all gooey-eyed at the eyeball technology because "we" don't have anything like that, at least for the next decade. Um. Have you seen the Iron Man suit? Granted he doesn't just let you have it, but the integration and miniaturization of all the things is beyond incredible.
Speaking of the Incredible Eyeball. In the continuing saga of is Coulson really an android robot clone, I thought this a neat in with introducing the technology that could be behind it. That is if he is an android robot clone.
I'm not up on all the Marvel things being mostly a DC fanbort, but for no reason I was getting a big AIM vibe out of this. Just because of the technology angle, not so much with the decoys hiring decoys controlling decoys plotty.
I laughed my face off at the big misandering Agent Woodbored got when the instruction to SEDUCE HIM popped up.
I can't put my finger on it exactly, but this is what I'm calling one of the better episodes so far. It flowed nicer or something. I dunno. It just felt better. It's not where it needs to be, but I'm not totally embarrassed about it.
I'm kind of intrigued by the idea that Coulson is actually a bit of an ass but we never saw it in the movies because the superheroes are all bigger assholes.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
I had some content issues with this week's episode (short and non-spoilery version: can we please have at least one mainstream TV show where a hacktivist character is not either a) revealed to be a bad guy who doesn't really believe in a principled freedom of information or b) converted to the authorities' way of thinking?), but otherwise, I thought it was pretty solid. More arc stuff, tied in seamlessly with the case of the week.
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"Trans Am Jesus" is "what hanged me"