Series Season 2: Or how to grow a beard
Pros:
Inhumans
Real SHIELD
Good build up for later films
Improved effects
Greater ambition
Moral grayness
Highly connected storyline
Mockingbird
Grant Ward
Darker tone
Stiill kept sense of humor
Lance Hunter
Callbacks to season 1
Calvin Zabo
Mysteries about Skye and Coulson not padded out
Improved pacing
No true villains during second half
Skye and Fitz's development
Better characterization
Koenigs
Daniel Whitehall
Finale has huge impact on MCU
Good tie ins with mcu
Cons:
Still some narm
Age of aultron tie in was a bit of a let
Real SHIELD had almost no buildup
Simmons during first couple of episodes of second half
Mack's fantastic rascism while understanding could get annoying
Whitehall as cool of a villain he was didn't do much
HYDRA pushed to background in latter half (Understandable but still flaw)
Ian Quinn and Gravitonium plotlines not touched on
The long, LONG wait to season 3 ( though ant man should help)
Bottom line:
This season was a massive improvement over the decent but flawed first. The heroes faced challenges both physical and moral. The villains with the exception of Hydra were not complete monsters. The new characters wer (mostly) awesome and the old guard was still strong. This show still has flaws but is slowly but surely becoming a classic.
Score: Please give this show a second chance/10 (9/10)
"I'm the one who kills Gordon" should be a meme.
Update: Second season coming out on Netflix. Show support by watching/ Converting as many people as possible. Ratings are going down so give this show the attention it deserves. Don't let it become another Invader Zim.
Series S.O.S. Review (Spoilers) duh
Pros: Good resolution to season
Leaves just the right amount of loose ends
Skye vs May
Mockingbird vs. 33 and Ward
Mack, Fitz, and I vs Gordon
May, Skye and Lincoln vs. Multiple Woman (Or whatever her name is.)
Cal putting his foot down
Skye choosing SHIELD
SECRET AVENGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cal getting closure
Cal's Heel face turn
Terrigen fish vitamins
Mockingbird's sacrifice
Fitz finally asking out Simmons
Ward's loss
Raina's sendoff
Ward head of Hydra
Mack being badass
Cons:
As good of a villain as he is, Ward is starting down the path to villain sueness
Mr. Hyde transformation was silly
Gordon's death while awesome was a bit stupid
Same with 33 except replace awesome with tearjerker
Raina laid the religous symbolism a bit too deep
Me losing my hand
Bottom line:
An amazing finale to a great season of a good show. Ties up several loose ends while leaving several open for Season 3. By this point the show has more than delivered on its original promise. 9.6/10
Series Average at first, but it gets so much better
At first, Agents of SHIELD is okay at best. Fairly weak, but entertaining enough to go along with. Then, 'Winter Soldier' happens and the ensuing collapse of SHIELD puts a turbo on the narrative, injects it with energy and a definite unpredictability.
In the second season, it maintains this energy and builds on it, delivering strong arcs for each character, even the villains (especially villains), with effective Character Development all around and a finale which left me saying 'Holy Shit' over and over again, because it was amazing.
But what has really made the show tick is the fact that Kevin Feige and the rest of Marvel have trusted the show to not just fill in the gaps of the MCU, but carve out a narrative of its own and lead the way, going from passive filler material to a show that can lead the way in the MCU and make drastic, lasting changes to it.
By the end of the first season, it was a good quality show. By the end of the second season, it shows all the signs of becoming a classic.
So, in short, sit through the boring parts of the first season: it is most definitely worth the wait.
Series It's definitly worth it
Most shows follow a pattern: They start out slightly shaky, then get better and better, reach their peak during the second or third season and then start to decline step by step until they are not watchable anymore, unless someone pulls the plug in time.
With this show, the start is weak. Really, really weak. And then suddenly it's like someone flipped a switch and it feels like all those annoying episodes one had to sit through actually had a point. Boring characters become suddenly interesting, the puzzle pieces fit together and you ask yourself what will the show do next.
Since the show needed to long to hit its stride, fans tend to be more critical of it than they would if they had gotten hooked from the get go. But I can honestly say that it just gets better and better.
So, give it a chance and try to keep an open mind.
Series Definitely Grew its Beard
I found the beginning of the series so-so, but "The End of the Beginning" put the first stubble on the show, and it only got better from there. The episodes were more exciting, and the characters became fully fleshed-out. I know some people have issues with a certain character's surprise villainous status, but I thought it was a great twist (especially since I hadn't originally found that character very compelling). The pacing improved, and it still managed moments of lightheartedness in the middle of the increasingly dark episodes.
Yes, it still has its flaws, but I think the pros outweigh them. I've become emotionally invested in the characters now in a way I really wasn't in the earliest episodes, and I really love Triplett's inclusion to Team Coulson: he's a character I enjoyed from his introduction. The stakes started raising fast, and I don't think any of the characters went OOC to meet them. Now that the show has an air of real urgency to it, I've come to love it.
I think it's kind of funny that, for a series called Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, it really hit its stride once there was no more S.H.I.E.L.D. The characters now have to act, rather than react, as they did earlier in the season. In a way, it's moved from being a procedural to a dramatic thriller, and it's much better for it.
Series Honest review
You have met the Kingdom of Joss Whedon, King of the nerds, a kingdom filled of fantastic creatures like Iron Man, Hulk, Thor and Captain America. In a world now filled with such dangerous creatures, meet now the police force that will make sure that law & order prevail: six guys without any superpower at all.
A superhero miniseries, with hardly any superheroes in it. A spy miniseries, with hardly any detective work in it. A science fiction miniseries, with hardly any interesting techs or weapons in it. "But this is an icer. Triple the stopping power and a much cooler... name". Sell it on E-Bay, dude.
The team is led by Phil Coulson, a man that proved that the might of an Asgardian god is insignificant next to the Power of the Fandom. He is assisted by Melinda May, an agent with the hostility and combat prowess of Xena Warrior Princess, but not the boobs or the skirt. Skye, an orphan teenager living in a van, who inexplicably knows how to hack even SHIELD and the Centipede organization. Ward, a grown up man who falls in love with Skye, and manages to cause so much controversy over other things he does, that nobody cares to accuse him of child molestation. Fitz, Simmons' wacky sidekick, and Simmons, Fitz' wacky sidekick. And Nick Fury, who would defy even the laws of science to save his friend. Oh, get a room you two.
They will team up against Raina, a woman with egg eyes and a morbid obsession on superhumans and... flowers. The Clairvoyant, the mystery villain behind everything, who had fans wondering for months wondering about his identity, and with theories that spanned all the Marvel Universe... unless you know the unwritten rules of miniseries reveals, in which case the candidates could be counted with a hand. A bunch of misfits who get instant super powers just by holding a staff. And a man with psychic powers, constrained to a chair... and who is not called Charles Xavier.
Starring: The Glue. Ward in the Skye with Mayamonds. Leopold Simmons. Jenna Fitz.
Series On board for season 2
I admit that I overlooked Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the beginning, dismissing it as a Marvel version of Warehouse 13. But after seeing Captain America: The Winter Soldier and hearing how the series tightly tied into the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I went through an Archive Binge of the first season. Needless to say, I'm fully on board the train and ready for season 2.
Yes, season 1 starts off a little slow, and initially comes across as just a series of "weird event of the week" shows. But there's very little actual "fluff" here, as nearly every episode lays the groundwork for the season arc, builds the characters, or both. Once I got past the halfway mark I could feel myself being pulled in, by the two-thirds mark I was hungry for more, and the season finale was as fun and amazing as the series' big-screen cousins.
The show is a worthy companion to the MCU, and I definitely want to see more of Coulson and his team.
Series So-So Super Secret Spies
As of this writing, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has aired half of its first season. I'm a relative newcomer to the prime time drama community, but I expected a lot more out of it by the half way point. Maybe that's being unfair, but when you want something to succeed you have to hold it to a higher standard.
Ao S has a good premise. Agent Coulson leads a team of his fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents as the world adapts to super beings after the Battle of New York. We're introduced to Agents Ward, Fitz, Simmons and May relatively quickly while wild card Skye is brought in as the audience surrogate, the newcomer to the shadowy para-government deal. I don't have a problem with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s logo being everywhere, if they have their hand in every pie then its stands to reason they can't be that secretive. I like it's portrayal as a higher-than-high government division.
What I don't like is Skye (Which has been strongly hinted to not even be her real name. How mysterious). Before, Coulson brought a lot of dry, spot-on humor to the films. Now, everyone gets in on the lighthearted joking action, leaving Coulson's quips a lot less indicative of his character, and no character is more guilty of this than Skye. I can't shake the feeling that she's meant for all the uninitiated female viewers to project onto. That's not bad in and of itself, but the most cliche stories were drawn up for her. She's quirky, motormouthed, unrivaled with networking and computer stuff, able to get in and out of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top secret databases and flirts shamelessly with Ward. If those two don't end up together in the most drawn out, agonizingly melodramatic way, I'll be honestly surprised.
Skye aside, the show also suffers from a lot of slow episodes and redundancy. So far, Ward and May do the exact same stuff, fight really well, except May is better at it and Ward has a Tragic Childhood. Fitz and Simmons hide away in the lab and got a grand total of one defining moment each while Skye and Ward smolder at each other. And Coulson delivers his quips sandwiched between two comedic scenes.
All told, I do like Coulson's team. Ten episodes might be a little unfair, and I do see the show blossoming beautifully as Skye moves out of focus, but for right now, blowing up a minor character and kidnapping a team member just don't have me gripping the edge of my seat.
Series Far Better Than It Has Any Right To Be
Hasn't been a review of this show for the past 3 years/seasons and I just finished binge-watching it on Netflix, so here goes. Spoiler-free as possible for peeps who want to give this a shot.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a unique beast among TV shows I've watched, comic book-based or otherwise. For whatever reason, the network hates it and does everything short of outright cancelling it to hurt its ratings; chiefly, it keeps giving it worse and worse timeslots while also slashing its budget with each passing year (hell, the next and most likely last season is going to be 9 episodes shorter than usual), and by all accounts the viewership doesn't have great numbers due to this (which the show itself lampshades in Season 5). And yet, what we have 6 years after Phil Coulson came back to life is a genuinely amazing, well-written show made by talented people who clearly love what they're doing and respect their fanbase.
You've likely heard that the series has something of a bland start that seems more like CSI with superpowers than a Marvel property, and that's not wrong, but as far as I'm concerned it's good enough to be worth watching instead of just "sitting through" to reach the beard-growing stuff, aka S 01 E 17 "Turn, Turn, Turn" where the setting's relationship with the actual movies really kicks into high gear. From that point onward, Ao S simply outdoes itself with each consecutive season and arc in terms of storytelling, character development, fight choreography, CGI (yes, even with the limited budget), and emotional torque. Again, without getting into spoiler territory so people can go in blind, the Myth Arc that gets built up over the course of 110 episodes is truly phenomenal every time it pays off, whether that be with the mystery of Skye's parents or the truth about "The Cavalry" or even what ends up happening with the Gravitonium, whose multi-season absence was a hilarious meme in the fandom until it came back in epic fashion. That we get such a fantastic product despite the constraints foisted by the network and the higher-ups at Marvel Studios is a testament to the love and skill put in by the writers, directors, actors and technicians working on this. Just watch any of the gag reels and you'll see everyone has a blast putting together this story, especially the folks playing the despicable villains (get the man his damn coconut water!). To me, this makes it easily superior to the Arrowverse family of shows (except Arrow season 1, that will always hold a special place in my heart).
Now, is the show without faults? No, not even to a fanboy like me. It could use some more overlap with the movie side of the cinematic universe, something Skye's actress Chloe Bennett herself has complained about many times, but that has a lot to do with Marvel Studios as a whole. Additionally, while almost all of the casting and writing is phenomenal, some characters like Lincoln fall flat for most of their screentime, in hindsight.
But, in summation, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a truly outstanding show and a substantial, high-quality addition to the MCU. I highly recommend it.