After much anticipation, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD debuted this past week. Being the latest television series of the beloved Joss Whedon and having a connection to Marvel's cinematic universe (following up from the super successful Avengers), Agents of SHIELD had a rare level of hype going into its first episode. Does this series live up to that hype?Well, it's off to an ok start but it will need to step its game up in the next few episodes to prove it's a worthwhile story in its own right and not just a compliment to the movies.
Being a part of the MCU has its obvious benefits, but it also had a drawback that I didn't really think about before. Usually when you're watching a pilot for a show with science fiction or fantasy elements, you're being introduced to a world and there's this great curiosity to see what's out there. After 7 MCU movies, we're well aware of what's out there and right now it feels like the most interesting things in this world are things we won't see on this show. The show can't deliver the spectacle of the movies, so it'll need great character writing and a story that really pulls the audience in so that we don't care that we're not seeing Iron Man.
Without a definite lead, it was a little bit difficult to connect to any of the characters in the time given. It did help to have the familiar faces of Agent Coulson and Maria Hill to ease us into things, but we're introduced to 5 characters of the main ensemble as well as the character of Michael Peterson. At this point there's not much of a hook to these characters' stories. We're given teases of about 4 things to be curious about regarding the character's backgrounds:
1. Grant Ward's family history is mentioned by Coulson as a reason his people skills are less than stellar.
2. SHIELD is hiding something from Coulson about the circumstances of his absence from duty after his reportedly faked death in The Avengers.
3. Melinda May is apparently a very highly regarded SHIELD agent, a living legend maybe, who no longer goes out into the field, because of some mysterious, probably traumatic event in her past.
4. Skye seems to have erased records of her past and has something to hide.
So, there are things that will hopefully make these characters interesting as we get to know them. However, the way these things were presented kind of felt like a heavy handed way of saying to the audience "There's more to this character than meets the eye, but you're going to have to stay tuned as we slowly reveal the truth over the course of this season!" For me, these teases of layers to the stories of these characters didn't really help to make them very interesting or appealing in the pilot.
Like the characters, the story presented in the pilot didn't really manage to grab me. I did think that Extremis was a good movie plot to follow up on in the show. However, I think it might have been better to use that as a mid season story after the series had established itself. As it is, connecting the story of the pilot so closely to Iron Man 3 sort of put the series in that franchise's shadow.
I must say that I hope the tone gets a little more serious. There are tons of great comedies on TV. That's not what's going to pull people into AoS. There were some decent comedic moments in the pilot, but overall I didn't think the comedy was very strong and it seemed like they were trying too hard. I'm not saying that the show should be very serious. Given the mixed reactions to the comedy in the last few Marvel Studios movies, I might eventually write an entire article on the subject of comic relief in these types of stories. For now, I'll say that I think they should let the comic relief be a welcome break that lightens things up, not a focal point that holds the story back from being taken seriously and having a sense of real danger.
This review may have come off as a bit harsh, but I didn't dislike the show. Despite its problems, the pilot for Agents of SHIELD was somewhat entertaining. It's important to keep in mind that this is just a pilot, so I don't want my criticisms of this episode to be taken as me writing this show off. Thinking about other Joss Whedon shows, I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I really wasn't sold on that show until about halfway into its second season. I do believe AoS has potential and I hope the next few episodes will show that this series is worth watching based on its own merits. Right now, Agents of SHIELD just feels like something extra for fans of the Marvel cinematic universe, the way that sitcoms like Parks and Recreation do webisodes that compliment the main story.