BuzzFeed: "What’s Wrong With ABC’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

The Marvel espionage drama bares a lot of similarities to the early run of Fox’s now-departed Fringe — and not necessarily in good ways.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "What’s Wrong With ABC’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.?” in which I ponder just what's wrong with ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and why the show is failing to deliver on the promise of its concept.

After what I thought was an enjoyable pilot episode (save for that unfortunate opening sequence), I’ve found the subsequent episodes of ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the television spinoff from Marvel’s cinematic universe, to be rather lackluster.

That shouldn’t be the case, particularly given the participation of the Whedons behind the scenes and the fact that the show’s writers have an entire universe of pre-existing Marvel material from which to draw inspiration. Yet, for the most part, these first few episodes have bordered on being depressingly dull, static installments that haven’t advanced the character development or loaded in an overarching plot or mythology that could amp up the tension a bit.

Tuesday’s episode (“Eye Spy”) was a step in the right direction, centering on a cybernetically enhanced former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent coerced into committing high-stakes crimes for her unseen puppet master. But the plot itself reminded me a little too much of Fox’s Fringe, another series about a makeshift team investigating rogue scientists and the seemingly inexplicable and mysterious occurrences unfolding in an otherwise grounded world. Everything about this episode — from the red masked couriers in the opening sequence to the tease of a larger pattern of illicit scientific behavior — screamed Fringe, in fact. (Interestingly, former Fringe writer Monica Owusu-Breen is on the writing staff for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..)

But, like Fringe before it, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is plagued with some of the same issues the Fox drama faced in its early episodes. Despite the fact that we’re only four episodes into the show, there hasn’t been enough character development at work; the agents are largely still the same archetypes they were when the series began, and the audience has little knowledge of them besides for their names. (I still can’t keep Fitz and Simmons straight, which is saying something, especially since they’re different genders.)

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BuzzFeed: "Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is Just As Awesome As You Suspected"

Marvel’s cinematic universe gets a television tie-in as the Joss Whedon-led spinoff — the pilot episode of which ABC screened for critics earlier this week — launches on September 24.

Over at BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is Just As Awesome As You Suspected," in which I offer my first impressions of ABC's pilot for Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D..

Agent Coulson lives!

Well, sort of, anyway, if the sensational pilot episode of ABC’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — a bit of a mouthful, not to mention a clutch of extra periods — is any indication. While Marvel’s studio bosses are keeping mum about the truth behind the revelation that Clark Gregg’s Coulson, who was last seen on the receiving end of a vengeful Asgardian god’s pointy stick in The Avengers, firmly under wraps, longtime fans of Marvel Comics can pretty much figure out what’s going on here. (Cough, LMD, cough.)

But that’s really more than okay, because the Agent Coulson plot is just one of several at play within Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., created by Joss Whedon (who directs the pilot episode), Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen. It masterfully blends together the high stakes action, quivering emotion, and deft humor we’ve come to expect from Joss and Co. The latter element is perhaps the most significant, because the show doesn’t live in the shadows all of the time; while there is more than enough death and destruction within the pilot episode, there is also a lot of genuinely funny beats and some snappy banter to satisfy any Whedon fan craving that delicate interplay of serious, soulful, and sarcastic.

However, the pilot for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which revolves around the team’s mission to track down the mystery man played by former Angel mainstay J. August Richards, does feature its share of tough moral dilemmas. Perhaps most wisely, it also depicts the high-flying adventures of this motley group as exciting and bracing. It does, however, skirt the issue of whether a powerful espionage agency — so far above the common man that it floats in the sky aboard a helicarrier — engaged in tracking down unregistered “supers” are truly “the good guys.”

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