Agents of SHIELD: Whadidyathink?

[Elomin Sha]

There was nothing overly silly in this week's episode. It had a decent story too.

[KiteNeravar]

Except that this is marvel who has seeded hints and cameos throughout their movies so assuming they are doing it in their TV show is not so far out there. Also every (or at least most) "over-analysis" of his has been what any big Marvel fan will be thinking

I am wondering if they will start introducing new heroes in the show, if only in their pre-power form (Carol Danvers, etc)

[Trisha Lynn]

Just watched episode 4 and I think I'm fully sold now. For some reason the scenes between Skye and Coulson did it for me. I'm starting to see the characters find their place and start to interact the way I hoped.

I wasn't fond of the Skye/Coulson scene, but I did like the May/Coulson scene. I also disagree with you regarding the bit near the end with May and the guest star. That part was awesome.

[Master Gunner]

I really find myself agreeing with whomever earlier said that it feels like NCIS with superheros. That's not a bad thing (after all, NCIS is in its 11th season), but I don't think that's what many people had in mind when the show started.

I don't plan to stop watching anytime soon, but my hope that the show manages to develop the characters and get us liking them a lot more before the end of the season. Hopefully then they can move into actual plot arcs in season 2.
Or it could all be coming very soon, and we just don't know yet.

[Geoff_B]

Except that this is marvel who has seeded hints and cameos throughout their movies so assuming they are doing it in their TV show is not so far out there. Also every (or at least most) "over-analysis" of his has been what any big Marvel fan will be thinking

I am wondering if they will start introducing new heroes in the show, if only in their pre-power form (Carol Danvers, etc)

I dunno. I feel that heroes like Captain Marvel or Ant Man are so iconic in Marvel that they kind of deserve something bigger than this. I just think that the moment you put an established hero into it, even before they became heroes, the show will become just about them and the main characters get shoved into the background.

[Elomin Sha]

I really find myself agreeing with whomever earlier said that it feels like NCIS with superheros.

I do notice that now. The recent episode of NCIS was really good.

[Lord Hosk]

I understand that there is a need for non-super heroes in a super hero universe, especially in one like Marvel where the difference between above average Joe and Super is frequently technological or training.

They reign things in "to make it more human" while at the same time introducing things that are insanely unrealistic.

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The concept of the characters ever dismissing super powers just feels kinda lame, as hacker girl even points out "this is a world with super heroes but ESP isnt possible?" I guess Professor X, founder of the X-men doesn't exist in the shield universe? Mental ability is not something uncommon to the marvel universe. There is just about nothing that isnt possible, in fact almost everything you can imagine is reused so that nothing should ever be considered outrageous by people who have direct interaction with those super individuals.

In this episode in particular I got very disappointed by the lack of a good scanner for the eye surgery to create false suspense of "oh no cut the wire!" How did agent mr hunky even know the eye was attached with a wire? How did scientist McTech not know that it was insignificant if he could tell that everything was self contained?

Also, magazine drop and safey are not things that can be easily confused by someone with ANY training with a firearm no matter how unfamiliar they start. You cant fire 20 rounds with a handgun without figuring that one out.

Sure I am nitpicking but thats kinda the point to me, if you miss stuff like this that shatters the illusion you are trying to create you cant rely on that illusion to make your show different and watchable.

[Master Gunner]

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At least for now, I think they're trying to keep things like the X-Men out of the show to avoid a confrontation with the studios who own the movie rights-especially since they wouldn't be able to get Patrick Stewart in to play the role. So right now, they essentially don't exist in the shows universe.

Also, it could be that (outside of schrodinger's x-men), nobody with psychic powers has revealed themselves yet in the MCU (at least as far as the new girl needs to know). So while SHIELD may not discount the idea going forward, the point is that they'll start by looking at established possibilities before jumping to new ones.

For the safety/magazine release, it was just a gag about her inexperience written by someone who likely has never handled a firearm before.

[Trisha Lynn]

Click to Expand

At least for now, I think they're trying to keep things like the X-Men out of the show to avoid a confrontation with the studios who own the movie rights-especially since they wouldn't be able to get Patrick Stewart in to play the role. So right now, they essentially don't exist in the shows universe.

Also, it could be that (outside of schrodinger's x-men), nobody with psychic powers has revealed themselves yet in the MCU (at least as far as the new girl needs to know). So while SHIELD may not discount the idea going forward, the point is that they'll start by looking at established possibilities before jumping to new ones.

For the safety/magazine release, it was just a gag about her inexperience written by someone who likely has never handled a firearm before.

I think I actually liked the safety/magazine gag because it also highlighted the point that Skye is not the type of person who is going to want to aim a gun first when she's in danger. It's a great character point to reveal because it shows that rather than using weapons to keep herself safe when she was living out of her van, she used her wits and street smarts. It made me like her a bit more this episode. Also, her picking up on the fact that staying out of reflections was something that Ward had to do? That was a nice touch and showed that Skye was really getting into the teamwork aspect being part of the group more than she did last week.

[Elomin Sha]

I think with a lot of US shows, namely Sci-Fi it can take a few episodes for it to get going. SG-1 springs to mind, pilot and second episode was good - following few not so much.

[Lord Hosk]

Click to Expand

At least for now, I think they're trying to keep things like the X-Men out of the show to avoid a confrontation with the studios who own the movie rights-especially since they wouldn't be able to get Patrick Stewart in to play the role. So right now, they essentially don't exist in the shows universe.

Also, it could be that (outside of schrodinger's x-men), nobody with psychic powers has revealed themselves yet in the MCU (at least as far as the new girl needs to know). So while SHIELD may not discount the idea going forward, the point is that they'll start by looking at established possibilities before jumping to new ones.

For the safety/magazine release, it was just a gag about her inexperience written by someone who likely has never handled a firearm before.

Scarlet Witch Avengers 2

[Geoff_B]

Technically she's not psychic. On the other hand she can reshape the whole of reality on a whim. And has done so on at least two well documented and rather famous occasions.

[Master Gunner]

Not within the MCU as of yet, though.

[Geoff_B]

That we know of. Maybe she altered reality and no one knows about it!

[Master Gunner]

Which would still not cause any plot holes in the statements made by he characters.

[KiteNeravar]

This weeks episode was good as well, seems like the show has gotten to where it wanted to be. Would still like to see established superheroes or villains, even if it is just a reference, like mentioning Wakanda, someone mentioning Simon Williams as their favorite Actor, a theory about The Pride running L.A. just something to show us that there is more to the universe than the Avengers, S.H.E.I.L.D. and A.I.M.

[JayBlanc]

I have to admit that the show's on a clock with me to demonstrate it's more than a collection of clever quips, action sequences, generic spy plots from 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E' combined with what appears to be chronic race-blindness... At the moment it's barely coasting at 'Torchwood' level.

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This episode kind of falls apart when you ask one simple question... Since they apparently have local teams in Hong Kong, why exactly did they need to call in the team of broken toys?

I get that they really really want to make this show 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' set in the Marvel universe, with visits to (American perspective) Exotic Locations. But they're not 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E.' which was indeed a massive backlash against the idea of a team of All American Heros fixing the world. There's just no plausible rationale for them to have been involved as the primary actors in this case, at most they would have consulted on the hacking, but who in their right mind then sends them to China? It's "Throw the dart at a world map, that's where we're going next!" writing.

[Master Gunner]

At least they tried to play it smart at first and went after the US angle first (not that they had any particular need to do that either, even if they did happen to be in the area)?

The show actually does justify Coulson and his team been kept in the loop, though. People like the guy who was kidnapped are part of a very short list (the only other person we know of in the MCU who would be on the list is Bruce Banner (and I suppose the Abomination as well), and maybe Steve Rogers at a stretch), so Coulson would have requested to be kept in informed if anything happened to them. From there, he exercised his "authority" to take charge, because it's a TV show and thus the main characters have to do all the interesting stuff.

What really bugged me about this episode was the new "hacker" guy, who was just a complete tool.

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1. He has a massive anti-establishment attitude, just hacked a huge inter-governmental organization with seemingly unlimited resources and jurisdiction, and then used a credit card to buy coffee from the cafe he just hacked said organization from. In real life, anyone like that (who isn't a complete idiot) would be operating pretty much solely on a cash and bitcoin basis, for the explicit purpose of not leaving such an obvious and easily tracked trail.
2. He hacked an organization that he knows his girlfriend is infiltrating. Let me say that again because of how stupid it is. He hacked an organization that he knows his girlfriend is infiltrating. Seriously. How did he not thing that was going to come back and bite her in the exact manner it did? Guy is now both an idiot and a complete tool.
3. He is a hollywood-level hacker, allegedly one of the best in-universe, and he complains about barely making enough to pay rent and does the above stupidity for the cliched million dollars? Real-life bohemian hackers, such as Adrian Lamo (or mathematicians, such as Paul Erdos), do so entirely because they choose to. The guy could be making serious money as a security consultant if he wanted to. I work for a company that does security work and penetration testing, and we charge $150/hr in a place that's essentially Maine (seeing as we are the part of Canada directly north of Maine). In Dallas, a decent security consultant could easily charge twice that and be considered cheap. At his alleged skill level, he could be making 10 grand for a days work.

Seriously, Coulson stranding him in Hong Kong at the end was incredibly cathartic. I couldn't stop wanting to punch the guy.

Overall, I think the show is getting better though, but at a slow rate. It's good to see they are introducing an actual long-term plot, and hopefully that will pay off.

[Lord Hosk]

The show actually does justify Coulson and his team been kept in the loop, though. People like the guy who was kidnapped are part of a very short list (the only other person we know of in the MCU who would be on the list is Bruce Banner (and I suppose the Abomination as well), and maybe Steve Rogers at a stretch),

Dialog from the avengers seems to imply that they keep tabs on anyone who has above average tech or ability. Which includes everyone of the avengers, the internet shorts include abomination, then we can extend that to Iron Patriot, all the asgardians and any other super heroes in the "avengersverse" which unofficialy would include Spiderman, the X-men and all the mutants, although they seem to be regarding the X-men as not existing in this 'verse' since I would hardly call the gathering in last stand "a very short list"

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3. He is a hollywood-level hacker, allegedly one of the best in-universe, and he complains about barely making enough to pay rent and does the above stupidity for the cliched million dollars?

At his alleged skill level, he could be making 10 grand for a days work.

That was the first thing I thought one day of "breaking and entering" at his level is a easy 5K and he wouldnt even have to write anything up, just "Im doing this on this day, see if you can track it"

Overall, I think the show is getting better though, but at a slow rate. It's good to see they are introducing an actual long-term plot, and hopefully that will pay off.

I have to admit that the show's on a clock with me to demonstrate it's more than a collection of clever quips, action sequences, generic spy plots from 'The Man from U.N.C.L.E' combined with what appears to be chronic race-blindness... At the moment it's barely coasting at 'Torchwood' level.

These two things sum it up, its better but thats not saying much. I suspect this will go at least two seasons and I will begrudgingly watch it because I have such high hopes.

[Master Gunner]

Dialog from Iron Man 2 states that SHEILD considers the Iron Man armour to be separate from Tony - it was approved for the Avengers while Stark wasn't. Presumably the same would be true of Iron Patriot (if it's not wrapped up in the Iron Man system too).

Also, while all the Avengers would be on many lists, the specific list talked about in this episode seemed more to explicitly "unexplained or unreproducible abilities/tech". The Iron Man suit can be explained and reproduced by human technology...at least, if you have the blueprints. Bruce Banner and this guy both could not be readily explained, much less reproduced (they have theories, but that's it). Captain America is the edge case where they can reproduce him, like they did with leftover serum in the Hulk movie, but they don't quite know how the serum works since the doctor who made it was killed (though Extremis is capable of reproducing many of the effects, and then some, but carries nasty side-effects).

Thor I would say warrants a wholly different list. After all, with him you'd have to include the rest of Asgard and the Frost Giants. Probably the Chitari too. Not to mention he's a bit outside of SHIELD's current ability to monitor.


As with the X-Men and the rest of the Marvel universe, I think it's safe to say that if they haven't been referenced in the MCU, they aren't yet active within the movie universe. Also, they couldn't reference the events of The Last Stand even if they wanted to - that movie franchise is owned by Fox. Even if the X-Men could potentially exist in the MCU if they stick to the tv show only, the existing franchise would be strictly off-limits (as, sadly, would the actors).

[Bebop Man]

I keep giving this show second chances but I can never get over the fact half the cast looks 20 and sucks balls. Skye in particular comes across as the kind of Mary Sue you'd find in a bad fanfic - scratch that, just A fanfic. And everybody speaks like a freaking Valley Girl, with, like, sarcasm, like, and eye-rolly condescendence, like? I'm sick to my stomach with this vanilla smugness as a substitute for wit. I swear this show is engineered to feed off fan expectations and nothing more. "Maybe this will really turn out to be that dude from that comic, maybe this episode we see a cameo of such and such".

[MisterDee]

1-I realized today that this was just picked up for a full season. That being the case, I've lowered my expectations for the early episodes and have higher expectations for the second half of this season.

2-Whedonspeak is really, really getting on my nerves. It worked well in Buffy, but that was because of the high school/early college setting (and probably in part because I was the target age.) It doesn't work nearly so well in AoS, as that is supposed to be an adult setting.

(In fact, the reason why the only characters I really like in AoS are Coulson and May is that they act like mature adult professionals. Not just badass agents, but actual people doing their job as well as they can. Seriously, Coulson would be a great manager in any setting.

3-The ham-handed take on hacktivists and government agencies got on my nerves, however (just as much as the inevitable "The Council is Evil, Let's Go Rogue" storyline will when we get there.) The whole thing would work a lot better in shades of grays.

4-As to the X-Men: I imagine that once the rights revert to Marvel, we'll have a reboot of the X-Men franchise. I mean, it'd be worth it just to have a watchable Dark Phoenix saga.

[Lord Hosk]

As much as I would love a real dark phoenix I dont think it will happen. If they reboot it they will go with something else like Apocalypse

[Master Gunner]

I wouldn't expect the X-Men rights to revert to Marvel in our lifetime. Often the agreement goes that so long as Fox keeps making X-Men movies, they get to keep the license. Seeing as how that franchise is still making them tons of money, I doubt they'll be giving it up any time soon.

[Trisha Lynn]

What really bugged me about this episode was the new "hacker" guy, who was just a complete tool.

Click to Expand

1. He has a massive anti-establishment attitude, just hacked a huge inter-governmental organization with seemingly unlimited resources and jurisdiction, and then used a credit card to buy coffee from the cafe he just hacked said organization from. In real life, anyone like that (who isn't a complete idiot) would be operating pretty much solely on a cash and bitcoin basis, for the explicit purpose of not leaving such an obvious and easily tracked trail.
2. He hacked an organization that he knows his girlfriend is infiltrating. Let me say that again because of how stupid it is. He hacked an organization that he knows his girlfriend is infiltrating. Seriously. How did he not thing that was going to come back and bite her in the exact manner it did? Guy is now both an idiot and a complete tool.
3. He is a hollywood-level hacker, allegedly one of the best in-universe, and he complains about barely making enough to pay rent and does the above stupidity for the cliched million dollars? Real-life bohemian hackers, such as Adrian Lamo (or mathematicians, such as Paul Erdos), do so entirely because they choose to. The guy could be making serious money as a security consultant if he wanted to. I work for a company that does security work and penetration testing, and we charge $150/hr in a place that's essentially Maine (seeing as we are the part of Canada directly north of Maine). In Dallas, a decent security consultant could easily charge twice that and be considered cheap. At his alleged skill level, he could be making 10 grand for a days work.

A friend of mine who recaps the show for The Backlot expressed doubt that there were big name hackers who have that kind of notoriety; your responses in the click-through justify the comment I made to him in reply that yes, there are such things as Big Name Hackers in "the real world."

Click to Expand

1. It's possible that she only claimed that he used a credit card in order to justify that she knew where he was or would likely be. Also, I could see him using a credit card with a fake name or one of those burner check/debit cards. However, yes, I don't think the scripting went into that level of rabbit hole.
2. It's also possible that he's so anti-establishment that even the idea of doing legit security consulting would mean that he's beholden to The Man. And the idea of making corrupt Establishments stronger would be totally antithetical to him. That does leave security consulting for less savory employers. But those kinds of people would already have their own killer pen-test teams in place, no?

Of course, I am really doing all of this plot hole tap dancing because I like the show and would like for it not to be so Hollywood about certain things. I think that the reality of information security is far more interesting than what Hollywood shows the world. In fact, one of the things I loved about "Leverage" when it was on was that one of the executive producers would do regular post-episode Q & As on his blog where he'd describe exactly how they came up with their Con/Heist of the Week and how they were based on things that actually have happened. Trojan Horses can be applied to education too, you know.


Trisha Lynn
...the first info tidbit is always free...