Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agents of SHIELD logo

Ever since I saw the first trailer with what was believed to be Luke Cage or maybe Rage I was ready for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  Is that Gunn from Angel? Hell yeah, I want to see what the ex gang banger has been up to.

….Then I watched the pilot. It’s going to be a decent show with plenty of cameos and fleshing out the Marvel universe but following the hype, what a let down. It’s a show filled with amazing characters like the Abercrombie generic field agent whose “lone wolf” status means he’s going to do all the heavy lifting while learning to be a team player. There’s the cute young hacker who the show’s way of opening the world and explaining what’s going on to the audience. She was somehow  believed to be an entire network like Wikileaks, able to evade SHIELD in her van with “super encryption” and gets conveniently caught because she slipped up. and used her cell phone to record someone doing something super.

This somehow gets her a job with the most covert of all agencies since day one based of this criteria alone. Seems SHIELD finds the best at whatever they do and finds a way to get them to think working with them is the best thing.  In her case, she’s a superhero groupie. For the technobabble we get two for the price of one. There’s Simmons, a biochemist,  who likes to get her hands dirty. The other is the weapons specialist, Fritz .

The pilot begins acknowledging the events of all the Marvel films to date making special mention of The Avengers since now alien tech is being sold on the black market.  Coulson with a cameo from Robin Sparkles create a field team to track emerging threats, which is what I thought SHIELD was already doing.

The dialogue is peppered with references about the Marvel universe and the events of the preceding films.  It’s very standard Whedon project with his near nepotism so I expect just about the entire cast of Firefly and Dollhouse who haven’t found steady work to pop up at sometime

The mysterious return of Agent Coulson seems to be part of a longer plot arc which Whedon is known for. This along with whomever is selling the technology last seen in Iron Man 3 (A.I.M.?) can keep the series going along with it’s procedural freak of the week bread and butter.

7/10