Now, with Ultimate Spider-Man, that’s actually worked out ok so far. It’s not quite up there with it’s predecessor, but it’s a quality show that has a lot of fun fan service. Can the same be said of the new Avengers series, Avengers Assemble?

Sadly no, so that infuriates me quite a bit. Avengers Assemble ultimately feels a lot like the recent Spider-Man movies, where they feel like they had to do something with the property and it’s just treading way too familiar ground. The team faces the exact same issues (and occasionally the same villains doing the same or similar things). Thor and Hulk don’t get along and beat the crap out of each other? Check. Cap feels like a man out of time even though he’s been around a few years and always seem quick to pick up on things? Check. Hawkeye’s a giant asshole? Check. Iron Man doubting himself, but not to the point of alcoholism because it’s a kid’s show? Fucking check.

Probably the worst thing about Avengers Assemble is how it seems to exist in it’s own continuity from everything else despite the fact that it was essentially made to capitalize on the movies, because it has very little in common with them. Ultimate Spider-Man pretty much exists in the Marvel movie continuity. Agent Coulson is his fucking principal. It’s silly, but it works as fun jokes and fan service and is consistent with the movie universe they have spent so much time carefully setting up. There is none of that in Avengers Assemble, and the prime example is just staring in your face the whole goddamn time in the new token black character on the team, Falcon (Black Panther is nowhere to be found).

Now I have nothing against Falcon, he was great in Winter Soldier. And if Disney/Marvel wanted to make THAT Falcon part of the team, cool. But the Falcon on Avengers Assemble is nowhere close. Not just in how he acts, he’s literally a different person. Younger, a rookie and in Stark’s employ. What the hell is the point of that? At the end of the day, Avengers Assemble isn’t terrible, but it feels like such a retread and is completely pointless and that might actually be worse.

Final Rating: 2/5-Avengers

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DOUBLE FEATURE!

Or, I MISSED LAST WEEK’S REVIEW AND I’M CATCHING UP!!!

I want to treat this as a state of affairs for Agents of SHIELD.  We’re four episodes in now, for better or for worse we probably have a good idea of what we’re getting.  A few shows have managed to have earth-shaking tonal shifts mid-stream (actually can I really think of any?  Spin City, I guess, but not really?  The Daily Show?  Even Cheers went through a huge cast upheaval and didn’t really change fundamentally) and sometimes it can take a season or two for a show to find its niche.

Unfortunately it doesn’t look like Marvel/ABC/Disney is going to allow this show to try to find its niche.  Four episodes in, and the formula has already been well established.  Introduce Problem in Act 1, debate/struggle with/explore/reason out the Problem in Act 2, overcome adversity, come together as a team, solve the Problem in Act 3.  If the target audience is children and morons, fine.  I might tune in a couple more times, then forget the show exists.  Us fanboys are well aware what we collectively need to do in order to make sure something doesn’t get counted as canon.  Widespread ridicule and ambivalence are remarkably effective weapons.

The sad thing is that there is significant potential here.  Make it supernatural sci-fi.  Or make it a spy drama.  Or just make it incredibly weird.  Draw on the enormous Marvel back catalog for characters, but give them an updated Marvel Studios spin.  The show that they’ve actually made is overly cautious and has no real redeeming artistic merit whatsoever.  It’s really the opposite of what Marvel Studios has done with their movie franchises.

So they’re dead set on doing one and done episodes that run together from week to week in only the broadest sense.  It makes for the perfect opportunity for one shot cameos!  Even if you can’t get a mid-level actor to come on the show, get a nobody to play an updated version of The Tinkerer!  As of now, there’s really nothing that makes this “Marvel” other than Coulson (who isn’t even a back catalog character, he was created for the movies), five minutes of Maria Hill, and five minutes of Nick Fury.  So if there’s not much Marvel, the content is completely uninspiring, and there’s no artistic merit, what exactly is there to keep me watching?

I have a plan for Joss Whedon, who apparently has forgotten how to take risks when it comes to making TV.  Watch season 1 and season 2 of Sherlock from the BBC.  The makers of Sherlock have done a masterful job of modernizing a classic character.  Their usage of high end tech and dramatic mystery dwarf the efforts of SHIELD.  Somehow, a show that theoretically has no spy thriller element is a far and away better spy thriller than the show that is about an elite spy organization.  Yes, it’s a little high brow (it’s British for chrissakes) and needs to be dumbed down for the unwashed American masses.  But it’s fantastic, edge-of-your-seat television, and something for SHIELD to aspire to.  I suppose Sherlock does have the advantage of having Benedict Cumberbatch.  But the makers of Sherlock accomplished far more in the series’ pilot episode than SHIELD has in its first four.

There have been moments.  Forcing an innocent to do one’s bidding by giving directions through an electronic eye is pretty fucking cool.  They also have done a decent job of setting up some future confrontations, like the scientist trapped in the element from episode 3, and we still don’t know who was ultimately manipulating people with the eye implants from episode 4.  But it remains to be seen if they’ll actually capitalize on the opportunities that they’ve created, and at this point I have serious doubts.

This had (has?) the opportunity to be action-packed event television, but right now it’s being played so safe that it appears everything that would be worth watching has been strained out of it.  ABC/Disney/Marvel/Whedon has three options, I’d be fine with any of the three:

1. Tackle socio-political issues through science fiction allegories (gay marriage?  How about MUTANT marriage!!!)

2. Make 22 mini Bourne Identities per season (Jeremy Renner can guest star in two different roles!!!)

3. Throw out the playbook and give the comic fanboys what they want (Naked Scarlett Witch!!! Naked Maria Hill!!! Naked Moira McTaggart!!! Naked She-Hulk!!! Naked Spider-Woman!!! Naked…)

Bring it on, motherfuckers.

Ep 3 5/10

Ep 4 5/10

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A pilot can obviously make or break a series.  In most cases, this refers to the actual survival of a show, as establishing an initial audience is often life or death when it comes to modern network programming.  In the artistic sense, this refers to tone setting, character establishment, episode format, etc.

When it comes to the pilot for a show like Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (the one and only time I will be properly typing out the official title), the stakes are a little different.  With its built in fanboy audience (OMFG It’s Maria Fucking Hill!!!), along with the potential to grab a percentage of the millions who have seen any or several of Marvel’s post-Iron Man movies, the show’s survival past the first 6-8 episodes should be virtually guaranteed.

Theoretically, this should allow the show creative and artistic freedoms that aren’t typically enjoyed by network shows in their infancy.  Instead of making a standard network pilot that lays out basic plot elements, introduces stock characters with little nuance, and crosses its fingers that it won’t get cancelled, Agents of Shield should be able to jump right into “good”, rather than skewing “safe”.

And there is some of that in the pilot (note to show producers: don’t name your pilot “Pilot” unless there are pilots.  I guess there are pilots here, so, whatever.  Fine, I guess.  Maybe it was meant to be semi-ironic).  There is certainly an assumption that the viewer has some basic knowledge of the Marvel Universe, but not so much that anyone jumping on would feel out of their depth.  Also, the show isn’t being written to specifically cater to fanboys, but also isn’t so vanilla as to insult us, which can be an extremely difficult tightrope to walk.  So Joss Whedon seems to have managed to avoid (for the time being) the largest of craters set in his path.

The larger and decidedly unexpected problem, however, might be the comfort level American network television (and admittedly, its viewing audience) has developed with procedural drama.  There were a few times during the pilot that I half expected NCIS-style head slaps to pop up, or Gil Grissom to step out of the shadows to give stern fatherly advice and wax poetic about the beauty of insects.  It’s extremely worrisome that given the opportunity to create some relatively original TV programming (Lou Ferrigno and Linda Carter aside), the creators dropped a short action sequence in the cold open, detective work and tech-savvy forensics in the show’s body, and a satisfying but convenient resolution at the end.  Yes, both NCISs and the jumble of CSIs have loyal followings.  It can be assumed, however, that this is because the audiences are on the verge of brain death.  Fourteen fucking seasons of CSI?  FOURTEEN FUCKING SEASONS?!?!?

Obviously there is a larger picture in the background, but to make the structure of the pilot so nondescript and formulaic makes it impossible to ignore the similarities to NCSIIS (the logical acronym for the inevitable NCIS/CSI crossover).  If each episode follows the bland crusade of a generic cast to contain a vague potential hero/threat, then there’s really not much more to say.  David Caruso and Gary Sinise are both recently out of work.  Why not team them up as a duo of criminal masterminds hell-bent on world domination, always two steps ahead of our shielded heroes?

The rest of the cast is passable, with the only real standouts being Clark Gregg as Agent Paulson (because we’ve seen him before) and Chloe Bennet (because her performance is pretty damn good).  We were promised the spontaneous explosion of this episode’s hero, and I wish the promise would have been kept, to put an end to his screen time.  If that’s the best casting they can do, this might be a long (first and only) season.

I would have been surprised if Joss Whedon had completely fucked this up.  I’ve read his comics, I’ve watched his shows and movies, and they are all generally above average (Dollhouse excluded).  He so far has delivered, if only in not completely fucking up.  But I have high expectations.  If the show ends up being NCIS with superpowers, I’ll be dumping it rather quickly.  The potential here is for high espionage drama (a proven entertaining commodity) with otherworldly elements mixed in.  That is what I expected going in, and that is what I’m hoping we still might get.  I’m decidedly on the fence.

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