Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

and its perfect timing with the Spidey crossover rights and setup for Civil War stuff

Well they have certainly come out for the box kicking this season. I have enjoyed all the episodes so far. I do have a question though, in addition to the plot line of the show don't they have to start aligning the plot to match up with the Age of Ultron on May 1st? They have 5 weeks to setup that movie.

Laters,
Jeff

In the past this show has been more reactionary to the movies than setup. I don't expect anything until after the hammer drops, per se.

I'd like them to practice more restraint with the superpower-stuff. The budget and script doesn't support doing full justice to it anyway IMO. This episode was a little weak for me precisely because of the new villains.
1. I feel like they've written themselves into a corner with Skye. She is so fundamentally changed she can no longer represent the surrogate "Everyman" in the story. I don't feel like the writers know what they're going to do with her yet.
2. The Fitz-Simmons arc which was a major climax of last season, but now it's painfully taking a back seat to newer arcs. I hope their story gets proper treatment. I like them a lot but they're starting to feel like tertiary characters.
3. The idea of a "real SHIELD" feels contrived (for now) if only because it undermines the gravity of Fury's coronation of Colson to directorship.
4. A team of "supers" is hard to pull off without looking silly. Case in point - diner scene. A bunch of brooding motley superpowered thugs have a serious discussion about revenge and homicide in the middle of a public diner in broad daylight? Couldn't they at least have taken outdoor seating or take a corner booth?
5. The guy with the mouth-piece ... how does he eat? And why wasn't he using his powers when he was getting beaten up?
6. The girl with the fingernails ... what makes her any more dangerous than someone with a knife? She's less versatile, that's for sure.

For me the show was peaking at the end of last season and early part of this season. But the Sif episode and this episode are weak for me.

Chloe Bennett - she's an average actor (in terms of acting) at best IMO, and she's not very convincing with action/stunts. ... but I admit she's so adorable I can't stop looking at her.

Yeah, I don't what they are going to do with Skye either. If she can never learn to control her powers then she is a liability. If she learns to control them, then she can pretty much defeat anyone they come up against, and then you really have no story with her anymore.

Maybe they could put her in the movies? Isn't there an Inhumans movie in the works?

Sluis Van Shipyards said:

That's exactly what I was thinking. I thought the earthquake power was lame, but her's tops it.

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Earthquake power lame? Really? She can literally shake anything to pieces. A person, a robot, a plane, a building. Once she learns to control it, it's an extremely powerful and dangerous power.

Kerr Avon said:

Earthquake power lame? Really? She can literally shake anything to pieces. A person, a robot, a plane, a building. Once she learns to control it, it's an extremely powerful and dangerous power.

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Her powers are actually vibrational in nature, not specifically related to earthquakes. Remember that one scene where everyone was arguing about what to do about Raina and anyone else that has been affected by the mists. The only thing that was shaking was a soda can. Later, she blew out the lights in the quarantine room.

So, something my friend brought up a little while ago, while he was binge-watching to get caught up (he missed most of Season 1, and hadn't watched any S2 until he caught up).

When the series started in Season 1, it was just after Iron Man 3. We knew what the "status quo" of the world was. Partway through the season we had Thor 2, and they dealt a bit with the clean-up, but nothing was really "shook up". Then, near the end of the season, we had Captain America 2, which really shook up the status quo, and they dealt with the fallout from that.

Between CA2 and now, however, our only look at the wider world of the MCU has been Guardians of the Galaxy, which had no present-day scenes on Earth. Which means that our only look at the state of the entire Earth has been post-CA2 Agents of SHIELD season 1, and all of season 2.

What my friend brought up, though, is pretty much "where is everyone?" While we understood the status quo of the world in most of season 1, it made sense that the heroes were off doing their own things. Stark was dealing with the aftermath of IM3. Thor was either off in Asgard (pre-Thor 2) or with Jane (post-Thor 2), etc. Now that things have been shaken up, and SHIELD are being treated like criminals (more so the end of S1 than in S2), and Coulson's team are fighting super-powered beings, where are all the heroes? Sure, they don't know Coulson's alive (other than Sif, who I've enjoyed seeing, I enjoy her as a character, and like her getting extra screen time), but they have to figure that someone is still running SHIELD, fighting against these people. Even if you argue that it's been primarily small-scale, after the prison break(s?) and the spectacle in Coulson's home town in this past episode, you'd think that someone would start digging to find out what was going on.

And while I have enjoyed season 2, I think that is its biggest flaw. In Season 1, we knew where the world stood, so it was fine to focus on a small group. But now that we have no clue what's going on in the rest of the world, focusing on the small group makes it feel like they're the only ones doing anything. Obviously, with the revelation at the end of this episode, it's going to lead us into some of this territory, but I feel his point (which, quite frankly, was made about 2-3 weeks ago, so before we knew this anyway) still stands. Agents of SHIELD works much better focusing on a small group when we understand what the status quo of the rest of the world is.

The Mad Professor said:

Her powers are actually vibrational in nature, not specifically related to earthquakes. Remember that one scene where everyone was arguing about what to do about Raina and anyone else that has been affected by the mists. The only thing that was shaking was a soda can. Later, she blew out the lights in the quarantine room.

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They need to get her a small item made of vibranium. When she starts to get the shakes she just just push them into it instead of turning it inside or just letting it rip.

The Mad Professor said:

Her powers are actually vibrational in nature, not specifically related to earthquakes. Remember that one scene where everyone was arguing about what to do about Raina and anyone else that has been affected by the mists. The only thing that was shaking was a soda can. Later, she blew out the lights in the quarantine room.

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I wasn't familiar with her character in the comics, so when they revealed who she was before the break, I did some reading up on Quake.

Pretty BA character, power-wise, from what I read. I think her shining moment was, during a battle, she took out Magneto by causing his brain to vibrate in his skull, rendering him unconscious. That kinda made me nervous for the show, because if they don't handle it well, she could end up with 'Superman Syndrome', where she's so powerful, it almost makes the rest of the team useless. Evidently though, that was a one time deal that was a one-in-a-million success.

We'll see..

Kerr Avon said:

Earthquake power lame? Really? She can literally shake anything to pieces. A person, a robot, a plane, a building. Once she learns to control it, it's an extremely powerful and dangerous power.

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Well I have to walk that back a little after last week's episode. If she can learn to focus it like she did when she did it to herself, it could be useful. If it's just creating an earthquake that has no target, that's not really useful unless you don't care about civilians.

Everyone at football/cheerleader practice dies in the afternoon, and by nightfall no one in town has come by and discovered this? Or if they have, and the baddies killed them, too, others would keep coming, and by the time Coulson arrived it would've been surrounded by police, national guard, media....

Treadwell said:

Everyone at football/cheerleader practice dies in the afternoon, and by nightfall no one in town has come by and discovered this? Or if they have, and the baddies killed them, too, others would keep coming, and by the time Coulson arrived it would've been surrounded by police, national guard, media....

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OK, I was trying to figure this out too. They said his voice causes immediate 'catatonia' with the slightest whisper... so... they're all in comas. I'm guessing there's a decent range on him dislocating his jaw and yelling like that... so... it's probably more than just that area... but the same thing would happen, somebody would still be awake, and they didn't call in reinforcements?

Sigh. This wasn't a well thought out episode. I thought Skye was getting better, but now she's reverting back to her old "Creator's Pet" trait that I loathed from the first season. Also, why cover up the surgical blades when you could just cut them off? It's like they wrote the part for the character Marrow who had uncontrollable bone growth but managed to use it as power. Cutting them or pulling them out wouldn't do anything because they'd grow back. That's the only way the hand covers made any sense. I guess when they realized they couldn't do Marrow or anything resembling her (Or X-Men Last Stand's 'him') they dropped the bone growth but not the hand coverings. I don't recall an instance where the surgical blades were said to grow back.

Usagi Pilgrim said:

I wasn't familiar with her character in the comics, so when they revealed who she was before the break, I did some reading up on Quake.

Pretty BA character, power-wise, from what I read. I think her shining moment was, during a battle, she took out Magneto by causing his brain to vibrate in his skull, rendering him unconscious. That kinda made me nervous for the show, because if they don't handle it well, she could end up with 'Superman Syndrome', where she's so powerful, it almost makes the rest of the team useless. Evidently though, that was a one time deal that was a one-in-a-million success.

We'll see..

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Her emotions will hold her back.

kegas76 said:

They need to get her a small item made of vibranium. When she starts to get the shakes she just just push them into it instead of turning it inside or just letting it rip.

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That was my thought as well. Of course her meeting Klaw would an interesting battle...

Kevin Gossett said:

Any ideas where this "real" SHIELD is headed?

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I'm wondering if it is the board, that group of talking heads that kept telling Fury to do things and he would then totally disregard them. I don't remember if they killed them off in Winter Soldier.

As for the woman with the knife fingers, it sure looked like the blades were attached with hex screws. Why didn't they just remove them and fill the screw holes with something? Or surgically remove whatever they screw into?

What's with this trend of anti-agents? Anti-agents in this. Anti-agents in the new Mission Impossible...

Oh hey, its not just EJO in "Real SHIELD" but also Agent Charlie Francis from Fringe Division!

I bet Hunter wasn't even on that submarine pod thing at all, he just launched it and then hid somewhere. He'll probably stow away on one of the planes going to attack Coulson and the others. Also, man but Fitz is going to be upset when he finds out that Mac betrayed them to.

Not really a fan of how much time they're spending on Ward, I just don't think he's that interesting anymore. Other than that it's a good episode. I especially liked Fitz calling Simmons out on how nuts she's been acting lately. Hopefully that will get her to calm down a bit.