Ruminations on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

My friend Jeff is on a podcast called Dinner 4 Geeks.  It's kind of like eavesdropping on any conversation you'd find at a comic book shop, line at the movie theater for [insert geek movie], or other such meeting of the nerds.  They cover everything from Star Wars, comics, music, television, and toys.  Their latest episode "The Love/Hate Episode" got me thinking about Joss Whedon's new show on ABC, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  The idea behind this ep was for listeners to fill in the following statement: Everyone hates _______ but I love it!  Overwhelmingly, several listeners replied with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  The Geeks haven't embraced the show.  They'd only seen a handful of episodes, and the opinions ranged from lukewarm to nope.  And one of the guys can't get behind Whedon shows because in his opinion Whedon takes cliched dialog and then tries too hard to make it clever.  I don't completely agree with this stance, but I can see how that could put a person off.  Especially if you're new to the Whedon world, and you dropped in casually to check out a new spy show.  

I was the right age group to get hooked on Whedon when Buffy the Vampire Slayer was on the air.  I came into at the beginning of season three when Faith was brought in as a bad girl foil to good girl Buffy Summers.  Then I started watching Angel which led to Firefly which led to Serenity, and of course Dollhouse.  The latter is considered Whedon's worst, but I disagree.  Eliza Dushku isn't a great showrunner, but the ensemble cast particularly Amy Acker made that show sing.  It also had this great moment of "Well, we're getting canceled so let's shoot the moon" sentiment that I'd only seen in Kevin Smith's Clerks: The Animated Series.  After Dollhouse stopped being formulaic it got super complicated and raised a ton of questions about privacy issues, corporate greed, and the general Whedon existentialism of who are we really?

Cut to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and I'm not sure what I was expecting.  I enjoyed Avengers despite never being big fans of any of the comics or the superheroes.  Well, I guess I was a Hulk fan as a kid thanks to Bill Bixby.  I grew up on Uncanny X-Men during the very long reign of Chris Claremont.  S.H.I.E.L.D. usually showed up to give the X-Men a hard time, and were generally kinda jerks about stuff since they were working for the government.  The X-Men were usually at odds with the government for being mutants/outlaws.  So I have sort of a bias while watching the show.  

But there's a couple other issues too.  This isn't the Whedon I've grown to love and expect.  It's the Crystal Light of Whedon.  I want the full on Jim Jones Whedon Kool Aid (Oh Yeah!).  Not this Disney watered down for average viewers crud.  In regard to character ensemble, they took the Buffy formula and mashed it up with Firefly.  It isn't working so well.  Here let me show you.

The Older Mentor Who Guides The Team: 

Giles the Watcher

Coulson the Handler

Then There's The Quirky Sidekicks! 

Xander Harris: Scooby Sidekick Extraordinaire

Willow Rosenberg: Scooby Sidekick and a Witch

T

The Fitzsimmons Dynamic Meh Duo

The Hitter Who Suffers No Fools:

Zoe Wash Bad Ass

Melinda May Bad Ass

Up to this point we can make this work right?  The crossovers make sense and are solid characters.  The Fitzsimmons duo is starting to grow on me.  They were a bit milquetoast at first whereas I loved Willow and Xander right from the start.  But with some stories spotlighting these two nerds they're starting to be more than just quipy lab geeks.  There's two characters left and here's where we go wrong.

The Handsome and Very Wooden Leading Man:

Riley Finn: Wooden Toy Soldier

Grant Ward: Wooden Agent Boy Wonder

The Ingenue:

Skye: the Hacker Terrorist Turned Agent

...

C'mon!  Riley Finn is the most unlikeable character in the Whedonverse!  Every other character brought in to replace someone else was reviled at first, but eventually the fan base grew to love them.  This did not happen with Riley.  He just always wasn't Angel.  Or interesting.  Tara replaces Oz, and we all grew to love her.  Spike and Anya replace Cordelia and they steal scenes right and left as BTVS wound down.  I hated Riley so much that I still have a hard time watching Marc Blucas in other tv shows and movies.  He's currently the love interest in Killer Woman, and cringe everytime he's on screen (My deep love of Caprica Six is my reason for watching Killer Woman.  Tricia Helfner is an awesome actress.)  So building an ensemble with one of the most failed and boring characters as a model isn't working for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  Even revealing that Grant Ward almost killed his little brother by not letting him get out of a well is his haunted memory didn't make him a more relatable character.  It just showed that he easily falls in line as a lackey behind a bully.

Then we have the problem of Skye.  Skye is supposed to be the vehicle to bring the viewers into the world of covert operations in S.H.I.E.L.D.  Whedon is known for having a strong leading ladies.  We aren't getting that with Skye.  They just revealed that there's something special about her, but not what that specialness is yet.  I love mutants in the Marvelverse, and I'm already bored by this.  Buffy Summers didn't take shit from anyone.  Her identity was based on balancing slayer and teen life.  It worked.  River from Firefly is just trying to survive and reveal the truth about what happened to her and the reavers.  It worked.  Echo from Dollhouse becomes sentient even though she's supposed to be a clean slate while her real personality Caroline Farley is being stored on a hard drive.  It mostly worked.  Skye's transformation from anonymous terrorist hacker turned good guy Shield agent feels a bit forced.  She still questions Shield motives and missions, but it's just a little off.

That's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in a nutshell: just a little off.  It's a watered down formula for what Whedon fans are used to.  The ensemble characterizations are a bad chemical make up.  The ingenue isn't delivering anything compelling.  The few episodes that Jed Whedon and Maurissa Taucheron have written have the darker Whedoney elements, but they're playing puppet master for the most part.  Also, we're in the Marvel Universe people we need more superheroes.  I know Lady Sif from Thor will make an appearance, but we need more than that.  Is Centipede part of Hydra?  And will J. August Richards as Deathlok be enough to quell the need for more super powered individuals?

About this Duck Dynasty tomfoolery...

I have a facebook account and a twitter account.  I keep them separate because the audiences are different.  Facebook you kind of get stuck with people you can't unfriend for one reason or another.  Before you criticize me on this think about it. We all have family and friends who we don't agree with, but stay connected for civilities sake.  Also, I adore my friends, just not always their opinions.  I expect them to feel the same way about me.  With twitter there's more anonymity, and it's easier to follow people that I may be more politically or thematically aligned.  It's also my number one source of geeky news.

Because I am from and went to college in the Southeast I see a fair amount of conservative stuff come through my fb feed.  It doesn't usually bother me because everyone is entitled to their own opinion.  Every now and then something does strike the proverbial chord.  So here's my opinion on the Duck Dynasty hubbub, and you can be incredibly outraged or not.

It's pretty stupid.  We have the freedom of speech in this country, yes.  That doesn't mean that you are protected from the repercussions of what you say.  You can yell fire in a crowded building all you want, but don't be surprised if you get slapped with citing a riot.  In the Duck Dynasty case, this isn't even just about freedom of speech.  It's about money and public opinion.  A&E looked at the demographics and saw they would lose out in the long run.  Also, from what I've read the show hasn't been canceled just the lead guy "suspended indefinitely."  Which to me translates as A&E is going to let this blow over, and put him back on the air.

As for the public opinion piece of this, I think it's awesome.  I'm part of the LGBTQ community.  Growing up I knew I was gay, but didn't come out until college where it was safe.  Even though I wasn't out other kids in high school would yell derogatory terms at me like "fag" or "dyke."  These were kids who regularly attended church especially during revival season.  Anything that was different or not "Christian" was to be bullied.  Did you know that LGBTQ youth have the highest rate of suicide in this country?  And it's because of behavior like this.  When I was in high school in 1992, the Duck Dynasty stance on gays would have been applauded.  Today it is not.  Public opinion is starting to recognize that I am not any different from the rest of society, and it's not cool to discriminate.  Yes, I know that the patriarch of DD says that he wouldn't treat anyone differently for being gay.  Those of us in the LGBTQ community groan every time we hear this kind of statement b/c it's the same thing as saying "I'm not racist, but..."

So yeah I think it's pretty cool that a cable network felt enough pressure to at least suspend the showrunner based on a homophobic remark.  And as for Christian discrimination, you guys can sit down and shut up for a change.  You've had the upper hand in the U.S. government for what seems like eons.  You've never had to sit in the back of the bus, or be told your partner can't stay in your hospital room.  Because let's face it, the people outraged right now are white, straight, conservative, Christians.  Shouldn't you be watching the "War on Christmas" over at FOX News anyways?

Screw off, Lt. Dan

Let me start this blog off by saying that so far we are doing just fine.

One thing I have learned for certain in my 34 years on this Earth: people freak the fuck out when it comes to in-climate weather.  Growing up in the Southeast, my childhood was warm and humid.  On the rare occasion when snow would fall it felt like winning the lottery...as long as you got to stay at home.  Driving was a nightmare.  One inch of snow, and everyone acts like it’s the first day of Driver’s Ed class.  Milk and bread are non existent on the shelves in the grocery store.  My family was big into camping.  The Big Guy had me sleeping in a tent before I was a year old.  So a massive power outage due to a snow storm meant he got gleefully excited to using the camp stove in the kitchen.  We had a wood burning stove to heat the house so being comfortable was never an issue.  Well, except for my brother who would get dragged out into the cold to chop firewood.  I think that may have been his most hated chore growing up.  

Cut to my current life in New England.  People do snow up here fine because it’s just part of scene. Hurricanes on the other hand they do poorly.  The Southeast has hurricanes down.  It’s just part of the scene.  When a massive storm is forecasted to hit New England it’s akin to Southerner’s snow panic.  Last year’s hurricane was epic for the region.  It decimated parts of Vermont which is crazy since they usually blow out before getting that far inland.  My town has one of the largest populations of old growth trees.  This means that region of the state I live in was without power for over a week due to tree limbs breaking and trees falling.  The city of Hartford is still working to replace trees that were lost from last year’s storm.  

We got through that storm okay.  Our kitchen is equipped with a gas stove so that wasn’t an issue.  Unfortunately, we lost heat despite having gas heat.  The heater relies on electricity to get warmness up into the house.  We trouped along like good little campers until it was warmer outside than in our house.  Our house is old, and it just couldn’t get enough heat from outside to get the inside comfortable.  We were sleeping with hats on until I had a bright idea: set up the 2 man tent in our loft.  I attached the rain fly to keep maximum heat in.  Sure enough we were sleeping in toasty warmth, and set up most activities in there until power was restored.  Our three cats were the happiest with this situation.  My boy, Moe Sonic Smith, was extremily pleased with the tent as it was filled with plenty of cozy places for him to nap.  He was the saddest on the day I dismantled the tent.  

Cut to this year.  Hurricane Sandy or Frankenstorm is supposed to be as big and bad or possibly worse than last year’s storm.  I’m annoyed b/c I need to travel by plane on Thursday, and don’t want to deal with the hassle of delays.  People are already panicking.  The grocery and hardware stores will have tumble weeds drifting through the aisles at this point.  I suspect he local REI is probably out of Coleman fuel by now. It's around five o'clock right now, and the winds outside are kicking. Flooding is happening all over coastal Connecticut.

We are as ready as we can be for this. After the joy that was "C'mon Irene" TheGirl and I created an emergency box. Cell phones are charged to the hilt, and we even have our old dumb phones charging too in case our smart ones lose juice. I went to the comic book store on Saturday so I'm stocked up on mah funny pages. We've eaten a lot of stuff out of the freezer in the past couple of days so we won't lose it. TheGirl has the DS all charged up for maximum portable game playing. Puzzles are in the waiting. Of course there's plenty of booze. I'm Southern we always have backup libations. Ain't no party like a hurricane party. The only down side is that I can't find my favorite headlamp. I have my old one from the YHC days, but it's clunky and not LED. Also, my new one has an emergency flash setting so if we decide to have a midnight rave in the loft I got the strobe light. So maybe no midnight rave if I can't find it. I will probably find it after this storm is over. We fully expect to lose power, and we're prepared for it.

There's some crazy, fundamentalist preacher that's saying Hurricane Sandy is all the LGBT communities' fault. Silly me. I was unaware my awesome was gonna blow everybody away! TheGirl and I will try to keep teh awesome contained, but no promises. Who knows maybe the avatar is trying to bring balance back?

In Which I have Opinions

From time to time I read The A.V. Club. There are articles that I enjoy and agree with their opinions.  More and more, I find myself going "really, guys?"  My ire began when they re-watched Avatar: The Last Airbender.  I disagreed with their assessment of the final episode.  I'm not going to go into details as I know of some friends are still in the process of watching it for the first time.  Largely, I ignore the website as I feel like it's a bunch of hipster writing reviews.  The other day one of their reviews for Girls came across my twitter feed.  It frustrated me.  I've watched Girls, and hated it the whole way through.  At first, I was intrigued because main stream media seems to really hate the show due the main character being homely.  I shrugged at that.  Then the indie media keeps heralding it with great praise for its feminist stances.  So I watched it, didn't enjoy it, and thusly complained to TheGirl about it.  I kept watching the show to see if it would get better, and to figure out exactly what I didn't like about it.  


The reality: it’s a show about average, white, hipsterish girls living in NYC.  It's the hipster version of Sex in the City. The difference being that the first couple of seasons of Sex in the City were actually good. Most of the characters in Girls are horrible people, only it's not funny or intriguing. Shows about horrible people are nothing new, and usually make for great TV.  Often they are funny like Seinfeld, or are in the dramatic vein of Big Love. The main character, Hannah, has a horrible boyfriend that has temperamental artist syndrome i.e. he’s an aspiring playwright.  In one scene, he urinates on her in the shower because he thinks it's funny.  The sad part isn't that she puts up with it.  The sad part is that he loves her, and when he fully commits to her she thinks she isn't good enough to be loved by this chump.  Then I end up rooting for the boyfriend for a second until the riot grrrl in me kicks in saying um no we all deserve better than that.  
That’s the real crux of why I hate this show.  It’s so heavy handed with how it’s hard to be a woman in the city.  So let’s everyone be victims, and not stand up for ourselves b/c you know that’s hard and stuff.   I find myself rooting for the average girl who isn't all that inspirational, but has the only story line that is trying to discover something about herself.  If the characters don’t evolve in the slightest then what’s the point?  I’m sure some feminist studies major will write a paper about how Girls is changing media with its vulnerability.  Girls isn't changing anything. Every time I'm almost on board with the show, the plot device shifts so hard I'm crushed under the weight of what the show is pushing me to believe. Good art is subtle. This is not subtle.
TheGirl and I finally watched the last season of Big Love.  That’s a show that can be hard to love as the subject of polygamy is hard to take.  The writers did an amazing job at portraying all the characters.  It’s insane that a television show centered around a polygamist family actually ends up being a feminist show while a show centered around white girls in Brooklyn is far from that idea. Through five seasons we watched Nicollette Henrickson struggle from being a victim to a survivor of a history of abuse at the hands of fundamentalist chauvinists.  I realize Girls is still in its first season, but I'm doubtful that Hannah has that much growth in her. And how had is it to survive being white and privileged? If nothing has ever really happened to the characters then where is the plot line supposed to go?
The girls in Girls went to college, that's how most of them met. Hannah was an English Literature major. She's a writer. Maybe it's naive of me, but how can you go through a program in which the feminist movement is featured so prominently only to be such a weak, shallow character. We are twenty years past the Riot Grrrl movement. You can't tell me that Hannah wouldn't have had a Bikini Kill poster in her dorm room, or didn't at least listen to Sleater Kinney. Why can't I have empowered women in my media? I want Girls to be more than it is because it has the potential to be great if the writers could just know when to stop. You can be vulnerable and strong at the same time.

Closets and Corners

I’ve always been different.  Most of it stems from being a geek.  In grade school, I was picked on a lot by other kids for liking Star Wars, Star Trek, and Spider-man.  As I got older I was still bullied for being a geek, but then I ofter heard slurs like “dyke” or “fag” in the high school halls.  I wasn’t out, and I was struggling.  I knew my parents wouldn’t understand, but I doubted in the long run that they’d judge me too harshly.  High school on the other hand...  I attended a public school in rural Appalachia.  My “kin” were from a different part of The South, and my parents had master’s degrees.  There was a target on my back from the minute I stepped on the school yard just for being not “from ‘round here” and coming from an educated background.  So to add being an out lesbian into that mix meant I’d get bullied even more by those backwater Southern Baptists.  I still got bullied for being an assumed gay, but I figured it’d be worse if I were an out gay.  This was all happening in the early 90's before Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet.  Pre-Ellen's outing, you kept your mouth shut until you got to college in a more liberal area.  Also, I wasn’t even sure IF I was gay.  High school is a weird time, full of change and angst galore so I had enough to deal with.

Flash forward a few years.  I’m in college, I come out, no one has a problem with it because I have surrounded myself with awesome friends and family.  My mother is supportive in her own quiet way.  My brother and his family would lead the PFLAG parade.  (Robby,my brother, and Jude, my nephew, really do love a parade.)  I become comfortable with who I am. Then I meet my future fiance on the 7th floor of my college library in the art section. We talk about amazing music, and I develop a serious crush. It takes awhile, but eventually we start dating, we move in together, and one day this lovely girl asks me to marry her. I say yes. We live in a state where we can legally marry each other. We tell our friends and family, and everyone close to us is ecstatic for us. To quote Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys, "she's the cheese and I'm the macaroni."

Everyone is happy for us except TheGirl's older sister and brother. The latter isn't much a problem because we don't live close. The former presents a problem as she lives in the next zip code. Recently, the sister asked TheGirl not to show any type of affection toward me when we are in public with them for fear that her kids would get bullied because of our gayness. TheGirl stood her ground, and said no. She patiently explained that would mean putting us in the closet. We've both been out for quite some time, and there's no way we're going back in.

Overall, this didn't bother TheGirl too much as this is what she's come to expect from her older sibling. I, on the other hand, was very upset by this. It triggered something deep down inside of me. I've never understood why the sister has such an ax to grind with our being gay. Anytime we hold hands the sister has a look like she's eating lemons. I find this whole situation ridiculous. I love TheGirl, and TheGirl loves me. What's the harm? How are we threatening marriage and society? We give to charity, and are just generally good people. We both embrace the Ghandi quote, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

After much consternation, I figured it out. I was upset for two reasons. 1)Using "the children" as an excuse for homophobia is just wrong. If anything we should be teaching the kids that everyone is different, and it's okay to be different. It's okay for boys to like girls or boys or both, and vice versa. It's okay be exactly who you, and for me to be who I am. For someone to use their children to express hate is cowardly. I have more respect for someone who tell me to my face how they feel as opposed to worming around the issue.  

2) I come from a family that loves me for exactly who I am. Love is not about putting limits and conditions upon your family and friends. Love is total acceptance of that person. So I'm confused as to why the sister enforces a relationship with TheGirl that would mean only accepting a less than version of her little sister. You can't cut the gay out of someone. It just doesn't work. You can't pray the gay away either. And you can't put the gay in a corner, and expect them to happily truck along with your version of normal. We all deserve the ending to Dirty Dancing.

The Song that Saved the World

The other day, TheGirl and I were at dinner with some people.  During the meal, the discussion turned to one member of the group's fascination with some video footage of a recent U2 concert.  Astronaut, Mark Kelly pre-recorded footage that was then played when U2 revved up "Beautiful Day."  Then we talked about how mission control played that song as a wake up call for the astronauts on the International Space Station.  My supper compatriot asked if that wasn't the most amazing thing ever?  TheGirl promptly kicked me under the table knowing I was going to respond with a flat no.

Here's why I was going to respond no.  Imagine you're on the International Space Station, and you wake up to the infinite vastness of space.  Yes,  you have a bird's eye view of the Earth, but you also can see the Universe in all its glory.  And then to add insult to all of this awesome, U2's average, generic "Beautiful Day" is piped through tinny speakers.  It just doesn't do the situation justice.  It's so bland.  So vanilla.  Out of all the amazing songs to choose from, NASA picked this one.  Seriously?

On the car ride home, TheGirl asked, "So what song would you have picked?"  I was silent for a bit while I pondered.  This is a big question for me.  My brother told me once that I don't see music like everyone else.  Most people just like or dislike a song.  According to him, I see music like a color scale.  There are variations, linkages, and nuances to it.  I can also tell you exactly why I don't like something and vice versa.  I've been referred to as a music snob, but what do you expect from a girl who lived in Athens, Georgia for over five years?  It's one of the best college towns for music.  I digress.

On the fly, I replied, "David Bowie's "Life on Mars."

 It always makes me think, and if I were standing at a window looking out at the infinite that's what I'd want to hear.  Between the lyrics and the sweeping orchestration of the piano I feel so isolated like I'm on the edge of space.  Perfect song for waking up to the infinite.

So here's my question to you, gentle reader: what song would you like to wake up to if you were on the International Space Station, and why?  There are no right or wrong answers here (unless the answer is U2).