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?