Posts Tagged ‘SHIELD’
With the Avengers: Age of Ultron scenes and trailer attached, I think we all expected something special in this episode to hook new viewers. And it’s a great episode still, I just can’t help but wonder if last week’s might have been better suited for gaining new viewers.
This week’s episode kept the streak going, while addressing some of the lingering mysteries, introducing a highly anticipated new character, and confirming a ton of fan theories. Plus, the reunion we’ve all been waiting for, even if it was a bit short. Read more
This week’s episode is one that’s practically made for the shippers, featuring May and Coulson going undercover and posing as a couple. I can almost hear the fangirl (and boy) squeals now. But there’s seasonal arc relevance, too, so read on for more.
With the threat from the premiere dealt with last week, Agents of SHIELD settles in as both SHIELD and HYDRA compete for the loyalties of returning character Donnie Gill, AKA “Blizzard.” Things are just as dark as the previous 2 episodes, though, and even the appearance (at last) of the real Simmons can’t shake that.
Watching TV can be a very enjoyable experience, but have you ever considered what it would be like to live a life like your favorite character’s? While we tend to look up to our heroes and hope to emulate them, if most people really thought about it very few would want to be them. The kind of world that TV protagonists live in is often an awful one full of crime, corruption, enormous alien threats and facing death on a daily basis. Take Agent Coulson, for example–he got stabbed by a Norse god and forcibly brought back to life, forever changing who he is. The organization he dedicated his life to is in shambles, and now all the responsibility for trying to rebuild it is on him, including the lives of both the people under his command and of the innocents caught up in the crossfire. But it wouldn’t just suck to be Coulson, or part of SHIELD; imagine being an ordinary Joe in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, left powerless while gods and supersoldiers do battle for the fate of the planet. It’s downright horrifying, when you think about it.
And while there are some exceptions (I think we all want to live in the Star Trek Federation. Replicators and holodecks, anyone?) TV is littered with these kinds of unpleasant worlds. So here are 4 of the worst universes to live in that have ever been shot on camera.
Picking up exactly where last week’s episode ended, we get an interesting setup for Lance Hunter’s character, a returning character from last season, and a step forward in the season’s story arc with the (real) first-time appearance of someone that we’ve heard quite a bit about. It also has a really, really appropriate title. Read more
Season 1 of Agents of SHIELD didn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger. There were plenty of plot threads left hanging, but all in all it wrapped up the main plot dealing with the Clairvoyant and gave the show a new direction moving forward–rebuild the agency and strike back against the newly emerged HYDRA. The show picks up with almost all of these, showing us what became of Fitz, Coulson, Ward, and wasting no time introducing a plethora of new characters.
When you have a shared universe, one of the biggest benefits is the crossover–bringing characters from one show within the property over to another show. Agents of SHIELD is starting off its second season tomorrow with a crossover of sorts, featuring flashbacks with Agent Peggy Carter before her own spinoff starts early next year. While this situation is a little different, as both Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter are spinning off from the same parent property, they still have enough in common to enjoy the benefits of a crossover. And with that in mind, I thought it would be a good time to examine the crossover and how it helps with the cohesiveness and plausibility of a shared universe. Read more
With Defiance having finished its second season, it’s time for me to shift gears and get ready for my next series to review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I know, I keep starting out with things that are on their second season, but there’s not a lot of new stuff coming in the near future (Syfy’s Ascension excluded) so I’ll run with what I’ve been into. To the topic at hand, then: SHIELD (as I will refer to it for the sake of my keyboard) was a highly anticipated show last year, and when it premiered it didn’t exactly meet everyone’s expectations. Even the highly anticipated tie-in with Thor 2 was a bit of a disappointment for those who (unrealistically) expected a cameo or something. It was frustrating because, much like season 1 Defiance, there was a lot of potential going unused as the show dealt with small and seemingly irrelevant details. Things changed big time, however, after the winter break.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was heralded upon its arrival as something revolutionary. A television series, set in the same universe as films, affected by the fallout of each one as they were released while allowing viewers to keep an eye on this world in the interim. It’s something not too different from how Defiance‘s MMORPG connection was described. And, much like with Defiance, it’s something that actually has been seen before, although few people tend to think of it in the same way. This time, however, it’s a much better known property: Star Trek. You see, when The Next Generation started in the 1980s, the feature films with the TOS crew were still being produced. Let’s take a look at some of the significant differences between the approaches of these two series and how the concept of a shared universe has evolved.
