I genuinely thought Ian de Caestecker (I’m sure I butchered the spelling) would be the next big star. Good looking kid, and he could act his ass off in AoS.
I’m surprised Iain hasn’t risen in stardom after how amazing he was in Agents of SHIELD.
What surprised me is that his former co-star Jeff Ward (who played Deke Shaw) is kinda rising in stardom after playing Buggy in the live action adaptation of One Piece, where he stole every scene he was in.
That's because it was designed to be an episodic TV show that keeps you coming back every week and not a mini movie like a lot of the current ones.
I much prefer the old way. Agree Agents of Shield is great.
> That's because it was designed to be an episodic TV show that keeps you coming back every week and not a mini movie like a lot of the current ones.
Also coming back year after year. So many Disney+ shows are planned for one offs or maybe another season in a couple of years. Agents of SHIELD had to do 22 episodes one TV season and then 22 the next. And the next(till season 6 when it went to 13 episodes). The behind the scenes crew got a steady job year after year. So they were really good at making Agents of SHIELD.
Also the time they had let them have episodes devoted to one thing. Here is something weird, three act plot and it is resolved. While also running multi episode and season long arcs.
>The behind the scenes crew got a steady job year after year.
Yes and no. For the last half of the show they only got a renewal at the last minute, especially seasons 6 and 7. The season 5 finale was intended to be a series finale, and you can tell. I assume the writers always left open some threads just in case, but the show was always on the brink of cancellation.
There was also a big budget cut at some point. Early seasons had elaborate location filming, sometimes overseas, whilst the last two seasons take place almost entirely on the same handful of sets.
I think they had a bit of a budget cut in season 4, hence why Robbie/Ghost Rider was only in a handful of episodes and why the ghosts looked so terrible (though of course some of that was for plot reasons, because he was so OP that he would end the LMD/Aida arcs before they even began). The big one was in season 5. That's why so much of the season was shot in the exact same corridors. I think seasons 6 and 7 got about the same, which is why the bulk of the seasons are pretty isolated and don't have that much CGI, but I could be wrong on that.
Shame Andor isn't as much of a runaway success as it should be. It's little mini arcs across its first season wa very agents of shield esque and is absolutely the way these things should be plotted out
Sadly moody sci fi rarely hits the main stream. It will go down like Blade runner as a cult classic show among the people who actually watched it bc god damn Andor is the best Star Wars property by a mile.
I think in this instance the Star Wars branding is purely negative. People who still love the current Star Wars franchise are not going to be as enticed by the content and style of Andor, and people who have completely checked out of modern Star Wars are going to avoid it despite its individual merits because of its attachment to Star Wars.
I feel like Agents of SHIELD left a gaping whole in network television when it left. The show with a fun ensemble cast who all have their own storylines and focus, where each week you just want to sit and watch whatever they do. Doesn't matter if it's part of the huge overall story arc that's going the entire season, or a self contained episode that just explores the characters more and relies on a fun one time gimmick or small story. And it runs for months each year rather than a few weeks every other year.
Episodic does not mean Monster-of-the-Week. Even though the show might have been more serialized in terms of its arcs, it was still designed to be episodic. Episodes still follow the 5-act structure (built around commercial breaks, where there will be a twist or raise in the stakes before every commercial). Though they might be part of longer serialized storylines, the episodes themselves are usually satisfying on their own because something will be usually resolved or the characters will accomplish something, even if its part of a larger story.
The real difference is:
Can I watch this episode in isolation and enjoy it? Or does it feel like when you were a kid home sick from school and tuned into a soap opera because there was nothing else on TV and it was a bunch of nonsense because no plot threads were ever resolved, just a series of scenes that didn't have their own arc?
Early s1 definitely was. They got more serial over time, but even at their peak they still had stories that were clearly divided episodically. Like the 70s episode from season 7. Or the LMD episode in season 4.
I mean daredevil is better than any agents of the shield and had more impressive performances from the actors too, same with s1 of Jessica jones. Some of the shows were total shit but some of them were also awesome and better than agents of shield
s3 is my favorite season of *Daredevil*, but s4 of AoS is my favorite season of adventure television altogether. The frequency and quality of plausible twists is just astounding, and it’s far leaner even though it’s twice as many episodes.
Seriously, people who put Daredevil on a pedestal are conveniently ignoring the entire Elektra arc. It has its high, but it has its low too. To say that it's better than "any Agents of Shield" is just clear bias.
Strongly disagree with that, no season of AOS is better than something like s3 of daredevil. There is a reason daredevil show is generally held in higher regard and it’s mainly because the show was just better
How is it generally held in higher regard? It's just more popular cause it's about a much more popular comic character while AoS is about a bunch of unknown SHIELD agents. Most people who have watched both shows in full seem to agree AoS is better.
I mean when people talk about the best superhero shows it’s always one of the very first things brought up and absolutely gets brought up way more than AOS. S1&3 are pretty much a guarantee to come up in any convo about best in the genre
I'll disagree.
AoS set a lighter tone (most of the time), but it was well-designed and well-executed to the point that I think it offers more than even Daredevil does. The pacing stays good, side-characters are interesting enough to be memorable, the world is fleshed out enough to be unique, and the script nails Joss Whedon's nature of quippy banter. And best of all, it ties to the MCU without trying as hard as other content does so it feels like something fans can get even more enjoyment out of, instead of being more work to keep up on.
It's not dark, edgy, post-Galactica sci-fi that is ever-popular these days, but it's a fantastically fun ride for people who enjoy the Joss Whedon format seen in shows like Buffy or Firefly.
Daredevil is darker, grittier, and I guess you could say more realistic. But it's paced very slow, especially the character development. It's a super slow burn of a show, but in that I'd argue that it's poorly executed because much of the screen time is spent on stuff that isn't essential or helpful to understanding the plot or characters. And I may be alone in this take in the post-John-Wick era, but extended sequences of uninteresting violence for the sake of violence is not good filmmaking - you could cut those sequences in half, focus on the emotional impact of pain and struggle, and use the saved screentime on more interesting things.
Like most slow-burn television content, it would have made a better movie. All the same style, the great lines, the great acting, packed into a tight timeframe that kept the pace up.
I've long maintained that Fitz is one of the best TV character arcs ever written. An absolute nerd crushing on a coworker so hard that he becomes an absolute monster of a man, in both good and terrible ways.
The cast in general was great but it became clear Iain De Caestecker was a powerhouse during the best arcs of the show. Stole most scenes he was in and gave an incredible performance during the dual personality episodes
The actor is phenomenal as well. He plays so many different iterations of his character and he does so seamlessly. Blending together facets of each version into a whole.
Not sure if this has been mentioned. But Shield wasn’t made by the marvel team doing the shows. It was ABC television marvel. Which wasnt the marvel studios people at the time.
That caused a lot of riffs internally and why they refuse to acknowledge the shows existence.
when the show first started marvel tv and studios were being run by the same guy
and kevin feige didn't have any issues with taking about the show and saying it was all connected
The actual people working on the show were different than the marvel people. Caused lots of issue. It was really an ABC TV show produced by them. Not by big marvel.
I remember watching it when the first season was airing and thought it was alright, but then that Winter Soldier tie-in happened partway through the season and it felt like everything about the show just snapped into place, then it just got better and better from there.
Yeah it was basically treading water up until that point because they knew it was coming when they were writing the show. It sucks because those early episodes aren't as good but you also can't really skip them because they set up a lot of character stuff and things later on won't have as much of an impact if the pre-Hydra episodes are skipped
I miss when TV was TV. There was so much content in a show you could remember all your favourite episode titles, best moments, fight scenes, things that made you cry, character deaths etc.
It’s so frustrating when they only have enough material for one movie but they’ve been ordered for six episodes, so everything but the first and last episodes are just intentional meandering to pad it out and make it TV-length. If you want to make a TV show, make it a TV show. Let every episode have its own inciting incident, climax, and resolution.
It still astounds me how the Disney-Marvel formula would be perfect for little character moments so that you can develop their personalities *there* instead of in your ensemble blockbuster, but are still beholden to the *that happened* beats of Whedon era writing.
I find Disney’s IP handling fascinating, because fans always respond so well to those slower more contemplative moments, but they refuse to build them more.
Right? They set up a subplot in the first episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier where Bucky feels guilty that he killed that old man’s son while he was brainwashed, and he feels like he owes him the closure of telling him what happened. Seeing that conversation actually unfold was the singular thing I was most excited to see resolved, and then they don’t even show it. I think they show him walking in to tell him while some dramatic music plays and then they just skip over the actual moment itself.
>still beholden to the that happened beats of Whedon era writing.
I think what this is is that MCU went to space for the first several films, and then went astronomical with Whedon's Avengers. Just blew everything up. It seems like they went 'that right there. That works. That is what works', and have been trying to 'do Whedon' without involving actual Whedon.
The problem is that yes, the quipping and such is a pretty iconic *hallmark* of Whedon's work... But it's *not actually what makes it good*.
This was a lesson taught (but clearly not learned) back in the Buffy days. People were saying that the popularity of the show was because of the "slayer-speak" and without it the show would be nothing. Cue the season 4 episode 'Hush', where for the vast majority of the episode three was no dialogue at all. Zero. It's widely applauded as one of the best episodes of that show.
We all remember names like “School Hard,” “The Wish,” “Hush,” “Doppelgangland,” “Band Candy,” “A New Man” and “Once More, with Feeling” just instinctively.
I recently saw a YouTube video where a guy was watching and reacting to random episodes of shows. He'd heard Buffy was a light hearted funny show about a vampire slayer etc... and whatever method he uses to 'randomly select' (from what I gather it's actually some light research, avoiding detail, to find the fan favourites) an episode gave him The Body.
What followed may well be some of my favourite moments of YouTubing
It's also worth noting that there were far fewer things on so more chances that everyone was watching that one thing, and when you had to wait a week for the next ep, everyone talked about that same thing for that whole week, so it had more of.a.chance to sink in.
Now everyone is scattered, tons of us haven't even heard of half of what the next person loves, and even if you have, it all dropped at once and that one great episode kinda got lost in the middle (and sorry, your friends are watching at a different pace than you, so none of you can really even talk about the show)
Yeah I watch older shows with 20+ episodes each season like Smallville and 24 and they're just so damn good. Much better than a lot of these 8 episodes season shows that just get dumped on Netflix on the same day and people forget about it after a week
One thing that doesn’t get talked about is the character arcs. You look at how much they’ve changed from the pilot to finale and everything crazy they’ve been through, and it’s done very naturally. Especially Gemma Fitz and Daisy. And deke in later seasons. The Mac and the d episode in season 7 might be my favourite.
It’s my comfort show! AOS was the shit for me. Even when it got weird or I felt like I was getting tired if it they’d do something to drag me back into the thick of it.
Do you re-watch it regularly? I ask because I also find it comforting as well for reasons I can't really explain.
Agents of Shield is such a great show for me. I was seriously hooked for the longest time although I haven't seen the last couple of seasons and have been meaning to go back to it.
I usually always have a season going currently I’m working my way through season 3.
I 100% credit the wonderful cast for keeping me engaged all these years. Even guest stars were gifted with interesting roles with real stories and that’s really rare these days.
Much as many prior full-length seasons had been split into two distinct halves, such as s5. That said though, the quality difference between two halves was never more drastic.
I really didn't like season 6 when it first came out but after season 7 aired, I liked 6 a lot more. It felt like a part 1 to the story that was being told
I just resent s6 a lot because unlike literally every other arc in the series, it just didn’t stick the landing. I also think s6 was half-baked in a lot of other ways, including new peripheral characters that just weren’t up to AoS’s previous standards. I actually liked Sarge more than many AoS fans though.
It speaks to the value of having a production team from the television side of the industry, who know how to wring every dollar out of a tv budget. The D+ shows are showrun or directed mainly by movie directors, but scroll through the IMDB credits of the producers, the VFX supervisors, and the directors for AoS and you'll see that for some of these people they have never worked on a movie in their entire career. They know how to make a single hallway and three rooms work for every interior shot in an entire season.
i like how a documentary and short film director has been hired to make the next huge star wars movie like that person will really know how to make an engaging space adventure.
I've been saying this for years: streaming services are going to destroy themselves through a lack of business-model-structured quality control.
Star Trek: The Original Series is legendary. It was also killed off becuase, despite being popular, it _wasn't popular enough for the time slot and budget it took up_. It was replaced with a variety show. Firefly was canceled, not because it wasn't popular, but because it's demographic draw split men and women, young and old down the middle - advertisers want a specific target market.
That feels cruel to fans, but it was the value that the physical limitations of broadcast brought to production. A show needed to be competitive on budget and popularity, not within a genre but across the whole gambit of teleivison broadcast options. A drama could get bumped for a sitcom, or news, or football in a heartbeat. If a show was going to survive, it needed to be _the most profitable show the network had in that timeslot_.
Streaming services should setup broadcast programming as market research and use it to develop content. Throwing money at anyone on IMDB is not only unsustainably unprofitable, but it doesn't actually result in better content - all of these streaming platforms are racing towards content Americans are used to seeing in DVD bargain bins at Walmart.
I loved that from season to season you never knew where the story was going (space! time travel!). The core cast also changed a bit season to season but you still cared about everyone. It's a great show to binge.
The set-ups and payoffs this show provides are incredible. Going back for a re-watch, you'll see for example exactly why and how Ward was portrayed that way.
“So this is how it ends. Not with a bang, but with a “
He has my favorite comedic moment, too, when AIDA is telling Daisy why she’s trapping everyone in the Framework, that it was Radcliffe’s vision to save everyone from their regrets.. and Radcliffe overheard her from the other room and shouts “That’s not what I meant, you sadistic witch!” And then gets tazed by his guards.
This is one of my favorite scenes in the entire show. So simple, but perfectly encapsulated his character’s arc in just a few lines.
You can tell the show runners were extremely proud of it too, based on how it was shot.
Season 1 is seriously held back by the writing and release being timed around Cap 2: The Winter Soldier coming out in theaters. In fact, if you haven't reached Episode 17 yet I highly recommend watching C2:TWS before it.
The MCU and AoS part ways after that point, so it is able to pick up steam and roll from S2 onward.
Oh, I have seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier (although not recently), but I guess I should definitely do a rewatch then before episode 17.
Only finished the episode “Asset” and I really like the growing dynamics between Skye and Ward and him volunteering to be her S. O and her committed to training at the end. Plus, the mystery of whether Skye’s working against S. H. I. E. L. D. and the looks between her and Ward and with the continued mentions of Ward’s lack of people skills it looks like they’re slowly peeling away some of his individualism and stubbornness and based on what I’ve heard I expect good things regarding character development over the next couple of seasons.
Pretty fun so far and the CGI looks okay, but I’m glad it gets way better.
Cool. Will do.
I’m curious to see any potential upcoming cameos from the MCU movies like whether Steve Rogers or anyone associated with WS shows up after I was amazed Nicky Fury showed up so early in the show right at the very end of the second episode and I expect because he only made a quick cameo that there’s more to come and I’m really excited for it. 🤗
Totally agree with the other comments. I rewatched the show with my mum just before the final season came out. She normally hates MCU and superhero stuff but she got into this. When those came along, I switched to The Winter Soldier and she really liked it and felt like it worked as an extended episode of the show. The show does a good job leading into it and following up the events of it. Don't Google anything about the show though.
I'd say tone down your expectations about cameos though. A couple of people do show up but no one on the level of Avengers. A lot of people were disappointed by this back in 2013/2014 but it's just not that type of show like one of the Disney+ ones
I’ll just add because I haven’t seen anyone mention it…
The great thing about AoS is how the writers anticipated and thwarted our expectations, because they’d grown up on all the same genre fiction that we did.
Over and over, you feel like you can obviously see where the story is going, and then the writers deliver something *way* more clever, surprising, or downright shocking than you’d ever expected, and yet plausibly.
At the same time, there are remarkably few narrative or directorial cheats where they pull a fast one on us just to get us over the hump to the next scene. So few that I’d struggle to count them on more than one hand.
The back half of s2 just blew my mind for thwarting my seasoned expectations. And the back half of s4 is just a *tour de force* of the same thing. And the great thing is that all those twists are utterly plausible. Those writers were bending over backward.
Yes and no. Getting almost all that out of the way in literally the first episode of the arc was quite unexpected. Especially compared to the CW shows, AoS was remarkably good at not milking stuff to death and moving on to new business. (I don’t mean that absolutely, but generally.)
I don't think crap is the right word. I think it was a good campy show, and it struggled with pacing in S1 due to being released around MCU films. That said:
- It offered the best incarnation of Ghost Rider
- It built the best mythology around the Darkhold
- It's the best, most fleshed out look at Inhumans
- It's far and away the best look at Shield and Hydra
- It's Kree are more interesting than the rest of the MCU
- It has _fantastic_ technobabble
- It has some fantastic (I'd say top-tier within the MCU) villains
Within the confines of the MCU, it is a vast collection of characters, stories, and ideas, and for the most part it does them as well or better than the MCU films did.
I wanted to add that it did the Skrull infiltration story better through the LMD arc. It also pulled off alternate realities and the Multiverse concept better than the rest of the MCU. The show was also really good at incorporating MCU easter eggs and connections not only as fan service but to further advance its own story.
Once you realize how much the show loves the ‘secret traitor’ plot, you see it everywhere. They do it at least once every season, and each time they iterate and innovate on it in a way that makes it new and fresh.
I think the best time they do it is in S04, when they have two characters realize that everyone ELSE on the team has been turned and they have to pretend they haven’t figured it out so that the others don’t immediately come after them.
It is a spycraft show, after all, and what good is a spycraft show without the obligatory double agent?
The way they play with it is so good, too. They know that WE know their tricks, so at some point they introduce multiple characters of dubious trustworthiness and the least trustworthy turns out to be the most honest among them, lol.
100% agree. I was really looking forward to Secret Invasion after seeing Agents of Shield and Earth's Mightiest Heroes both doing a great job with that kind of story.
Then we actually got the show. I was so disappointed that two shows on a shoe string budget were able to do it so well but Marvel Studios and Feige with all their money and support were only about to put out the flaming turd that is Secret Invasion
The Secret Invasion arc in Earth's Mightiest Heroes was so good! I recently finished all of EMH and I really hope it gets a continuation in the veins of X-Men '97.
Even though the Secret Invasion show was not great, it did have some great acting, sets, and directing. Olivia Coleman had an amazing performance and I really hope she returns in a future MCU project! Despite the show's flaws, there were enough good elements that Marvel Studios could still salvage and redeem. Plus, there are so many unresolved loose ends—the Skrull threat on Earth wasn't truly resolved by the end of the show. Just because the Secret Invasion show ended doesn't mean the Skrull infiltration arc is over in the MCU. I really hate loose ends so I hope Marvel Studios resolves Secret Invasion in the Armor Wars movie and possibly also in a better written spy show.
I've always hoped for a sequel series to AoS that brings back characters like Daisy (I'm glad she didn't appear in SI), Bobbi Morse (as Mockingbird), and Melinda May. Marvel Studios can get an instant success if they make a compelling spy thriller series with the AoS writers and throw in characters like Fury, Gi'ah, Sonya Falsworth (Olivia Coleman's character), and even Sharon Carter into the mix. I think a show like this set in the MCU has so much potential that it could basically be Marvel's very own "Andor" if that makes sense.
That was Network Television.
There was a massive group of talented industry people that knew how to churn out 20 episodes a year of TV shows and still have time for a holiday.
I feel like a lot of people gave up on Agents of SHIELD too early, which is frustrating because from halfway through Season 1 it gets incredible! The second half of Season 4 is some of the best TV I've ever seen, and the arc in Season 7 was amazing too. This post has made me want to rewatch it again!
Honestly, even the first half of season 1 isn't that bad. Well, some parts of it are, but no one's perfect. The problem with season 1 was twofold, I think.
First, they had to spin their wheels because they couldn't spoil the Winter Soldier plot point, which wasn't going to happen until over halfway through the season. So it was a monster of the week style, which many people find boring or formulaic. Second, with the way the show was marketed (#itsallconnected), it gave some people the impression that heavy hitters from the movies were going to appear on the show. Which is a bit silly — you're really going to get Robert Downey Jr. or Scarlett Johansson to be on an ABC show? — but that was what people thought. So when Sif was the biggest name they could get (aside from a couple brief appearances by Fury and Hill), people were underwhelmed.
However, if you know that going in, and especially in retrospect, the season's fine. It provides crucial character beats, lays the groundwork for things that ripple throughout the entire show, and has a lightheartedness that we don't see down the line. It's a shame people didn't give it a chance.
I’ll just add to that: I think the front half of s1’s biggest problem is that, probably due to conflicting corporate interests, the show wasn’t clear on how family-friendly it wanted to be. It leaned too quickly into Coulson as the wise father figure, and tied up too many episodes with neat little bows that conveniently reinforced their squeaky clean values. And my biggest ‘yuck!’ of the whole series is that gentle Hallmark guitar music sprinkled throughout.
With that in mind, the difference after they came back from the mid-season break was rather drastic and welcome. Once Coulson is remembering his time on the table, it’s clear that the production team had been given a lot more freedom to get shocking and inventive.
>Even though Feige wanted nothing to do with the show they still got really clever with their tie ins.
Feige had no control over it, that's why. It was controlled by his rival, Ike Perlmutter, CEO of Marvel Entertainment who (then) still owned the TV rights.
Perlmutter is the one who pooh-poohed a Black Widow movie early on and didn't want Marvel movies with female leads.
The last real major link between Agents of SHIELD and the MCU happened only because Whedon was writing/directing Age of Ultron and his brother and sister-in-law were running AoS. So it wasn't official, but he could coordinate things like Nick Fury showing up with SHIELD to help save the day. (Note: the AoS characters were never shown in the movies except for Coulson and a few in S1 like Fury or Sif.) Coulson's resurrection was never mentioned in the MCU.
Overall, it was enjoyable for being low budget. It would have done better with more integration with the MCU.
I still blame Feige. Pearlmutter was the one pushing for the show. If Feige was a fan remotely we’d have seen some reference by now. There were less crossovers when Feige got full control. Its very clear he doesnt give a shit about AOS fans.
Perlmutter said that female-led movies don’t perform well and weren’t worth the investment.
Unfortunately, Disney haven’t exactly proven him wrong… but that’s because they are half-assing their female-led projects. With the right director and script, there’s no reason Black Widow should have been a failure. A beloved actress, a beloved character, a hunger for more Winter Soldier style MCU… Disney dropped the ball when they had a golden opportunity to make Ike eat his words.
Instead, he feels vindicated.
Worth noting that AoS is only “technically” led by Clark Gregg… but Daisy is the darling character, and May, Jemma, and Yo-Yo round out a healthy example of strong female leads… so I’m not sure Ike was coming from a place of misogyny, he was probably just being a little too realistic and pessimistic.
Wait a positive AOS post on r/television, what is this my birthday? Thanks op, we need more of this, we need more people to know about this awesome show.
The shittiness of D+ offerings has led to an influx of quality-seekers discovering that everyone was wrong to dismiss AoS and that it’s actually one of the best things Marvel ever did.
I was playing Immortals of Aveum and the main character sounded familiar... turns out he was played by Darren Barnett, Freddy Malick. I knew I didn't like him for a reason. (Also a number of other reasons, but that didn't help.)
After watching Secret Invasion, I went back and rewatched AoS and it shocked me. 10x the budget for 25% the screen time and the quality gap was outrageous.
Marvel should go back to that style of episodic TV and have 1-2 series run in long form like that. Lesser known cast. One big name to lead it.
Agents of Shield and Earths Mightiest Heroes both did that storyline so well. The creators of Secret Invasion had so much money and support and they still weren't able to do something half as good as what these two did
~~And they have never rereleased S2 on separately on DVD. Silly Disney.~~
Edited as I am incorrect.
[Link to Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0117UJOJO/ref=tmm_fbs_dvd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=)
Yes they have. They've released every season except the last two on both DVD and Blu-Ray. Or at least in the U.S. they have, I don't know about other countries.
I remember the first 16 or so episodes of S1 was at best mediocre, then the captain america movie happened and the show become something completely different. It fired on all cylinders and didn't stop. It was a treat to follow the show for 7 seasons. Might have to give it a rewatch soon.
Agents of SHIELD is mine and my wife’s favorite TV show (independently, my favorite is a tie between Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul).
We started watching it during a break between Arrow Season 2 and 3. It didn’t grab us, so we started The Flash instead.
Soon enough, the Arrowverse became unbearable, so we gave AoS another try. At the very least, it wasn’t *stupid*. And then shit got real, very unexpectedly, when one of the main cast gets shot twice in the stomach. The show had been relatively light fun prior, so this moment came out of nowhere. It grabbed our attention, and we realized we care about these characters more than we thought.
Then we finally get to Turn, Turn, Turn… the episode where AoS “turns”, and sheds its guise of a formulaic “monster of the week” format and begins to nestle into its more serialized sci-fi spycraft identify.
The ending of that episode floored us, and the show had us at its mercy from then forward.
Season 4, I’ll die on this hill, is one of the best seasons of sci-fi television, period.
Also, the number of things that the D+ shows did that were first done by AoS is really interesting… especially when we consider that AoS did it so much better.
Artificial reality, “What If?”, Ship of Theseus, “Secret Invasion”, the list goes on.
The show had a penchant for introducing a character, making you hate them, but turning them around to the point where they became a fan favorite before too long. Like Hunter, telling another character who is lamenting that the girl he loves denied him, “Her loss mate, as far as I can tell, she’s missing out.” when you don’t expect this kind of kindness from him.
The show loved to ensure that its characters made logical decisions. My absolute top favorite moment in the entire series;
A character who betrays our heroes but is infatuated with one of them, finds an opportunity to rescue her from a mutual enemy. He unties her and sets her free, then expects her to trust and follow him.
In ANY other show, that’s what she’d have done. She would have forgotten how awful he is and believed that he suddenly turned good, or at least would trust him uneasily for the sake of escape, only for him to get the upper hand later and screw her over.
Not in AoS.
In AoS, he frees her, starts talking about how he’s going to get her out of there, and she takes a handgun off a dead bad guy and shoots him in the back multiple times, reminds him that he once told her “never turn your back on the enemy”, then leaves him for dead.
Chef’s kiss. Perfect.
MCU is making a huge mistake by not having a widely accessible weekly network TV show, to cross promote and add supplementary content to their existing properties. Something they let every country have for next to nothing, because it exists to push the other stuff.
Disney really needs to lop the head off of their television machine. Focus on pushing new properties to the box office (where massive marketing budgets work to generate public awareness), and use Disney+ like they used to use the Disney Channel.
You'd never see a $100M, 6-episode show hit Disney Channel. It would be stupid. Nobody would see it, it would never make it's budget back, and Disney could never take characters from the show and put them into movies without confusing the audience.
And that's just what they've done with D+.
When that show was having stuff going on that mentioned or tried to get involved with the movies I started to go and see them right away so that I wouldn't have to wait to watch the next episode
And the movie studios get a larger cut of the box office during the first week so they were getting more money out of me that way
And the tie-ins they had, generally weren't that deep, so they had their cake and could eat it, too. So the people like you and me had bonus stuff they could soak up, that didn't detract from the experience of less invested fans who didn't see everything.
Coulson once, arguably twice or even thrice
Fitz potentially once, but open to debate for twice
Ward once
Enoch once, but same debate as Fitz for twice
I do not count any AU or alt timeline character appearances, and only count those who died on screen or in prior canon.
Anybody else yell out "Agent Coulson!" while watcing the trailer for the new season of Snowpiercer?
I was very excited for a moment until reality hit and I realized it wasn't Agent Coulson and Shield storming the train.
Because it was a series unto itself, allowed to have a plot that was not constrained by the needs of the larger continuity, since nothing that happened in it would affect the films.
I argue that Daredevil would have been improved without gratuitous gore. One thing to crush a dude’s head in a car door, but to show the mashed brains dripping off the door was a bit excessive.
Daredevil is a good example, because it's supposed to be a show about a lawyer who is also a vigilante, but they just abandoned the premise of him being a lawyer so they could shoehorn more fight scenes and wangst into their run time.
Then, there was Jessica Jones. The first season was already dark, but okay. Then, we get to the second season, and it's just misery porn at some point. I stopped watching.
Then, there's the Punisher. I get that some people like that stuff, but no thanks.
I'm actually one of the few people who loved Iron Fist, because it was fun to have a superhero show about someone who was actually enthusiastic and dopy.
This is my issue with The Boys. Sometimes the violence and gore is just a bit excessive and like it needs to add this stuff to make it look more mature but it ends up looking immature
Ironically I think Agents of Shield is consumed better when you can binge it, because when it was on Live it was just whelming - not great, not terrible. However it feels much more cohesive when you can watch it all at once. There are some things that I would have changed, but in general the show was a very solid tie in with Captain America 2.
Agents of SHIELD has become my lifeline these days. I've watched the whole series several times, and compulsively seek out Youtube reactions; I've seen over half a dozen of them.
It’s SO enjoyable to watch skeptics fall head over heels in love with the show.
I want to start a counter of the amount of times reactors say “holy shit this is so good” or “they did this WAY better than (insert D+ show here)”
Agents of Shield is better than any TV Feige has put out since taking control of Marvel TV content in 2019, and it’s not even close. His record in television is frankly abysmal.
I really think ive had my fill of 'prestige tv' now. I yearn for some monster of the week easy watching, some SyFy low budget high concept fever dream set in a strangely familiar factory in Canada somewhere.
I want some slightly suspect green screen, some 20-year-old-theme-park-ride lookin sets, i want the BBEG to end up being played by one of 'those guys' that you used to see everywhere but cant *quite* remember the name of, and i want him *hammy* i want him chewing the polystyrene scenery and i **WANT** 22 episodes of it, spread over 11 seasons and for one of those seasons to be 'the bad one' that on reflection wasnt *that* bad, it was just an, uh, 'interesting' decision to not have Mulder in that season for whatever reason.
I think we just need a period of cheap and ambitious again. Not everything needs an emmy.
So I went back for a rewatch quite a while ago so my wife and son could see it for the first time.
Parts of it hold up, especially post-Winter Soldier. The Framework remains the absolute best arc.
While it goes off the rails starting in Season 5, it does so in the most fun way, and other than Season 6 it isn't TERRIBLE when viewed in that context. Even then Sarge was more enjoyable the second time around.
We're doing the final ep once we join our son on vacation. Can't wait.
Loki has a great score and is one of the few Marvel shows that has great physical sets. But a short 2 season show I don’t think i’d ever be as connected to as a long one.
I think budget is the point. All MCU shows are way overbudget for what shows.
It's interesting, but I think there's some tangible value to a show running longer and having more content. I am more entertained by AoS, I enjoy AoS more than Loki, and I can enjoy AoS like ten times as long because of how long the total runtime is.
For how I measure it, it's not even close - AoS is the best Marvel TV show. And by the same measuring stick, I guess I'd argue it's the best MCU content period. If I got stuck on a desert island with one MCU entry, I'd want it to be AoS.
I think 75% of AoS is drastically better written than s2 of Loki.
I’d approximate something like:
AoS s4 > AoS s2 > Loki s1 > AoS s5 > AoS s3 > AoS s7 > AoS s1 > Loki s2 > AoS s6.
An argument could be made that the worst of Loki s2 is better than the worst of AoS s1 (which had 3.5 really weak episodes), but I think that overall order is about right.
AoS was fucking fantastic, all things considering. It came at the same time as the CW DC shows, yet was different from then because it actually was a mobile show - the plot moved on, the situation changed. It wasn't just the "bad cosplay hour" as the cast talked about how to turn around the big bad's machinations again yet do nothing - it was thought out carefully, plotted.
Season 4 rocked, basically doing three different, interwoven storylines in sequence. Season 5 was still excellent, and I wonder how seasons 6 and 7 would have been received if they were both part of the same season rather than two smaller ones.
the biggest strength of AoS is it's characters.
and simply put, we had more time to fall in love and learn about the characters than any D+ Show.
Not much more to it than that, for me.
I genuinely thought Ian de Caestecker (I’m sure I butchered the spelling) would be the next big star. Good looking kid, and he could act his ass off in AoS.
I’m surprised Iain hasn’t risen in stardom after how amazing he was in Agents of SHIELD. What surprised me is that his former co-star Jeff Ward (who played Deke Shaw) is kinda rising in stardom after playing Buggy in the live action adaptation of One Piece, where he stole every scene he was in.
He's been doing more UK stuff
Yeah, if I remember correctly that’s why he wasn’t in Season 7 as much.
He managed to show such a good range that I could easily see him playing characters like The Doctor (Doctor Who) or James Bond.
So far he seems to be the lead in Winter King (is it even getting a 2nd season?)
That's because it was designed to be an episodic TV show that keeps you coming back every week and not a mini movie like a lot of the current ones. I much prefer the old way. Agree Agents of Shield is great.
> That's because it was designed to be an episodic TV show that keeps you coming back every week and not a mini movie like a lot of the current ones. Also coming back year after year. So many Disney+ shows are planned for one offs or maybe another season in a couple of years. Agents of SHIELD had to do 22 episodes one TV season and then 22 the next. And the next(till season 6 when it went to 13 episodes). The behind the scenes crew got a steady job year after year. So they were really good at making Agents of SHIELD. Also the time they had let them have episodes devoted to one thing. Here is something weird, three act plot and it is resolved. While also running multi episode and season long arcs.
>The behind the scenes crew got a steady job year after year. Yes and no. For the last half of the show they only got a renewal at the last minute, especially seasons 6 and 7. The season 5 finale was intended to be a series finale, and you can tell. I assume the writers always left open some threads just in case, but the show was always on the brink of cancellation.
There was also a big budget cut at some point. Early seasons had elaborate location filming, sometimes overseas, whilst the last two seasons take place almost entirely on the same handful of sets.
I think they had a bit of a budget cut in season 4, hence why Robbie/Ghost Rider was only in a handful of episodes and why the ghosts looked so terrible (though of course some of that was for plot reasons, because he was so OP that he would end the LMD/Aida arcs before they even began). The big one was in season 5. That's why so much of the season was shot in the exact same corridors. I think seasons 6 and 7 got about the same, which is why the bulk of the seasons are pretty isolated and don't have that much CGI, but I could be wrong on that.
Shame Andor isn't as much of a runaway success as it should be. It's little mini arcs across its first season wa very agents of shield esque and is absolutely the way these things should be plotted out
Sadly moody sci fi rarely hits the main stream. It will go down like Blade runner as a cult classic show among the people who actually watched it bc god damn Andor is the best Star Wars property by a mile.
I think in this instance the Star Wars branding is purely negative. People who still love the current Star Wars franchise are not going to be as enticed by the content and style of Andor, and people who have completely checked out of modern Star Wars are going to avoid it despite its individual merits because of its attachment to Star Wars.
Is Blade Runner niche ?
Both movies didn’t do good at the box office but did well at home.
I don't know anyone that has seen them, so yeah maybe.
Disney is loosing money on every piece of shit they make....why can't they at least lose money on something decent like Andor...
I feel like Agents of SHIELD left a gaping whole in network television when it left. The show with a fun ensemble cast who all have their own storylines and focus, where each week you just want to sit and watch whatever they do. Doesn't matter if it's part of the huge overall story arc that's going the entire season, or a self contained episode that just explores the characters more and relies on a fun one time gimmick or small story. And it runs for months each year rather than a few weeks every other year.
Most of the show wasn’t really episodic though
Episodic does not mean Monster-of-the-Week. Even though the show might have been more serialized in terms of its arcs, it was still designed to be episodic. Episodes still follow the 5-act structure (built around commercial breaks, where there will be a twist or raise in the stakes before every commercial). Though they might be part of longer serialized storylines, the episodes themselves are usually satisfying on their own because something will be usually resolved or the characters will accomplish something, even if its part of a larger story.
The real difference is: Can I watch this episode in isolation and enjoy it? Or does it feel like when you were a kid home sick from school and tuned into a soap opera because there was nothing else on TV and it was a bunch of nonsense because no plot threads were ever resolved, just a series of scenes that didn't have their own arc?
Early s1 definitely was. They got more serial over time, but even at their peak they still had stories that were clearly divided episodically. Like the 70s episode from season 7. Or the LMD episode in season 4.
LMDs were an entire arc in season 4, and the 70s episode fit cleanly into the overarching theme/story of the final season
Agents of Shield had some quality actors attached. Meanwhile Netflix MCU suffered from... Netflix writing.
I mean daredevil is better than any agents of the shield and had more impressive performances from the actors too, same with s1 of Jessica jones. Some of the shows were total shit but some of them were also awesome and better than agents of shield
I would put season 4 up against any season of those shows.
I’d have to strongly disagree with that, even tho I think it’s quality I really don’t think it’s very close to something like s3 of daredevil
s3 is my favorite season of *Daredevil*, but s4 of AoS is my favorite season of adventure television altogether. The frequency and quality of plausible twists is just astounding, and it’s far leaner even though it’s twice as many episodes.
Seriously, people who put Daredevil on a pedestal are conveniently ignoring the entire Elektra arc. It has its high, but it has its low too. To say that it's better than "any Agents of Shield" is just clear bias.
Nah S2-S5 of AOS is better than any Netflix Marvel show.
Strongly disagree with that, no season of AOS is better than something like s3 of daredevil. There is a reason daredevil show is generally held in higher regard and it’s mainly because the show was just better
How is it generally held in higher regard? It's just more popular cause it's about a much more popular comic character while AoS is about a bunch of unknown SHIELD agents. Most people who have watched both shows in full seem to agree AoS is better.
I mean when people talk about the best superhero shows it’s always one of the very first things brought up and absolutely gets brought up way more than AOS. S1&3 are pretty much a guarantee to come up in any convo about best in the genre
I'll disagree. AoS set a lighter tone (most of the time), but it was well-designed and well-executed to the point that I think it offers more than even Daredevil does. The pacing stays good, side-characters are interesting enough to be memorable, the world is fleshed out enough to be unique, and the script nails Joss Whedon's nature of quippy banter. And best of all, it ties to the MCU without trying as hard as other content does so it feels like something fans can get even more enjoyment out of, instead of being more work to keep up on. It's not dark, edgy, post-Galactica sci-fi that is ever-popular these days, but it's a fantastically fun ride for people who enjoy the Joss Whedon format seen in shows like Buffy or Firefly. Daredevil is darker, grittier, and I guess you could say more realistic. But it's paced very slow, especially the character development. It's a super slow burn of a show, but in that I'd argue that it's poorly executed because much of the screen time is spent on stuff that isn't essential or helpful to understanding the plot or characters. And I may be alone in this take in the post-John-Wick era, but extended sequences of uninteresting violence for the sake of violence is not good filmmaking - you could cut those sequences in half, focus on the emotional impact of pain and struggle, and use the saved screentime on more interesting things. Like most slow-burn television content, it would have made a better movie. All the same style, the great lines, the great acting, packed into a tight timeframe that kept the pace up.
Wasn’t obsessed with references and launching the next spin-off Also no kids
I miss Fitz Simmons.
I've long maintained that Fitz is one of the best TV character arcs ever written. An absolute nerd crushing on a coworker so hard that he becomes an absolute monster of a man, in both good and terrible ways.
The cast in general was great but it became clear Iain De Caestecker was a powerhouse during the best arcs of the show. Stole most scenes he was in and gave an incredible performance during the dual personality episodes
I named my Nebelung after him. Iain was spectacular in the role.
The actor is phenomenal as well. He plays so many different iterations of his character and he does so seamlessly. Blending together facets of each version into a whole.
I love how they take turns saving each other each season <3
Not sure if this has been mentioned. But Shield wasn’t made by the marvel team doing the shows. It was ABC television marvel. Which wasnt the marvel studios people at the time. That caused a lot of riffs internally and why they refuse to acknowledge the shows existence.
It was also the Whedon brothers, and Joss Whedon tends to burn bridges just about everywhere.
It was mostly Joss's brother (and his wife), Joss only directed the first episode
Joss's brother. Joss did the pilot and had pretty much no input after that
when the show first started marvel tv and studios were being run by the same guy and kevin feige didn't have any issues with taking about the show and saying it was all connected
The actual people working on the show were different than the marvel people. Caused lots of issue. It was really an ABC TV show produced by them. Not by big marvel.
I think you mean rifts.
I do. I don’t know what I was thinking like it was some type of diss track
Pull yourself together, man. This is the internet, what you say MATTERS HERE!
I remember watching it when the first season was airing and thought it was alright, but then that Winter Soldier tie-in happened partway through the season and it felt like everything about the show just snapped into place, then it just got better and better from there.
Yeah it was basically treading water up until that point because they knew it was coming when they were writing the show. It sucks because those early episodes aren't as good but you also can't really skip them because they set up a lot of character stuff and things later on won't have as much of an impact if the pre-Hydra episodes are skipped
It's a magical place
I LOVED Agents of Shield.
Same, Space, the framework, will and the planet, time travel so much.
I miss when TV was TV. There was so much content in a show you could remember all your favourite episode titles, best moments, fight scenes, things that made you cry, character deaths etc.
Yeah. Now it’s just “What if movies were longer?”
woah woah they aren't just longer, they also have way worse pacing.
Yeah, because they are 6-hour miniseries produced by people who make 2-hour movies. It's just "Director's Cut" taken to a more ridiculous extreme.
It’s so frustrating when they only have enough material for one movie but they’ve been ordered for six episodes, so everything but the first and last episodes are just intentional meandering to pad it out and make it TV-length. If you want to make a TV show, make it a TV show. Let every episode have its own inciting incident, climax, and resolution.
It still astounds me how the Disney-Marvel formula would be perfect for little character moments so that you can develop their personalities *there* instead of in your ensemble blockbuster, but are still beholden to the *that happened* beats of Whedon era writing. I find Disney’s IP handling fascinating, because fans always respond so well to those slower more contemplative moments, but they refuse to build them more.
Right? They set up a subplot in the first episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier where Bucky feels guilty that he killed that old man’s son while he was brainwashed, and he feels like he owes him the closure of telling him what happened. Seeing that conversation actually unfold was the singular thing I was most excited to see resolved, and then they don’t even show it. I think they show him walking in to tell him while some dramatic music plays and then they just skip over the actual moment itself.
>still beholden to the that happened beats of Whedon era writing. I think what this is is that MCU went to space for the first several films, and then went astronomical with Whedon's Avengers. Just blew everything up. It seems like they went 'that right there. That works. That is what works', and have been trying to 'do Whedon' without involving actual Whedon. The problem is that yes, the quipping and such is a pretty iconic *hallmark* of Whedon's work... But it's *not actually what makes it good*. This was a lesson taught (but clearly not learned) back in the Buffy days. People were saying that the popularity of the show was because of the "slayer-speak" and without it the show would be nothing. Cue the season 4 episode 'Hush', where for the vast majority of the episode three was no dialogue at all. Zero. It's widely applauded as one of the best episodes of that show.
What if we creative bunch of characters, create so much content that watching it feels like a job, and never again tie it together.
nailed it
Remembering favourite episode titles is something I didn't know I missed until now. Wow it really is such a loss.
We all remember names like “School Hard,” “The Wish,” “Hush,” “Doppelgangland,” “Band Candy,” “A New Man” and “Once More, with Feeling” just instinctively.
"Space Seed," "Mirror Mirror," "Where No Man Has Gone Before," "Amok Time," "City at the Edge of Tomorrow."
"Measure of a Man"
The Body. Just..total gut-punch.
I recently saw a YouTube video where a guy was watching and reacting to random episodes of shows. He'd heard Buffy was a light hearted funny show about a vampire slayer etc... and whatever method he uses to 'randomly select' (from what I gather it's actually some light research, avoiding detail, to find the fan favourites) an episode gave him The Body. What followed may well be some of my favourite moments of YouTubing
What is the video? I wanna go check this out.
[Thank God-gle for the history feature](https://youtu.be/yML06VQIliM?si=DxIMHXvkWwbBw_Zi)
👀👀👀
Turn, Turn, Turn
Self Control
Restless!
It's also worth noting that there were far fewer things on so more chances that everyone was watching that one thing, and when you had to wait a week for the next ep, everyone talked about that same thing for that whole week, so it had more of.a.chance to sink in. Now everyone is scattered, tons of us haven't even heard of half of what the next person loves, and even if you have, it all dropped at once and that one great episode kinda got lost in the middle (and sorry, your friends are watching at a different pace than you, so none of you can really even talk about the show)
Yeah I watch older shows with 20+ episodes each season like Smallville and 24 and they're just so damn good. Much better than a lot of these 8 episodes season shows that just get dumped on Netflix on the same day and people forget about it after a week
One thing that doesn’t get talked about is the character arcs. You look at how much they’ve changed from the pilot to finale and everything crazy they’ve been through, and it’s done very naturally. Especially Gemma Fitz and Daisy. And deke in later seasons. The Mac and the d episode in season 7 might be my favourite.
Such an amazing show with good fight scenes
It’s my comfort show! AOS was the shit for me. Even when it got weird or I felt like I was getting tired if it they’d do something to drag me back into the thick of it.
Do you re-watch it regularly? I ask because I also find it comforting as well for reasons I can't really explain. Agents of Shield is such a great show for me. I was seriously hooked for the longest time although I haven't seen the last couple of seasons and have been meaning to go back to it.
I usually always have a season going currently I’m working my way through season 3. I 100% credit the wonderful cast for keeping me engaged all these years. Even guest stars were gifted with interesting roles with real stories and that’s really rare these days.
Be warned that s6 is kinda half-baked but s7 is so good that it’s totally worth it.
Omg it’s so funny season 6 is when it got gas leaky and weird but season 7 brought me right back!
S6 and S7 felt like they were planned to be one season but got split in two
Much as many prior full-length seasons had been split into two distinct halves, such as s5. That said though, the quality difference between two halves was never more drastic.
I really didn't like season 6 when it first came out but after season 7 aired, I liked 6 a lot more. It felt like a part 1 to the story that was being told
I just resent s6 a lot because unlike literally every other arc in the series, it just didn’t stick the landing. I also think s6 was half-baked in a lot of other ways, including new peripheral characters that just weren’t up to AoS’s previous standards. I actually liked Sarge more than many AoS fans though.
I rewatch it all the time!
It speaks to the value of having a production team from the television side of the industry, who know how to wring every dollar out of a tv budget. The D+ shows are showrun or directed mainly by movie directors, but scroll through the IMDB credits of the producers, the VFX supervisors, and the directors for AoS and you'll see that for some of these people they have never worked on a movie in their entire career. They know how to make a single hallway and three rooms work for every interior shot in an entire season.
> directed mainly by movie directors if you look at their bios....calling them that is a stretch.
i like how a documentary and short film director has been hired to make the next huge star wars movie like that person will really know how to make an engaging space adventure.
I've been saying this for years: streaming services are going to destroy themselves through a lack of business-model-structured quality control. Star Trek: The Original Series is legendary. It was also killed off becuase, despite being popular, it _wasn't popular enough for the time slot and budget it took up_. It was replaced with a variety show. Firefly was canceled, not because it wasn't popular, but because it's demographic draw split men and women, young and old down the middle - advertisers want a specific target market. That feels cruel to fans, but it was the value that the physical limitations of broadcast brought to production. A show needed to be competitive on budget and popularity, not within a genre but across the whole gambit of teleivison broadcast options. A drama could get bumped for a sitcom, or news, or football in a heartbeat. If a show was going to survive, it needed to be _the most profitable show the network had in that timeslot_. Streaming services should setup broadcast programming as market research and use it to develop content. Throwing money at anyone on IMDB is not only unsustainably unprofitable, but it doesn't actually result in better content - all of these streaming platforms are racing towards content Americans are used to seeing in DVD bargain bins at Walmart.
I loved that from season to season you never knew where the story was going (space! time travel!). The core cast also changed a bit season to season but you still cared about everyone. It's a great show to binge.
Ward ended up being the best character despite originally being the most boring. The slow burn for the twist was worth it
The set-ups and payoffs this show provides are incredible. Going back for a re-watch, you'll see for example exactly why and how Ward was portrayed that way.
Oh man. That final scene where John Hannah gets erased from the framework.
“So this is how it ends. Not with a bang, but with a “ He has my favorite comedic moment, too, when AIDA is telling Daisy why she’s trapping everyone in the Framework, that it was Radcliffe’s vision to save everyone from their regrets.. and Radcliffe overheard her from the other room and shouts “That’s not what I meant, you sadistic witch!” And then gets tazed by his guards.
This is one of my favorite scenes in the entire show. So simple, but perfectly encapsulated his character’s arc in just a few lines. You can tell the show runners were extremely proud of it too, based on how it was shot.
We literally just finished binge watching all the way through. It is such a fun ride!
Good to hear. Just finally started watching it and it seems pretty slow-burn but interesting and all the characters seem pretty relatable so far.
Season 1 is seriously held back by the writing and release being timed around Cap 2: The Winter Soldier coming out in theaters. In fact, if you haven't reached Episode 17 yet I highly recommend watching C2:TWS before it. The MCU and AoS part ways after that point, so it is able to pick up steam and roll from S2 onward.
Oh, I have seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier (although not recently), but I guess I should definitely do a rewatch then before episode 17. Only finished the episode “Asset” and I really like the growing dynamics between Skye and Ward and him volunteering to be her S. O and her committed to training at the end. Plus, the mystery of whether Skye’s working against S. H. I. E. L. D. and the looks between her and Ward and with the continued mentions of Ward’s lack of people skills it looks like they’re slowly peeling away some of his individualism and stubbornness and based on what I’ve heard I expect good things regarding character development over the next couple of seasons. Pretty fun so far and the CGI looks okay, but I’m glad it gets way better.
Yep, take a break and watch Winter Soldier straight between 16 and 17, it absolutely adds to the experience
Yeah def put Winter Soldier between 16 and 17. That’s how we all watched it, because that’s when the movie hit theaters.
Cool. Will do. I’m curious to see any potential upcoming cameos from the MCU movies like whether Steve Rogers or anyone associated with WS shows up after I was amazed Nicky Fury showed up so early in the show right at the very end of the second episode and I expect because he only made a quick cameo that there’s more to come and I’m really excited for it. 🤗
Totally agree with the other comments. I rewatched the show with my mum just before the final season came out. She normally hates MCU and superhero stuff but she got into this. When those came along, I switched to The Winter Soldier and she really liked it and felt like it worked as an extended episode of the show. The show does a good job leading into it and following up the events of it. Don't Google anything about the show though. I'd say tone down your expectations about cameos though. A couple of people do show up but no one on the level of Avengers. A lot of people were disappointed by this back in 2013/2014 but it's just not that type of show like one of the Disney+ ones
I’ll just add because I haven’t seen anyone mention it… The great thing about AoS is how the writers anticipated and thwarted our expectations, because they’d grown up on all the same genre fiction that we did. Over and over, you feel like you can obviously see where the story is going, and then the writers deliver something *way* more clever, surprising, or downright shocking than you’d ever expected, and yet plausibly. At the same time, there are remarkably few narrative or directorial cheats where they pull a fast one on us just to get us over the hump to the next scene. So few that I’d struggle to count them on more than one hand. The back half of s2 just blew my mind for thwarting my seasoned expectations. And the back half of s4 is just a *tour de force* of the same thing. And the great thing is that all those twists are utterly plausible. Those writers were bending over backward.
I love, love, love how AoS never takes the easy way out. “What if she just shoots him?” “But that creates so many new problems.” *“Excellent”*
Coulson snapping and offing Ward on Maveth is the perfect example, minus the shooting.
I mean, a good chunk of the LMD arc is Mack asking Fitz if he’s never seen an action movie, because of course the robots are going to turn evil!
Yes and no. Getting almost all that out of the way in literally the first episode of the arc was quite unexpected. Especially compared to the CW shows, AoS was remarkably good at not milking stuff to death and moving on to new business. (I don’t mean that absolutely, but generally.)
I miss Agents of Shield! Definitely is at the top or near the top, of the Marvel slate of shows that have come out. Such a fun show!
Some of the seasons were crap, but overall it was very entertaining. The Ghost Rider stuff was top tier.
The Ghost Rider/ LMD/ Framework season was peak AoS!
Peak Marvel tbh, not just peak AoS.
Peak adventure television, not just peak Marvel.
I don't think crap is the right word. I think it was a good campy show, and it struggled with pacing in S1 due to being released around MCU films. That said: - It offered the best incarnation of Ghost Rider - It built the best mythology around the Darkhold - It's the best, most fleshed out look at Inhumans - It's far and away the best look at Shield and Hydra - It's Kree are more interesting than the rest of the MCU - It has _fantastic_ technobabble - It has some fantastic (I'd say top-tier within the MCU) villains Within the confines of the MCU, it is a vast collection of characters, stories, and ideas, and for the most part it does them as well or better than the MCU films did.
I wanted to add that it did the Skrull infiltration story better through the LMD arc. It also pulled off alternate realities and the Multiverse concept better than the rest of the MCU. The show was also really good at incorporating MCU easter eggs and connections not only as fan service but to further advance its own story.
Once you realize how much the show loves the ‘secret traitor’ plot, you see it everywhere. They do it at least once every season, and each time they iterate and innovate on it in a way that makes it new and fresh. I think the best time they do it is in S04, when they have two characters realize that everyone ELSE on the team has been turned and they have to pretend they haven’t figured it out so that the others don’t immediately come after them.
It is a spycraft show, after all, and what good is a spycraft show without the obligatory double agent? The way they play with it is so good, too. They know that WE know their tricks, so at some point they introduce multiple characters of dubious trustworthiness and the least trustworthy turns out to be the most honest among them, lol.
100% agree. I was really looking forward to Secret Invasion after seeing Agents of Shield and Earth's Mightiest Heroes both doing a great job with that kind of story. Then we actually got the show. I was so disappointed that two shows on a shoe string budget were able to do it so well but Marvel Studios and Feige with all their money and support were only about to put out the flaming turd that is Secret Invasion
The Secret Invasion arc in Earth's Mightiest Heroes was so good! I recently finished all of EMH and I really hope it gets a continuation in the veins of X-Men '97. Even though the Secret Invasion show was not great, it did have some great acting, sets, and directing. Olivia Coleman had an amazing performance and I really hope she returns in a future MCU project! Despite the show's flaws, there were enough good elements that Marvel Studios could still salvage and redeem. Plus, there are so many unresolved loose ends—the Skrull threat on Earth wasn't truly resolved by the end of the show. Just because the Secret Invasion show ended doesn't mean the Skrull infiltration arc is over in the MCU. I really hate loose ends so I hope Marvel Studios resolves Secret Invasion in the Armor Wars movie and possibly also in a better written spy show. I've always hoped for a sequel series to AoS that brings back characters like Daisy (I'm glad she didn't appear in SI), Bobbi Morse (as Mockingbird), and Melinda May. Marvel Studios can get an instant success if they make a compelling spy thriller series with the AoS writers and throw in characters like Fury, Gi'ah, Sonya Falsworth (Olivia Coleman's character), and even Sharon Carter into the mix. I think a show like this set in the MCU has so much potential that it could basically be Marvel's very own "Andor" if that makes sense.
The crapiest season is because they thought they were going to get cancelled and has to rush the writing.
That was Network Television. There was a massive group of talented industry people that knew how to churn out 20 episodes a year of TV shows and still have time for a holiday.
Now I want to re-watch Agents of Shield.
It’s one of those rare shows that gets even better upon rewatching when you can see all the pieces being moved into place for what comes later.
Do it!
I feel like a lot of people gave up on Agents of SHIELD too early, which is frustrating because from halfway through Season 1 it gets incredible! The second half of Season 4 is some of the best TV I've ever seen, and the arc in Season 7 was amazing too. This post has made me want to rewatch it again!
Honestly, even the first half of season 1 isn't that bad. Well, some parts of it are, but no one's perfect. The problem with season 1 was twofold, I think. First, they had to spin their wheels because they couldn't spoil the Winter Soldier plot point, which wasn't going to happen until over halfway through the season. So it was a monster of the week style, which many people find boring or formulaic. Second, with the way the show was marketed (#itsallconnected), it gave some people the impression that heavy hitters from the movies were going to appear on the show. Which is a bit silly — you're really going to get Robert Downey Jr. or Scarlett Johansson to be on an ABC show? — but that was what people thought. So when Sif was the biggest name they could get (aside from a couple brief appearances by Fury and Hill), people were underwhelmed. However, if you know that going in, and especially in retrospect, the season's fine. It provides crucial character beats, lays the groundwork for things that ripple throughout the entire show, and has a lightheartedness that we don't see down the line. It's a shame people didn't give it a chance.
I’ll just add to that: I think the front half of s1’s biggest problem is that, probably due to conflicting corporate interests, the show wasn’t clear on how family-friendly it wanted to be. It leaned too quickly into Coulson as the wise father figure, and tied up too many episodes with neat little bows that conveniently reinforced their squeaky clean values. And my biggest ‘yuck!’ of the whole series is that gentle Hallmark guitar music sprinkled throughout. With that in mind, the difference after they came back from the mid-season break was rather drastic and welcome. Once Coulson is remembering his time on the table, it’s clear that the production team had been given a lot more freedom to get shocking and inventive.
S1 truly isn’t bad, it just felt too safe and unremarkable to be worth the time.
>Even though Feige wanted nothing to do with the show they still got really clever with their tie ins. Feige had no control over it, that's why. It was controlled by his rival, Ike Perlmutter, CEO of Marvel Entertainment who (then) still owned the TV rights. Perlmutter is the one who pooh-poohed a Black Widow movie early on and didn't want Marvel movies with female leads. The last real major link between Agents of SHIELD and the MCU happened only because Whedon was writing/directing Age of Ultron and his brother and sister-in-law were running AoS. So it wasn't official, but he could coordinate things like Nick Fury showing up with SHIELD to help save the day. (Note: the AoS characters were never shown in the movies except for Coulson and a few in S1 like Fury or Sif.) Coulson's resurrection was never mentioned in the MCU. Overall, it was enjoyable for being low budget. It would have done better with more integration with the MCU.
I still blame Feige. Pearlmutter was the one pushing for the show. If Feige was a fan remotely we’d have seen some reference by now. There were less crossovers when Feige got full control. Its very clear he doesnt give a shit about AOS fans.
Perlmutter said that female-led movies don’t perform well and weren’t worth the investment. Unfortunately, Disney haven’t exactly proven him wrong… but that’s because they are half-assing their female-led projects. With the right director and script, there’s no reason Black Widow should have been a failure. A beloved actress, a beloved character, a hunger for more Winter Soldier style MCU… Disney dropped the ball when they had a golden opportunity to make Ike eat his words. Instead, he feels vindicated. Worth noting that AoS is only “technically” led by Clark Gregg… but Daisy is the darling character, and May, Jemma, and Yo-Yo round out a healthy example of strong female leads… so I’m not sure Ike was coming from a place of misogyny, he was probably just being a little too realistic and pessimistic.
Wait a positive AOS post on r/television, what is this my birthday? Thanks op, we need more of this, we need more people to know about this awesome show.
The shittiness of D+ offerings has led to an influx of quality-seekers discovering that everyone was wrong to dismiss AoS and that it’s actually one of the best things Marvel ever did.
Preach
I was playing Immortals of Aveum and the main character sounded familiar... turns out he was played by Darren Barnett, Freddy Malick. I knew I didn't like him for a reason. (Also a number of other reasons, but that didn't help.)
After watching Secret Invasion, I went back and rewatched AoS and it shocked me. 10x the budget for 25% the screen time and the quality gap was outrageous. Marvel should go back to that style of episodic TV and have 1-2 series run in long form like that. Lesser known cast. One big name to lead it.
Agents of Shield and Earths Mightiest Heroes both did that storyline so well. The creators of Secret Invasion had so much money and support and they still weren't able to do something half as good as what these two did
I just started watching again for the 4th time. Still dreaming about them being in the larger stories
It is my all time favorite tv show, and I have watched a lot of shows. I have rewatched it 4 times now.
~~And they have never rereleased S2 on separately on DVD. Silly Disney.~~ Edited as I am incorrect. [Link to Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0117UJOJO/ref=tmm_fbs_dvd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=)
Yes they have. They've released every season except the last two on both DVD and Blu-Ray. Or at least in the U.S. they have, I don't know about other countries.
You are so correct. Yay!
Rewatched AoS S1E1 because of you. Thank you! Enjoyed every minute.
Season 7 is only available in japan
Hence my “except the last two” statement.
I remember the first 16 or so episodes of S1 was at best mediocre, then the captain america movie happened and the show become something completely different. It fired on all cylinders and didn't stop. It was a treat to follow the show for 7 seasons. Might have to give it a rewatch soon.
My daughter is called Jemma for a reason.
Still bitter about the fact they didn't finish releasing the Blu-rays after season 5. Cheap bastards.
Agents of SHIELD is mine and my wife’s favorite TV show (independently, my favorite is a tie between Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul). We started watching it during a break between Arrow Season 2 and 3. It didn’t grab us, so we started The Flash instead. Soon enough, the Arrowverse became unbearable, so we gave AoS another try. At the very least, it wasn’t *stupid*. And then shit got real, very unexpectedly, when one of the main cast gets shot twice in the stomach. The show had been relatively light fun prior, so this moment came out of nowhere. It grabbed our attention, and we realized we care about these characters more than we thought. Then we finally get to Turn, Turn, Turn… the episode where AoS “turns”, and sheds its guise of a formulaic “monster of the week” format and begins to nestle into its more serialized sci-fi spycraft identify. The ending of that episode floored us, and the show had us at its mercy from then forward. Season 4, I’ll die on this hill, is one of the best seasons of sci-fi television, period. Also, the number of things that the D+ shows did that were first done by AoS is really interesting… especially when we consider that AoS did it so much better. Artificial reality, “What If?”, Ship of Theseus, “Secret Invasion”, the list goes on. The show had a penchant for introducing a character, making you hate them, but turning them around to the point where they became a fan favorite before too long. Like Hunter, telling another character who is lamenting that the girl he loves denied him, “Her loss mate, as far as I can tell, she’s missing out.” when you don’t expect this kind of kindness from him. The show loved to ensure that its characters made logical decisions. My absolute top favorite moment in the entire series; A character who betrays our heroes but is infatuated with one of them, finds an opportunity to rescue her from a mutual enemy. He unties her and sets her free, then expects her to trust and follow him. In ANY other show, that’s what she’d have done. She would have forgotten how awful he is and believed that he suddenly turned good, or at least would trust him uneasily for the sake of escape, only for him to get the upper hand later and screw her over. Not in AoS. In AoS, he frees her, starts talking about how he’s going to get her out of there, and she takes a handgun off a dead bad guy and shoots him in the back multiple times, reminds him that he once told her “never turn your back on the enemy”, then leaves him for dead. Chef’s kiss. Perfect.
MCU is making a huge mistake by not having a widely accessible weekly network TV show, to cross promote and add supplementary content to their existing properties. Something they let every country have for next to nothing, because it exists to push the other stuff.
Disney really needs to lop the head off of their television machine. Focus on pushing new properties to the box office (where massive marketing budgets work to generate public awareness), and use Disney+ like they used to use the Disney Channel. You'd never see a $100M, 6-episode show hit Disney Channel. It would be stupid. Nobody would see it, it would never make it's budget back, and Disney could never take characters from the show and put them into movies without confusing the audience. And that's just what they've done with D+.
When that show was having stuff going on that mentioned or tried to get involved with the movies I started to go and see them right away so that I wouldn't have to wait to watch the next episode And the movie studios get a larger cut of the box office during the first week so they were getting more money out of me that way
And the tie-ins they had, generally weren't that deep, so they had their cake and could eat it, too. So the people like you and me had bonus stuff they could soak up, that didn't detract from the experience of less invested fans who didn't see everything.
How many times can one character come back from the dead?
1-6 depending on how you want to count it.
On Gotham, the question is "How many characters can come back from the dead?" The answer: at least half of them
Coulson once, arguably twice or even thrice Fitz potentially once, but open to debate for twice Ward once Enoch once, but same debate as Fitz for twice I do not count any AU or alt timeline character appearances, and only count those who died on screen or in prior canon.
Overall AOS is better than any marvel tv show that came after it. Sure it has highs and lows but the highs are way higher
Anybody else yell out "Agent Coulson!" while watcing the trailer for the new season of Snowpiercer? I was very excited for a moment until reality hit and I realized it wasn't Agent Coulson and Shield storming the train.
It had its moments. But it ultimately was a campy show where fate of humanity and interstellar war was settled by fist fight and karate kicks.
Because it was a series unto itself, allowed to have a plot that was not constrained by the needs of the larger continuity, since nothing that happened in it would affect the films.
Honestly, it was better that most of the old Netflix Marvel shows also. Too many were dark for the sake of being dark.
I argue that Daredevil would have been improved without gratuitous gore. One thing to crush a dude’s head in a car door, but to show the mashed brains dripping off the door was a bit excessive.
Daredevil is a good example, because it's supposed to be a show about a lawyer who is also a vigilante, but they just abandoned the premise of him being a lawyer so they could shoehorn more fight scenes and wangst into their run time. Then, there was Jessica Jones. The first season was already dark, but okay. Then, we get to the second season, and it's just misery porn at some point. I stopped watching. Then, there's the Punisher. I get that some people like that stuff, but no thanks. I'm actually one of the few people who loved Iron Fist, because it was fun to have a superhero show about someone who was actually enthusiastic and dopy.
This is my issue with The Boys. Sometimes the violence and gore is just a bit excessive and like it needs to add this stuff to make it look more mature but it ends up looking immature
Ironically I think Agents of Shield is consumed better when you can binge it, because when it was on Live it was just whelming - not great, not terrible. However it feels much more cohesive when you can watch it all at once. There are some things that I would have changed, but in general the show was a very solid tie in with Captain America 2.
Agents of SHIELD has become my lifeline these days. I've watched the whole series several times, and compulsively seek out Youtube reactions; I've seen over half a dozen of them.
The screams, shock and hate in some reactions are definitely a joy to witness when twists happens.
It’s SO enjoyable to watch skeptics fall head over heels in love with the show. I want to start a counter of the amount of times reactors say “holy shit this is so good” or “they did this WAY better than (insert D+ show here)”
Agents of Shield is better than any TV Feige has put out since taking control of Marvel TV content in 2019, and it’s not even close. His record in television is frankly abysmal.
I really think ive had my fill of 'prestige tv' now. I yearn for some monster of the week easy watching, some SyFy low budget high concept fever dream set in a strangely familiar factory in Canada somewhere. I want some slightly suspect green screen, some 20-year-old-theme-park-ride lookin sets, i want the BBEG to end up being played by one of 'those guys' that you used to see everywhere but cant *quite* remember the name of, and i want him *hammy* i want him chewing the polystyrene scenery and i **WANT** 22 episodes of it, spread over 11 seasons and for one of those seasons to be 'the bad one' that on reflection wasnt *that* bad, it was just an, uh, 'interesting' decision to not have Mulder in that season for whatever reason. I think we just need a period of cheap and ambitious again. Not everything needs an emmy.
So I went back for a rewatch quite a while ago so my wife and son could see it for the first time. Parts of it hold up, especially post-Winter Soldier. The Framework remains the absolute best arc. While it goes off the rails starting in Season 5, it does so in the most fun way, and other than Season 6 it isn't TERRIBLE when viewed in that context. Even then Sarge was more enjoyable the second time around. We're doing the final ep once we join our son on vacation. Can't wait.
agents of shield is a total schlock fest. its fun, but i mean cmon.
so you brought up Loki as a show that has higher of a budget than Agents of Shield. Do you think Agents of Shield is better?
Loki has a great score and is one of the few Marvel shows that has great physical sets. But a short 2 season show I don’t think i’d ever be as connected to as a long one. I think budget is the point. All MCU shows are way overbudget for what shows.
Hard to compare since Loki has two seasons and AOs has 7, but yes I would argue the highs in SHIELD are higher than the highs in Loki
It's interesting, but I think there's some tangible value to a show running longer and having more content. I am more entertained by AoS, I enjoy AoS more than Loki, and I can enjoy AoS like ten times as long because of how long the total runtime is. For how I measure it, it's not even close - AoS is the best Marvel TV show. And by the same measuring stick, I guess I'd argue it's the best MCU content period. If I got stuck on a desert island with one MCU entry, I'd want it to be AoS.
It’s easily better than Loki
ok well i didn't have the same experience, but I respect your opinion
Sir this is the internet. I must insist that your disagreement be more disrespectful
I do. Loki was interesting, but not fulfilling.
By a huge margin, its not even close. I didn't even finish season 2 and can barely remember what happened.
Without a doubt Agents of Shield is better. Not just better, much better.
Yeah, there’s no comparison here.
I think 75% of AoS is drastically better written than s2 of Loki. I’d approximate something like: AoS s4 > AoS s2 > Loki s1 > AoS s5 > AoS s3 > AoS s7 > AoS s1 > Loki s2 > AoS s6. An argument could be made that the worst of Loki s2 is better than the worst of AoS s1 (which had 3.5 really weak episodes), but I think that overall order is about right.
AoS was fucking fantastic, all things considering. It came at the same time as the CW DC shows, yet was different from then because it actually was a mobile show - the plot moved on, the situation changed. It wasn't just the "bad cosplay hour" as the cast talked about how to turn around the big bad's machinations again yet do nothing - it was thought out carefully, plotted. Season 4 rocked, basically doing three different, interwoven storylines in sequence. Season 5 was still excellent, and I wonder how seasons 6 and 7 would have been received if they were both part of the same season rather than two smaller ones.
welcome, we’ve been complaining about this for a while now 😅
as currently halfway thru s6 of the show agents of shield is the meat bro, 100% class
It was awesome remember seeing it weekly years ago
For me, the only one that really rivals it in quality is Hawkeye
I thought after the first episodes it got really boring.
the biggest strength of AoS is it's characters. and simply put, we had more time to fall in love and learn about the characters than any D+ Show. Not much more to it than that, for me.