Has there ever been a bigger disappointment on TV than Agents of SHIELD? On paper it look like a slam dunk, but when Joss Whedon’s involvement was negligible, and Disney decided to equip it with a budget and look that seemed more like an extended episode of The Suite Life — Helicarrier than the top shows on nighttime TV, people began to grumble.
I’ve only watched a few episodes myself, but I begin to snore. As I stated from the start, Clark Gregg is great but he is NOT a leading man, and the rest of the cast aside from Ming Ma Wen is Disney Channel level, especially those English kids who seem to have been included to play the “companion” role and trick Doctor Who fans into thinking the show was fun.
Yes, yes I know that the show has some admirers. As one father of a seven-year-old girl told me “She loves the show!” and that’s who Disney was making it for: kids. But of late they’ve realized they’re tarnishing the Marvel TV brand with this sitting duck and have been doing more to tie it in with the movie-verse and add a few other Marvel-esque touches.
And now, enter Bill Paxton as Agent John Garrett. It is statistically shown that the addition of Bill Paxton to a TV cast results in more ass being kicked and his “at least” four episode run should do just that. “We wanted to bring in a rough-and-tumble former cohort of Agent Coulson with a little bit of attitude and cigar-smoking swagger,” executive producer Jed Whedon told TV Guide.
Executive producer Maurissa Tancharoen added that he will enter the show in a “surprising” way and “He is the type who wants to stay out in the field no matter how high-level he gets.”
Translation: It is “surprising” that producers realized they had to invest in an actual TV star to get the show back on track.
The Paxton character sounds like he’ll be adding a lot of firepower to the show. “When Garrett got his promotion to Level 7, he refused to sit behind a desk and doesn’t like the formalities of S.H.I.E.L.D. He’s going to help Coulson solve some mysteries and is not afraid to rig an explosive or two.”
Garrett is a comics character who was created by Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz in their classic Elektra: Assassin. THe comics Garrett is part cyborg after SHIELD has to patch him up when he’s injured, so you can see where this is going, and it looks like we may have to tune in the Agents of SHIELD again!
Has there ever been a bigger disappointment on TV than Agents of Shield? Why yes, remember Star Trek: Voyager?
I’d rather watch Voyager than SHIELD any day, so I’d say you have it backwards, Mr. Burns.
The vast wasteland of TV is strewn with many disappointments. AOS is hardly the biggest one, imho.
“especially those English kids …”
One of which is Scottish …
I thought we still owned Scotland? Wait, is that not the case?
“Has there ever been a bigger disappointment on TV than Agents of SHIELD? ”
The American version of “Coupling”? Or maybe not, since nobody thought it was actually going to work, anyway?
That all said, I’m liking SHIELD, so maybe I’m not one to judge.
the show for me has been hit or miss. what I don’t understand is that this show is called “marvel’s” agents of shield, yet there are barely any marvel characters in the show. this show could be called “acme’s spy team 6” and it would still be the same show. it is nice to see at least a handful of characters like nick fury (cameos), victoria hand, jasper sitwell, graviton (tho’ the character is not graviton yet), the ghost (tho’ not called the ghost), and now john garrett (obscure character), and the character that turns out is not cage, or rage (maybe deathlok, then again maybe not), make appearances, but with the large catalog of characters that marvel has, this show should be stocked to the brim with characters (agents and villains) that all marvel fans are familiar with. no aim, no hydra, no baron strucker ,no contessa, gabe jones, no LMDs (maybe Coulson?) , not even the great grand son of dum dum dugan. c’mon, what’s the problem? I don’t know, all of a sudden the david hasselhoff version of shield doesn’t seem so bad. at least they used actual marvel characters in their flick.
“Game over man!” Like the series, zing!
Modok or GTFO.
I tuned out after a few episodes, it really did seem quite underwhelming. That said, I’d follow Paxton pretty much anywhere, and I have very fond memories of that amazing Elektra series, so I’ll come back for these episodes. Whether that is enough long term remains to be seen.
I won’t call this a “rescue”, because I’m unconvinced that Agents of SHIELD needs to be rescued yet.
Your thoughts Heidi on this are the same as mine. The worst shows are the ones I want to like….then don’t. Time to call…..STERANKO.
game over man… game over.
“As one father of a seven-year-old girl told me: she loves the show” In my opinion seven years is too early for this show. It might have a campy overcoat but I still find it too violent for a seven year old.
Reality show WIFE SWAP. But only because I mistook the premise.
I like Agents of Shield. Its entertaining. Everyone on my twitter hates it, but seems to live tweet snark for every episode. That’s kinda funny how the hive mind works.
This show would have been more successful with fanboys if it had nothing to do with Marvel, The Avengers or Comics. I think all the hype and expectations were so high, that anything short of the Avengers making cameo’s in every episode is going to be a fanboy rage festival.
Chris says said it for me. I truly enjoy the show, and think it’s actually improving. There’s a solid back story, and the characterizations aren’t cardboard cut-outs anymore. Clark Gregg is always solid, and the rest of the cast (even Ward, and Fitz/Simmons, which took a while) has grown on me. Looking forward to seeing Paxton, and following this wherever it goes… so to all you naysayers, go whine somewhere else and watch Smallville re-runs, I’m just fine with this, thank you.
Star Trek: Voyager was disappointing at the outset and never got better. But Deep Space Nine and even Next Generation were disappointing at the start and improved tremendously and steadily. I really wanted to like Agents of SHIELD, but find it lacking in so many ways, but hopefully adding Paxton will give the show what it needs, so I’ll give it a second chance.
I’ve totally fallen I love with Steven Universe. That’s a damn awesome show. Compared to that, SHIELD sucks!
The only way to save SHIELD is to bring Hasslehoff in and give him a talking car. Or Moon Knight. Moon Knight can save anything!
Really enjoying SHIELD, it’s like the Six Million Dollar Man of today and I mean that in a good way. I really hope there’s a market for a show like this and they don’t “fix” it too much.
Smallville was much more disappointing and went nowhere for ten years.
I looked at that illustration and thought Ron Swanson joined the show.
I’m not sure anything could save Agents of SHIELD. I wanted to like it so badly week to week but finally gave up in disgust. But adding Bill Paxton to anything sure won’t hurt.
Network shows that require 23 episodes a season are the real issue. SHIELD might get better, since most network shows are usually better in the 2nd season than in the first – look at Buffy, the first season was garbage, shot on 16mm – bad acting, bad writing, a budget around $15 per episode, etc…
But even if SHIELD does get better in its 2nd season, it will still be a 23-ep per season show. Maybe if they only had to get 10-12 episodes done a season, the fans might like the show more, since they would be able to put more time into it. But Disney wants a mainstream network procedural, so it will never happen.
I don’t think it is as bad as people are making it out to be. I am enyoying the show overall despite some hit and miss episodes. I am only on the Well episode so maybe the next five will change that opinion.
I think everyone’s expectations were too high for a show about a background organization in the Marvel movies and a majority cast of unknown actors. I would think the studio would be about using the show every so often to build up to the a Marvel movies like Iron Man, Thor or Captain America since it would help in ratings.
So could they be using the wealth of other non-movie optioned characters? Absoultely but the bottom line is super hero effects cost $ and Disney is going to make this show for as cheap as possible to get it to go on for as long as possible. Unless it starts to pull some serious ad dollars with what they have I doubt we will get beyond a second season.
It’ll be renewed with no great enthusiasm and spend next season floundering around until cancellation comes as a merciful release. I can’t remember a show with a duller and more dislikeable cast.
I’ve never heard of Bill Paxton, so his addition doesn’t make any difference.
I think AoS is definitely missing the emotional/human/jeopardy element. It’s all quips instead of characterisation, you want to care about these people and why they’re doing what they’re doing. I dropped out after the episode where the SHIELD scientist girl contracted a virus and had to be locked in her lab. That was an amazing episode, so heart-wrenching. I hoped there’d more episodes like that, but there aren’t.
I didn’t care for the cast or the first episode as a whole (it was boring and whole premise is weirdly generic), and that was enough for me to drop out. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is on at 8:30, and that’s an actual good show. I only have so much time to watch TV and I don’t pick up a new show lightly so they’d better impress me from the start.
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