I have important things bubbling in my head, both political and personal. I don’t feel up to writing about them today. I’m tired and I don’t have that much time. So, I’ll write about something fun, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I’ve been rewatching the entire series, and I love it more on the second, sometimes third viewing than the first. I find it difficult to turn off to do other things, like eat. That’s what made me know it was worth writing about.
The show was always on the edge of cancelation. I didn’t start watching it until after the third season when I started streaming from the start. I hear very little about it and don’t read much, and I don’t get why. It’s the best show ever based on the comics and one of the best science fiction shows ever made. This is not a guilty pleasure, it’s a show with depth.
As so many shows since Buffy the Vampire Slayer have done it centers seasons around a Big Bad, there are season long story arcs. One of things I love is that who the Big Bad is, is not clear at the start. Several seasons the second half of the arc is more of a sequel to the first half, rather than a continuation of it. Think of it like Lord of the Rings, with Hobbit being the first half and the trilogy the second.
It’s the characters than make the show special. The series is a spinoff of the MCU up to the first Avengers film. Phil Coulson’s death is what got the Avengers working together, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D Phil’s story. It took half a season to find out how Phil could still be alive. They teased that along. Phil didn’t know. Coulson is was the first great character to emerge. He doesn’t look like a super spy; he looks like a teacher. He’s not physically special in any way, but he’s not just brilliant and brave, he’s a full person, a person that I like. He handles difficult situations with humor, similarly to Buffy. That’s not a coincidence, Joss Whedon is the executive producer. He has interests, and passions. As he came back from the dead, he feels like he can indulge them. He drives a 1963 Vette with features that James Bond would envy. He never lost the ability for wonder even though he’s seen everything. And to make all the fans happy he makes nerd culture references.
Skye, later Daisy, is Coulton’s pet project and daughter figure. She starts as a hacker for an underground movement but eventually joins S.H.I.E.L.D. Her rootless childhood, she was shuffled between foster home, is the key to her character. She is always in search of making a connection. She develops into much more than a hacker and perhaps it’s just my prejudice, but I see her as the second lead.
Fitz-Simmons were designed to make me love the show. They are two characters, Leopold Fitz and Jemma Simmons but the joke early on was that they always worked together, and people couldn’t remember which was which. They are scientific wunderkinds, earning multiple PhDs as teens and the youngest graduates of the S.H.I.E.L.D academy. Fitz studied the physical sciences and Simmons the biological. Together they can work miracles. Their relationship is another core of the series. They start as the closest of friends and it leads to romance but something always gets in the way. Fitz thinks they are curse. Daisy put it best, in a tight spot with Simmons she says; “We’ll get through this. Will all the weirdness we’ve been through the one thing in the universe I’m sure if is that you and Fitz belong together.”
I gotta run so I’ll just mention Agent May. Her first name is Melinda, but nobody uses that. She starts as a traumatized specialist, a fighter, that wanted to be away from the field. She’s a troubled version of Emma Peel, the best fighter who always keeps her cool. But May is not just cool, but cold. She’s has issues.
These are the characters that lasted the entire run of the series, that became family. They are characters I care about. Without them the show wouldn’t work.
There’s so much more I wanted to say but I have to make breakfast and go to therapy. The other half of the show’s success is that it works as science fiction; it makes you think. It deals with topics as complex as the notion of reality. Where do the objective end and the subjective begin? What does it mean to be human? How does time work?
Each season is very different than the previous. Every year the show reinvents itself while keeping the core of characters and the first-rate writing. I’m now watching my least favorite season, the fourth. And I find it difficult to pull myself away from it, even on rewatching. The worst season of AoS is better than the best of most other shows.
Wise Madness 