Agents of SHIELD (SPOILERS)

[Sardorim]

So... Skye is not only Daisy Johnson but also an Inhuman?

Think the comics will make Daisy into an Inhuman as well? I mean she has been in space apparently so that could explain why the Mists haven't hit her yet.

Whatever the case, this really shoots up Quake's chances of being in Marvel Heroes and Avengers Alliance.

[Sandy Hausler]

Agreed. Anybody bitching about this episode is out of their freaking mind. As for why they couldn't have a Hyde transformation or Madame Masque in costume, this is only the half point of the season - there's plenty of time for both of those things to happen. What actually did happen in this episode was more than huge enough. Great reveal about Skye and a really powerful moment with the transformation at the end. Also, the character we see at the very end looks like Reader from Soule's Inhuman to me.

I'm of the view that every episode of a show should be awesome. Of course, that never happens, but that should be the plan. You don't get a pass by saying we're saving the good stuff for after the Avengers movie. That's not fair to the viewers.

Having said that, I thought the episode was OK, but not great. That's my general view of the show. I'm not sure I'd watch it if it weren't based on a well loved Marvel comic book.

Oh, an of course, that's just my opinion.

Sandy Hausler

[PennyD]

That was satisfying this was very good on a very good night of tv. Im glad i stayed on board. Now if Deathlok can be the winter break show next season like agent carter this year.....

[evangelionofasgard]

- emotionality the entire episode worked 100% for me
- coulsen shooting whitehall was the single let down of the episode
- skye shooting the **** out of ward is why this show exist
- game for daisy johonson as she has aways been one of my favorite shield agents, she to me is the non bitch fun version of maria hill, but before the end of the season she better cut her hair and make it all sleek, glossy yet messy looking.
less like this...

more like this...

If you don't think this was "stepping up its game," then I really don't think this show is for you. I don't think it could get any better. It's my favorite show on TV right now, at least until...

justified or house of cards comes back on for me, but yeah agreed, its even better than the blacklist this season.

[PennyD]

- emotionality the entire episode worked 100% for me
- coulsen shooting whitehall was the single let down of the episode
- skye shooting the **** out of ward is why this show exist
- game for daisy johonson as she has aways been one of my favorite shield agents, she to me is the non bitch fun version of maria hill, but before the end of the season she better cut her hair and make it all sleek, glossy yet messy looking.
less like this...

more like this...



justified or house of cards comes back on for me, but yeah agreed, its even better than the blacklist this season.

Soooo sad about blacklist this season... and Im waiting for hannibal too...

[Luke Cage]

This show is crap and I'm done with it. I guess I can use the DVR space to start checking out those reruns of Downtown Abby.

I've been watching it since the start, it's never been good. When The Flash came out on a third-tier network with a modest budget and started making Shield look even more like inept crap, I started losing patience, and now that I've seen the two fall finales side-by-side while eating some late night pizza, I can't even even remember why I bothered watching this awful show to begin with.

Agents of Shield hasn't done a single thing all season that can match Captain Cold derailing a train, and Barry rescuing everyone on board before it finishes crashing. That cheesy little dogfight tonight that mostly consisted of closeups of Mai's face while the camera tilted sideways? Ah.

Today I got to see Professor Zoom duel Barry at super-speed. It was awesome. But it wasn't nearly as cool as seeing Cal transform into the nightmarish Mr. Hyde, and tearing Whitehall into bloody chunks while the camera quickly panned away so that the show could keep its tv PG rating. Oh, wait, that didn't happen at all, my bad.

Wait, why the hell didn't that happen? Why is this show so cheap? All this build up and drama just so we could get a bullet-time effect of Quake breaking some granite and watching a black guy die horribly? Ffffffffffffffff. What are they saving their money for? Oh, right, Marvel studios is extremely el-cheapo, and they'd rather herd people into the theaters for the good stuff than come up with a compelling reason to keep watching. They saved so much money by having Coulson doing etchings on Aluminum. Ha, no ancient hidden city for you, suckers. I bet when they wrapped up for their holiday break, they treated the crew to CiCi's pizza. Because free breadsticks.

I'm assuming the white guy with no eyes is Karnak, thus fulfilling my dream of seeing Karnak getting played by some old white guy with silly putty over his eyelids. Yeeeeah, I'm out.

Captain Boomerang was lame. And Flash fighting the Reverse flash as super speed is nothing but red and yellow streaks. What did you actually see? The effects in the show are so much better than flash it's ridiculous. How hard is it to make a streak. Barry rescuing everyone on the train is akin to stop motion.

AOS effects with their aircraft is better than anything Flash has done. You've seen transformations from the Absorbing Man, Blizzard deploying his ice abilities, the transformations from the obelisk, Quakes transformation, and multiple others.

You obviously value bright light more than actual effects. The flash effects are so basic it's kinda laughable.

[Jmacq1]

I know I must be crazy or something, but I like Agents of SHIELD AND I like The Flash. I like Arrow too. I like Star Wars AND Star Trek. Playstation AND XBox. DC AND Marvel.

I don't like Gotham though.

[evangelionofasgard]

Soooo sad about blacklist this season... and Im waiting for hannibal too...

oh let me be clear i thought the black list was awesome, and yeah forgot hannibal OMG

[Sardorim]

I do hope that Skye ends up cutting her hair so it better resembles the Comic version. Maybe as a sign of growth for her character because of a certain death?

[gwangung]

I know I must be crazy or something, but I like Agents of SHIELD AND I like The Flash. I like Arrow too. I like Star Wars AND Star Trek. Playstation AND XBox. DC AND Marvel.

Yes, you're crazy. Absolutely stark mad, certifiably bonkers take-you-away-in-a-staight-jacket crazy.

I don't like Gotham though.

Oh, OK. You're sane, then.

Seriously, we like what we like. Personally, I understand the people who are indifferent to the show better than the haters, but...whatever.

[censorship]

It all works... if you don't think about it. Look how pretty that Obelisk scene was or whatever.

But this whole season's premise has been about stopping Hydra from using a WMD. If the Obelisk goes into the temple, the world goes boom.
And then at the last moment, Raina's all like, oh no you're all wrong, it's not a weapon. Now excuse me while I turn into a bald, spiky lizard witch.

It was an anti-climatic finale, because the world didn't need to be saved. Raina or Skye could have wiped out all their enemies just by luring them through curiosity into that chamber. Or most of them. Maybe Kraken would have grown an comic-styled exoskeleton when exposed. Moot point now. But Raina was probably smart enough to realize the huge advantage she had. Yet she didn't do anything about it, which made the entire Obelisk story a red herring. All the chasing and carving and drama was for nothing. Not to mention that withholding information is how novice writers wring 15 hours of story out of what should take about two hours at most. Even the Grumpy Cat Movie jokingly admitted that it was stretching its thin plot out for run time. At Marvel it may sell more comic issues but you can't gain television viewership by having your characters stand around and your side-plots go nowhere.

The crew has said that this whole year and a half was about showing the creation of a superhero. And like the Avengers, it turned out to be a creation through lies and deception. The only real hero was Triplett, but no TAHITI for him. I'm still disappointed they pulled that one-off deus ex machina when at this point Coulson is probably one of the least interesting characters on the show. He's certainly no Director, not after this. SHIELD is its biggest threat to itself. Take away the WMD threat, and Hydra suddenly crumbles like a bad joke. There weren't any stakes anymore. So the writers had to make the four little bombs the entire stakes for the remaining run time, and because that just wouldn't be enough, they had to kill somebody, too. Otherwise the episode would have the emotional resonance of a pancake.

This is not good writing. The show didn't get better in the second half of season one. The show just got better at writing badly. The movies benefit so much from the time limitation and the inherent tightness of the medium. And the special effect, of course. But given 20 hours a season to tell a narrative, Marvel can't really hold it together without resorting to dramatic twists and gimmicks.

Sorry, but as a writer I'm just not enjoying this show.

[PretenderNX01]

I don't like Gotham though.

AOS and Gotham are the only comic based shows that appeal to me.

AOS effects with their aircraft is better than anything Flash has done. You've seen transformations from the Absorbing Man, Blizzard deploying his ice abilities, the transformations from the obelisk, Quakes transformation, and multiple others.

They really do have a lot of effects for a show previously without a superhuman but as always, if people want to be done then #ByeFelicia I'm not going to make anyone stay.

[gwangung]

It all works... if you don't think about it. Look how pretty that Obelisk scene was or whatever.

But this whole season's premise has been about stopping Hydra from using a WMD. If the Obelisk goes into the temple, the world goes boom.
And then at the last moment, Raina's all like, oh no you're all wrong, it's not a weapon. Now excuse me while I turn into a bald, spiky lizard witch.

It was an anti-climatic finale, because the world didn't need to be saved. Raina or Skye could have wiped out all their enemies just by luring them through curiosity into that chamber. Or most of them. Maybe Kraken would have grown an comic-styled exoskeleton when exposed. Moot point now. But Raina was probably smart enough to realize the huge advantage she had. Yet she didn't do anything about it, which made the entire Obelisk story a red herring. All the chasing and carving and drama was for nothing. Not to mention that withholding information is how novice writers wring 15 hours of story out of what should take about two hours at most. Even the Grumpy Cat Movie jokingly admitted that it was stretching its thin plot out for run time. At Marvel it may sell more comic issues but you can't gain television viewership by having your characters stand around and your side-plots go nowhere.

The crew has said that this whole year and a half was about showing the creation of a superhero. And like the Avengers, it turned out to be a creation through lies and deception. The only real hero was Triplett, but no TAHITI for him. I'm still disappointed they pulled that one-off deus ex machina when at this point Coulson is probably one of the least interesting characters on the show. He's certainly no Director, not after this. SHIELD is its biggest threat to itself. Take away the WMD threat, and Hydra suddenly crumbles like a bad joke. There weren't any stakes anymore. So the writers had to make the four little bombs the entire stakes for the remaining run time, and because that just wouldn't be enough, they had to kill somebody, too. Otherwise the episode would have the emotional resonance of a pancake.

This is not good writing. The show didn't get better in the second half of season one. The show just got better at writing badly. The movies benefit so much from the time limitation and the inherent tightness of the medium. And the special effect, of course. But given 20 hours a season to tell a narrative, Marvel can't really hold it together without resorting to dramatic twists and gimmicks.

Sorry, but as a writer I'm just not enjoying this show.

This is a fair enough critique. Though I think it founders in that a) it assumes that the technology could not be repurposed in a destructive way, and b) it's actually clear to me that the world still needed to be saved ---leaving this in HYDRA hands gives them another way to create super-powered beings. It's still destruction on a large scale....just not as large as they thought it was.

[AndrewCrossett]

They nailed it in the '70s on TV first try with zero CGI.

That show was great for the 70's, and it's great today if you look at it through nostalgic eyes and accepting that it was a product of the 70's.

But Lou Ferrigno in a ripped shirt and green food coloring probably wouldn't pass muster with today's audiences.

[Enigmatic Undead]

That show was great for the 70's, and it's great today if you look at it through nostalgic eyes and accepting that it was a product of the 70's.

But Lou Ferrigno in a ripped shirt and green food coloring probably wouldn't pass muster with today's audiences.

I'm sure they could find him a better wig nowadays.