Agents of Shield *review*

So I finally finished the entirety of Marvel’s not exactly hit show Agents of SHIELD. So I wanted to get my thoughts out. Also, here is a spoiler warning, if you’re aren’t caught up on the show, you may want to come back and watch this after you’ve gotten caught up. Although, I’m going by season, so first I’ll talk about season 1 in all of its spoilery glory, and then very clearly I’ll start talking about season 2, so if you aren’t caught up on only season 2, you can watch up until that point. Got it? Let’s go. SEASON 1 So a summary for Season 1 of Agents of SHIELD: first half, they find a new ancient mystical artifact each week. Second half, Nazis! Alright, there is a bit more to do than that, but that’s the general gist. Also, this is an official spoiler alert for The Avengers, if you’re one of the 5 people who haven’t seen that movie. So in the Avengers, Phil Coulson one of the main agents of SHIELD gets stabbed in the heart and apparently dies. His death was super important because it’s what motivated the Avengers to save the world. But it turns out he isn’t dead, how, where, why? All of this will be answered more or less. So let’s get to my opinions. Firstly, the team in the show. Coulson returns and he is great. While I do think he worked better as a grounded kind of funny supporting character, he’s a good main leader. Then there’s Grant Ward, who at first when you see him, you think, oh boy, it’s gonna be this kind of guy. A flawless bland action model guy who gets everything perfect. But really, he isn’t. You become more attached to his character, making the plot twist that he’s actually evil all the more interesting. Skye is sort of the new window into this world. She’s your average person that you follow along on all of these adventures from her point of view, as she’s inducted into this world of superheroes and guys in suits and ties. She was likeable and funny when she needed to be. The mystery surrounding her parents wasn’t the most fascinating, it definitely wasn’t as good as it was in season 2, but it still worked. Fitz and Simmons are the quirky, British Scottish nerdy scientist guys and for the first, say, 3 episodes, I was like, “I don’t really care about you guys.” Then that episode where Simmons jumps out of the plane to save the crew really got me back on board and those two started getting more interesting. May was my least favorite on the team, at least in the first half of Season 1. She just seemed like the quiet, intense, sincere lady they bring in who incidentally can also be a total badass. The actress also was the voice of Mulan a decade and a half ago, so that’s just something interesting I discovered. But really, despite some complaints, the core team is great. As far the other characters, Bill Paxton gives a fun, tough guy, bad guy performance, and it was cool to see a pretty big name actor along with other relatively unknowns. Mike Peterson, who later became Deathlok had some interesting character plot points. Seeing Maria Hill very briefly was fun, and Patton Oswalt made an appearance, which was weird but welcome. Also, the Nick Fury cameo at the end of episode 2 was so great. I wasn’t expecting it, and then you hear Samuel L. Jackson just shouting at Coulson and you just start smiling. So the overall episodes, how are they? Well, here’s the thing. The first seven or so episodes of the show are very episodic, there’s this new artifact or person with powers or something mystical every week. And by the 6th and 7th episodes, it was getting kind of old. But then they spiced it up a bit, and that’s when the show got quite interesting. There was the overarching TAHITI story, which I’ll get into in a second, the HYDRA twist, the intrigue of Skye’s parents, all sorts of stuff. Although I will say, the first episode of this season is definitely the best episode, with possibly the exception of the season finale. It was great, probably because the pilot was directed by Joss Whedon. There was some cool action, lots of fun humor, introductions to new characters. The series got off to a strong start. Then it slowed down considerably and then started speeding up again towards the middle. As far as tie-ins to the other movies, the Thor: The Dark World tie in might be my least favorite episode. Not because of Sif or anything, she was great, but because it was just hey Thor came out might as well do something Asgardian related. The Captain America: Winter Soldier tie in episode, aka the HYDRA is invading SHIELD episode was awesome, although it had too many plot twists. Like, hey, this guy’s good, but this guy’s bad, but this guy kills these guys, and this girl’s good but kind of bad. It got a bit confusing but still it was cool. And those HYDRA episodes were remarkably really good. They were more intense, the characters got deeper story arcs, and it might just be me, but most of the cast got, like, a bit better. Not sure if that makes sense, but seeing the guy who plays Grant Ward, he worked really well as a sympathetic manipulative bad guy. And it’s kind of like, is he good or is he bad, like that scene where he’s given a gun and told to shoot his dog and you see him shooting it into the air so he faked and you’re like oh ok so he is good. Then a couple of minutes later it cuts back and you see he got out a sniper rifle and you’re like, oh. Oh my. As far as the other storylines go, the main one that everyone wanted to see when going into this was “How is Coulson alive?” and they explain in an interesting way. At first, you just see him having flashbacks of people poking in your brain and you’re like, “Oh, it’s just gonna be a cop out kind of we lasered your brain back together or whatever.” But then he discovers this corpse that the fluid that brought him back comes from and oddly enough it ties into Guardians of the Galaxy. The thing that brought him back was a Kree corpse, the Kree being the species that Ronan is. So that was actually kind of cool. On a more overview scale, the action in the show is pretty good. It isn’t great, but it’s good. Same for the humor. The tone of the show also did seem to change a lot. Less so after the HYDRA twist, but sometimes it was a lighthearted artifact chasing, let’s prank each other episode, and the next episode Skye gets shot in the stomach. The special effects are also really good especially for a TV show on ABC. There are some romantic subplots and they try to set up some love triangles that just kind of die away. Like, Fitz likes Simmons but he also likes Skye a bit but Skye likes Ward but Ward’s with May and May has a husband or whatever the heck happened. That kind of died off though and left us with just one sort of romance for the first season. And then there was the season finale, which was, and I know I use this word too much but I’m gonna use it here, awesome. Nick Fury shows up fresh off the Winter Soldier, he has some great action scenes and some great lines. Ward was great, Bill Paxton was great, it was really funny, it was really exciting, Fitz and Simmons had a pretty touching moment on the bottom of the ocean where Fitz gets brain damaged. It was a great way to end it off. So that was Season 1. It started off a bit slow, but soon it picked up steam and actually got really enjoyable. For that, I’ll give it a 7.9/10. It was leaning on 8, but I think that the negatives kind of way this down. Still, it’s pretty good. So now I’m going to talk about Season 2, so again, if you aren’t caught up, click away now. SEASON 2 So a summary for Agents of SHIELD Season 2: They deal with Nazis, then they deal with Inhumans, then they deal with a new SHIELD, and then they deal with more Inhumans. That’s pretty much it. First off, when this new season started, there’s this new team of mercenary like agents, and I was like, “I don’t really like these people.” Fortunately, all but one of them get killed off pretty much immediately, so we’re just left with this British guy called Hunter. At first, I didn’t like him, I thought he was annoying and pointless. But his character started to grow on me, and especially towards the last episodes I really liked him. This season changes a lot of stuff up. Firstly, Fitz got brain damaged at the bottom of the ocean, so he has that going on. Simmons goes undercover in HYDRA, so he has hallucinations of her, and that was a pretty interesting subplot that just sort of resolved itself. Coulson isn’t really fun anymore. Sure he has a couple of lines, but after becoming Director of SHIELD, he isn’t at all the Phil Coulson we’ve known from the movies. He’s all serious and shout-y and angry. It wasn’t bad, he just wasn’t fun anymore. It also introduces three other agents. Agent Triplett, who I guess was already introduced in season 1, but he gets a lot more interesting here. He was a lot of fun, and his death was actually kind of effective. Then there’s Bobbi Morse aka Mockingbird, Hunter’s ex-wife, and she was pretty good. Like Hunter, she got a lot better towards the season finale. Then there’s Mack, but honestly, and this is not a bad thing at all, he really reminded me of The Rock. A slightly smaller, kind of different looking Rock. Just in the way he moved and his attitude, it was very Rock like. But anyway, this new team has great chemistry like the old man. I kind of surprised myself with this, but I sort of wished there was more Ward. Don’t worry, he’s in it a bunch. But really, he’s in it at the start, then he sort of disappears for a bit, and then he comes back in a big way towards the end. His romance with Agent 33, yeah, I could take or leave, but it was still good. As far as the new characters go, they’re pretty great. Daniel Whitehall or Verner Reinhardt, he was a really good villain. His sidekick, Bakshi I believe his name was, he wasn’t that interesting. The Absorbing Man, even though he was only in, like 3 episodes, he was awesome and once again, the special effects are really good, on both this guy and the face changing effect. Then we get to Skye’s dad, Cal, who was...eh...good. At some times, he was great. At some times, he was overacting a bit. I don’t really know about him. Raina, who was in season 1 as the girl in the flower dress, she was really interesting in this, with her weird spikey transformation that I’ll get to in a bit. Skye’s mom wasn’t super fantastic, she also was just a bad guy all of a sudden for some reason. Gordon, the teleporter Inhuman with no eyes, he was suitably creepy and interesting. Before I get into some details, just some things that aren’t necessarily good or bad, just somethings to note. Firstly, this season is a lot less grounded than the first season, but I didn’t really get why they were so careful in the first season then. The action is again not amazing but it’s still cool, especially in the season finale. The episode that revealed more about May’s past in Bahrain was really good. And Grant Ward, even though he isn’t in it that much, plays a really good bad guy. So here are some of the positives and negatives. This season focused a lot on the Inhumans, which is cool, since that movie is coming out. Basically, they were people left behind by the Kree who get powers by going through this mist or something confusing like that. Skye is an Inhuman, she goes through the mist, gets earthquake powers, and then she’s taken off to a type of Inhuman day camp. And here’s the thing. The whole Inhuman aspect of it was really cool and interesting. That Kree temple or city or whatever, awesome. Skye’s powers and the repercussions that came from those, great. But the whole Inhuman camp got a bit old. Like, we get it, she’s here, she needs to learn to control her powers, but can we just get back to Coulson. Speaking of which, Coulson really shines in the second half of this season. Some really good moments and lines from him. Then there was this whole other storyline about another SHIELD, the real SHIELD, coming out of the HYDRA SHIELD destruction. And they have this leader, and Mack and Bobbi are double agents, and it was all just kind of, enough already. The twist itself wasn’t super good to begin with, but there had already been so many other kind of plot points that we didn’t need another. You’ve go the Inhumans and their camp, the Real SHIELD, the alien blood that’s making Coulson draw maps of an alien city, and the HYDRA storyline. All of them intercepted and it made the show feel kind of crowded. There were also so many betrayals and twists and turns and it kept trying to pull the rug out from under you, like hey, this person is good now or this person is bad now, but it just got confusing at a point. However, then we come to easily the best episode of the season and maybe even the whole show. Maybe. The Season 2 season finale. I honestly loved it. If every episode could be like that, this show would be a 10/10. You’ve got Ward doing some messed up stuff. First he kidnaps Bobbi and tortures her, that was surprisingly intense. The fight between Bobbi, Ward and Agent 33 was really cool. Then you’ve got Ward seeing his girlfriend 33 disguised as May, and he just shoots her several times in the stomach before realizing what he’s done, and you’re like, that is what you deserve. The action was stepped up, although I don’t really know about Skye’s weird slow mo Matrix fight with the quote un quote ginger ninjas. Mack also really steps it up in the finale, making him one of my favorite characters. And there are quite a few lines of dialogue in this that are just cheesy and epic and hilarious, that I laughed out loud quite a few times. They are straight up Arnold one liners. *I’m the guy who kills Gordon, science ***.” Then Coulson also gets his arm chopped off. That came out of nowhere. And then there’s the last scene, the literal last thing you see in the season took me way by surprise. Everyone is getting their happy into the sunset resolution and then bam this happens. I’ll just play the clip. So overall, season 2 was quite a bit better than season 1. Better character arcs, better stories, better action, better special effects, it was pretty great. I’ll give it an 8.4/10. It did feel a bit crowded and a lot of the things they did I didn’t really like, but in the end I thoroughly enjoyed it. So those are my thoughts on the first two seasons of Agents of SHIELD. Do you like the show? A lot of people don’t, and I totally get that. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. Hit the like button and subscribe for more videos like the one you just watched. Thanks for watching and I’ll see ya next time.