Earlier this year and through some of the last, I was put in charge of reviewing Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD for this site, much to the chagrin of some site commentators and fans of the show (sorry, readers and that one guy on reddit who insisted I was a hater), I’m back for more!. Despite my reviews generally knocking the show down, though, every week I went in faithfully hoping that it would improve; that the mistakes that I was seeing and railing on the show were ones that were temporary flukes that would improve if I just stuck with it.
And, as I’ve noted in the past and I’ll note again, the show eventually did improve. In fact, I can honestly admit that I’m excited for the new season to start up again. However, where others may be excited to reconnect with these characters or see what happens to SHIELD after the bombs have gone off, I’m only excited for one reason: I want to see if the show learned its lessons or not. I want to see if the forward momentum present in the last handful of episodes has been retained, and that the show is going to be exciting to tune into every week.
Because here’s the thing: there is an abundance of comic book-based television coming our way. It’s hard enough keeping up with weekly comics at this point, so who has time for a show that’s not pulling its weight week after week? And given the inconsistent first season of SHIELD, who are we to give the benefit of the doubt?
So what follows is a short list of things that I’m hoping for in the new season. Some thoughts are general, some are specific (so beware spoilers from here on), but all of them are done from a place of earnestly wanting SHIELD to be a show that is as good if not better than the films.
Lets begin.
5. Procedural, Pro-shmedural
One of the biggest faults of SHIELD’s first season, completely removing any aspect of Marvel’s universe or characters or anything like that, is that the show stuck to the dull tedium that is basic weekly formatted television. Television, as much as it can be a wonderful medium, does have a surfeit of formulaic “villain/monster/bad guy of the week” storytelling that used to be more predominant across the board and now seems mostly present in your average cop show with a dramatic one world title. This basic formula — introducing a new bad guy of some sort, dragging out a mystery for 40 minutes and wrapping things up easily with a nice deus machina in the last two — drives more shows than I can count, and far too many network dramas. Why? Because it seems that most television networks think that if they don’t feature completely accessible storylines that wraps up nicely and evenly every week then the show will be a failure.
But it’s 2014. We don’t really need to have that kind of storytelling anymore, and I fail to see the argument for this kind of antiquated techniques. Not only that, but SHIELD doesn’t really need this either. It can work to a point, but the first season used it to a fault; there’s a stark difference between allowing your story to unfold over a few episodes and just padding the show out. Many fans and critics will agree that the first season reached its peak when a true, central story came out akin to (and based off of) that present in Marvel’s films, and it’d be a shame to not keep that momentum going. While the show doesn’t have to be like a movie, it seems weird that we live in a world where people making television don’t realize that we’ve moved on from that kind of weekly narrative into bigger, more sprawling and engrossing experiences from shows like Breaking Bad or Sons of Anarchy.
This isn’t to say that shows can’t exist within this formula and succeed. Hannibal, for example, is one of the most unique and exciting shows on network TV — and yet, many of the episodes do fall into the trap of being your basic procedural. Yet through powerful storytelling, stylized visuals, a consistent ever-present plot and fantastic acting, it’s quite easy to forget that you’re sometimes watching a show using the same generic story tools as CSI: Miami. SHIELD could ostensibly still have just one villain or bad guy or threat or whatever a week, but it’s important to move beyond the shackles of the otherwise lazy narrative predominant in this kind of episodic TV.
Continued below4. Utilize the Marvel Universe
One thing that was very strange to see in SHIELD was how seemingly afraid it was to play around in the Marvel Universe. Arguably the only point to do a show like SHIELD would be to play with these concepts and showcase them on a scale different than the films but still as celebratory of the source material, so why didn’t we see more of it in season one? We got a few good cameos, sure, like with Sif’s episode of Nick Fury’s stunt in the finale, but for the most part we were given some Z-List villains without any powers, brief flirtations with casual references and the occasional landmark or other non-committal way to have a show integrated with its source material and greater context.
Well, hopefully in season two that is thrown out the window. Get in there, SHIELD; knees deep, all in, getting messy with it. Agents of SHIELD is such a unique opportunity because you have characters that can explore every corner of the globe, every facet of the strange and the unknown, and they can potentially do new things on a weekly basis. We’ve seen in announcements that Marvel is getting a bit more bold and including characters like Mockingbird and Absorbing Man on the show, and that’s wonderful, but the show needs to embrace the comics in the same ways that the films do. Heck, last season skirted around directly involving the Kree who appeared in this summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy, but it was done in such a way that you’d be forgiven if you that that blue body in the tub in “TAHITI” was Abe Sapien.
Here’s the thing: are you familiar with SHIELD‘s major competitor, Arrow? Arrow‘s first season seemed afraid to get too weird with the DC material because it didn’t want to ostracize the typical audience of the CW, and with a groan I can get that; but the second season threw caution to the wind, brought in a myriad of obscure, C- and B-List characters and had fun — and it worked! It worked extremely well: Flash! The League of Assassins! Allusions to the Metal Men and the sorta-appearance of the Suicide Squad! A freakin’ army of Deathstrokes!! SHIELD‘s second season should embrace the madness and sheer lunacy of comics on the same grand scale that Arrow did and have fun with it, because otherwise you’re wasting your own budget.
3. Less Filler, More Killer
This was more of a complaint towards the first half of SHIELD’s first season, but boy, were there a lot of episodes in there that were just throwaway. Ideas were introduced and then never re-visited, characters were teased and then lost in a vault, and things generally moved at the same breakneck pace as Walking Dead’s infamous second season, which spent 13 episodes adapting a two-issue storyline set on a farm. In re-watching the recent release of Agents of SHIELD Season One on Blu-ray, it struck me that I was only really paying attention to later episodes of the show; early episodes had some interesting story beats and character moments, but were largely forgettable and unimportant to the narrative that took over the show.
Once upon a time, genre shows generally coasted on the lack of a bigger narrative, using that episodic approach wherein our heroes and heroines would have one adventure a week involving something weird and that’d be the end of it. Looking back on television shows that I can put on as background noise and enjoy, shows like Star Trek and Xena: Warrior Princess are sort of emblematic of this — but as discussed earlier, it’s an outdated and otherwise archaic approach to television that works better on niche channels like USA (he says, as an unapologetic fan of Psych). Thing is, it’s 2014 and SHIELD ties directly into the bigger plans of creating a cohesive multi-media experience with spinning plates galore; the audience has neither the time nor the patience for material that doesn’t pull its weight, and neither should SHIELD.
So every episode should count. Every episode should be important, every storybeat should matter and every lesson needs to be learned. We have met all of the characters and we have a general feel for them; it’s time to make their adventures really count for something.
Continued below2. Less Coulson, More Everyone Else
When SHIELD first began airing, the soul of the show rested in Coulson. A character created for the films that pretty much represented the human heart and core connecting everyone in the Avengers together, Coulson’s death in the films and resurrection in the show was a premiere plot line, and one that we were very eager to explore when the show began.
But you know who became nearly immediately insufferable? Coulson. And you know who was left to prop the show up? Everyone else.
So here’s the thing: the show’s first season beat Coulson’s story to a pulp. The character and his life was dragged through the proverbial mud to the point where it was hard to care about Coulson’s trials and tribulations, as the character became erratic and (for a time) slightly unrecognizable. But the more that Coulson fell, the more there were also opportunities for the other characters to excel and grow — and thankfully they did! The supporting cast became more involved with the events, the storylines were more evenly distributed and the onus wasn’t placed entirely on one man’s shoulders; everyone got a chance to pull their weight, and slowly little character moments were unveiled that made us care about their lives more.
So let’s keep that up. Forget Coulson; we honestly don’t really need him as anything more than a figurehead or a mentor. Fitz and Simmons are characters that can actually talk to us, whose hijinks and exploits entertain. Melinda May is an amazing, complex and multi-faceted character with a lot of secrets left to share with us. Even Skye, whose introduction was a bit facetious, grew into a very headstrong and capable character with some of the biggest moments in the latter half of the first season. Use them, make them the stars — and this doesn’t account at all for whatever is to come with Triplett (you guys didn’t lose him, right?), Ward, and newer characters like Agents Koenig and Hartley (Patton Oswalt and Lucy Lawless, respectively).
If there’s one thing that SHIELD needs to keep ever-present in its mind, it’s that this is a show about a group. Relying on Coulson and the audience’s past affection for him alone makes for a dull experience with underdeveloped characters that act as props. It can be a tricky balance to have at times, sure (when everyone’s a main character, no one is), but relegating Coulson to the background is the smartest thing this show could do. This isn’t Buffy or Angel, or even Arrow; we don’t need a strong focal point to anchor everything. We have a team. Showcase it.
1. Don’t Hedge All Your Bets on Age of Ultron
This is the big one, folks.
Agents of SHIELD was a polarizing show that many people wrote off for a variety of reasons. For most it was that the show felt inconsequential and unlike the films; for others, it’s that the show meandered about and wasted most of its time treading in uninteresting waters. These are all things that we talked about and addressed in previous points, and hopefully the second season will have learned from those mistakes and general slip-ups.
However, it’s also universally agreed by those who stuck around through the whole thing that the show ended up coming out the other end with a positive experience. The producers of the show kept telling fans throughout the first season to stick it out, to wait and see, and they were right: things did pay-off, but only because the show found itself directly intertwined with the events of the Marvel feature film Captain America: The Winter Soldier which premiered after the 16th episode of SHIELD aired — conveniently giving them six episodes to address the cataclysmic events of the film, find and change the direction of the show and kick everything into high gear.
It was a gamble. It paid off. But as any high roller in Vegas will tell you, you’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away and know when to run.
Continued belowBut here’s the problem: it didn’t pay-off because every idea or character concept introduced in the first half of the show had some pay-off in the second. No, it paid off because we spent so much time toiling with these characters that we ended up with some form of affection for them — to the extent that, when the other shoe dropped and things became dire, it turns out we cared about their predicament. Their lives suddenly mattered, things felt real. On a show that felt safe, suddenly there was danger and excitement and actual spy work, let alone an integration with the Marvel Universe we’d been begging for.
This is more related to Winter Soldier, though. If Winter Soldier was Avengers 1.5, then SHIELD Season 1 was Winter Soldier Plus. Things we didn’t see explored in the film were explored in the show and given flimsy at best connections to the ongoing plot of the show, with certain loose ends and plotlines still getting tied up in quite satisfactory ways. However, you could still easily just watch those six episodes of SHIELD and act like the rest of the season never existed, though.
So why bring this up? Specifically because SHIELD Season 2 could inherently tie into Age of Ultron, which premieres May 1st (I’ll estimate that Season 2 will wrap around that time, as Season 1 ended May 13th). The timeline is less convenient than Winter Soldier, but I can guarantee you that there will be some connection there — even if it’s a la Torchwood Season 1 and how that tied into Doctor Who Season 3 (and that, honestly, would be the best solution). Marvel is intent on their synergy, so OK, lets deal with it and figure out ways to make things coherent — but don’t allow that synergy to be the only thing that makes your show worth watching.
I’m obviously spending the most time talking about this issue for what I’m hoping about Season 2, but it’s only because I’d love to see the show succeed from where it ostensibly failed. Season 1 of SHIELD should’ve been a lot better than it was, and it’s a shame that most people I know adore the films and deride the program; I can tell them over and over that it becomes worth it, but it’s not like I don’t understand their reluctance. And while I can make my assumptions of how the show will (perhaps obviously) bridge the gap towards Age of Ultron, my biggest fear is that the show will see Age of Ultron like a crutch that it has to feed into since #ItsAllConnected — and man, what a waste of time would that be.
So if I could give just one single piece of advice to the showrunners of Agents of SHIELD now, a week before Season 2 premieres (so clearly it’s a convenient time to give un-asked for tips to professionals), it would be this: make SHIELD a show worth watching on its own, and only on its own. It shouldn’t be separate from the films and there can be crossovers and synergy and all that, but Season 2 of SHIELD has enough characters, storylines and potential plotlines available and left over from Season 1 that it doesn’t need to tie-in to a film to justify its existence anymore.
Believe in yourself, SHIELD! Jed and Maurissa — forget what Joss and the rest of the gang at Marvel Studios are doing. You know why Guardians of the Galaxy is the most successful franchise film of the year? It’s at least partially because James Gunn was given a franchise to do whatever the hell he wanted to do with, and so he did; with the cast and crew and Nicole Perlman, Guardians tied into the Marvel Universe and blazed its own trail, and everyone couldn’t help but be charmed and want to follow along. It presented a central and unique voice and spoke to us with it, and it had nothing but an uphill battle because it starred at least partially a talking tree and raccoon.
It’s a point everyone makes about Guardians, but it’s never the less a salient one. Guardians found a voice and connected itself with the rest of the Marvel U without being beholden to it in the way the Avengers franchises have to be. It’s time for SHIELD do the same.
So bring out your best, SHIELD. Go exploring, play in the unknown corners of the world and showcase the voice that is available with the big and diverse cast here to play. Pretty much everything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has found a way to be self-defined with different styles and genres and forms of panache; find yours in Season 2.
