Date Night: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

In which I review a movie that's streamable on Netflix.

This might be turn out to be cheating, but I was up against a wall here.  For the last week, all Becky's wanted to watch has either been Dragonball Z, Dragonball Z movies or Fast and Furious movies.  It was a struggle to get her to watch Daredevil, and even then she hasn't been amenable enough to that series to get me to where I could review that for today yesterday.

So I hadn't seen a movie on Netflix this week and wasn't about to do a half measure by reviewing the first five episodes of Daredevil.  But do you know what I did get her to watch despite herself?  Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  And although technically just outside of the scope of my recent revisited series, it does fit roughly into place leading up to Age of Ultron.

In the wake of the Battle of New York, the world has become a far more interesting place.  Instead of going to bed thinking that the weirdest thing in the world was a Batman wanna-be in a robotic suit, people know for a fact that their world is populated with gods, monsters and super-powered legends.  Agent Phil Coulson, who survived his supposed death in The Avengers, has assembled a mobile response team to investigate and contain technology that the world simply isn’t ready to deal with yet.  Routine missions and by-the-books protocol are quickly set aside, however, as a mysterious villain known only as The Clairvoyant begins unraveling everything that Coulson has lived – and died – to defend. 

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s premise allows to plumb the depths of science fiction, free to explore technologies that society is simply safer without: gamma radiation, extra-dimensional wormholes, anti-gravity bombs, cybernetic upgrades, Asgardian sorcery and Project Centipede’s next gen super soldiers.  With TV-veteran Joss Whedon’s continued oversight, the show adopted the light-hearted, action-comedy blend and dramatic underpinnings that made The Avengers a billion dollar box-office success, as well as a dynamic cast of distinctly-rendered characters that made Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly household names.

While it has been argued that the series cheapens the MCU by retconning Agent Coulson’s sacrifice into a mere team-building exercise, its playful, back-and-forth development between each week’s episode and the latest Marvel movie greatly broadens the scope of the MCU.  Premiering shortly after the release of Iron Man 3, it immediately dealt with the next phase of Extremis’ development.  Following Thor’s victory over Malaketh, Coulson’s team parses through the Greenwich wreckage for trace bits of alien tech and assists Lady Sif recover an Asgardian fugitive who escaped in the aftermath of the assault on Asgard.

The series gives a broader and more complete timeline of Hydra’s insurgence, only a part of which was the battle above the Triskelion during The Winter Soldier.  Agent Coulson’s attempts to contact Fury are met with constant dead ends and misdirection, which we understand are because Fury has faked his death and has gone underground.  As Coulson’s team attempts to retake a S.H.I.E.L.D. base from Hydra sleeper agents, they begin to understand the scope of the uprising.

Faculty and students are slaughtered at the S.H.I.E.L.D. academies, the assassination of all high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (only one of which was Fury) and raids on secure facilities for weapons, artifacts and prisoners acquired over the course of the series.  We watch the United States government label S.H.I.E.L.D. a terrorist organization and understand that Maria Hill defected to Stark Industries not for the steady paycheck, but for its legal team’s protection against government action.

The show's casting is the perfect blend of action-capable muscle with big screen presences and comically understated support.  Clark Gregg is perfect in his role of the soul-searching Agent Coulson.  Iain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge bring out the emotional cores of Agents Fitz and Simmons, characters who could have otherwise been presented as interchangeable cogs in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s scientific machinations.  Despite her character’s inherent impassivity, Ming-Na Wen’s Agent Melinda May is seething with the subtle rage of a good person who can never seem to find forgiveness from the one person who truly counts: herself.

Chloe Bennet’s search for what happened to her family as Skye  is both more desperate and more earnest than many more-veteran actors have been able to pull off on the big screen.  Brett Dalton shifts easily between Agent Ward of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Ward of Hydra: caught between his loyalty to the greater good and to the man that saved him from the worst in himself.

It’s hard to even find any real faults in the show, since everything that I could mention was sorted out in the first quarter of its first season.  While Skye does begin as a counter-point to S.H.I.E.L.D. – a character so obviously beyond the scope of the agency that her primary function seems to be to remind the audience that “normal” people actually exist – she soon finds her place both within the team and as a character.

Although initially bland and out-of-place amongst the myriad of colorful cast members, Agent Ward’s nuanced character quickly becomes apparent when the story allows him to open up to the rest of the team.  Despite sitting sideline in the early episodes to allow Agents Ward and May to command the action scenes, Agents Fitz and Simmons swiftly begin commanding scenes both in and out of the field in their own right.

Although the series doesn't really come into its own until season 2, the first season is a surprisingly strong addition to Marvel's burgeoning cinematic universe.  It allows us access to stories and characters that would be too immaterial for a movie, but far too interesting to be cast aside.  Any fans of Marvel's big screen endeavors, Netflix series or even just "genre" TV as a whole will find something to love in this series.

Rating:  8/10

Buy on BluRay:  Yes, especially for the latter half of the season.

So what is your favorite episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s first season?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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