Hasta La Gadget!

Jan 27

‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ vs. the special snowflake

Most people are told not to touch Coulson's vintage car, Lola. Skye gets to ride in it.

(Credit: ABC screenshot by Kelsey Adams/CNET)

The ratings haven’t been that bad, but the buzz has. I know hardly anyone who admits to watching and liking “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” Well, building a TV show around a beloved but essentially one-joke character and his army of men in black was never going to be easy. Agent Coulson has been a surprise standout of the Marvel movie series, but he’d always been effective in small doses. For this they had to figure out how to make him and S.H.I.E.L.D. into a full meal. Still, Clark Gregg is great, and Joss Whedon was involved — so what went wrong?

Mostly, the writers of the ABC show did what you’d expect. They came up with some more character traits for Agent Coulson; gave him a cute supporting cast; tried to flesh out S.H.I.E.L.D. a bit without killing its mystique; and threw in an audience identification character to ground it all. But now that character’s been revealed as so much more than that.

I’m talking, of course, about spunky, sassy, vulnerable Skye, who is an extremely special person. Or so we’re told, again and again. I’m assuming she’s the audience surrogate because she comes in to S.H.I.E.L.D. from outside, asks for explanations of everything, calls the organization out for being creepy but falls for Coulson’s charm,… [Read more]