So your ever reliable and urbane narrator Dane Barbados Jr. did not review last week's episode of SHIELD. Had the review been missed because Dane Barbados Jr. had something better to do it would not be worth mention, however the sad fact is that despite being eternally young, panty moisteningly handsome and extremely rich even one such as Dane Barbados Jr. is beholden to the vile capriciousness of Comcast. Mother. Fucking. Comcast. And a service interruption that encompassed two city blocks claimed my viewing of the episode.
When the episode was finally seen it just as quickly vanished from the memory of your humble narrator. Not much happened, long time Marvel comics villain Graviton got an origin and that was all of note.
Onto this week's episode, entitled "Eye Spy." A quick synopsis can be written quickly and efficiently: "Skye is an offensively vapid slattern and Dane Barbados Jr. would enjoy to see naught but her being eaten alive by gamma irradiated gila monsters because I truly fucking hate her."
Skye is almost single-handedly sinking the proverbial stupidly multi-winged ship that is the show. She's so incongruous to whatever is happening around her, so out of place she feels like she was transplanted from another show. As the only character the uses it the limitations and irritations of Whedonspeak become apparent. That idiosyncratic style of dialogue, which lent a since of youth and charm to shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. is grating and nut-crunchingly teeth grinding in SHIELD. Primarily because it all comes from one character. No one else talks like a bubble-headed, sun bleached, idiot from the shores of your southern California. And really, it has little place in a group of highly funded, somewhat professional secret agents. If the character was played by a plucky teen it would be a whole different brand of scarlet tinted fury but it would at least be believable.
Outside of that the episode, while not exactly bad judged by the lofty standards of one such as I, still ended up sucking by virtue of being exactly what Agents of SHIELD should not be: just another procedural. This week's episode, with extremely minor changes, could have been 60 minutes of NCIS.
Rouge agent trained by the straight-faced lead agent of our heroic, government employed, protagonists. One of our team members wants to take her out but team leader has a suspicion that all is not what it seems and that rouge agent is being coerced. They predictably are but are being monitored and will be killed if there is an issue Race against the clock to discover the mastermind behind it while simultaneously attempting to disable the fail-safe threatening to kill the rouge agent.
How many times have you seen that on television already? Replace "government employed" protagonists with "peace enforcement officers" and ask yourself that question again. There are scores of procedurals on television. The American television populace has been inundated with them since "Law & Order" got its first spinoff in 1999, from medical procedurals to police procedurals to government agent procedurals to supernatural procedurals with Fox's "Sleepy Hollow." SHEILD being a government procedural with science fiction elements will not cut it in a world in which "Fringe" existed. Tony Stark mugging at the camera or Samuel L. Jackson making a dry quip every fortnight isn't a requirement but finding a way to embrace the more fantastic elements of the Marvel universe, within budget, is a necessity to separate from an endless, grasping sea of similar shows, particularly at a point where procedurals' popularity is finally starting to wane.
Even within the show other supposedly highly intelligent characters show astounding lack of logic, reason and intelligence. When discussing the failsafe within the rouge agent with our resident geeks Agents Fitz/Simmons , Agent Coulson says of it "It could be a bomb, it could be poison gas, we don't know." Once the failsafe is removed what happens you may wonder? Well one of our highly intelligent agents, the female one, (dare not ask Dane Barbados Jr. to remember their individual names. If the show doesn't care if they're distinct, than neither shall I) deposits it into a small blast chamber where there is a small puff and some smoke or vapor. Five seconds later she opens it, smoke / vapor pouring out, sticks her face over and peers in. Good thing for her it was a bomb and not the gas. Bad thing for us perhaps.
On the good end Clark Gregg put in his usual solid performance as Agent Coulson and there was another plot hit of what happened to him after the Battle of New York, though hopefully this won't be the season's big mystery as if all as it appears it will serve as a massive anti-climax for readers of the comics. He also got to show a little more range and emotion than usual.
Guest star Pascale Armand as rogue agent Akela Amador was a fine addition being able the range necessary to pull off someone who has been at turns abandoned, manipulated and then rescued, with a question about Coulson near the end of the episode being played quite well. She also puts in a good action scene against Melinda May.
Ming-Na Wen continues to just barely skirt the right side of the line between "completely empty cypher" and "quiet deliverer of asskickery" with little things like her interactions with Coulson early in the episode and effortlessly dodging a knife thrown at her head with a slight tilt of the neck and a stone-faced glare played out extremely well.
Most surprisingly Brett Dalton's Agent Ward finally got to show some actual personality beyond "gruff military man with hidden soft side" in this episode, having to infiltrate a facility posing as the rogue agent. His small moment with a burly and surly Russian guard was a rare genuinely fun moment.
All in all this wasn't a bad episode, and "Agents of SHIELD" isn't a bad show, but both were numbingly average leaving little that lasts in the memory and not much to separate if from its many similar peers. Very similar to your girlfriend if Dane Barbados Jr. remembers correctly.
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