GREAT, spoiler-free review of the last episode of this season's Agents of Shield.
One of the biggest and most frequent complaints thrown at Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. last September was in regard to the series seeming lack of “punch.” While a fair criticism series detractors seems to forget S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t a film, it’s a TV series. When the big moment of delivery finally comes, things need to remain somewhat small (from a logistical stand-point), yet still feel like they have as much gravity as a feature because of bui…
Still flagging it for reading after I see the finale. We have 3-4 episodes to go through en famile once we're all back in the same house (though I confess I have kept up covertly on my own).
Okay, couldn't resist. Which says something about how excited I've gotten about this show after being so, um, merely dutiful in watching it earlier on.
After The Winter Solder, SHIELD turned into Must See TV for us, too. With Game of Thrones, pretty much the only show we watch the day it airs.
I guess I'll come back to it then once the full season is available again on hulu. Can I just watch the episodes after the movie…cause I didn't make it very far.
+Michelle Norton You could — though they are doing a lot to tie in (and make meaningful) seemingly random one-off stuff from earlier in the season. Knowing it gets better and that a lot of the stuff that seems very dull, pedestrian, or by the numbers turns out to be a lot more significant than it seems, I'd recommend watching the full season.
If you don't, then start with at least ep 15 ("Yes Men"), which is a couple before the movie, as they start ramping things up about then.
Here's the dilemma — the first 2/3 of the season are not well executed in a variety of ways — some awkwardness with acting, lack of clarity as to the direction they are going with things, some apparent cliche writing, and just … well, you fell out of watching it, so you know. And I don't think that they tie things all back together so that they make sense justifies the poor execution. But …they do tie everything back together.
Best analogy (if it's at all meaningful) is the first season of "Babylon 5", which suffers from all the flaws I give above, with occasional (but only occasional) flashes of OMG. Could you watch everything starting with the first ep of S2? Yeah, you probably could, and you'd avoid a lot of cringing and laughing and irritation. But you'd still probably miss out on some stuff that makes the rest of the series a lot better. Same with AoS: you could skip all that stuff and avoid a lot of pain, but you'd also miss out on some bits.
I am, honestly, tempted to rewatch the full season at this point, even knowing its faults, just to see the pieces fit together.
I'll probably start where I left off then…which was an ep or two after the went to the HUB. I got very tired of Captn Smug and the Cardboard gang.
The Hub was ep 7; things start to finally start gelling a bit around ep 10 ("The Bridge"), are beginning to fire on all-to-most cylinders by ep 14 ("T.A.H.I.T.I."), and once the Winter Soldier stuff is full engaged in ep 17 ("The End of the Beginning") it's pretty damned good.