Sunday, December 1, 2013

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 1.09 Review: How We Understand People


For all those that have yet to watch this last Tuesday’s episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., entitled ‘Repairs’, well then you’re even later to the show than I am so you should probably go watch it now. This isn’t a spoiler free blog. THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS! Proceed ahead at your own discretion.
This series seems to be coming together rather slowly. Even just with this week’s episode the characters seem mostly superficial, and in May’s case mostly rigid. There’s very little heart to this series on a consistent basis, it seems to peak out at times, but not quite often enough. I just don’t care enough about these people’s lives, and I think that the rest of the audience is feeling that way as well. These actors don’t seem to play off each other well enough and don’t seem to have enough good chemistry to keep this show up. Someone needs to throw them all in a cabin in the middle of a no-signal patch of deep woods and let them work together for a week and see how they come out after that.
More regarding this episode, while it was inferred to the last episode, I’m not getting Ward and May. They didn’t set that thing up anywhere near as well as they should have. Of all people, I’d expect May to gravitate towards Coulson more than Ward, despite her sharing more in common with Ward – job wise. They just, they don’t fit well enough at all. And the fact that they feel the need to hide it, I honestly don’t think anyone would care if they were getting their freak on together. And yes, I did just use freak on. Basically, for me, it didn’t feel natural to either the story or the characters themselves. I would feel differently if it had.
So basically this week’s episode, otherwise, was about this man who kept jumping between dimensions – or, at least, that’s the gist I got from it. This was a very confusing concept for me. Was the guy going to die? Or was he just holding on to this reality too grippingly that he wasn’t able to stick to the other dimension? They didn’t explain this nearly as well as they should have, so it kind of feels like unfinished business to me.
Up until that point, I was enjoying what was going on with this episode, very intriguing. I really liked the whole prank situation that went on, although it wasn’t done nearly as well in certain situations as it could have. Also, I’m kind of angry with Coulson for thinking that what May needed to hear at her ‘Cavalry’ moment was what she told the man clinging to a woman he liked. That was completely terrible, and not at all something anyone should tell another person. It kind of made me want to punch him out.
All in all, this series isn’t exactly moving in a way that makes sense. It feels like it’s jumping all over the place, and that it’s resolving certain storylines improperly. It’s like they don’t seem to know where they’re going, or even have some endgame in sight. The way that it is moving is rather sloppily done, and not at all something that will likely keep this series around longer than this season. Unless they really get their act together, I don’t have high hopes.
My rating: 6 out of 10.

Best Lines:
“No! You do not touch that!” – Fitz scolds Skye for touching the graphics.
“My boring, old, flat computer.” – Skye mutters, after being told not to touch the graphics.


My apologies for how late this is, although I did watch it two days ago, I’ve just not felt in the mood, I’ve been in the Christmas spirit – something that’s getting harder to ignore the closer we get to Christmas. But here you go. I’m probably not going to have the Dracula review up until tomorrow, alongside Once Upon A Time.

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