So I Watched 45 Minutes Of That Marvel TV Show Last Night

I don't watch a lot of TV, but when I do I'm a pretty easy "get" in terms of keeping me on board for an hour or so. I watch a lot of not-great TV shows on USA Network when I have dinner with my Mom. I have one or two network shows I try to catch with a nearby sibling when we're both free, and I catch up with the better-reviewed stuff in big gulps on DVD. You put something on a TV right in front of me and I can usually get invested in whatever's going on, at least for the time necessary to get me from one place to another.

I know that early-season episodes of a new TV series can be uneven, but I was still shocked how generic and cheap-looking and narratively slack Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed. There were only a few characters but their roles still overlapped; much of the dialogue felt like the same person speaking with a half-dozen different outfits on. You could shove that entire cast into a CSI or a NCIS or some syndicated show about a mutant superteam without blinking, which I suppose is the point. The bad guys in last night's episode could have strolled over from the set of a Burn Notice or a Strike Back and not had to change clothes. Perhaps worst of all for an action-adventure drama, I got no sense of basic physical stakes in any of the action scenes. One fight scene featured teams with wildly uneven skill sets doing battle in a plane interior with a hole in its side, and there was never any doubt as to the outcome or any interesting moment getting us there.

I don't know. The Marvel universe was a rich, distinctive place for me to spend time when I was a kid and a teen -- I visited for years afterwards -- and I get the sense from today's Marvel comic books when I see them that there's still a feel to the place that keeps those readers enthusiastic. From this, I got nothing.
 
posted 9:00 pm PST | Permalink
 

---

 
Daily Blog Archives
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
 
Full Archives