Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

I just want Malekith to finally be dethroned as worst villain, damn it!

I found Slingshot to be enjoyable, not amazing or great, just enjoyable. As much as I disliked the idea of the Marvel's Most Wanted spin-off, it they made it in this format then I would've been on-board. Short and sweet is a good formula when it comes to things like these.

Just curious, why didn't you like the idea of Marvel's Most Wanted Spin-off?

I just felt that it wouldn't do all that well, given the issue this show has with ratings I doubted that a lot of people would go watch a spin-off of this show at that time. I also felt it wouldn't do too well because the characters of Bobbi and Hunter worked better when being mixed in with a team, at least in my opinion.

That's how I felt too. Bobbi and Hunter were both much more interesting characters when interacting with literally anyone else than with each other. Their relationships to the rest of the cast is what made them great. When the story became about their relationship, the quality usually dropped.

When they first announced Bobbi and Hunter were getting spun off, I was not very happy with the idea because it meant taking the two characters, cutting off every interesting dynamic they had, and just shunting them into their own serious all about the least interesting aspect of them.

The decision to spin them off was terribly ill-conceived and, ultimately, all it accomplished was costing us two of the most fun characters in the entire cast.

edited 13th Dec '16 5:06:59 PM by TobiasDrake

I made a page for the web series.

I enjoyed Bobbi and Hunter on the show so much, but I do think that a spin-off would have been good. For one thing, it wouldn't just be Bobbi and Hunter — there were other actors they had, so they wouldn't only be interacting with each other. And two, they had enough great moments between them that a show with both would probably have a lot of great moments.

They could have their show, I just wouldn't watch it.

Well you can't now!

And because everyone was saying it was going to be shit before it even started, it died before it could even be born.

Nobody wanted to give this show a chance, and now it's never going to be a thing at all.

I wouldn't have minded getting to see Mockingbird go be Mockingbird some more. And maybe there'd have been flashbacks, so we'd have gotten more Isabel Hartley. And Mack could cameo. Frankly, any excuse to open up more adaptations of MCU— the smaller stuff that'll probably never make it onto the big screen— that's fine by me.

Didn't really care either way, but I hope the two can show up again.

edited 13th Dec '16 8:06:49 PM by Cross

Well that's not gonna happen now.

I blame everyone but me.....because I wanted to actually see the show!

For once, I'm totally clean! I win!

Now now Rob, it's no one's fault.

Except Ike Perlmutter's.

edited 14th Dec '16 11:46:59 AM by MapleSamurai

Ok.

I'm cool with that.

I actually really enjoyed the relationship between Hunter and Bobbi. It was so delightfully Mr. and Mrs. Smith - like. And I am fairly convinced that it was all the negativity which was thrown towards the show which killed it, and not the pilot (which I would love to see one day).

The show would have been a great opportunity to explore the MCU even further, more from the perspective of the "common" people and outside New York. I still morn the missed opportunity.

I don't think Most Wanted got an unreasonable amount of hate directed towards it. The thing is that nowadays, there is an insane number of comic-book adaptations on screen (and that's without counting shows that aren't CB adaptations yet whose viewers overlap). It is becoming really hard to watch everything that is released, as such, you need to be certain any new show will manage to find its public.

I think AOS already has "finding its public" as its major issue. The reason it is not a hit is not because of a lack of quality - it has highs and lows, but I think that the medium quality is above average overall - but because it doesn't have the same appeal other comic book adaptations have. It is neither a campy Silver Age show (like Flash, Gotham or Supergirl) nor a show that mainly tackles super-serious, "adult" themes (like Jessica Jones or Luke Cage), which means that it doesn't "look" like a comic-book show as much as others...yet it is still trying to be a show about superheroes, being set in the MCU. It doesn't even have recognizable characters (unlike Arrow) that makes viewer think "okay, it's a superhero show". That's one of the reasons I think, now, they should really make Daisy-as-Quake the center of the show, because she has powers, she has a costume, and she has more "superhero appeal" than the rest of the team. Note that I think Person of Interest suffered from the same issue: having an unclear positioning that was neither cop show, nor sci-fi or superhero, but something inbetween. The quality was stellar but it was hard to sell a show that looked like CSI but was actually more in line with Ghost in the Shell.

So a spin-off from a show that has a hard time finding its public is a really hazardous move. Hunter and Bobbi were likable characters, but not to the point of overshadowing the rest of the cast - the cast is probably the most balanced out of all the superhero shows as far as character quality goes, but on the downside it means it is less likely to create a clear Ensemble Dark Horse almost everyone agrees on (the likes of Cisco Ramon, Kilgrave, Foggy Nelson, Cottonmouth, or not-dating-Oliver-Queen Felicity Smoak). And even though Mockingbird is reasonably popular, she isn't really using her superheroic persona in the series.

Factor in the wonky status of the show - within the MCU, the movies are closely tied together, the Netflix shows are closely tied together, and AOS is...kinda there - and the chance for Most Wanted to reach a sufficient success was rather low. I don't think the Unpleasable Fanbase is to be blamed here.

edited 14th Dec '16 5:11:57 AM by Julep

I really don't think that this is the issue with Ao S, especially not since I consider it easily the best of the Comic book shows currently on Network TV. I think it is a combination of too high or wrong expectations (to this day there are people who are basically complaining about it being a spy show even though it is called AGENTS of shield), the really weak first episodes which caused a lot of people to give up to it and then lead to a situation in which it is somehow "hip" to say what an awful show it is. Add to this that reviewers who kept complaining about it in the past are very reluctant to admit that it actually is now better than shows which they used to praise to high havens and which are now on a constant downslide.

Naturally it doesn't help that Ao S isn't a show you just can turn on and understand immediately, you actually need to invest in it and pay attention to the details.

And yes, there was a LOT of negativity towards the Marvel's Most Wanted. On more or less every comment board people expressed how not interested they were in the show.

Again, you are blaming the "unfairness" of the critics or the fanbase on the lack of success of a show. There are some rules to success, some "boxes to tick": quality aside, if you want to triumph, you need to be original (so the viewers don't think that you are a waste of time already seens somewhere else) but not too original (else the viewers will have a haard time knowing where you fit).

Game of Thrones is extremely successful, but it is not fundamentally original. It is a medieval/fantasy show, with more politics and sex than average, but it is still clearly medfan. Arrow had some very low lows, but it still looks like a Nolan-era superhero show, because characters have codenames and most of them are costumed (also, it came out before most of its rivals, when the scene was much less crowded). Those show know the audiences they are targeting.

But if you take Person of Interest, who are you targeting? Police procedural fans? You probably lost them at the end of season 2. Sci-fi lovers because it is a freaking awesome techno-thriller? You have to convince them to go through two seasons of independent episodes ala CSI while the story arc very slowly kicks off. So it's super hard to advertise, and it got cancelled after a shorter fifth season, despite being arguably better than, well, pretty much everything else that was airing. Seriously, this show is a pure gem, yet I have a hard time even explaining people why I watch it. It wasn't a problem of negative critics, it's just that the show was in a no man's land between different genras, and never found its target audience.

AOS is similar.in that it is neither a Spy show (like Alias) nor a superhero show (again, few codenames, no costumes), and it is stuck between Movieverse and Netflixverse within the MCU. If the audiences aren't huge, it's not because it's being panned by the critics, it's just that it is very hard to advertise. And MW which was supposed to be a spin-off, on top of starting with that handicap (unlike Jessica Jones or Flash whose "mothershows" were more successful), it didn't feature characters popular enough to ensure a large fanbase.

Compare to Legends of Tomorrow, which among others starred three beloved characters from the Arrowverse (Sara Lance from Arrow and Captain Cold & Heatwave from Flash): very, very few people disagree that those three were by and large the most entertaining during season one, and the biggest reason the show got to season 2 (where it seems to have finally found its rhythm and tone). I don't think that, right now, there is a sufficient Ensemble Dark Horse in AOS that would guarantee the success of a spin-off - and don't forget that being based around an Ensemble Dark Horse is already how AOS got pitched. Maybe if Daisy and Robbie teamed-up and lived their own adventures...but they would have the advantage of looking like superheroes.

edited 14th Dec '16 6:14:50 AM by Julep

Personally I don't see what was so wrong about Coulson's resurrection being drawn out over the season.

Then again I'm used to watching shows like Buffy and Angel where plotpoints carry over a 22 episode season.

I just think that today's tv views are impatient.

You have to earn the right to drag out that kind of reveal. It's not as inherently interesting as the show seems to think, and Buffy had a pretty wacky take on a different monster in every episode to make up for any slow spots in the seasonal arc. It also had the Master— who admittedly was a total cliche, but also a very genre-savvy, self-aware spoof on that cliche. He was a villain who could hold your attention, even if he pales (hahaha) in comparison to later Big Bads.

AOS just had to run on Coulson's revival and Project CENTIPEDE, both of which were heavily backgrounded and so cloaked in mystery as to actually be kind of boring. Ruth Negga is gorgeous, but she never got to do anything remotely as cool as Julie Benz's 'vampire with a gun' standoff.

edited 15th Dec '16 4:21:05 PM by Unsung

If I remember right, they barely do anything with Centipede until episode four, spacing it out with two adventure of the week episodes (admittedly one introduced Ian Quinn, who became tied into the plot later on). Like, Skye mentions it to Coulson in the pilot, and Deathlok and that red haired doctor vaguely discuss it, but then they don't pick it up until episode four when they introduce Reyna. Hell, probably one of the reasons why I stuck with the show during season one was that Reyna was so much of an enigma to me that I just had to see what her whole deal was. That and the stuff about Coulson's revival genuinely felt interesting to me.

This is funny. Chloe Bennett did a commercial for "It Can Wait" that also stars Colton Haynes (Arsenal from Arrow). So it's like Quake having brunch with Arsenal.

I don't think that the problem with season 1 was that the Coulson reveal was dragged out, I think the problem was partly that they rushed character development so that they could have their "team" as fast as possible instead of giving the audience the time to get to know the characters. When the plane nearly crashes in the second episode, I didn't care at all, because I didn't really care about the characters at this point. It would have been better to introduce them through their interaction. Partly the problem was the focus on Skye. The audience signed up for an ensemble show about Coulson and his team, it was kind of annoying that the show spend the first episodes holding Skye in the air like a rejected puppy screaming "look, isn't she great". As a result, there was a lot of resentment towards Skye and not enough interest in her mystery, which run parallel to Coulson's.

I stick to my opinion though that if the fandom had a little bit more open-minded, Most Wanted would have happened. As it was, we lost out...now we have Bobbi and Hunter neither in the main nor in their own show.

The problem with Season One was that it was terribly written and all the characters behaved like utter morons.

If you're writing about teenagers a la Buffy, or a ragtag bunch of petty (yep, I said it, Mal) criminals like Firefly, having them sometimes screw up entertainingly works fine. Even in a show like The Flash, in the first season, there's some leeway, because none of them are trained front-line crimefighters (except Joe).

When you apply that style to an elite team of secret agents who supposedly go through an extensive recruitment and training process, though, it doesn't work. A secret agent show needs the characters to act to some degree like professionals, and at least be smarter than the audience, and they weren't. Like sending male agents on a mission against Lorelei, or that episode at the Shield Academy where it was patently obvious that the student Fitz was working with was Blizzard, or the very second episode where the lesson was "we need to work together!" and it was treated as some big revelation. Add in some dreadful dialogue, and you get a downright crappy show.

Better dialogue, more character development (including for antagonists like Cal and Jiaying and Ward), more protagonist competence, and more complex plots made the show from Season 2 onwards much more watchable. (I don't agree that the tail end of Season 1 was mch better than the rest of the season.). Ward in the first half of Season 2, as the guy who thinks he's having a redemption arc but isn't, was especially good.

edited 16th Dec '16 7:13:04 PM by Galadriel

Like, some people actually seemed to think Ward was getting a redemption arc that one time.

Was it- was it just me whom that never occurred to? Like, a fully, wholly bought into him being, like, straight asshole, right from the start of it first showed. And when he had his, "I'm really banged up about this guys, no really," I was like, "Yeah, he's crazy, straight up from crazy town. Kinda pitiful, really."

But then I read some people be like, "Yeah, I actually thought he was gonna get better."

And I'm like, "Huh."

I legitimately thought he was gonna go for a redemption arc. Didn't help that the way they framed the twist, while still making sense in hindsight and being the biggest and best twist of the show, was right after so many other twists that my immediate reaction was "nah, it can't be, it just can't be".