As if Coulson wasn’t already dead enough, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s second episode “0-8-4,” opens with our beloved agent nearly being sucked out of a hole that has been blown out of the side of their plane (The Bus). Why a hole? Why near Coulson? Who’s the idiot who yells “Hang on!” from offscreen, as if a Level 8 S.H.I.E.L.D. agent didn’t have “don’t get sucked out of a plane” completely internalized? We don’t know. Let’s keep watching!
The episode flashes back to 19 hours earlier, where we find Skye moving her stuff out of her van and into The Bus, because anyone who isn’t an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. can do that it’s just not a constitutional right that we’re made aware of. Agent Ward asks Coulson what’s up with Skye and Coulson says she’s not an agent, she’s a “consultant” and Stark was a consultant so LAY OFF. Ward and, oh, Agent May is also there she just wasn’t talking, continue to argue their very reasonable points: 1.) She’s part of a group that’s considered hostile to S.H.I.E.L.D. 2.) She’s not combat-trained and that stretches the actually-trained members of the team thin, considering that Fitz and Simmons haven’t yet perfected their Care Bear Stare. 3.) Coulson is giving her access to tech that she could bring the world to its knees with.
Coulson pretends to have good answers to these, but doesn’t really, and the subject changes to the teaser from the previous episode: the emergence of an “0-8-4” which, in S.H.I.E.L.D., is the catch-all code for Who Even Knows. Actually, technically it’s “An object of unknown origin” according to later dialogue and we find out the last 0-8-4 that S.H.I.E.L.D. encountered was a very specific hammer….
Skye gets shown around The Bus and immediately is given a bunk nicer than any of our apartments. Simmons apologizes for the whole thing where they threw a bag over her head and kidnapped her and the bagger himself, Ward, gives Skye a handy pamphlet on how The Bus works and where to escape from it should it ever turn into a flying deathtrap. The pamphlet is super adorable but leads me down an existential spiral of wondering why they thought they needed pamphlets, do they have a lot of guests, where were they printed, was that printing classified, is printing classified pamphlets something you would label a 0-8-4, is this a Chekhov’s Pamphlet and…this is why I can’t have friends.
Coulson strolls by to explain The Bus some more. It turns out it was a gift to Coulson from Nick Fury for putting himself in harm’s (i.e. Loki’s) way “before the Battle of New York.” Skye mentions that she heard he went to Tahiti to recuperate, to which Coulson vacantly replies, “It’s a magical place.” The message is clear. He knows he’s not supposed to be alive. And you should really be using coasters if you’re going to leave that bottle of water on the table.
The team lands in Peru and Agent May is given the high-priority job of parking their cars while the rest of the team explores the area. Fitz geeks out over monkeys and Simmons geeks out over the wide variety of biologically diverse fauna in the region. Skye gets on Coulson about warning the people but Coulson is all, “Remember the panic from that antimatter meteor that nearly engulfed Miami?” We rack our brains trying to remember which Marvel movie that happened in, but before a result comes up, Coulson reveals that no, of course we never heard about it, because S.H.I.E.L.D. kept it contained and quiet. Now let’s all go inside that huge temple we drove up to, he continues-ish, because that’s one of the index cards that the writer’s room darts hit this week.
S.H.I.E.L.D. meets a professor in the temple, who reveals that it dates back over 500 years and is full of pre-Inca artifacts, one of which is weeeird. Skye finds out that if said artifact gets Too Weird her job is to destroy any information that gets out about it. Plainly, the opposite of what she wants to do in life.
The 0-8-4 is pretty obvious, being a piece of tech that’s 1500 years old, still glowing, and somehow gouged into a wall that it pre-dates. Fitz likens the craftsmanship to German manufacturing. While they take readings, Ward and May guard the entrance to the temple and Ward teases her about her nickname “The Cavalry” while also sneaking casually up to a soldier hiding in a nearby bush and taking him out. May takes another three or so out as they flush into the area, but the two of them are quickly outnumbered and a stand-off ensues.
Coulson walks out and the woman leading the soldiers recognizes him instantly. He introduces her as Commandante Camilla Reyes of the Policia Peru. “We used to work together back in the day.”
While Coulson and Camilla canoodle the team bickers about revolution, unknown isotopes, and the hypocrisy of promoting violence from behind the safety of a computer. Just then, rebels attack the soldier camp just outside of the temple. Coulson and Camilla dive into the action and the rest of the team scampers away with the artifact after Ward literally yanks it out of the wall and gives Fitz a heart attack.
There is a daring escape and Ward gets to use this weird spike thing that shoots out an EMP burst. The team makes it back to The Bus and Fitz reveals that the artifact uses the same kind of power that the Tesseract from The Avengers did. During this explanation Ward uses one of the dumbest lines of dialogue in the history of ever, a cliched line that I hate so much that I wish the U.N. would pass a binding resolution where using it is considered a war crime: “Hey, [name of scientist], in English.”
First of all, don’t cut a character off when he or she is actually about to say something interesting and possibly horizon-expanding. Especially in a show that’s about the Earth taking a huge leap forward into an era of superheroes. A show which will, by definition, involve fascinating theoretical concepts. So what if I don’t understand the terms that the character is saying? If they’re important to the story, or they sound cool, then I’ll bother to find out what those terms mean. And even if the show is using those terms incorrectly, I’ll still have learned something interesting.
Second of all, this is a show about a team that deals with superpowered anything. Your audience grew up reading comic books! You can safely bet that they self-identify as a nerd or geek of some sort, so having Agent SquatThrust hush up someone who is just trying to lay some science down is more than annoying character trait, it’s downright shameful. You’re telling your audience that even in arenas where they are valued for their knowledge they should act as if they aren’t, that some jerk will steamroll right over them, and that they should feel ashamed for even trying to share.
Third, it’s not even a line that’s necessary to the script. In the episode, Fitz begins his detailed explanation, then Ward bark bark barks, then Fitz gets to the summation of his explanation. Regardless of what Ward does or doesn’t say, Fitz will get to the piece of information that the script is trying to convey, so why have Ward say something that doesn’t actually contribute to the scene or his character? The “in English” line is a cliche for a reason. Its presence is so ubiquitous in the media that we consume that it’s easy for writers to find themselves inserting it into a script without really thinking about its implications or needlessness. Which just makes it worse, really. It’s an insulting line, included without thought.
This is possibly also why I can’t have friends.
Coulson sheepishly apologizes (to May, not me, although wouldn’t that be an interesting twist?) about putting her back in combat but she gives him the coldest of shoulders and he backs off. Meanwhile, Fitz yells at Ward for jostling and exposing the artifact—which is essentially a nuclear core—to gunfire even though Fitz told him “in plain bloody English!” to Be Careful. Ward doubles down on being an asshole, looms over Fitz, and says he used “MY English. Words like ‘duck.’ And ‘cover’.” and that should have been enough for Fitz. The two of them escalate to full on screaming as Coulson herds the Peruvian police to the upper deck where they can relax. (And which, oddly enough, does indeed prove the usefulness of printing pamphlets about The Bus!)
With Coulson in the room, everyone on the team (except May. Always except May!) brings their laundry out to air. Skye accuses the team of being just as inexperienced as she is and that she might as well be Team Captain. Ward insists that his talents lay in solo ops, he’s trained to eliminate variables and arrive at One Solution, and that being on a team confuses that training. Fitz and Simmons babble over each other about how unappreciated their talents are. Coulson listens, but doesn’t engage. They need to work this out for themselves.
Fitz and Simmons get to play with some nifty Stark tech as they analyze the artifact and without Ward’s mastery of English to interrupt them, we get a clear explanation of what it is: The Tesseract energy generates plasma and focuses it optically into a beam powerful enough to shoot through 50 feet of solid rock. “A laser?” “A weapon.”
Upstairs from the lab, Skye sits down to talk with Ward and explain her viewpoint on supporting uprisings with her online activities, citing that technology as straightforward as Twitter is allowing people to unite their voice in a manner that hasn’t been possible in previous times. Uprisings against oppressive regimes will happen anyway, she argues, but if you link thousands of like-minded people together they can produce change and consensus that is more useful than a handful of militants can. Skye reveals that supporting this concept provides her with a lot of optimism, although she’s careful to add that she’s never been in a war zone “until today” (and even that is arguable), like Ward has.
Coulson uses his downtime to show his collection of classic spy tech to Camilla, including a walkie-talkie watch that S.H.I.E.L.D.’s precursor made in 1936. Camilla makes a series of clumsy passes and Coulson’s spider-sense goes off, just about the same time that Ward’s does, one deck below. “We could make some more memories…what do you think?” Camilla flirts. To which Coulson responds, “I think Ward already knows that you’ll have to take May out in the cockpit to have any chance of getting this plane, which gives him 20 seconds to get to her first.” BOOM. Coulson for the win! He was also probably ordering dinner for everyone off of Seamless while he said that. That’s how smooth he is.
Unfortunately, Ward gets caught up with pummeling the soldiers near him and May gets gassed in the cockpit. The soldiers also make short work of Fitz and Simmons and the agents are nullified. They’re tied up together and start apologizing for being jerks to each other earlier, and for not knowing kung fu, which is an apology we all have to make at least once in life.
While they work out a plan, Camilla delivers her Villain’s Monologue to a captive Coulson in while utilizing the Watching-A-Pigeon-As-It-Flies-Around-Inside-A-Car-Rental-Office style of stage acting, the incongruity of which has the fascinating effect of making you more interested in the scene just to see what weird move she’ll try next. We get the full story about the 0-8-4. The artifact is actually pretty new and was made by Hydra agents that fled Germany for Peru after World War 2. They lost it until recently and would like to use it to crush the Peruvian rebels, please. Coulson reminds her that engineering alien tech to rule your own country is pretty small-minded when you consider how the Chitauri tried to kill everyone just a short while ago. “They won’t care what colors you’re wearing, just that you’re in the way.”
Camilla accuses Coulson of having a mid-life crisis, a line reading only made notable by Coulson’s response of “More of an afterlife crisis…” He thanks her for giving his team a common enemy, though, and forcing them to work together. One level below, this new bonhomie starts off with the team taking out the one guard watching them, smashing through the lab doors with their truck, and sending a bunch of Fitz’s hovery robots through the duct system to activate the ray gun and blow a hole through the plane.
The team battles through the decompression, gets the artifact back, retakes the cockpit, and even saves Camilla. Then Skye notices the pamphlet and scampers off to get one of the helpfully marked inflatable rafts marked out on it, her idea being to seal the hole in the plane’s hull with it. The plan WORKS, but the camera tries not to linger too long on it, lest we notice the hole torn in the extremely flimsy raft prop.
The team makes it to The Slingshot, a classified facility where the 0-8-4 can be stored, and Skye considers whether to join S.H.I.E.L.D. outright. May mentions that if she does she’ll need a supporting officer to show her the ropes. Ward assumes she’s talking about him.
While The Bus gets looked at, the crew watches the lift-off of a rocket that Fitz apparently built as a way to unwind from their adventure. It’s calculated to fly directly into the sun, and shouldn’t hit any Lagrange points or coronal ejections. Ward pleads once more for English, but he is the worst and besides, Lagrangian points are cool and rockets are cool and oh Ward, the cliched line did have a real point, didn’t it? You’re just nervous now that you have to be around people all the time, aren’t you? It’s okay, I forgive you.
They have some beers as the the stub rocket takes off in the distance, but Skye abstains. She’s busy getting texts from Rising Tide asking whether she’s infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. yet.
Impressions of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Second episodes are harder than first ones, I imagine. You’ve introduced your premise already, and given new viewers some real spectacle to see, but now you have to keep giving that spectacle while the actors figure out what kind of character they’re playing, while the show figures out what kind of voice it has, and while the viewers figure out whether this is interesting enough to stay tuned in. The first episode has to put some butts in the seats, so to speak, but the second episode has to keep them there, and that is not easy.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s second episode “0-8-4” does…okay. It puts some real effort into developing the characters alongside the action sequences, squeezing in bits of dialogue or conflict wherever it can, and it allows itself one great one-on-one between Skye and Ward in the final third of the episode. Both are espousing their worldviews in it, which can be awkward, but it’s refreshing to watch due to how the two actors let their characters relax and just talk to each other like adults.
It’s obvious that the show needs to keep focusing on this if it’s going to be at all interesting, because it’s already scraping the edges of the Barrel O’ Plot. A tesseract-powered gun made by Nazi Hydra agents that escaped to Peru is a pretty groan-worthy plot device, made just barely allowable due to how silly the Marvel superhero world can get. But the rest of the Peru stuff was so by-the-numbers that I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of it.
The same goes for what the artifact eventually turned out to be. A laser gun? Whatever. S.H.I.E.L.D. has those already. Any other type of device would have been more interesting to convey. Hell, even a laser gun with a specific twist would have been more interesting. Like, what if it was a gun that only activated for the first person who touched it? That would have made Ward a threat to the team and a target for the Peruvians. It would have made Fitz insanely jealous. It would have made everybody very worried. And it would have allowed Ward to explore the pros and cons of his habit of always finding one quick solution for a problem.
This is all easy to point out from where I sit, however. And any TV show, regardless of pedigree, can hardly be faulted for its simplicity when it’s only two episodes old. “0-8-4” is at least trying to build its characters into more fully realized people, and it does that without sacrificing the verve and fun that has come to embody the cinematic Marvel universe. At this point I feel like that’s all we can really ask from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
I shall endeavor to create a pamphlet that explains this more concisely.
Tidbits of S.H.I.E.L.D.
- It also helps a LOT to have a post-credits scene where Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury shows up to yell at people. A fish tank, Coulson? This is why he is in charge and you are not.
- Marvel teased the post-credits scene before the episode and in my mind it was an even toss-up between a Nick Fury appearance and something Thor-related. I wonder if they’ll weave more Asgardian stuff in to subsequent episodes, or react to the events of it after Thor: The Dark World has been released?
- Clark Gregg is trying so hard not to break during that scene. It’s amazing to watch. He almost loses it after the fish tank line.
- I love that the agents, the Peruvian soldiers, and the rebels were all very careful to keep Lola out of harm’s way.
- It is pretty creepy how insistent the show is at keeping May offscreen or silent in group scenes. Not “good” creepy, just “creepy” creepy. I also get the sense that May will end up being the one taking a traitorous Skye down, not Coulson.
- What, again, was the actual plan that the Peruvians had? Did they pick up on the same transmission that the professor sent to S.H.I.E.L.D.? Are all professors just trained to call S.H.I.E.L.D. in the Marvel universe?
- THAT IS NOT HOW PRESSURIZATION WORKS. But it was a hilarious solution. Sorry, science. I will always give you up for comedy.
Chris Lough is the production manager of Tor.com and is buying inflatable rafts wholesale in order to corner the plane-hole-plugging market.
The rocket at the end is carrying the 0-8-4 to destroy it in the sun unless I was very lost.
Ah, that makes sense. I must have missed it in the garble-garble at the beginning of that scene. That’s a shame! I love the idea of Fitz building rockets as a stress reliever.
The post-credits bit was definitely the best.
Although next week’s episode was called “their most bizarre case yet” by the network announcer guy. Dude, it’s their 3rd case. Most bizarre yet doesn’t really mean all that much.
It’s interesting that Coulson said the Hammer is the last 0-8-4 that SHIELD found, since that occured at the end of Iron Man 2, while they apparently found another Tesseract device at the end of Thor/beginning of The Avengers which took place chronologically after.
Three times now in two episodes, Coulson has said “It’s a magical place” when Tahiti was mentioned. That’s more than just a running gag. The mechanical way he says it suggests some kind of conditioned response — or a preprogrammed one, if you go for the ubiquitous fan theory that he’s really a Life Model Decoy.
And how can a pyramid only 500 years old have pre-Inca artifacts in it when the Inca civilization arose 800 years ago and was overthrown by the Spanish 480 years ago?
@@.-@: I believe Coulson said the hammer was the last 0-8-4 he personally investigated.
They’re a government agency in a world that’s embroiled in a war with a ruthless alien enemy that has superior technology and weapons, and they find an extremely potent weapon of an unknown type, and what they do with it is throw it into the sun? Sure they do. If everyone in S.H.E.I.L.D. is a moron, maybe.
The tesseract from the Avengers was found while looking for Cap. They’d had it for 50 years or so by the time of the movie.
@3: Thank you! I thought the same thing. Hate it when networks do that.
@5: It’s becasue most TV writers don’t know history, and the interns were unable to find the real facts quick enought. Plus it’s a show on USA television. So even thought it’s audiance is “nerds” so people who know how to reseearch; they figured the audiance doesn’t care about history outsider their own borders.
Hate that I think that, but it’s what I see too often.
“Flying Man Cave” is the name of my next band
@6: Maybe Fury convinced SHIELD to abandon their “Phase 2” research into weaponizing tesseract technology due to the ethical objections the Avengers raised. Or maybe he just made it look like the HYDRA weapon was launched into the Sun and it was really shunted off to a secret facility somewhere. Heck, the whole existence of this show is predicated on the fact that Fury lies.
@8: It took me mere seconds to find the info on Wikipedia. “Didn’t have time to find the facts” is no longer a valid excuse in this day and age.
Coulson’s attending physician… Stephen Strange. Tahiti truly is a magical place.
Was there an explanation given how this 1500-year-old artifact was built by post-WWII Germans?
Yeah, a 1500-year-old artifact built by a 50-year-old organization lodged in a 500-year-old structure made my head hurt.
Quibbles aside, this is turning out to be a fun show.
Yeah, the whole 500 years ago thing made me do a double-take. I really didn’t listen to much of the show after that point. I read posts online while the fighting happened in my background vision.
But Samuel Jackson totally brought me back to the show. Apparently I am easily mollified.
Is there a word for the non-science technobbable? I think that’s what they were doing for the archeology and history here, so they figured it’d didn’t really need to be right.
I do like that half the team (and half the interesting characters (to me)) are women.
Glad to see the 500 year old thing covered. Another thing that got my humanities nerd rage going was Skye burbling over Sendero Luminoso.’ They’re not a recent indigenous protest against eeeevvvil mining companies. They are murderous, atrocity committing Stalinist souled thugs who, until Fujimori, had been slaughtering people with near impunity for decades. And one of the factors was the government arming and organizing the peasants the SL supposedly championed.
Joss, I love your work, but that was limousine liberal fatuousness at its most egregious.
And, sorry, but Chloe Bennet can not pull off Skye. Sorry. She’s not interesting.
The Tesseract was found YEARS ago, that’s shown at the end of Captain America, First Avenger. Howard Stark fished it out the water, looking for Cap(to quote Fury).
So that still makes Meow-Meow(sorry, I love Darcy) the last 0-8-4.
There’s definitely a dash of Men In Black coming through here.
Am I the only one who didn’t like Jackson’s cameo? I think it’s great to have Fury on, but Jackson just didn’t convey the same flair he does in the movies.
Yeah, the Incan timeline stuff bugged me too. And the impression I got wasn’t that the professor KNEW the 0-8-4 was 1500 years old, but that the OTHER artifacts they had found were 1500 years old.
This was definitely the TEAM BUILDING EPISODE, like Train Job. But I’ll forgive, because you kinda have to do that episode.
I’m liking they are keeping May’s past a secret, and that she’s rather reticient to talk about it. I’ve read speculation that she’s the pilot who launched the nuke at Manhattan, which would be a neat twist(though you hear a man’s voice, that can be fudged as not the pilot speaking). Coulson’s mystery condition can’t be the ONLY mystery.
I like that Skye’s got an agenda, “magical place” is continuing to creep me out, and the actors are adjusting to their roles.
I missed Fitz smacking Ward on the back this episode, but I did catch that Ward returned the favor while they were watching the launch.
No excuse for pre-Incan things 500 years ago, except that one of the things FitzSimmons went off on was the temporal weirdness caused by the tesseract bitses. I think they were trying to show something weird was going on by having all the dates not make sense. ‘Cause how in hell do you get clearly pre-Incan artifacts dating out to only 500 years? And clearly German manufacture dating to 1500? Tesseract temporal weirdness, of course! So perhaps the criticism due is lack of clarity, instead of being dumb with dates.
Huh. I just assumed the 500-year-old structure was built around the 1500-year-old artifact, presumably because it was a very interesting 1500-year-old artifact.
But the whole bit with it only being 50 years old is very, very confusing to me. How does Reyes even know about it? How the hell did it end up embedded in the wall of the temple? It feels like there’s got to be more to this story…
The Inca civilization was overthrown by the Spanish 480 years ago. So 500 years old is just right for the pyramid to contain plenty of “Incan artifacts”. At the last minute somebody said, “That doesn’t sound mysterious enough. Make it pre-Incan artifacts.” Or maybe the actor flubbed the line, I don’t know.
Or maybe this is a storehouse where the Incan archaelogists stored their finds…
Anyway, when they first find the weapon they scan it and say it’s 1500 years old. Then it turns out that it’s only 50 years old. That’s not a contradiction, that just means Fitz/Simmons made a mistake. My impression was that the Tesseract technology in it confused their dating mechanism, what with the Tesseract itself being 1500 years old or more.
Note that they didn’t accept the age their techniques gave them unthinkingly. “This says its 1500 years old.” “Yeah, but the construction of it looks almost German, which contradicts that.” “We’re going to need to do more investigation.” That’s good science right there!
The 50-year-old device being inside the 500-year-old pyramid makes perfect sense. You can see right from the first time it’s on-screen that it was embedded in the wall by force, not something that’s been there ever since the pyramid was built.
Reyes knew about it, and knew that SHIELD was coming, because she’s an official agent of the Peruvian government. The government had records of it but didn’t know where it go to. Then when the archaeologist found it, he reported it to the Ministry of Archaeology or whatever that government department is called, who called in SHIELD as per their protocol, and reported both these facts to the next level of government above them. Then they decided they wanted to keep it and use it. so they sent their own agent – Reyes – to try and get the artifact before SHIELD made off with it.
Unlike the dating thing, this was all spelled out explicitly in the episode. Come on, people.
Just as a quibble, the professor indicated that some sort of ministry (government presumably, can’t remember the exact word he used) sent word to SHIELD after the prof came to *them*, so it’s not unreasonable to think Camilla’s squad turned up thanks to a mole or something easily explained like that–rather than the professor contacting SHIELD directly and Camilla somehow unrealistically catching wind. I only remember that because I was yelling at the TV about how SHIELD found out about this before the prof’s line provided that convenient handwave. Thanks, Joss Whedon!
Oops JoeNotCharles beat me. Chapeau, sir :-)
I realize Stargate SG-1 already did this, but I want to see an episode in which SHIELD has to deal with Hollywood making a low-budget knockoff of their adventures in which Nick Fury is played by Avery Brooks.
@25: See this post from yesterday. Someone’s already made posters for a couple of in-universe movies based on the Battle of New York — a Michael Bay movie with 50 Cent as Fury and a David Fincher one with Forrest Whitaker in the role.
Nerd-Rage all one likes about the “English!” meme when the team ISN’T being shot at, but during escapes from certain peril I’m *totally* in Agent Ward’s court on explaining dangerous matters succinctly! ;)
needed more Samuel A Jackson
[Sendero Luminoso ] are murderous, atrocity committing
Stalinist souled thugs
Maoist, surely? And Skye’s confusion about human history is because she’s clearly a Skrull mole, which is also how she managed to maintain that hairstyle while living in a van.
@29, yes, they’re Maoist ideologically (and it used to creep me out/piss me off when I saw the propganda posters put up by their soulmates oft the RCP), but ‘Stalinist’ is a better pejorative ATM.
Isn’t Skye being so spectacularly wrong about the rebels part of the point?
It isn’t remotely a safe assumption that the rebels are supposed to be Sendero Luminoso.
@31: Maybe she’s only partly wrong. Revolutionary movements are rarely as monolithic in their membership and ideology as their opponents would like them to be. Generally there are different factions fighting the establishment for different reasons, some more moderate than others. You often see that when a revolution with idealistic or populist goals succeeds, a more militant fringe comes to the fore and shoves the other factions aside, creating a state far more extreme than most of the revolutionaries wanted — see the French Revolution and Robespierre, or the Iranian Revolution and the militants who took the hostages.
So maybe the Peruvian rebels do include people fighting the mining companies alongside the other, more politically militant ones, and Skye was just focusing on the more upbeat side of the equation while Ward was seeing the more dangerous side. Each of them was only seeing part of the answer.
Ok the archaelogist didn’t know how SHIELD got involved and it was Coulson who suggested/stated that it must of been contacted by the ministry of arcaelolgy that the arcaelogist contacted. I suspect the info was intercepted by NSA type listening program and SHIELD just showed up.
JAWolf – I thought I caught some lines impliying that the local rebel group was not in fact Shining Path but something else – some discussion about “Shining Path, and rebels against the mining” or suchlike. So Skye was endorsing some presumably-less-unpleasant organization.
@Why? Is Samuel L. Jackson not good enough for you?
@18: Re: Men in Black: My father told me exact same thing. Although he said he found MiB far more enjoyable. So did I, actually.
I don’t mind inaccurate details, but I definitely mind a ‘temple’ that looked like they used the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland and car chase/shoot out scenes staged like it was 1988 again. Yes, it’s a tv show, not a movie, but it’s a tv show with a big budget. When a show with a shoestring budget like Nikita does those scenes better, that’s a problem.
JAWolf @17, THANK YOU for making this point. That line from Skye bugged the hell out of me. I tried to justify it to myself by saying it was intended to illustrate her character’s geo/political ignorance and moral bankruptcy but I could not quite believe it.
What struck me as I was thinking about the episode afterwards is that it’s a little eerie how closely the ensemble template for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. maps to the one for its time-slot competitor, NCIS.
Both have Team Leaders (Gibbs, Coulson) who are deceptively mild-mannered and inscrutable, yet always six steps ahead of their subordinates. Both have Dashing Men of Action (DiNozzo, Ward) who are annoying to be around and insulting to their co-workers. Both have Fierce Warrior Women (Ziva*, May) who are scarily good at their jobs, and who easily outshine the Dashing Men of Action at need. [*Okay, so Ziva’s just leaving, but you get the idea, and dollars to doughnuts her eventual successor will fit the template equally well.] And both have Misfits of Science (McGee and Abby, Fitz and Simmons) who are brilliant and eccentric in approximately equal proportion.
Now, part of this is the nature of TV ensemble drama. But the resonances here are just close enough to make me wonder how closely Agents‘ creators might have been studying the NCIS playbook (and whether it’s entirely coincidental that they were dropped into this particular timeslot).
@40. So that makes Director Vance into Samuel L. Jackson, but who’s Ducky?
@11. I was thinking the same thing. And Marvel has been talking about working him into the MCU for an Avengers role.
Also, how are we not geeking out about the Firefly reference? The stun-bomb Ward used was the exact same toy Simon used to rescue River.
@40: “Deceptively mild-mannered?” Isn’t Gibbs that guy that’s always whacking people upside the head?
So no one else has answered this one. Camilla tells Coulson how the 0-8-4 gets in the pyramid. It was a weapon bought by Peru and built for them by x-hydra scientists about 50 years ago or so that got lost when it disappeared when test fired. As seen from the quick fireing in the plan the object travels in the opposite direction from the energy blast with considerable force and will embed itself in walls.
@43: So these HYDRA scientists were able to master Asgardian technology… but never invented the clamp? Wow, standards really fell after Arnim Zola was arrested. I’m pretty sure most of his gadgets were actually bolted to the floor.
Coincidental re: NCIS?
Unlikely.
@41: Correct, that gives us Vance/Fury as a template match — but also correct, that there isn’t (so far) an Agents counterpart for Ducky. The template thing only goes so far. (Or possibly Ilya Kuryakin existed in this iteration of the Marvelverse, and that used up the match sometime in the prior generation.)
@42: The Gibbs Whack is more ceremonial than fierce, and is virtually always directed at DiNozzo — who virtually always deserves it. OTOH, I’ll grant you that “deceptively mild-mannered” is only one of Gibbs’ operating modes; he also has “Marine-level stubborn” when he needs it. Either way, however, he and Coulson both have the magic power of knowing exactly what their subordinates have been doing at all times.
@45: That’s what I was thinking. Although in the circumstances, I don’t think I’d have scheduled Agents directly opposite NCIS. (It may actually work out, given Cote de Pablo’s last-minute exit from the latter series over the summer — but ABC had no way of foreseeing that stroke of luck when they were schedule-building.)
@40 & 46: You can posit parallels between the leads of just about any shows by cherrypicking the similarities the right way. I once came across a thread from someone who claimed that Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda was a knockoff of some other show, I forget which, because all the characters corresponded to the characters on that other show. I rebutted it by offering an equally solid argument for how the characters paralleled the cast of Gilligan’s Island. All I had to do was cherrypick different attributes than the other person did.
There are only so many templates for characters, and ensemble shows about investigative teams need a certain mix of types themselves. So just because you can pick and choose certain character attributes to posit an equivalence between two casts, that doesn’t prove that one cast is a direct and conscious imitation of the other. It just proves how easy it is to massage data.
#46: True enough, and I hadn’t meant to suggest that Agents‘ creators were deliberately copying the NCIS formula. As the ensuing exchanges demonstrate, there are divergences as well as parallels, though I think the parallels are fairly significant.
What surprises me is that ABC scheduled Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. directly opposite NCIS. While I can see the logic of throwing a show with a large potential fanbase against a ratings powerhouse like NCIS, I’d think that two shows with this degree of structural similarity would be likely — at best — to split their (equally similar) target audiences down the middle. Result: neither show is a ratings blockbuster, and Agents is expensive enough that it likely needs really strong ratings to last more than a season or two.
I’d have been inclined to counterprogram, pitting Coulson & Co. against dissimilar opposition (say, Thursday, competing with comedy blocks and the CW’s vampire soap operas).
I don’t mind inaccurate details, but I definitely mind a ‘temple’ that looked like they used the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland …
It looked awfully Mayan to me; I see that someone on TV Tropes page for the show has already mentioned it as an example of the “MayIncatec” trope…
The trigger line for my own nerd rage was the reference to “the antimatter meteor that splashed down”. That would have been quite a spashdown, and S.H.I.E.L.D. would have had a real job covering it up. Unless Coulson forgot to mention the magnetic bottle…
Love this summary. And yes, those speculations are entirely normal! Don’t most people wonder such things?
Re: Your “Nerd Rage” about the “Speak English” line.
I’m currently the TA in a class whose main goal is to teach biologists and computer scientists to work together in interdisciplinary teams, and one of the main things the professor is trying to teach her students is to say, “Speak English!” to each other. It’s far too easy for specialists in any field to lapse into jargon, and it doesn’t do any good if other members of the team sit there smiling and nodding politely. If a biologist starts going on about methods for determining how many kilobases are in the regulatory region (or the CS people start going on about whether a problem is Max SNP-Hard), they need to be stopped. Not understanding another field’s specialized jargon does not make you stupid, and you shouldn’t be ashamed to say something.
Here, Ward should have been more polite, but he was correct. He’s not stupid, but he’s also not a physicist, and when Fitz and Simmons are explaining something to him, he should be allowed to tell them to back up and put this in non-technical terms, at least the part he needs to understand. And @27 is absolutely right that Fitz should have known better than to give anything but the most important details while their being shot at.
Sorry for the rant, but you hit one of my buttons the same way that Ward’s comment apparently hit one of yours.
What bugged me the most was the trope of having the hole in the side of the plane sucking people out for more than the few seconds of the explosive decompression. And the fact that at 30,000 feet they’re well above the point where they’d quickly go unconscious and die due to the lack of oxygen at that altitude. Slapping a raft on the hole two minutes later won’t cut it unless there’s a whole lot of compressed air constantly repressurizing the plane. Also, the whole process of the team coming together felt very rushed to me. I wish they’d stretched it out over a few episodes instead of forcing it to happen all in one little crisis. They’re trying to have everything wrap up in each episode instead of looking as the series as a whole. Whedon usually doesn’t make that mistake so I’m guessing interference from above.
@53: Remember, when May fought with the soldier flying the plane, the stick was pushed forward and the plane descended. Of course, it wouldn’t have descended that far that quickly, but I think the idea was that they went to a lower altitude where the outside pressure was greater.
And I’m sure we’ll continue to see growing pains among the team. We still don’t know what happened in Melinda May’s past that she’s so unhappy about.
If you think about it, the comics that Stan Lee and his collaborators created in the Silver Age pioneered the blend of episodic cases-of-the-week and serialized personal soap opera that most scripted TV dramas use today. In the ’60s, they rarely had 2-parters or longer storylines in Marvel comics; every supervillain attack or monster rampage or alien invasion began and ended within a single issue. But in between action scenes, the characters were dealing with everyday or personal concerns that formed an ongoing storyline from issue to issue, and characters grew and their relationships evolved and the series as a whole had strong continuity, even though they were nominally episodic and the action plots were always one-and-done. So I don’t have a problem with it if this show follows the same pattern.
The first episode struck me as similar to Torchwood, with the small team rushing about in black SUVs quashing knowledge of strange occurances.
This one kept making me think of how similar SHIELD is to Firefly, especially with all that action and/or bonding taking place in the cargo bay of the large flying vehicle.
Lets just hope the parallels with Firefly are limited–I for one would like to know something more about this show’s pilot before the director drives a giant spike through her body.
Dr. Streiten – Ron Glass’ character from episode 1 – may end up their “Ducky” analog.
Lsana’s point about cross-discipline jargon containment’s well taken.
Speaking of cross-training, May ought to be training someone to spell her at the Bus controls. If neither Couldson nor Ward are already C-17(?)-qualified, that is.
MiltonPope: There likely was a magnetic bottle involved in the Miami thing. Another part of why SHIELD was able to keep that one quiet.
A major problem with the pressurized cabin requiring a hole in the side to open the door. If the cabin is sealed off from where the agents were, how did the quadcopter get into the pressurized cabin?? How did the agents survive if they were in an unpressurized area?? In the real world people have died when they hid in wheel wells and cargo areas.
Unless network attitudes have changed, putting them against NCIS is the death knell for it. Even if they could even up the ratings, it will take too long by network standards. Based on past experience, it will either be cancelled within a month, or moved to a new location, preferably a slot where an another network cancelled a show. Also, do not underestimate the power of comedies, putting it against a popular comedy would be suicide.
Of course, we do live in a “new” world and maybe the network execs have grown up. You can now time shift shows with Tivo, watch them a day or two later on the networks website, watch some of them on Amazon, and iTunes. Will the network consider alternative demographics, or stick with the 50’s demographics when there were only 3 networks?????
It is still rough around the edges, given time, it could evolve into a great series, but it has a lot of polishing to do.
As far as plot devices are concerned, it is difficult to come up with a new device or plot that has not been used many times. The skill is not so much coming up with a new plot or plot device, but is how you wrap it up, the way you tell the story.
@57: Disney owns both ABC and Marvel. I don’t think this show is going to be cancelled anytime soon. The pilot’s humongous ratings sure didn’t hurt.
@58 Yeah all that. We’ll see Robert Downey Jr on the show in stunt casting before ABC cancels this show.
@5 I thought the Dr. admitted (in the pilot) that Coulson hadn’t actually been to Tahiti, that he didn’t really know what happened to him.
It’s totally a preprogrammed response.
Nobody else noticed the Dr Horrible nod with the van in the begining of the episode?
I could totally see them using the “Slingshot” to keep firing dangerous objects into the sun for the rest of the season…even longer, only to turn around at some point and reveal that -someone-has been intercepting the rockets and now has an entire arsenal of MacGuffins.
Someone like AIM or Hydra.
Muahahaha.
1. I didn’t think they were sending it into the sun, but into high orbit, thereby making it unaccessible for anyone without the technology to get it. Was it actually said that they were sending it into the sun?
2. “Your audience grew up reading comic books”
No, YOU AND I grew up reading comic books. The actual percentage of people watching the show who have the in-depth Nerd Brain you speak of is probably a tiny fraction of the total audience of the show. The fact is, even if every single Marvel comics fan in the US watched the show, that’s a tiny percentage of the total TV audience, and not enough to give them the ratings they would need. So no, the at-home viewing audience didn’t necessarily understand all the techno-babble. While it may be cliche and annoying, it’s also somewhat necessary if you don’t want to lose all but the most hard-core viewers.
Further, as Lsana in 52 says, it’s way too easy for professionals to drop into jargon others don’t understand. I’m just a high school English teacher, and I use jargon all the time that my very intelligent friends don’t know, but other teachers do.
As far as the “English, please”
A) Do people make this joke in other languages?
B) Do we all forget so fast. “It seems to run on some form of electricity” During that previous moment, Tony’s descent into technobabble was hindering their ability to fix the engine on the Helicarrier. It was comforting to Tony, to retreat into something familiar, but it was completely unhelpful to Steve because he could not comprehend what Tony needed to him to do. In addition, if Steve hadn’t been able to get Tony to stop, it would have cost Tony his life. He was overcomplicating the explanation of the “red lever” which would have prevented Steve from slowing the rotor when necessary.
@63: Yes, it was said they were sending it into the Sun. That was part of Fitz’s technobabble spiel before the launch.
@64 Pull the lever Cap!
Wrong leveeeeer!
Why do we even have that lever?
Instead of using technobabble written by folks that seem to barely understand the terms they are putting into the script, they ought to hire some real science advisors. Like that B5 spinoff, Crusade, which was kind of forgettable, but partnered with JPL to get the science of other worlds right. I for one, would love to watch a show that, while it presents devices that depend on science beyond our current understanding, also takes the time to do an accurate job with the science we do understand.
63: 1. I didn’t think they were sending it into the sun, but into high orbit, thereby making it unaccessible for anyone without the technology to get it.
So not the majority of humans but easy access for every incoming armada of alien invaders?
I am reminded by how in The Cosmic Computer the Federation abandoned a mighty arsenal of hellburners and planet busters on a lifeless world in the Gartner System, which might have counted as security of a sort if it wasn’t for the fact the Gartner System has a lot of tramp freighters passing through….
Why did they get rid of the gun? That power source alone was significantly larger than what the world electricity consumption. You could have ended the coal debate in one fell swoop, and maybe much of the Oil debate, with free electricity.
@69, Did you miss the movie? Messing with the Tesseract painted a giant target on Earth’s back.
@69: The weapon here wasn’t unique. The Avengers revealed that SHIELD has been developing tesseract-based weapons based on HYDRA technology for decades. This was the “Phase 2” that Fury and Hill discussed in the opening sequence of the film, and the bone of contention between Cap and Fury in the big argument scene in the middle.
Aeryl may be right that SHIELD has changed its policies in the wake of the Chitauri invasion. Or maybe they just made it look like they shot it into the Sun and are really hoarding it in a warehouse alongside the Ark of the Covenant or something. Either way, it’s not like the weapon’s power source is unique in the MCU.
The male nerd scientist said it’d take 180 days for the rocket to arrive at the sun. So yes, pretty sure they were sending it to the sun. Or at least he thought they were … DUN DUN DUN.
Still not a great episode. Sometimes they can take a while to come. In Babylon 5 it took a whole season. In ST:TNG two seasons. Let’s hope this show can deliver this kind of good episodes (it should, considering the world it’s set in) and that it doesn’t get axed before that.
No mention of “Matterhorn” in the post or the comments? With all the trivia mentioned? (It’s a real book. It might shed some light on the role of a certain agent in mentoring a certain new agent-who-might-be-a-spy.)
@72: And I really liked that, that dumping something into the Sun was not treated as an easy thing. It’s actually very hard to launch something from Earth into the Sun, because we’re moving around the Sun at very high speed, and anything launched from Earth has that same speed. It has to thrust long and hard in the opposite direction to cancel out that orbital velocity, to slow down enough for the Sun’s gravity to pull it in. Otherwise it’ll just end up in a cometary orbit around the Sun. I get so sick of seeing cartoons — and even live-action movies — where Superman or Green Lantern or somebody just hurls something directly toward the Sun and it goes straight in.
To continue with the NCIS analogging,
Jethro=Coulson
DiNozo=Ward
Ziva=May
Abbie=Fitz
McGee=Simmons(yes I swapped genders on purpose, Simmons is the one who wants to work in the field)
That makes Skye the story equivalent, Agent Michelle Lee, the incredible recurring character, played by Liza Lapira, who was robbed of good plots(aside from sleeping with Mr. Palmer), until they needed a double agent.
(Interesting tidbit, Lapira was also on Whedon’s Dollhouse, playing another character that mostly got shortchanged til the plot needed a double agent. I can see Whedon doing an homage to that, by making the incidental character a major player)
I had thought of the Skye-Agent Lee parallel, but wondered if that might be pushing the analogy a bit too far.
I’m just still bitter about what happened with her character. Of course, I only caught it in reruns a few months ago ;^D
Just caught up last night. Overall a fun episode.
Putting a Central American pyramid in Peru annoyed me–clearly not an Incan temple.
I share Chris’ irritation at Ward. It seems that he and Fitz are supposed to not entirely like one another.
Since people were complaining about Fitz and Simmons mumbling, I paid attention to this and didn’t really hear any mumbling in this ep. Not everything they said really made complete scientific sense, but maybe things work a tad differently in the Marvel universe.