Looking VERY interesting...

Oh, so it's a TV show. I thought it was a movie. Interesting. I was trying to figure out who the new 'hero' was. The closest I could come up with is "Panther"... if his backstory changed.

Ooooh.

"Don't touch Lola."

LabRat :-)

Sorry - Agents, not Agent.

Slightly startled to discover there are already 19 fanfics on Archive of Our Own, at least some of them NSFW. Lola is VERY popular...

The superhero is supposedly Luke Cage.

I've added it to my SKY Never Miss list. Hopefully, it'll make its way to the UK soon.

Well, now that a couple of episodes have aired, what do people think? Fortunately it's airing in the UK only a couple of days after the USA, and I've seen episode 2 thanks to a friend with satellite.

I'm enjoying it so far, and Whedon seems to have taken a lot of care to remember the series' roots in comics - for example, the final scene of the first episode, with Lola, was probably inspired by the 1965 comic that introduced SHIELD, which had the SHIELD agents pick up Nick Fury in a similarly-equipped vehicle. And the fact that I remember that nearly 50 years later shows how vivid an image it was...

The plots of both episodes weren't especially complicated, but I think we're still in the "getting to know the characters" phase. Nick Fury's brief appearance in episode 2 was a very nice touch, and the mystery of Coulson's survival is more of a mystery - all of the robot double theories now seem to be ruled out since robots don't bleed, which still leaves magic, cloning, another body programmed with Coulson's memories (a la Dollhouse), etc.

So what did everyone else think?

I've only seen the first ep so I haven't given up on it yet, but to be honest I was disappointed.

It seemed very much to be TV by numbers. No surprises in the plot* and full of characters which didn't exactly grab my interest. I'm also a little concerned at how much wiggle room there is to break out plotwise if they continue to box themselves in to fitting in with the movie plots. But we shall see.

So, I was pretty bored but I could change my mind; it's early days yet.

LabRat :-)

* If Coulson isn't a clone I'll be enormously surprised.

After the first episode I was cautiously pessimistic.

After the second, I have lost the caution. Unfortunately, I am finding both the characters and the stories to be uninteresting. What worse, all the "children" on the team left me feeling like I was watching a rip-off of the "Superfriends" Saturday morning cartoon. There is a reason that people that do this kind of work in real life are specially selected and have extensive training for field operations. The nature, maturity and overall training of this team is ridiculous and borderline insulting to me as a viewer.

At this point I may not watch another episode. I thought this idea had a lot of promise and am hugely disappointed.

Bob

The three trainees / newcomers are a problem, I admit - I think you have to assume that this is part of Coulson's master plan, and that Coulson, May and whats-his-name (possibly not a good sign I don't remember what he's called) are there to take the load until they get up to speed. Alternatively, that the whole operation is a false flag, and has been set up to fail in a way that benefits SHIELD.

Actually, it makes a lot of sense if this is a disinformation mission, set up to be the nice incompetent face of SHIELD, while Fury takes care of the black ops etc. After all, we didn't see the German secret weapon loaded into the rocket, for all we know it's really being studied as part of the Phase 2 weapons program mentioned in Avengers

Marcus, I think you are showing yourself to be a more thoughtful and creative writer than they have on this show. Still, I hope you're right. That would be an amazing plot twist.

However, even within this group of "agents", the writers need to be more creative. Too many of the things I've seen in the first two episodes are a)cliché, b)predictable or c)both.

Also, they seem to have lost sight of the concept that gunfights, explosions and other "eye candy" are not enough unless there is a compelling story that causes the viewers to connect to the characters. I've seen two episodes and I don't know anyone's name other than Coulson's. So, at least in my case, they are apparently failing to provide characters that I care about.

Bob

Actually it's only Agent Thingy whose name I can't remember, I have no problems with the others. It's odd that someone who is supposed to be the male lead is such a cypher.

So, I've been watching this, and I admit I'm slightly mixed in my opinions too. I'm hoping it improves, because I agree that it's got a bit of the super-friends vibe going and is a bit cheesy. But I love that Coulson's alive and there's been a few good laughs. I trust Whedon & Crew, of course, so I will obviously continue watching. Also, I love superheros, new tv shows, and the occasional bout of cheesiness. There really aren't too many mainstream/primetime superhero shows anymore (no, "Arrow" does not count) and I for one am intrigued by it and *fingers crossed* hope this starts a new trend....

In a lot of ways, it reminds me of ABC's last superhero tv attempt, "No Ordinary Family" that was on two, maybe three years ago. I really enjoyed that show, too, despite its cheesiness and several lacking points in the plot. "Agents of SHIELD" gives me the same feeling so far.

As a bit of a side note, I find that I have a bit of trouble understanding Fitz & Simmons. I'm usually really good at understanding accents, and I get most of the tech/"science" talk too, but they just talk so darn fast and it's making my brain go a little bit slower in processing it all. Was awesome and completely unexpected! I hope we get a bunch of little cameos throughout the show (liked Robin's (Cobie Smulders) appearance as Maria Hill too).

All in all, I'll keep watching, hoping it's just in that early we're-still-getting-there phase and soon we'll get to the meat of it all.

(To be completely honest though, the number one new show to watch this season is by far "Blacklist." Please, please, PLEASE watch it, as NBC shows are always pulled off the air too soon and I want this one to make it! )

Re Arrow - apparently they're going to have Barry Allen turn up in at least three episodes as a back-door pilot for his own series. Not sure if this means there will be a super-fast Flash, they seem to be going out of their way to avoid having anyone with real super-powers in Arrow, but it'll be interesting to see what happens.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/flash-writers-preview-cws-newest-595705

Well, I've just caught up with E2 and I have to say I enjoyed it much more than the pilot. Still very little that's original or surprising in the plot, but I am warming to the characters more and I liked the touches of humour. Especially loved Fury's scene. "Cancel the fish tank."

LabRat

I'm watching, and so far enjoying. I'm not a die-hard comics fan, but I'm having fun with it. Not especially ground-breaking yet, but I'm willing to give it time.

"Technically, Stark is a consultant" and the line about girls cos-playing around the Stark tower had me LOL.

PJ

I'm enjoying it as well. There are times when I want a deep convoluted plot, and there's times when I want light-hearted fun. And when it comes to comic-based TV and movies, I'm quite willing to have that light-hearted fun. I'm loving the Avengers references. When I started watching this week's episode, I figured Franklin Hall was comic-based and had to look him up... then had to wait to see if they were going to go the comic-mythology route with him. I'm happy that SHIELD got a full season pickup, so it's doing well so far. I was worried!

I think Barry Allen will eventually have powers on Arrow. If I remember correctly, he's supposed to be in 3 episodes this season to seed the new series. I think something's going to happen the 2nd or 3rd episode so he gets the powers. The trick will be how they'll explain a person with powers in the so-far-non-powered universe they've created.

I've loved the constant reitteration of "Tahiti." Remember that it was used three different times in Lois and Clark (Lois saving up for a trip to Tahiti, Deter nearly taking a trip to Tahiti and Jimmy mentioned it once somewhere.)