So far, Agents of SHIELD has been a boon to the worst kind of geek/nerd - the geek/nerd who thinks that they are there to call nerds nerds and that makes them some sort of alpha badass nerd. I've had a hard time finding a review of Agents that was both negative and didn't devolve into someone furiously trying to smugly troll Joss Whedon fans. "Oh no, your little nerd god has messed up, you sad sweaty little nerds!" is pretty much the tone of every commentary about that show that wasn't favorable. I guess folks love an underdog for only so long - they have to hate that same underdog once he's an actual success. Gotta keep that cred!
It's too bad, though, that Agents of SHIELD is really, really not great. It's not bad, by the standard of typical prime time network television, it's just... bland. Nearly no television show has ever hit the ground running, though, and we're only three episodes into it, so there's room for consideration still. Look at the first season of Buffy, for Christ's sake. It was objectively terrible at start and moved into "decently engaging" territory by the end of that season. Firefly, by another comparison, was one of the rare ones that do start strong, but it's fair to remember that you can't do that every time, no matter how good you are.
So I'm skeptical but I'm not personally willing to call time of death on it or anything. It doesn't have the problems hardwired in like Dollhouse had - a shoddy premise held up by bland characters all around - but there are definitely some similarities.
The characters, save a rare few, are just... well, they're walking piles of tropes. You have Perky Tech Girl, Unremarkable Loner Agent Guy, Hardened Veteran With Painful Past, and on and on and on. They're all just seriously a jumble of characters who come off like someone just took a list of traits and assigned them to different stereotypes rather than actually trying to build characters. By episode three, if you want to keep a clipboard of this, we've pretty much checked off Obligatory Dark Time In Backstory from nearly all of them except the Excitable Nerd Puppy Twins. I'm sure, since their's wasn't shoved in our face immediately, that it'll somehow be the absolute worst. Like, "Oh we're so perky and wonderful to cover up the fact we were molested by ten-faced alien demons" or something.
And the pilot. She has a PAINFUL BACKSTORY!!!! that, like Shepherd Book, gets communicated to us in the most obtrusive, graceless "subtle" ways ever. And if you missed her BACKSTORY!!!! don't worry, someone will make some forced reference to it in a few minutes. It's not even like the BACKSTORY!!!! is even that mysterious - it's pretty obvious given the clues dropped so far. It's almost the same as if Coulson held up Wile E. Coyote type placards every five seconds that pointed to her and said "BACKSTORY EXISTS, AND SINCE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS, YOU ARE INTERESTED!"
Coulson gets by, mostly due to the actor's ability to turn over-use of deadpans and oneliners into something that doesn't wear as quickly as it should. And, to be fair to the whole show, it's hard to say if it's the actors who are unable to really convey convincing characters, or if the writing and direction is just that phoned in. By the end of the third episode, the guest bad guy (who will hopefully be recurring) immediately captures the smarm and witty line delivery Whedon shows tend to rely on, though... so it's probably the actors. Who's to say if that's Whedon's fault or network interference or whatever, but they just seem like they were picked for their ability to read lines while looking young and hip in whatever soulless costumes the show put them in. Even down to the wardrobe, nothing about these folks feels vaguely human or real, just purely manufactured.
Agents, so far, is just pretty much what would have happened if Firefly was handed to someone in marketing to have everything adjusted for the network. The parallels between the two shows are numerous and, unfortunately, not exaggerated. People see the plane and start making the jokes, but it doesn't take long for you to realize you can line the two up without having to make very difficult or forced comparisons.
But, I am optimistic. Not, as some sad little people would like to believe, because I am some breathless sweaty Joss fan-nerd. Just because the show does have promise, and even Daniel Radcliffe was godawful when that whole Potter thing started. Granted, he was like 10 or something, but hey you never know. If I had given up on Fringe in the first three episodes (and I thought about it, honestly), I'd have missed out. And the quality of the show has definitely ticked upward since the... life raft. So, here's hoping.
