Episode Title: "Pilot"
Episode Grade: B+
(Editorial note: I've considered the pros and cons of repeatedly typing in the periods listed above, and after a careful analysis have decided to omit them in the body of the reviews. It's annoying, and you can send complaints to my copy editor)
The Avengers was more than your usual summer blockbuster. It was, in fact, less of a movie than the culmination of a marketing and branding strategy that began with the original Iron Man. Superhero movies are always mercenary, profit-driven affairs, but The Avengers was unseemly even by the standards of summer comic book flicks.
For all that, the movie was redeemed by Joss Whedon's deft, light-hearted direction; in an era of dark, gritty superheroes, The Avengers was as whimsical as a movie about fighting the end of the world could really be.
Agents of SHIELD is clearly just another branch in the trillion-dollar money tree Marvel is nurturing with The Avengers franchise. But based on the pilot, it also has plenty to recommend it, including a top-notch cast and a healthy dose of Whedon's irreverence.
Of course, Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo and Chris Hemsworth aren't available for a weekly television drama, so we instead get the delightful adventures of Special Agent Phil Coulson. You might remember Coulson as the guy who assembled the Avengers in the various Marvel movies.
You might also remember him as the guy who was killed about halfway through The Avengers. So far as Coulson is concerned, SHIELD Director Samuel L. Jackson faked his death in order to unite the superhero team. The reality is far more traumatizing, though we don't get the details in the pilot; our old friend Agent Maria Hill (hi Colbie!) darkly hints at some other back story. There's probably a cloning plot line coming up, or maybe straight resurrection, but, hey, it's a universe with Thor and The Hulk in it. I can buy this.
Clark Gregg always gives off an air of officiousness; he has always been perfectly cast as a government operative (back to his delightful appearances on The West Wing) who's just a little annoyed by everything going on around him. He's somewhat less well-suited for the role of idealist, but it's not a crippling flaw.
If there's a hole in this particular episode, it originates with Brett Dalton, who plays the blandly handsome Agent Grant Ward. Writers of superhero stories enjoy putting an everyman at the center of the craziness in order to provide the viewers/readers with a relatable entry to the universe. The problem is that the everyman is seldom of much interest himself, and Dalton continues that tradition here. Dalton is both boring and insufferably arrogant, which isn't much of a combination.
The plot of "Pilot" is compelling enough: an apparently average man witnesses an explosion at a building, then punches into a brick wall, climbs into the burning structure and rescues a woman inside. This being 2013, all of it is caught on video and posted online. SHIELD swings into action to find the man and bring him in.
There are some nifty little Whedon-esque tricks. For the first 15 minutes or so, an organization called "Rising Tide" is set up as the antagonist, one of their operatives providing a portentous, threatening voiceover...until it's interrupted when Coulson tracks down the van "Rising Tide" is using as a base and discovers the organization is a single hacker, played by Chloe Bennett.
"Skye," as Bennett's character calls herself, isn't a terribly well-rounded figure at this point. She's beautiful, she's good with computers, she has your standard network television paranoid politics and she's hiding an idealistic streak. All standard stuff. But Bennett has the right attitude for the part, and she's good with Whedon's dialogue, so we can afford to wait a bit for Skye to get fleshed out.
It turns out that the superhero from the opening scene, Michael, isn't a superhero at all. He is, instead, an unemployed factory worker who got roped into a medical experiment that somehow involves gamma radiation, Captain America's super serum and alien metal. There is, of course, a shadowy organization lurking behind the scenes, and the ghastly experiment in creating a super human causes insanity in the subject, as ghastly experiments to create super humans often do. Michael is also set to explode sooner rather than later. Again, your usual evil scientist side effects.
This all leads in fairly predictable, lockstep procedural fashion to a showdown at the local train station, and here's where Agents of SHIELD shows a little hint of becoming something more. Through Michael, the show explores the psychological ramifications that come with the existence of The Avenger; Mike is torn by feelings of inadequacy, brought on in part by the knowledge that there are "gods" above him and in part by his own economic ails.
The various resentments swirl together and get tangled up, and all Michael can really feel is impotence and the resulting rage.
This gets resolved in an annoyingly neat fashion, as SHIELD's science team rushes to the scene at the last minute and provides Ward with a magic rifle that can paralyze Michael, but not kill him. He's taken back to headquarters, the superhero device is removed and he's returned to his wife and kids.
There are a few paths Agents of SHIELD can take from here. It can become a procedural with nice branding and excellent production values; discover a new superhero or villain or science experiment every week, destroy it, find out a little bit more about the organization funding all this. Or, it can go deeper into serialization and explore its characters in depth.
A show like Agents of SHIELD is probably never going to be able to take a lot of risks; it's too important to Marvel's brand for the downsides that come with excess ambition. But between the presence of Whedon and cast members like Coulson and Ming-Na Wen, there's every reason to expect a consistent, quality product.
Notes
- Skye briefly talks with Michael before Coulson discovers her, and she insists she has an office. "Of course I have an office. A mobile off...I work...live in a van. By choice..."
- Coulson discovers Skye while she's loudly insisting that SHIELD will never find her, because Joss Whedon is clever, but he's often not subtle.
- That woman Mike saved? She was the doctor who implanted him with the alien device that gave him his powers. She's still alive at the end of the pilot.
- The show helpfully informs us that a scene takes place in "Paris, France," thus saving us from the inevitable confusion over whether or not they're actually in Texas.
- The fight choreography in Paris is really, really impressive. Very brutal.
- "I don't think Thor is technically a god." "You haven't been near his arms."
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