That is, it seems to me, a tremendous advantage for Agents of SHIELD. And yet it's an advantage the show has yet to leverage, much to my disappointment. Agents of SHIELD has been many things, but chief among those traits it has been boring. And that's unfortunate.
I was talking about this same issue on another forum, and a friend of mine made a point I hadn't considered (because I'm usually incapable of thinking more than an inch deep about things). To paraphrase his question, isn't the presence of superheroes in the show's universe actually a significant disadvantage? Don't Thor and Iron Man and Captain America present serious questions about the importance of the show's plot? Can't all these super beings just solve the problems?
You know this is a reasonable point, because it involves multiple questions in a row. And in a world with an active Norse god, Skye's hurried typing is only so interesting.
There are, I think, three ways Agents of SHIELD can answer this question:
- Embrace it: Go big. Become "the superhero show." Sure, you can't really use any of the A-level heroes from the movies, but the Marvel universe is a big place. There are a lot of other heroes, both super and mundane, and they don't come with baggage. Alternatively, you can make up new heroes and villains, give the comic books some fresh material. Make your show a big, grandiose spectacle, the sort of thing viewers know will be consistently entertaining.
- Shun it: Go small. Alternatively...you know you can't live up the movies. You don't have the resources or the freedom. What you do have is time; a full season of 20+ episodes in which to develop characters and themes. Make Agents of SHIELD a character-focused show and let us learn to care deeply about the people involved. This approach has the added advantage of addressing the "why can't the superheroes handle this" question: when the scale and stakes are apparently small, it's reasonable that Iron Man and Thor can't be bothered.
Of course, these approaches both have their issues.
The problem with "go big" is that...well, put simply, you can't do it. As noted, the big-time superheroes and villains are out of the picture. Robert Downey Jr seems a good-natured sort, but I doubt he's going to agree to show up regularly on your network television show.
Still, even if you try to be the superhero show with lesser or original heroes and villains, this still requires more resources than Marvel and ABC appear willing to invest in Agents of SHIELD. Superheroes and super villains require special effects, and special effects require money. And if you want compelling heroes and antagonists, you have to invest in compelling actors.
But the problems with Approach One go beyond the budget. Agents of SHIELD is less a work of fiction than another province in the Marvel empire or a tentacle in the undulating, grasping squid that is Marvel entertainment. It's more of a support structure than a standalone enterprise.
This means that the show's ambitions almost have to be limited. We've got Avengers 2 coming out in 2015, and that's going to make enough money to enable Marvel and Paramount to buy Poland. It's an investment you can't put at risk, not for the sake of one ABC drama. So Agents of SHIELD can play in the Marvel sandbox, but it can't disturb the terrain, either by introducing new elements or screwing too severely with what's already there.
"Go small," by contrast, is eminently doable. It doesn't require a huge budget and it doesn't mean you have to muck around with the established dynamics of the Marvel universe. And it seems to be the approach Agents of SHIELD is taking so far.
What it does require, however, is a level of writing skill, character development and thematic resonance that the show has not displayed as yet. The "small" approach demands a core of characters we can care about, and a set of stories that grab our attention.
And, no, we're not there yet. It's difficult to care about a group of characters when one of them is Agent Beige Drywall, another is Generic Hacker Girl With a Dark Past and the other two are Bumbling Scientist Mark I and Bumbling Scientist Mark II.
(Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen...you're cool)
One can be too harsh in evaluating the quality of the show's stories so far. After all, we're just five episodes into its run, and we've only just begun to see the vague outlines of a season-long arc. But a smaller, character-focused drama isn't just dependent on the larger stories. Individual, standalone episodes can be fertile soil, and Agents of SHIELD hasn't shown any ability to use these episodes to its advantages.
Instead, we've gotten a series of forgettable antagonists, boring plots, meaningless MacGuffins and vaguely portentous looks.
So, if going big is impossible, and going small seems beyond the capabilities of the show's writers, where does that leave us?
With option three: steer into the skid.
You have a universe full of superheroes you can't use, and these entities present serious challenges to the stakes of your show. But don't ignore them: acknowledge them. Make these questions the core of your narrative.
What does the existence of superheroes do to the morale of Coulson's team? How does the knowledge that there are beings of infinite power and ability just around the corner affect a person's self-esteem and sense of self-worth? It would seem to make everything you do seem small and petty by comparison. When you've busted your ass to reach the pinnacle of your field, only to find others floating effortlessly above the peak you've spent your life staring at longingly, that would seem a shattering moment.
Beige Drywall has honed his skills and physical abilities over years of training and endured god knows how much to get to that point. What does it do to his psyche when Thor flies in and destroys all the bad guys with one swing of his hammer? Or to discover that Captain America out-paces him in all physical tests simply as a result of being injected with a serum?
Fitz and Simmons spent years studying to become world-class scientists. Isn't it disheartening to see Tony Stark walk into a room and solve problems of mind-boggling complexity with a glance?
These issues go on and on and affect every member of the team. Their struggle to define themselves as extraordinary while standing among gods can make for truly compelling drama.
And, in fact, Agents of SHIELD has shown some inclination toward this road. One of the reasons I enjoyed the pilot as much as I did was the way it put those precise questions in the mouth of Mike, the engineered superhero the SHIELD team is trying to neutralize. His feelings of worthlessness, brought on by a combination of economic deprivation and the presence of The Avengers in the popular consciousness, were powerful and well-articulated.
Unfortunately, these themes were largely dropped after the pilot. It's easy and cliched for someone like me to suggest that they would be compellingly developed if Joss Whedon was actually running this show, instead of serving as a kind of honorary executive producer (Whedon wrote the pilot). But that's a meaningless thought; Whedon has The Avengers to look after, and he's beyond weekly television dramas at this point.
I certainly don't expect Agents of SHIELD to choose option three. That version of the series doesn't have to be dark, and it can make eloquent statements about the power of humanity and the everyday greatness of these characters. But it would undoubtedly require going to dark places, and I don't think those are places on which Agents of SHIELD wants to shine a light.
Regardless, the show as it stands now is barely worth watching. It is a largely boring drama salvaged by a few solid performances and an occasional flash of wit in the dialogue. Agents of SHIELD can be more, but only when it decides what it wants to be.
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