Top 10 Television Episodes of 2017

By the standards of most human beings, I watch a staggering amount of television. But by the standards of those who are paid to write and watch about TV, I've missed an awful lot. That won't stop me from offering an unqualified list of the best episodes that aired in 2017, of course, but keep in mind that there's a lot of great TV I wasn't able to watch this past year.

That said, the list:

10. Speechless, "C-A--CAMP"

This is admittedly more of a season achievement award than anything else. Speechless was one of the highlights of the 2016-2017 new television season, a genuinely sweet, heart-warming sitcom about an under-represented community that never forgot to be funny. Speechless' greatest achievement is its ability to portray J.J., the high schooler with cerebral palsy who is at the center of the show, with dignity and grace, while still mining his teenage boy flaws for sitcom humor. J.J.'s not a saint, he's not an inspiration - he's just a kid, and that means he can be gross and weird and inappropriate.

"C-A--CAMP" is the season finale and a solid showcase for the entire Speechless ensemble. Exploring J.J.'s first real stab at independence, "C-A--CAMP" is, in many ways, a stereotypical network sitcom season finale: it's big and emotional (there's a helicopter!), and ends the season on a note of small-bore change that won't fundamentally alter the structure of the show. But "C-A-CAMP" is a reasonable representation of an outstanding first season (that has been followed by a similarly excellent second season), and belongs on this list.

9. Lucifer, "Off The Record"

Lucifer is more of an entertaining show than it is a genuinely good one, and it certainly falls far short of greatness. It does a few things very well, and it has a keen grasp of those strengths. It knows the right tone for its story and characters, and it hues to that tone with impressive consistency.

"Off The Record" makes this list, however, because it's one of the few Lucifer episodes to try something different. By playing with perspective and chronology, and diving deep into the psychology of a reporter (played by Patrick Fabian, who'll show up again on this list) who's new to the wacky Lucifer universe, "Off The Record" represents a rare bit of adventurousness and ambition from a show that's usually content to stay in its lane.

8. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., "The Return"

One reason for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s improvement since its disappointing and tedious first season has been the abandonment of standalone episodes. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D found its groove when it stopped trying to tell isolated stories and instead focused on longer arcs, which provided a more compelling framework for the show's characters.

"The Return" is kind of an exception to the overall trend, then, an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D that stands out on its own. It represents a fitting culmination to the Framework arc that saw the main characters trapped in a computer simulation in which HYDRA controlled the world. It compellingly explored the consequences of the actions the characters took while trapped in the Framework, treating them as meaningful choices with emotional resonance.

But the real highlight here is Mallory Jansen (formerly of the late, lamented Galavant) as Aida, the former "life model decoy" whose journey to self-awareness and - of course - super-villainy is the best character arc of the season. Jansen's performance in this episode was, quite simply, one of the best on television in 2017, though it was never going to get much recognition.

"The Return" asked a pretty fascinating question: what happens when a super-powered entity discovers emotion - including heartbreak - for the very first time? The answer itself wasn't terribly surprising - it goes badly. But Jansen's furious, grief-ridden performance gave life and energy to the end of the show's fourth season, and proved that even predictable stories have the power to move us.

7. Better Call Saul, "Lantern"

Some of the seams started showing in Better Call Saul's still-excellent third season, especially in the storylines involving Breaking Bad returnee Mike Ehrmantraut. Mike's scenes were smart, well-shot, intricately put together and, frankly, kind of boring.

Fortunately, the McGill Brothers and Kim Wexler were still around to keep things exciting. "Lantern," the season three finale, (likely) marks the death of Chuck McGill, played with smarmy brilliance by Michael McKean, who steals the episode with a portrayal of Chuck's episode-long nervous breakdown that's as exceptional as it is hard to watch.

But there's enough limelight here for multiple characters, including Howard Hamlin. As played by Patrick Fabian, modern television's finest douchebag, Howard had evolved from an empty suit antagonist in the first season to a man of genuine strength and integrity. The scene in which he tells off Chuck, largely sparking the older McGill brother's cringe-worthy breakdown, is as much a catharsis for the audience as it is for Howard.

6. The Good Place, "Michael's Gambit"

"Michael's Gambit" isn't on this list entirely because of Ted Danson's creepy, evil smile toward the end of the episode, but that smile sure is one hell of a kicker.

It was easy to be skeptical about The Good Place's basic premise, which saw Kristen Bell's Eleanor accidentally sent to heaven after her cruddy, undignified life ended in a cruddy, undignified death. But The Good Place quickly put those concerns to rest, immediately establishing itself as the best sitcom on television, a show defined by its hilarity, thoughtfulness and intricate plotting.

All of that narrative worked paid off in "Michael's Gambit," the show's season finale, which revealed that our core group of characters - Eleanor, Tahani, Jason and Chidi -  were actually in The Bad Place, test subjects for demon Michael's new theories on hellish punishments. Punctuated by Danson's masterful laugh, this was the best sort of twist: utterly shocking, but completely reasonable in hindsight.

5. Rick and Morty, "The Rickshank Rickdemption"

Another season achievement award. Rick and Morty had a predictably outstanding third season, combining unique sci-fi weirdness with a genuine willingness to probe the psychological depths of its thoroughly fucked up characters.

Did Rick and Morty occasionally wallow in cynicism and emotional darkness? A bit. And while Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland admirably deconstructed the mindset of a self-proclaimed evil scientist god, there was still an awful lot of straight-forward "Rick is an impossibly awesome evil scientist god" stuff this season.

But that's nit-picking. "The Rickshank Redemption," Rick and Morty's season three premiere, was the show at its best - gleefully weird and satisfyingly subversive, with an impossible to untangle combination of sincerity and utter bullshit.

For the record, other possibilities here include "Pickle Rick," "Vindicators 3" and "Rest and Ricklaxation."

And shut up about the sauce.

4. The Good Place, "Dance Dance Resolution"

If "Michael's Gambit" proved that The Good Place could pull off an extraordinary twist, "Dance Dance Resolution", the third episode of season two, proved that Michael Schur and his team weren't taking any steps backward after a great first season.

"Dance Dance Resolution" is a sitcom triumph, a hilarious episode of television that manages to address every concern critics and fans had about the show's second season while moving the plot forward in meaningful ways.

"Dance Dance Resolution" sees Michael resetting his Bad Place experiment time and time again, only to be foiled repeatedly when Eleanor (and, in one particularly embarrassing scenario, Jason) keeps figuring out the ruse. No matter which deeply mediocre food item Michael fills the neighborhood with, or which torture scenario he conjures up, something always goes awry.

And for extra-special bonus jokes, check out writer Megan Amram's exhaustive list of restaurant puns.

3. Better Call Saul, "Chicanery"

The creative team behind Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad have many strengths, but the greatest is their ability to make high-quality prestige drama that's actually fun. These shows are complex and challenging and well-made, but they're also enjoyable in a way that much of our modern prestige television industry just isn't.

This isn't to say that these other shows are bad (check out #2 below) - it's just that Vince Gilligan and company have found a way to make great TV that never feels like an obligation.

"Chicanery" isn't an explosive bit of pulp storytelling, like Breaking Bad classics "Ozymandias" and "Crawl Space." But in its relentlessly focused, skillfully claustrophobic portrayal of the fraternal battle between Jimmy and Chuck McGill, as waged in a bar association hearing that determines whether Jimmy will lose his legal license as a result of his actions in the show's second season, "Chicanery" makes clear just how brilliant this entire group of writers, actors and directors really is.

It's probably not a coincidence that "Chicanery," like "Lantern," keeps Mike off-screen. The story of Jimmy McGill and his evolution into Saul Goodman has always been the show's best, and "Chicanery's" laser focus keeps the tension palpable as we see just how far Jimmy is willing to go to save his own skin and destroy his own brother.

2. The Leftovers, "The Book of Nora"

I'll confess, I sometimes found The Leftovers to be a bit of a chore. I often appreciated it more than I truly enjoyed it - this chronicle of a world where two percent of the global population had disappeared without a trace or an explanation always took itself very seriously, and while the show's exploration of grief and trauma was well-acted and crafted with great care, it was also relentless and unforgiving.

Still, there was no denying the show's quality, and it went out on a high note with its third season and - especially - with its series finale, "The Book of Nora."

Mostly taking place decades in the future, "The Book of Nora" highlights the grace notes that were always a part of the show's ambitious symphony. It is, in the end, a story of the necessity and durability of human connection and of our ability to find redemption and love in the face of extraordinary trauma and even our own mistakes.

In some ways, it was unfortunate that Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrota decided to end the series with Nora's big monologue about discovering The Departed in another universe (it makes sense in context). It's too easy to obsess over whether Nora was telling the truth, too easy to ignore everything else that was great about "The Book of Nora." And for a show that stubbornly insisted there was no answer to The Departure, just the reality of the loss and the necessity to continue in the face of tragedy, it was surprising to see just such an answer.

Still, Nora's monologue is beautiful, and Carrie Coon throws everything she has into it. And, in the end, while the show provides a possible answer, the truth of it is as irrelevant as ever. What's important is Kevin's final line: "You're here."

1. Game of Thrones, "The Spoils of War"

I've already written at some length on why I disagree with the consensus that Game of Thrones is a show in decline. If you're the masochistic sort, you can read that piece here.

But "The Spoils of War" is the episode that needs no defending. It's a brilliant, thrilling hour of television, one of the best Game of Thrones has produced. It's spectacular and magnificent and utterly exhilarating.

"The Spoils of War" reveals a creative team in perfect control of the staggering effects resources - both practical and computer generated - available to them. In many ways, it represents the culmination of six years of waiting for Daenerys' dragons to be fully unleashed, and "The Spoils of War" delivered on that promise in a way that won over even the most skeptical of observers.

And perhaps most impressively, "The Spoils of War" manages to hit multiple emotional beats amidst the blood and flame of the Loot Train Battle that defines it. Peter Dinklage manages to imbue "Flee, you idiot...you fucking idiot..." with all the intensity we've come to expect from him.

There were definitely subtler episodes of television that aired in 2017. There were definitely more emotionally resonant episodes of television that aired in 2017. But there was nothing that aired on television in 2017 that was as simply great as "The Spoils of War."

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light...(Review)

Series: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Episode Title: "The Well"
Episode Grade: B

Agent Drywall displayed an emotion!

Granted, the emotion was "inchoate rage" and it was only brought out by the presence of an Asgardian rage staff left behind by Peter MacNicol a thousand years ago, but congratulations to Brett Dalton for getting a chance to do something besides look damn good in a suit (damn good). In honor of this august occasion, I'll refer to Dalton's character by his real name in this review. Checking IMDB, that appears to be "Grant Ward," which is only slightly less boring than the character himself.

OK, OK, this is a little unfair. In fact, Dalton got a chance to flash a little emotion and even humor in "F.Z.Z.T.," one of two consecutive episodes I was unable to review in this space as a result of other commitments.

Ward has been something of a cipher throughout the early run of Agents of SHIELD, a character type who would be more appropriate in a setting full of heroes instead of other non-supers. But "The Well" is very much a Ward episode, our first such phenomenon, and it works well enough. So far, "works well enough" qualifies as pretty high praise for this show.

The plot here borders on the hackneyed: a thousand years ago, an Asgardian warrior fell in love with life on Earth and broke his staff into three pieces, hiding them across the globe. The staff gives its holder great power, but at the cost of summoning his or her inner rage and consuming them with hatred. Bad guys (Norwegian white supremacists in this case) find part of the staff and go searching for the other two parts, while SHIELD tries to stop them.

So, yeah, this is the plot of basically every action movie ever.

It works for two reasons. First, Peter MacNicol is always a treat, and there's something undeniably awesome about casting this famously nebbishy actor as an all-powerful Norse god, even if we never actually see him kick ass (missed opportunity, Agents of SHIELD). MacNicol's enthusiasm and dorky charm help sell his character's backstory; it's easy to believe that this guy fell in love with life, as it's apparent that MacNicol loves life just by looking at him.

 When Ward grabs part of the staff (MacNicol, posing as an expert on Norse mythology, having tracked it down in an effort to keep it away from the bad guys), he's filled with the rage and hatred of a Viking berserker, which takes "The Well" to interesting places.

The staff, according to MacNicol, "shines a light on your dark places," presumably meaning that it doesn't so much change Ward as it does discover and intensify the anger within him. So the frustrations he reveals here, lashing out at Skye and Fitzsimmons for their talkativeness and general physical uselessness, ring true, as does Ward's recognition of what's going on.

The Ward in "The Well" is a man of discipline faced with the uncomfortable surfacing of emotions he makes a point of smothering (he rather baldly spells this out to Coulson). There's an interesting parallel here between Ward and the superheroes who exist on the periphery of Agents of SHIELD, in that it can be hard for him not to look down on the other members of his team, none of whom share his physical gifts and outlook.

Except for Melinda May. Ming-Na Wen has been one of the stronger elements of Agents of SHIELD, providing a kind of steadying force for the viewers to turn to in the face of Fitzsimmons' oft-insufferable banter and Skye's hacker babbling. As such, she's a good fit with Ward, and I like both the decision to have them end up together at the end of the episode and the execution of that decision (an open door, a bottle of high-end booze and a knowing look).

"The Well" does an excellent job of smoothly using the events of an episode to tie together larger, multi-episode elements. May ends up joining the three parts of the berserker staff in the final battle with the white supremacists and uses it to finish them off; the shared experience of holding the staff brings Ward and May together, but it also reflects a larger attraction that's defined by their underlying character dynamics.

Agents of SHIELD has earned a healthy measure of skepticism from its viewers, and I'm not going out on a limb to predict a dramatic uptick in quality and longer, serialized story arcs. In fact, I'm pretty confident predicting that May and Ward's hook-up will be efficiently disposed of in the next episode.

But a quality episode is a quality episode, and considered on its own "The Well" certainly qualifies.

Notes

• The episode's title refers to the flashbacks Ward experiences after grabbing the staff, which involve a young boy trapped in a well. We're meant to think it's either Ward or his brother, and it turns out to be the latter. The "twist" is that a young, somewhat pudgy Ward is outside the well, debating whether to help his brother, only to be threatened into submission by another kid. The revelation that Ward was something of a loser and a coward as a kid is interesting.
• The episode ends with Coulson waking with a start from a dream of Tahiti. Would really like to know what's going on there.
• The villains here are really lame, undefined and meaningless.
• Coulson recommends MacNicol try living in Portland, Oregon for a while. 
• "The Well" takes place in the aftermath of the events of Thor: The Dark World, which I won't spoil here (though if you're the type to watch Agents of SHIELD every week you're probably the type to see the new Thor movie pretty soon after release).  Aside from an opening scene in the rubble of Greenwich University, this doesn't play a huge role in the episode. 
• "It would be nice if, just once, Thor and his people sent down the god of cleaning up staff. Probably has a magic broom."
• As mentioned in the text, I was unable to review "F.Z.Z.T." and "The Hub," the previous two episodes. Both were decent, unexceptional episodes that resided on the border between a B- and a B.  Some nice character work for Elizabeth Henstridge in "F.Z.Z.T." and some interesting questions of secrecy and duty in "The Hub." 

The Existential Question at the Heart of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

A few weeks ago, in my review of "Eye Spy," the worst episode yet of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, I explained that I expected more fun and crazy from a show set in the Marvel universe. We've already been conditioned by a series of hideously expensive, skillfully put together movies to accept a world with superheroes.

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. 

The Dull Heat of Betrayal (Review)

Series: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Episode Title: "The Girl in the Flower Dress"
Episode Grade: B-

Last week, I expressed some irritation that Agents of SHIELD hadn't really taken advantage of the Marvel universe's full potential. The context established by the blockbuster Marvel movies of the last few years presents some serious challenges for a television series set in the same universe.

There's a longer, standalone piece to be written about those challenges and the various ways this show can address them. A review's not really the proper place for that sort of macro-level thinking, but "The Girl in the Flower Dress" indicates one possible way forward.

Agents of SHIELD has been reluctant to become "the superhero show," and for a number of understandable reasons. And its ability to craft a compelling, long-term arc has been limited. "The Girl in the Flower Dress" tackles both of those issues, and reasonably well.

Some of the execution here is lacking, a reality that starts with the decision to make the show's first true superhero a fairly generic fire-starter. You've got to have a fire guy, apparently, but that doesn't make this particular superpower any more compelling.

If budgetary concerns constrain the show from really exploring the full range of visual effects that tend to arise from superpowers, there are some smaller stories that still can be pursued. The psychology of superpowers has been pretty well explored in modern comics, but it remains a fairly compelling topic for a TV show set in the Marvel universe.

"The Girl in the Flower Dress" tries to get at the motivations driving Chen Ho Win, the Hong Kong street magician who reveals his pyrotechnic capabilities when approached by a beautiful woman in a...um, flower dress. Sure, the woman, named "Raina" and played by Ruth Negga, has a couple guys in hazmat suits knock Chen out and drag him back to a laboratory.

But she also plays expertly on Chen's ego, his sense of destiny. In these early scenes, with Raina trying to persuade Chen to give in and help her organization, Chen comes off as a little desperate, but not truly troubled. He is, instead, a man with a remarkable gift and an awareness of it that makes him vulnerable to Raina's persuasion. When she hooks him with a promise that everyone will know his name, it's a powerful moment, and it truly resonates. That we're all a little desperate for recognition isn't some grand sociological insight, but combining such a desire with Chen's destructive capabilities is compelling television.

Still, I mentioned earlier that while I liked the ideas of "The Girl in the Flower Dress," some of the execution was less effective. This is most clearly seen in Chen's little arc here. Louis Changchien, who plays Chen, does the best he can, but the writing takes the character to extreme places with little justification.

Raina's organization ("Centipede") betrays Chen, of course, and we saw the evil doctor from the pilot return as part of a plot to use Chen's fire-resistant platelets to complete the organization's super serum and prevent it from causing all the soldiers to spontaneously combust. This is actually reasonably clever.

What works less well is Chen's reaction after being saved by SHIELD. Again, Chen doesn't come off as a bad guy early in the episode, but by the end of the hour he's ranting and raving like a mad man. That power corrupts is an old cliche, but it usually doesn't wok this quick. Chen goes from mild-mannered street magician to power-mad lunatic with remarkable celerity. Chalk it up to the super serum if you'd like, but that's too much of a hand wave for my tastes.

This does lead to an interesting ending, where Coulson and Melinda May once again get to be ruthless SOBs, which is a look that works well for both Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen. Gregg's line, "We don't want to hurt you. But we have to," is genuinely chilling. And there's a cold brutality to Ming-Na forcibly injecting Chen with the unstable super serum.

This story finally gives us a little more development on the larger, season-long arc that was nodded at in the pilot, which is good. It's hard to evaluate that arc at the moment, but it's nice to see Agents of SHIELD indicate a little more ambition.

The other plot here is the revelation of Skye's betrayal, which is met with some mild irritation by the rest of the team but doesn't really seem to affect the group dynamic too much. We've known Skye's been working as a double agent for the Rising Tide since the second episode, of course, but while Coulson seems appropriately angry no one else really registers an emotion.

The details of the revelation here are fairly unimportant. Skye helps SHIELD track down the guy who hacked into their data stream, thus putting Chen in danger, only to stymie them in lovely Austin, Texas, as it turns out the hacker is her old boyfriend. They have sex, Agent May is waiting outside the bedroom door (for how long, one wonders) and the truth comes out.

The hacker boyfriend is a disposable part we'll never see again. Skye tells Coulson at the end of the episode that all she's really looking for is information on her parents, which doesn't seem terribly interesting at the moment. She found a document redacted by SHIELD, and so Coulson, instead of throwing Skye off the plane in the middle of the Pacific Ocean as he probably should, decides to keep her on and even offer her help.

I don't know. We'll see. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the potential for this or the inevitable introduction of Skye's shockingly alive parents, but I suppose it could lead somewhere reasonable.

For now though, I'm content with an episode that took several steps up from last week's dull affair and actually brought some new elements into the fold.

Notes

• Ruth Negga is absolutely phenomenal in this episode. She's quietly menacing when she's not being the perfect salesman.
• Coulson mentions to May that, before the alien spear went through his heart before the Battle of New York, he never would have trusted Skye. "You sure it didn't go through your brain?" "You don't really do comforting either, do you?"
• "I'm really sorry." "Noted." Stony Coulson is the best Coulson. 
• Raina dubs Chen "Scorch," which he eventually comes to embrace. "Ah, crap. They gave him a name."
• Chen ends up killing the evil scientist/doctor from the pilot. There's some fairly impressive visuals in that scene. 
• Beige Drywall Emotion Watch: This week, vague annoyance at being betrayed by Skye. 

With That Double Vision...(Review)

Series: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Episode Title: "Eye Spy"
Episode Grade: C

Well, that was boring.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Agents of SHIELD, post-pilot, has been the show's unwillingness to explore and exploit the potential of its premise. This is a universe with a physical god (Thor), a super soldier unfrozen from the 40's (Captain America) and a mild-mannered scientist who transforms into a massive green monster when he's peeved (The Hulk).

And viewers accept this. We're down with it. We've spent a lot of money watching the movies that established this universe. We've made it pretty clear that we're OK with a healthy dose of crazy. That's a tremendous advantage for the show.

Unfortunately, Agents of SHIELD hasn't shown any inclination to indulge us in this. Instead, it has been content to poke at a few mildly interesting stories that don't come close to fully taking advantage of the Marvel universe.

As such, it's hard to find too much to say about "Eye Spy," beyond acknowledging the truly dire nature of that pun. It's a standalone procedural episode without much wit or energy or really anything to truly recommend it. It's never actively bad. But when the best word to describe your episode is "workmanlike," you have an issue.

To its credit, "Eye Spy" does begin with a nifty, creepy little set-piece in a square in Stockholm. A dozen men in suits and red masks carry briefcases through the square and into the local subway system, stalked by a mysterious woman. She follows them onto the subway, de-activates the lights and kills them all in about a minute, picking up one of the briefcases by removing the hand to which it is cuffed.

It's a really excellent opening sequence, bare and almost wordless but utterly effective at setting an intriguing mood. Unfortunately, "Eye Spy" isn't really interested in exploring that atmosphere.

There's some suspicion that the woman, quickly identified as former SHIELD agent Akela Amador, might actually be a telepath; that seems the only way to explain how she could have pulled off her heist (the briefcase she took contained a healthy load of diamonds, and there was no way of knowing which briefcase held the gems). Agent May is skeptical of this, pointing out that there's never been a proven case of telepathy or ESP, to which Skye quite reasonably points out, "Hey, Thor."

Unfortunately, May is right, and it turns out Amador's apparent ability to read minds is actually the product of a nifty little camera that's been implanted in her eye. She can use it to see through walls by closing her eyes.

Through the usual Bones/CSI-esque procedural tech wonders, Coulson's team is able to track Amador down and bring her in. Turns out she's being controlled by some mysterious organization she knows little about; text orders appear in her sight, and if she doesn't follow them her handlers will activate a kill-switch that...well, it's probably easy to guess what a kill-switch does.

Again, there's just not much here. There's some attempt to draw a theme out of the contrast between Amador's lengthily exposited backstory as an agent hostile to the team concept and the little squad Coulson is put together, but it's clumsy and uninteresting, and Pascale Armand, who plays Amador, doesn't do much with the little she's given.

Agent Beige Drywall is sent into the facility Amador was meant to rob (using a pair of glasses wired to convince Amador's handler that he's looking through her eyes), has a couple mild adventures that no more succeed in raising Drywall's heart rate than they do the viewers' and escapes with few problems. Meanwhile, the science team manages to complete a rather sensitive (and icky) operation on Amador that removes the kill switch lodged in her eye.

All of this ends with the death of Amador's handler and no particular advance in the larger story arc at which Agents of SHIELD is making a show of nodding. Amador knows nothing about the organization controlling her, and so neither does SHIELD. This means we're left with a standalone episode that's not nearly interesting enough to stand alone.

Notes

• Skye does get to be competent in a few scenes here, which is nice. 
• Left alone in a surveillance van and told not to call unless there's an emergency, Skye, Fitz and Simmons call Agent Drywall to ask what to do if they have to pee. Drywall directs them to a water bottle. Skye points out she doesn't have a penis. It's juvenile, but I chuckled at it.
• Skye's also going through weapons training. Coulson's excited to learn that she's just about stopped saying "bang" every time she pulls the trigger.
• Agent Drywall's instructions once he finds Amador's target? "Seduce him." He beats the guy up instead. 

Pure, Weapons Grade Gravitonium (Review)

Series: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 
Episode Title: "The Asset"
Episode Grade: B-

For most of its running time, "The Asset" is a thoroughly mediocre episode of television, an hour or so that passes without much of note occurring and elicits nothing more than a shrug. It only reaches its modest heights as a result of some moderately intriguing character work and a direct, unsparing resolution to its central conflict.

"The Asset" launches with a dynamo action sequence, the sort of thing that really shows the resources backing Agents of SHIELD. A semi-truck is rolling down a Colorado highway when its schlubby, dirty-looking driver makes a call to some friends, who turn out to be SHIELD agents. They're escorting some precious cargo that the driver is transporting, and everything seems fine.

And out of nowhere the vehicles are lifted by some invisible force and thrown straight into the air; first, the escort SUVs, then the truck itself. The driver, who is himself a SHIELD operative, survives having his truck thrown into the asphalt from a few dozen feet in the air, which is kind of bullshit, but OK, whatever.

The "cargo" he was transporting turns out to be a rather fussy-looking gentleman by the name of Franklin Hall. He's a distinguished professor of...whatever the hell generic field sounds "science-y" enough for this show, and he was kidnapped by an old friend, Ian Quinn. Quinn, played by veteran "Hey, That Guy Looks Familiar" David Conrad with his usual slick charm, wants Hall's help turning the rare element "gravitonium" into something productive and profitable.

Quinn is actually a fairly intriguing character, and the show deserves credit for not turning him into a cliched corporate villain. Openly and unabashedly interested in profit, Quinn is also an information idealist who sounds more like Julian Assange than a mining magnate. There's little in the episode to indicate that Quinn's soaring speeches about the free flow of information and the evils of government intrusion are lies or hypocrisies; instead, we have a portrait of a bad guy with a message that is genuinely compelling without coming into conflict with his villainous actions.

And so we're off. "Gravitonium" is a classic screenwriting ploy, a little bit of nonsense used to hand wave the large nonsense that drives the plot. We need something with broad, generic powers to "suspend the laws of gravity" within a given area and throw trucks around while plausibly possessing the ability to also do massive, profitable things like moving lots of cargo around and acquiring oil without drilling, so we invent an element and give it a cliched, vaguely ominous-looking massive gyroscope machine to contain it.

"The Asset" attempts to advance the relationship between Skye and Agent Beige Drywall, and if it does so in rather clumsy and unskillful fashion, well, you take what you can get. Agent Drywall is training Skye to be a field agent and is apparently doing a poor job of it. Skye, for her part, is more whiny than committed and complains about the physical requirements of the training.

This is amusing (what did she figure field agents did?), even if all we see of the training is Skye and Drywall punching a heavy bag. But it finally does give Drywall's churlishness some reasonable motivation. Skye isn't taking any of this seriously, and while her jokes are pretty entertaining for the audience it's not hard to see how they can drive a serious agent up the wall.

Most of the training scenes go to pretty uninteresting places: Drywall gives us some vague backstory about protecting his younger brother from a violent older brother, he lectures Skye about "defining moments" and commitment, he teaches her a move to disarm a man wielding a gun that we know we'll see her use before the end of the episode, etc.

Because Quinn's operation is located in Malta and SHIELD can't swoop in without violating international laws, Coulson agrees to send Skye in to Quinn's mansion/compound (she uses her mad hacker skillz to acquire an invitation to his party).

This particular plot is mainly notable by its admirable unwillingness to play into the fake seduction act we often see in these scenarios. Instead, Skye fools Quinn into believing that she's betraying SHIELD out of a shared set of values (which doesn't require much acting), then succeeds in shutting down the magic laser wall surrounding the compound.

Still, this is mainly lockstep plotting (we're supposed to think that Skye is genuinely betraying SHIELD, and that's never a serious possibility) until Coulson (along with Agent Drywall as part of an extraction team and still wearing his suit, for some reason) tracks down Hall in the laboratory basement of the place.

As it turns out, Hall arranged to have himself "kidnapped." Worried about the consequences of Quinn's research into gravitonium, Hall leaked his location so he could get close to the facility and destroy Quinn's work.

It's a reasonably clever twist, if nothing particularly shocking. But "The Asset" plays the situation out to a logical and brutal conclusion. Hall puts the massive gravitonium generator into overload, which will sink the entire facility to the bottom of the sea, destroying Quinn's research for good but also killing everyone at the mansion.

He's not swayed by Coulson's pleas, and he doesn't ever waver from his course. So when the science team tells Coulson that the only way to stop the generator from exploding is to induce a chemical reaction within the elemental field, he chooses the only real option: shooting out the floor underneath them and letting Hall himself fall into the generator.

It's not entirely clear how that achieves the goal, but set that aside for now. It's a solid moment, unsparing and ruthless without being cruel, and it (mostly) doesn't attempt to escape the logic of the plot. It also gives Coulson an interesting character beat and a chance to actually be a bad-ass, do-the-job-at-all-costs government operative.

"The Asset" still isn't terribly impressive, even with this satisfying conclusion, and it's discouraging that Agents of SHIELD has, through these last two episodes, failed to live up to the promise of its pilot. Joss Whedon's presence is sorely missed, and the writing lacks the edge and wit the pilot promised. But there's enough going on to raise this episode slightly over "O-8-4," last week's disappointing effort.

Notes

• Yes, Skye gets to use the disarming move to take Quinn's gun away from him. There's a funny moment afterward, however, when Quinn asks, "But do you have what it takes to pull the trigger?" "Nope." *flees*
• Coulson struggles to dismantle a gun in the field and complains that it should be "muscle memory." He's still struggling with it on the plane after the mission. This is probably related to his mysterious post-death interregnum after The Avengers. 
• "I saw plenty of action with The Avengers." "And you died."
• Melinda May hands Skye a massive binder of communications data. "Do you want me to bench press this?"
• Someone's going to tell me that "gravitonium" is a real thing, aren't they?
• A brief programming note: I obviously didn't review How I Met Your Mother yesterday or Rome on Sunday. You can blame Braves' postseason baseball, but that's not going to be an issue from here on out. Look for a Rome review later this week. As for yesterday's How I Met Your Mother, I give it a B-. 

Squabbling And Artifacts (Review)

Series: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Episode Title: "O-8-4"
Episode Grade: C+

Shows focusing on the adventures of a team always feature the group conflict episode. In formulaic procedurals with standalone stories, these episodes tend to exist so that the audience gets a little twist and a look at something different. The fight is resolved at the end of the hour and it's forgotten by the start of the next.

In shows with serialized ambitions and interests in exploring characters, the group conflict episode is a chance to examine the dynamics of the team and the personalities of those involved. The conflicts can last longer, and the consequences can resonate more deeply.

It's obviously too early to say where "O-8-4" fits in. But its position within the show's run (quite early) and its tone (the episode ends with a round of back-slapping and knowing glances) all indicate that the conflicts of this episode will stay in this episode. The conflicts explored here are only moderately interesting, the plot is shrug-inducing and much of the wit that defined the pilot is missing here.

"O-8-4" is a reasonably entertaining hour of television, and there are some nice moments and performances here. But this is a trifling and insubstantial episode that leaves no lasting impression, even with Samuel L. Jackson's much-hinted-at pre-credits cameo.

So, what happens tonight? Agent Coulson and his ragtag team are called to Peru to retrieve a dangerous artifact. They do so, but only after a firefight with some rebels in which they are aided by the Peruvian army and Camilla Reyes, an old friend of Coulson's. Agent Beige Drywall (Brett Dalton) is pissed about something or other. Reyes and the Peruvians, brought on board SHIELD's fancy plane in order to escape the fight, betray Coulson in order to retrieve the artifact. The team works together to defeat the bad guys. They shoot the artifact, which is a weapon built by German scientist refugees from the Hydra organization we saw in Captain America, into the sun. The end. Oh, and Skye is still communicating with Rising Tide. The end. Oh, and Samuel L. Jackson. The end.

It's not that any of this is bad, really, but it's just workmanlike, uninspired and forced. Part of the reason the conflict here falls flat is that it doesn't seem to be based on anything. Agent Drywall (his name is actually Ward), Skye, Melinda May (a delightfully taciturn and no-nonsense Ming-Na Wen) and the science team of Fitz and Simmons (good lord) return from their firefight and immediately get to bickering.

Thing is, there's no reason for it. They retrieved the artifact. Every member of the team survived. No one even got hurt. And yet Ward starts complaining about being stuck with unprepared non-combatants, while the scientists take shots at Ward that seem rather ungrateful considering he protected them from a bunch of guys with guns.

Coulson even points out that nothing really went wrong, but that observation is lost on his team, who continue fighting. At no point are the stakes to this conflict really made clear. Ward mumbles something about being trained to eliminate obstacles and finding it awkward to work with a team, but Dalton isn't nearly compelling enough to sell any of this.

A little better is Skye's sense of helplessness and open self-doubt. Chloe Bennet does a reasonably solid job of conveying the emotions one must feel at being thrust into a group of hyper-trained, hyper-educated professionals who are used to dealing with superheroes. The character is constantly aware of being in the way, of an apparent lack of worthiness in the presence of all the chaos swirling around her.

But taken as a whole, we're too early in the show's run for any of this to have much meaning or impact. We don't know these characters very well, and while some of what we know is interesting enough, plenty of it us thoroughly uninteresting. The show needs to give me a reason to consider Ward a human being and not a fleshy piece of furniture before I actually care about his feelings toward those who lack his training or skills.

It's probably unfair to read too much into this episode or worry about what it augurs for the rest of the show. You have a give a show a chance to breathe, and that entails watching a few awkward gasps.

Notes

• Hard not to think about the plot to The Avengers, which also featured a heavy emphasis on team conflict, while watching this episode. 
• With the entire team bundled into a truck, fleeing the firefight, Dr. Fitz points out that the artifact is unstable and over-heating. Simmons says, "I can roll down a window!" *gunshots* "Do not roll down your window!"
• "Do you need anything else before I check in on the device fueled by evil sitting in our cargo hold?"
• Coulson reminds Ward that he speaks six languages (riiiight) and Fitz and Simmons that they have doctorates in "fields I can't even pronounce," tells them to pull it together and walks out. Skye quietly points out, "I'm good at stuff too."
• "So...everything that I'm against?" "Yep."
• Coulson keeps referring to Tahiti, where he supposedly spent his rehab, as a "magical place." Skye points out that it's the sixth or seventh time he's used that exact phrase. 

Resurrection of a Franchise (Review)

Series: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
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."