MARVEL's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

So, who caught the new television show "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D" this week?  Last Wednesday night we got the first and second episodes and are apparently now caught up to where the show is in the United States.  I watched both but am now torn about whether to continue watching.

I know you're thinking, what does this have to do with movies and why are you writing about it?  However, the thing that makes me want to watch it is the way that it expands on the Marvel universe and builds on the movies that we are all loving so much of late - Avengers, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America.  As a casual comic book fan during my life rather than a devoted regular buyer and reader, I have a reasonable awareness of the Marvel characters but the run of movies we've had since Marvel Comics decided to build their own movie studio and control the output has really turned me into much more of a fan.  You get the comic book action and themes but so far most of the movies have had great heart and scripts to back it all up.

So a new TV show from Marvel Studios is an exciting prospect.  It should, in theory, be able to expand on the universe they have created to give us a better understanding of the motivations of different races and organisations (especially the ultra mysterious S.H.I.E.L.D which has barely been scratched in the films to date) and introduce a wider range of exciting characters with different superpowers.  And from watching two episodes, I did get that.  The casual references thrown in to things like "Hydra" (aka the German Nazi research program headed by the Red Skull that Cap'n America fought in his first film) and "the best combat results since Romanov" (Natasha Romanov aka The Black Widow who was played by Scarlett Johanssen in the Avengers) or "Tesseract" (the power source that Loki was using to try and bring the Chitauri to Earth from Asgard) are gold to a geek trainspotter.

The problem I had though is that for a movie studio with seemingly never-ending resources to pump out multi-million dollar budgeted blockbusters that make billions of dollars, the budget for the TV show seems to be incredibly low.  The action scenes were pretty pathetic when compared to one of my favourite shows at the moment, Hawaii Five 0.  They have very little gloss and there seems to be a lot of low-quality CGI being used.  It's really distracting for someone who has been spoiled by the high production values of so many action based TV shows these days e.g. Lost, Heroes, Hawaii Five 0, even recent stuff like Sleepy Hollow and Once Upon a Time seem to have better effects.  The script is also layered with more cheese than a triple cheese pizza.  I groaned a few times in two episodes.  The lack of major characters crossing over to TV will also disappoint many people but honestly, Robert Downey Jr is probably not going to appear is he?  I was cheered up a fair bit though by a cameo from the man, Samuel L Jackson, as S.H.I.E.L.D commander Nick Fury, towards the end of episode 2.  I mean, how can he not be in it!

Will I keep watching?  Probably.  There is the little matter of the mystery about how Agent Coulson is now actually alive after being killed by Loki in the first Avengers movie.  It looks like they have a very good explanation for this up their sleeve which is going to be unveiled extremely slowly over the course of a season.  And will the new recruit in the team come over to the 'right' side or will they discover the rat in the ranks?  I do love a good mystery.  And in the end, any TV series that is not a sitcom is going to work if it keeps you guessing what is going to happen next.  It seems I will just have to get over my expectation of high quality production!

If anyone else is watching, please feel free to post here about the in-jokes and references and what they mean.