[FairfieldLife] Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (was Re: Breaking Bad finale conspiracy theories)
OK, you knew that as a Joss Whedon fanboy I couldn't not comment on this series. I have to or they'll take away my browncoat. :-) I *am* a committed Joss fanboy, but that said I'm far more a fan of him developing his *own* ideas than those of others. Joss' ideas are The Bomb, man. Testimonies to that creative side of Joss include Buffy (what is not to like about a normal teenage girl who suddenly discovers that she's the Slayer, and all that stands between earth and a universe of evil monsters?) and Firefly/Serenity (similarly, what is not to like about outlaws in space?). It also includes Dollhouse, which I personally believe is one of the best and most intelligent scifi TV series ever created, *far* superior to many that most people would place at the top of their lists. But then there's the fanboy side of Joss Whedon. He has been a life- long comics fan. He reads them, he collects them, he knows the classics by heart, and he even writes and draws them himself. *Of course* he loves The Avengers, and *of course* he did the best job in history of bringing a big Marvel epic to the screen. I suspect that he'll do the same thing with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. But it's an uphill battle to drag me -- Joss fanboy that I am -- into his comic book fetish. I liked The Avengers, but it just didn't float my boat because as I said before I prefer Joss' original ideas to his render- ing of other people's ideas. I feel the same about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I will watch it, and applaud the good parts and laugh at the funny parts, but a part of me will always be longing for characters created by Joss himself. That said, I think that we have to cut this first episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. a bit of a break, because it's an origin tale. It has to try to create a storyline and introduce characters we've never met before (with one exception), and *get us interested in them*, interested enough to tune in every week, all within one hour (or less, given commercials). It's a formidable task, and judging from the positive reviews from both critics and viewers, Joss seems to have pulled it off. But the characters didn't really hook *me*. Despite Joss' tendency to reuse actors he's worked with before, I saw only one, Ron Glass. Most of the others are too young and pretty for me to identify with, but a few of them have the potential to develop into true genuflect Joss Whedon Characters. I like Fitzsimmons, for example -- the two lab nerds, one named Fitz and the other Simmons, who finish each others' sentences and work well together while exchanging witty quips. They have potential. And certainly Chloe Bennet as Skye has potential. She's supposed to be our favorite character, and she pulled that off for me. I like the way her character was introduced, and the way the actress pulled it off. The loner nerd who single-handedly tracks down a potential superhero who S.H.I.E.L.D. had never heard about (nerd genius), and then tries to recruit him, revealing her other side (homeless nerd genius): Skye: Come to my office... Mike: You have an office? Skye: Yes, I have an office...a mobile office...it's a van...I live in it...by choice... She's also great when Coulson tries to recruit *her* for S.H.I.E.L.D. She doesn't trust them, so he walks into the interrogation room with his biggest, baddest macho male agent, holds up a big-ass hypodermic and says it contains a fast-acting truth serum that cannot be blocked. Then, as she's expecting to be the one given the drug, he shoots up the uptight macho agent Brett instead of Skye, and then leaves the room, letting her ask *him* questions, which leads to a couple of funny moments like: Brett: I'll just call upon my training. There is no way I'm going to reveal classified secrets to a girl who's hell-bent on taking us down... Skye: Have you ever killed anyone? Brett: (immediately, no pause) Yes, a few...high-risk targets, but they were terrible people who were trying to murder nice people...and I didn't feel good afterwards. Skye: I understand. Does your grandmother know about these things? Brett: (almost crying) Grammy? So I *like* Skye, and I'll be interested to see how she develops. I'll give the series a chance, even though part of me will always be wishing he'd done a third season of Dollhouse instead. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu wrote: Highest rated drama debut in 4 years with 12 million viewers. Funny thing is Whedon seems to be holding the cards close because IMDB so far only lists 3 episodes and elsewhere I see 4. On 09/27/2013 09:09 AM, Michael Jackson wrote: I have enjoyed most of the Marvel Comic movies, but Agents of Shield was rather stale *From:* Bhairitu noozguru@... Nah, Walt's going to take a job at a nearby logging camp working along side a guy from Miami. ;-) I hope you haven't been too busy fussing over Neo and FFL to have missed the best new fall
[FairfieldLife] Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (was Re: Breaking Bad finale conspiracy theories)
Edg sez: I stopped watching it about half way through. Edg, I hope you know that I'm not replying because you weren't a fan. I firmly believe that taste is in the eye of the beholder, and that you're more than entitled to yours. I wasn't much taken with it the first time I saw it, either. I'm replying because of what you said next: Thing is for me: if Thor comes to Earth, it changes everything far more than the series' lite take on that event.let alone The Hulk et alia being exposed to the masses in one stroke, and add to it aliens from a worm hole. Here is where we disagree. And it's because to some limited extent I've been there, done that. A lot of people raised up in the TM movement and its utter lack of anything spectacular or miraculous or even interesting seem to believe that (to synthesize comments made on this and other TM-related forums) If someone just demonstrated Yogic flying fer real -- real hovering- in-mid-air-the-way-a-brick-doesn't stuff -- it would Change The World. People would be so wowed out by such an event that it would change them forever, and the world would never be the same. I disagree. I've been in lecture halls in which the general public paid their $2 entry fee and came to a talk by a guy who then levitated onstage -- real hovering- in-mid-air-the-way-a-brick-doesn't stuff -- right in front of them. I invited one such non-pre-programmed guest (meaning that I never suggested *anything* she might experience, except an interesting meditation) to one of these talks in L.A. once. She was an ex of mine, but we were on friendly terms until that evening, even though I was distinctly Off The TM Program and she couldn't be more On The TM Program if she were sucking Maharishi's dick in secret and wearing saris and looking virginal in public. :-) I was sitting right beside her as she watched the guy do his thing. She's a bit of a Chatty Cathy, so we whis- pered to each other a lot during the talk. She kinda liked his rap, and his general talk-in-plain-people-talk approach. I think it appealed to her after years of having to speak Hindu-but-not-religious-because-TM-isn't-religious TM jargon. Then we meditated, and the guy invited newbs to either meditate with their eyes open, or open them occasionally to check out the room they were meditating in, and him up there onstage, if they felt like it. She did. Sitting next to her when she did this, I occasionally heard her gasp and say, OMG, he's levitating! Or OMG, he just turned invisible! Or OMG, the whole room just turned gold! And even the clincher, for an OTP TMer, OMG, I'm having the best, deepest, and most profound meditation of my life, in the L.A. Convention Center. After the talk, she continued in that vein. Over coffee before she went home (she really was an ex, and I had no intentions about her, personally or cult-ily), she babbled on about what she had seen. I didn't bother to call her the next day, or for a few days, figuring she needed to sit with what she'd seen and experienced. When I saw her next, she denied having seen or felt ANYTHING extraordinary that night. I reminded her of what she'd said about seeing him levitating and turning invisible and having a great meditation that night, and she denied ever having said it. I have heard in the years since that she even denies *ever having gone to see him*. THAT is how far people who are heavily invested in their current world view will go to protect and preserve it. To this day, I don't know exactly *what* it was we saw in those lecture halls and out in the desert and on mountaintops, but there is no question that we saw it. Literally thousands of people had these experiences. Some accepted *that* they had had them -- whatever they were -- and went public with them. Others, like my ex, blotted them from their mind and their memory and above all from their oh-so-important public image, and claimed never to have had such experiences. THAT is how I think people on the street would react to the events of The Avengers, and The Mighty Thor and The Hulk walking the same streets they walked. IMHO, 95% of them would have blotted out the memories of those events within a few days, just so their world view wouldn't be threatened and have to change.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (was Re: Breaking Bad finale conspiracy theories)
I tend to look at TV shows a little differently having been somewhat in the business and to some extent still am. So I look at the storytelling and entertainment quality. It can be a sleazy cheezy z-movie shot on a $20 camcorder (yes, they have those that will even do HD) and if it has a good arc (tells a good story) will hold my interest. Too much of Hollywood is technique and of course money. Interesing thing about Agents is we don't know how many episodes have been produced. Perhaps Whedon is being cautious. Dollhouse had some very rushed scripts and production which tended to hurt it. The other thing I notice in reviews and comments from fans on the web is that many seem to have preconceived notions about what these shows should be and if it doesn't fit their preconceived notion then they don't like it. I even think that if Firefly we launched today they wouldn't like it. It just played well ( for some folks) in that period of time. I agree that Skye, Chloe Bennet's character is interesting. I'm trying to figure out what well known actress Bennet resembles. Bennet, BTW, is half Chinese. And yes she knows Mandarin. ;-) On 09/29/2013 04:08 AM, turquoiseb wrote: OK, you knew that as a Joss Whedon fanboy I couldn't not comment on this series. I have to or they'll take away my browncoat. :-) I *am* a committed Joss fanboy, but that said I'm far more a fan of him developing his *own* ideas than those of others. Joss' ideas are The Bomb, man. Testimonies to that creative side of Joss include Buffy (what is not to like about a normal teenage girl who suddenly discovers that she's the Slayer, and all that stands between earth and a universe of evil monsters?) and Firefly/Serenity (similarly, what is not to like about outlaws in space?). It also includes Dollhouse, which I personally believe is one of the best and most intelligent scifi TV series ever created, *far* superior to many that most people would place at the top of their lists. But then there's the fanboy side of Joss Whedon. He has been a life- long comics fan. He reads them, he collects them, he knows the classics by heart, and he even writes and draws them himself. *Of course* he loves The Avengers, and *of course* he did the best job in history of bringing a big Marvel epic to the screen. I suspect that he'll do the same thing with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. But it's an uphill battle to drag me -- Joss fanboy that I am -- into his comic book fetish. I liked The Avengers, but it just didn't float my boat because as I said before I prefer Joss' original ideas to his render- ing of other people's ideas. I feel the same about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I will watch it, and applaud the good parts and laugh at the funny parts, but a part of me will always be longing for characters created by Joss himself. That said, I think that we have to cut this first episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. a bit of a break, because it's an origin tale. It has to try to create a storyline and introduce characters we've never met before (with one exception), and *get us interested in them*, interested enough to tune in every week, all within one hour (or less, given commercials). It's a formidable task, and judging from the positive reviews from both critics and viewers, Joss seems to have pulled it off. But the characters didn't really hook *me*. Despite Joss' tendency to reuse actors he's worked with before, I saw only one, Ron Glass. Most of the others are too young and pretty for me to identify with, but a few of them have the potential to develop into true genuflect Joss Whedon Characters. I like Fitzsimmons, for example -- the two lab nerds, one named Fitz and the other Simmons, who finish each others' sentences and work well together while exchanging witty quips. They have potential. And certainly Chloe Bennet as Skye has potential. She's supposed to be our favorite character, and she pulled that off for me. I like the way her character was introduced, and the way the actress pulled it off. The loner nerd who single-handedly tracks down a potential superhero who S.H.I.E.L.D. had never heard about (nerd genius), and then tries to recruit him, revealing her other side (homeless nerd genius): Skye: Come to my office... Mike: You have an office? Skye: Yes, I have an office...a mobile office...it's a van...I live in it...by choice... She's also great when Coulson tries to recruit *her* for S.H.I.E.L.D. She doesn't trust them, so he walks into the interrogation room with his biggest, baddest macho male agent, holds up a big-ass hypodermic and says it contains a fast-acting truth serum that cannot be blocked. Then, as she's expecting to be the one given the drug, he shoots up the uptight macho agent Brett instead of Skye, and then leaves the room, letting her ask *him* questions, which leads to a couple of funny moments like: Brett: I'll just call upon my training. There is no way I'm going to reveal classified secrets to a girl who's
