Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 2, Episodes 8 & 9 Review


Agents of SHIELD started off as a fun, enjoyable spin-off from the Marvel films dealing with monster-of-the-week formulas to build interesting and complex characters, while also setting up arcs that would carry through the series that would be built up and concluded at a later date. This was something simple and I was happy with it. However, towards the end of Season One the show became more focused on the arcs, lost a lot of the fun and began to feel like one continuous story building up the characters. We get to Season Two though, and a lot of the character building that made Season One so great is now lost. Agent May is still lacking in actual background; Skye magically turns from being the likeable newbie to SHIELD with a mysterious background to a badass SHIELD veteran with a mysterious background over the course of a few months; Simmons is still the same person she was at the beginning of Season One, only without Fitz; Ward is still a bad guy who thinks he's a good guy; and Coulson is still not completely trusted by his team as a man who is fighting for everything SHIELD stands for. Yeah, the main characters haven't gone very far, and neither have the new ones. In fact, the new characters have clogged up the show from going down interesting routes with its current characters and has left us with a bloated show trying to do something interesting but missing what made the show so great in the first place - standalone episodes each week, subtley building up story arcs and building the characters to become more interesting and complex. The simplicity of the original show is lost, and the complexity of this show has devoured.
Coulson and Skye (© Marvel.com)
Don't get me wrong, I can still enjoy Agents of SHIELD, but by no means is it the show it once was and I was happy with. Solution: kill off half the main cast and explore our main characters in more depth. Sadly, the new characters won't get built up, but none of them are that interesting in the first place. Definitely kill off Hunter though, he's a waste of each episode's running time as a character.
Easily the best development of Season Two has been Skye's father, and the actor is pitch-perfect at every moment in portraying the character. Basically, don't kill him off, he's great.
Agent Koenig finally returned in Episode 9. I forgot about him with his lack of involvement this season.
Yeah, in all honesty, Agents of SHIELD is just building up to something, and each episode is building up the story. Good in some ways, not so good in others. You end up being left with nothing to say at the end of each episode, and with the arc going on at the rate it is, this'll be a common element for the rest of Season Two (and at this rate, Season Three, if that gets made).
Its not that the episodes this season have been bad, but they've mostly been so mediocre and the show seems to have lost its spark. This darker, more arc-focused Agents of SHIELD might be better for some, but my interest in the show is just decreasing. Maybe its just me.
Agents of SHIELD might pick up. It did for a couple of episodes, but now its lost its spark. Its the mid-season finale next week. And I have nothing to say about that.
Episode 8: 7/10
Episode 9: 7/10

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