Agents of SHIELD
Dec. 7th, 2014 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI watched the last couple of (UK) weeks of Agents of SHIELD.
I... have gone right off Coulson.
I can see why the writers are making the choices they make, very drama, but he's not the character I want to hang out with in my head.
I realise given the many and varied problems with SHIELD's way of doing things that what he does to Ward shouldn't be the only tipping point, but it actually makes me feel physically ill, so, you know, problem.
It's a problem in the first place that they've been keeping him in solitary confinement. The 'without trial' part would matter more if he wasn't readily confessing to everything, so it sounds good that they were handing him over for trial. There's just that little problem where they were handing him over to his abuser.
That, right there, I cannot stomach.
If they're going to call all the accusations false, I'm going to be pissed that they want to tell that story. People don't often cry wolf about abuse, that isn't a story we need to hear. The rule is, someone says they were abused, believe them.
Obviously if this was real world stuff the older brother should get a trial. And equally obviously there are many directions of problem that we've been shown, a lot of guilt and blame to go around, a lot of room for reasonable doubt. It's just a basic rule, someone says that guy is their abuser, you do not hand them over to that guy, that's their own personal slice of hell and the good guys do not do that.
It doesn't matter if they're useful or not. Useful shouldn't be a standard.
And I know Ward is unarguably a bad guy, a free willed operative of HYDRA, a really messed up person who did a lot of bad things and doesn't seem to understand why people are annoyed at him about them. He's twisted and manipulative and a real son of a bitch. Which is a great direction to take a character who looked like the standard white male angst manpain guy. He's the bad guy, the story is real clear on that.
... the fans that are not real clear on that worry me.
Leaving HYDRA guys like a cat leaves dead bird presents, Skye called it, and that seems about right. He's messed up in the head and thinks this will win him friends and influence people. And his experience to date is kind of focused on skills and missions that would make that true. Coulson implicitly told him to be useful and earn his keep, so he's doing that. He's still the messed up bad guy. It's real clear about that.
At this point a redemption arc would have to involve him understanding that, just for starters, killing people is a bad thing. And since action TV isn't very clear about that point, that's going to be hard.
So the story with Ward is interesting... except for the thing where the story continues to be about Grant Ward. White male. About as interesting as a block of wood. Epic creepy. As a bad guy, okay, fine, whatever, but couldn't they have thought of more interesting things?
Coulson's other issues, the thing with the carving? Because it came right after the thing with Ward I have difficulty having the reactions I would have expected. I've been worried about Phil, but now I'm just sickened by Coulson, and it's overriding what I was expecting to be big feels. So, you know, not the impact the writers would probably hope for.
It all being done-as-you-did stuff, what happened to him, and showing how it can go most right (happy city building guy) and most wrong (carving people), that's interesting. I just don't have a reaction to it right now.
It's pretty clear that it wasn't SHIELD in the abstract doing bad things, it was, personally, Phil Coulson. The thing with the mind wiping being graphically shown, that it wasn't just because he'd been dead that the brain machines did their poking thing, that he did that to other people already... you know, I can see a friend thinking they're doing him a favour making him forget all that. But it's also interesting that all the others got wiped and started over, complete new lives, but Phil's reprogramming was to be Phil Coulson, agent extraordinaire. Just with notably less data. Because he forgot the people involved in TAHITI, not just going there himself. He reckons he should recognise that level 6 Triskelion based agent, so he doesn't know how much has been taken. Forgetting (at least) half a dozen people is quite different from forgetting one mission to assess a project. He once again doesn't know how much of his life has been taken away. And if a complete new personality is a possibility, he doesn't know how much of him is him. Again. Stronger doubts than before. So he's not getting the carving of crazy urges now, but he has more reason than ever to doubt what SHIELD did to him. Except he probably won't, because he's very invested in SHIELD.
That narrative where SHIELD are good guys and HYDRA got inside, that's the oversimplified narrative. That makes the bad guys be on the outside. Nobody is stopping to question their own actions. This is not the story I had hoped for after Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It's an easier sell, but it's lacking lessons.
The carvings turning out to be a tube map to some destiny place, I'm bored of. The interesting angle is all SHIELD and their decisions. Millennia old genetic memory is just the whatsit to make the comics bits of the story keep happening. That part, anything can happen, so it doesn't seem worth getting fussed about, it'll all be the writers what done it anyway. More so than anything with real world parallels.
And yet, I only watch F&SF. There is a logical contradiction there.
Morse and her ex... I actually hate typing that. Because so far that's the story, not the ongoing awesome that is Mockingbird, comic book superheroine. It's Morse and her ex being all awkward.
I'm not keeping track of if episodes Bechdel pass or fail, but it seems like all the relationships and tension lines and plot and interesting happenings are all set along m-f and m-m lines. May and Coulson, Coulson and Skye, Skye and Ward, Simmons and Fitz, Fitz and Mack. There was some promising May and Skye stuff where she's training Skye, but then she left Skye to keep an eye on Coulson, which was done rather incompetently. Coulson being cooler than her, fair enough. Them not going as a group to put Coulson somewhere safe, not at all reasonable. Bloody stupid in fact.
As was how they transported Ward, in restraints he could get out of. There are other forms of restraints that wouldn't leave him all plot relevant.
I hate it when the good guys have to be incompetent to keep the plot moving.
I also don't like Morse yet. We've only seen her in relation to the husband we probably don't like already. who is an insecure dick. The minutes when I hoped he was leaving were my favourite minutes. why keep someone who talks about women the way he did?
Everything is boring and I'm sick of it.
Also the way they've set things up so SHIELD are the tiny and outnumbered outlaws just seems morally bankrupt to me. That sounds like an overstatement, but it's giving up on the whole thing about state power and the surveillance state and how much we've handed over to the security forces and what is good and really not good for them to do, and instead it's just the few going up against the nazis. Way to oversimplify. They've given up on the questions, and their answer is no answer. Unless the point is to show how awful it would be to take all their toys away, and we'd be sorry. Which is pretty much the opposite of what the CA movie was saying.
Also I have read some spoilers about a thing that maybe happens to one character, and if they do that, again, for real this time, I'm out. And I won't miss it.
I'll miss the show I was hoping they'd make, I won't miss this.
I actually was in a pretty good mood before I watched these, and then they pissed me off.
I did like Melinda May kicking arse. And there are still plural at least potentially interesting female characters, which is ahead of sadly many other things. I just... don't at the moment like it.
I... have gone right off Coulson.
I can see why the writers are making the choices they make, very drama, but he's not the character I want to hang out with in my head.
I realise given the many and varied problems with SHIELD's way of doing things that what he does to Ward shouldn't be the only tipping point, but it actually makes me feel physically ill, so, you know, problem.
It's a problem in the first place that they've been keeping him in solitary confinement. The 'without trial' part would matter more if he wasn't readily confessing to everything, so it sounds good that they were handing him over for trial. There's just that little problem where they were handing him over to his abuser.
That, right there, I cannot stomach.
If they're going to call all the accusations false, I'm going to be pissed that they want to tell that story. People don't often cry wolf about abuse, that isn't a story we need to hear. The rule is, someone says they were abused, believe them.
Obviously if this was real world stuff the older brother should get a trial. And equally obviously there are many directions of problem that we've been shown, a lot of guilt and blame to go around, a lot of room for reasonable doubt. It's just a basic rule, someone says that guy is their abuser, you do not hand them over to that guy, that's their own personal slice of hell and the good guys do not do that.
It doesn't matter if they're useful or not. Useful shouldn't be a standard.
And I know Ward is unarguably a bad guy, a free willed operative of HYDRA, a really messed up person who did a lot of bad things and doesn't seem to understand why people are annoyed at him about them. He's twisted and manipulative and a real son of a bitch. Which is a great direction to take a character who looked like the standard white male angst manpain guy. He's the bad guy, the story is real clear on that.
... the fans that are not real clear on that worry me.
Leaving HYDRA guys like a cat leaves dead bird presents, Skye called it, and that seems about right. He's messed up in the head and thinks this will win him friends and influence people. And his experience to date is kind of focused on skills and missions that would make that true. Coulson implicitly told him to be useful and earn his keep, so he's doing that. He's still the messed up bad guy. It's real clear about that.
At this point a redemption arc would have to involve him understanding that, just for starters, killing people is a bad thing. And since action TV isn't very clear about that point, that's going to be hard.
So the story with Ward is interesting... except for the thing where the story continues to be about Grant Ward. White male. About as interesting as a block of wood. Epic creepy. As a bad guy, okay, fine, whatever, but couldn't they have thought of more interesting things?
Coulson's other issues, the thing with the carving? Because it came right after the thing with Ward I have difficulty having the reactions I would have expected. I've been worried about Phil, but now I'm just sickened by Coulson, and it's overriding what I was expecting to be big feels. So, you know, not the impact the writers would probably hope for.
It all being done-as-you-did stuff, what happened to him, and showing how it can go most right (happy city building guy) and most wrong (carving people), that's interesting. I just don't have a reaction to it right now.
It's pretty clear that it wasn't SHIELD in the abstract doing bad things, it was, personally, Phil Coulson. The thing with the mind wiping being graphically shown, that it wasn't just because he'd been dead that the brain machines did their poking thing, that he did that to other people already... you know, I can see a friend thinking they're doing him a favour making him forget all that. But it's also interesting that all the others got wiped and started over, complete new lives, but Phil's reprogramming was to be Phil Coulson, agent extraordinaire. Just with notably less data. Because he forgot the people involved in TAHITI, not just going there himself. He reckons he should recognise that level 6 Triskelion based agent, so he doesn't know how much has been taken. Forgetting (at least) half a dozen people is quite different from forgetting one mission to assess a project. He once again doesn't know how much of his life has been taken away. And if a complete new personality is a possibility, he doesn't know how much of him is him. Again. Stronger doubts than before. So he's not getting the carving of crazy urges now, but he has more reason than ever to doubt what SHIELD did to him. Except he probably won't, because he's very invested in SHIELD.
That narrative where SHIELD are good guys and HYDRA got inside, that's the oversimplified narrative. That makes the bad guys be on the outside. Nobody is stopping to question their own actions. This is not the story I had hoped for after Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It's an easier sell, but it's lacking lessons.
The carvings turning out to be a tube map to some destiny place, I'm bored of. The interesting angle is all SHIELD and their decisions. Millennia old genetic memory is just the whatsit to make the comics bits of the story keep happening. That part, anything can happen, so it doesn't seem worth getting fussed about, it'll all be the writers what done it anyway. More so than anything with real world parallels.
And yet, I only watch F&SF. There is a logical contradiction there.
Morse and her ex... I actually hate typing that. Because so far that's the story, not the ongoing awesome that is Mockingbird, comic book superheroine. It's Morse and her ex being all awkward.
I'm not keeping track of if episodes Bechdel pass or fail, but it seems like all the relationships and tension lines and plot and interesting happenings are all set along m-f and m-m lines. May and Coulson, Coulson and Skye, Skye and Ward, Simmons and Fitz, Fitz and Mack. There was some promising May and Skye stuff where she's training Skye, but then she left Skye to keep an eye on Coulson, which was done rather incompetently. Coulson being cooler than her, fair enough. Them not going as a group to put Coulson somewhere safe, not at all reasonable. Bloody stupid in fact.
As was how they transported Ward, in restraints he could get out of. There are other forms of restraints that wouldn't leave him all plot relevant.
I hate it when the good guys have to be incompetent to keep the plot moving.
I also don't like Morse yet. We've only seen her in relation to the husband we probably don't like already. who is an insecure dick. The minutes when I hoped he was leaving were my favourite minutes. why keep someone who talks about women the way he did?
Everything is boring and I'm sick of it.
Also the way they've set things up so SHIELD are the tiny and outnumbered outlaws just seems morally bankrupt to me. That sounds like an overstatement, but it's giving up on the whole thing about state power and the surveillance state and how much we've handed over to the security forces and what is good and really not good for them to do, and instead it's just the few going up against the nazis. Way to oversimplify. They've given up on the questions, and their answer is no answer. Unless the point is to show how awful it would be to take all their toys away, and we'd be sorry. Which is pretty much the opposite of what the CA movie was saying.
Also I have read some spoilers about a thing that maybe happens to one character, and if they do that, again, for real this time, I'm out. And I won't miss it.
I'll miss the show I was hoping they'd make, I won't miss this.
I actually was in a pretty good mood before I watched these, and then they pissed me off.
I did like Melinda May kicking arse. And there are still plural at least potentially interesting female characters, which is ahead of sadly many other things. I just... don't at the moment like it.