Aw, so Cal wants to have his own superhero team. Which becomes a bit of a moot point when he's dragged off by the faceless guy in the episode's climax in a way so as to completely divert the way the episdoe was going. I find myself wondering what happens to the rest of the group if Cal never comes back to keep…

No one’s ever happy with their lot in life. Before the break it was noted (by which I mean that I rambled about it) that the quietest villain, Raina, was the only
character who really “won” the mid-season finale. Well, apparently being the love-child of a _Cats_ character and the Shrike isn’t working out for her,…

"I wanted it to be perfect." Probably the definining line of this episode, since I wasn't able to come up with anything thematic from "are we going to cloak?' 'Not yet.'" But overall the story is divided between the functional cripples who need things to be just so and those who don't. Whenever Cal seems capable…

_Agents OF S.H.I.E.L.D._ isn't a new show anymore. I still think of it as a young show, but having cranked out ten Marvel movies' worth of content over the last year and a half, it's got a past. And "…Ye Who Enter Here" is downright obsessed with that past, crawling with callbacks. From this season we have stuff…

Too much going on! This episode actually deserves a short takes format rather than a longer ramble about a particular theme.

So we've just quietly had an upheaval in everything we thought we knew about Grant Ward. Both the Well and the episode "The Well" are often dismissed as minor stories, especially in the HYDRA era, but in theory it's where our understanding of Ward comes from. Especially as a villain, he's been defined by the ways in…

In short, whiplash from lots of plot threads slamming together in a way that didn't give me a sense of narrative momentum, and too much focus on the poorly drawn (in that episode, at least) new characters with too little reason to care. It gets a few AoQ points for a cool antagonist and the understated Fitz reveal,…

For reference, final S1 ratings after second viewing are as follows.
1) "Pilot" - Decent
2) "0-8-4" - Decent
3) "The Asset" - Decent
4) "Eye Spy" - Good
5) "Girl In The Flower Dress" - Good
6) "FZZT" - Excellent
7) "The Hub" - Weak
8) "The Well" - Good
9) "Repairs" - Decent
10) "The Bridge" - Decent
11) "The Magical…

Been on the road, so on the remote chance anyone even noticed my absence during weeks 1-2, that's the reason. Probably won't be posting again until episode 6 because, well, road.

For reference, my ratings for Season One of _Marvel's
Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D._ are as follows (* = initial rating, still
pending a re-watch)

We often hear about how spinoffs need to carve out their own identity free of the thing from which they're being spun off, or risk being marginalized. I'm sure I've suggested that this show was vulnerable to such a phenomenon - we can't have our heroes constantly referencing Avengers who wouldn't deign to waste their…

Thanks to Zack and to all our beloved gimmick commenters. It's been amazing to have an excuse to finally do that full re-watch of DS9 I'd been planning for years, and these five years of Trek reviews have been a highlight of the Internet.

Many people have speculated these last few weeks about whether Ward will earn himself a "redemption arc," and what it would take to get him there. Redeemed through his love for Skye, or beyond saving? It might be worth looking through what the show itself seems to think about how important about where one has been,…

Last week's ramble was about the cynicism underlying AoS. Then this week is an episode that thrives on breathless plotting, "kung fu betrayal," and over the top action sequences. This is a show in which, over about twenty seconds of screen time, the FBI gets called on someone, there's a bunch of gunplay and…

Gowron whups on "Kahless" in "Rightful Heir" too, right? He knows his way around a bat'leth, he just doesn't really believe in honor and such.

So much good. Occasionally I'm counting how my favorite characters are getting shortchanged as the show winds down, but "Tacking" packs so much rich content for Kira and Garak and to a lesser degree Odo (the three most fun of the long-standing characters) and uses them being themselves to inform the story of Damar,…

I wish I could've posted more (I run my clinic on Thursday afternoons, which usually runs late), because I fantasized for years about doing a total DS9 re-watch with a big discussion community. Zach, though, is both a first-timer and a better reviewer than I am. His opinions are occasionally wrong, but way less…

Great points; I'd thought of this episode as a culmination of many of the Final Chapter plots, but it really is bigger in the ways Zach points out. The era of _Star Trek_ about which I personally care is the "23rd/4th Century Alpha Quadrant universe," so like many people here, the _Star Trek_ I care about ends when…

_Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D._ has evolved into a fundamentally cynical show. It's quite possible that this wasn't necessarily the agenda. It's maybe a natural outgrowth of a show about conspiracies and double agents and such, and furthermore a show that loves the Big Reveal (hell, it almost qualifies as a twist that…

What do we make of Coulson's breakdown in the snow this week? Or more generally, what should one conclude about the way he and other S.H.I.E.L.D. company men are portrayed. On the one hand, this is basically the arc that deconstructs the character. Coulson coasts on his status as the lead and on Clark Gregg's charm…