A guide to 1940s costume design in Marvel's Agent Carter

Marvel's Agent Carter begins tonight, and I wrote this Daily Dot article to coincide with the first episode. It's a spoiler-free background for Peggy Carter's costumes, and why the show is set during such an interesting period in fashion history.

Set in 1946, Agent Carter's seven-part espionage story is rooted in postwar culture. And like the first Captain America movie, one of its defining features is its 1940s aesthetic, immediately setting it apart from Marvel's other TV show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The biggest influence on Western fashion in 1946 was, obviously, World War II. Fabric rationing led to a trend for simpler clothes, and women's fashions suddenly became more practical due to the influx of women joining the workforce—like Peggy Carter, whose career began in the Strategic Scientific Reserve during the war. These factors added up to women wearing low heels and plain, knee-length skirts without pleats or frills, and men wearing suits without cuffs or flaps on the pockets. 

Agent Carter takes place during a dynamic period in fashion history, the transition from wartime austerity to the postwar styles that would define the 1950s. By 1947 the French fashion industry was up and running again, and Christian Dior introduced the so-called "New Look" of nipped-in waists and flouncy calf-length skirts.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier Part 5 -- Worldbuilding in the MCU.

Part 1: "Trust No One" -- How Captain America became the gritty superhero we never knew we wanted.
Part 2: HYDRA, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe.
Part 3: Black Widow and Falcon. 
Part 4: The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes.

With a movie of this scale, I tend to fixate on what happens after the end credits roll. Not in an "I'm really looking forward to Sebastian Stan crying in the sequel!" way (although obviously that's a given), but in the sense of what impact Steve Rogers' actions will have on the rest of the world. I find it disappointing when movies just focus on the main characters and hit the reset button on the rest of the universe, as if the only people effected by a deadly supervillain/apocalypse are the hero and supporting cast. Luckily, the scope of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has given us a far better chance to see how the world changes and develops over time.



People love to point out the little details that link Marvel movies together, like Sitwell's offhand mention of Dr Strange. But to be honest, this type of in-universe worldbuilding is pretty easy. The MCU's real strength is the way it portrays a world with a realistic history and contemporary culture, rather than following the more familiar method of plopping a superhero into a city with no hints of influence from the outside world.

From the first Iron Man movie onwards, the existence of superheroes is something that has directly influenced everyday life in the MCU, from the legal ramifications of Tony Stark's unlicensed "prosthesis" to the way he markets himself as a celebrity hero, to his decision to move from weapons manufacturing to clean energy and robotics. By the time we reach Avengers, we've seen more than a glimpse of how the rest of the world is changing as a result. Agents of SHIELD was a stroke of genius because it shares more of the everyday nuts-and-bolts stuff that we're ever going to see in the actual movies. (Note to anyone who stopped watching after the first few episodes: AoS is so awesome now. Persevere.)

Captain America is the strongest strand in this worldbuilding web because he's the first publicly recognised superhuman in the MCU. He gives us a link between the Red Skull in the 1940s, and the present-day world of SHIELD, the Avengers, and the ever-growing pantheon of weird 21st century tech and superhuman characters. Fittingly, CATWS was the first movie to give us a truly in-depth look at the non-superheroic side of the MCU.


A typical superhero/adventure movie ends with the hero defeating the villain, plus some kind of set-up for a sequel. Just to be clear, I have zero problem with this. A simple storyline doesn't necessarily preclude good writing. However, one of the reasons for the popularity of this formula is the fact that big-budget filmmakers are leery of making things "too complicated" in case audiences don't show up for later sequels -- a theory that's now been obliterated by the increasingly complex nature of the MCU. Marvel Studios loves worldbuilding, and their movies are better as a result. 

The events of CATWS have turned the MCU on its head. SHIELD is not only rotten to the core, but functionally dead. The Avengers no longer have the support structure of a rational, government-funded backup to help clear things up after the next alien invasion. Fury is in hiding. Natasha is now a public figure. Coulson and his team are on the run. Thanks to Natasha's Snowden-esque leak, anyone with internet access can now read everything from SHIELD's black ops missions to the Helicarrier specs to Hawkeye's psych evaluations. Civilians now know precisely how much SHIELD has been hiding from them all these years, and therefore people are likely to react differently to superhuman threats (and heroes) in the future. By sheer force of numbers, "normal people" are now more powerful and influential than the strongest of the Avengers.



Avengers was the most high-impact movie before this, but for obvious reasons it didn't show much of its own aftermath. Iron Man 3, much like its prequels, focused on Tony Stark's life and emotional journey rather than on the outside world -- although it was still a direct follow-up from Avengers, because one of the main themes was Tony struggling with PTSD resulting from the Chitauri attack. Thor: The Dark World told Loki's side of the post-Avengers story and spent half of the time on alien planets, meaning that there wasn't much room for earthbound worldbuilding. But Captain America? He was the perfect choice to show us everything else, not just because we already knew he was working with SHIELD (i.e. the Avengers' most direct link to the civilian population), but because Cap has always been a hero of the people.



It would be a waste of a movie to just have Steve Rogers face off against some supervillain all by himself. Even in The First Avenger, he was backed up by Bucky, Peggy and the Howling Commandos. Before that, his first mission as Captain America was as a propaganda icon, a foundation for his later role as an in-universe historical/comicbook hero. Basically, Cap is public property. Even his origin story is all about collaboration, with Dr Erskine and Howard Stark working to build a supersoldier, rather than Steve's powers being an accident of birth, magic, or science.

Cap is pretty unusual in that his battles aren't personal so much as idealogical. Most supervillain/hero conflicts are a combination of personal rivalry (Lex Luthor/Superman, Thor/Loki, Tony Stark/Obadiah Stane, etc.) and the supervillain Doing Something Evil That Must Be Stopped. In the MCU, Captain America doesn't really have an arch-enemy in that sense. He just fights bad people, which he'd already been trying to do before he got the supersoldier serum. This attitude is why it makes sense for Steve to be working for SHIELD in CATWS, while Tony Stark continues to stay on the sidelines. Steve wants to help, and he feels that SHIELD is the place where he can most effectively put himself to good use.

This also ties into the way Steve straddles the line between human and superhuman, meaning that it's still ethically acceptable for him to be going toe-to-toe with normal people. Captain America can be surprisingly indiscriminate in the kind of bad guys he decides to take down, because unlike Superman (who can kill more or less anybody without breaking a sweat) or Tony Stark (who is richer than god and can blast you out the sky with his near-indestructible robot suit), it doesn't feel like overkill to have Steve go up against someone like Batroc. Sure, he's stronger and faster than an ordinary human, but he's not so strong and so fast that you see him having to rein himself in. His enhanced physical abilities are a tool rather than a weapon of mass destruction.

In The First Avenger, Steve's battle with the Red Skull only becomes personal after Bucky dies. CATWS mirrors this because Cap's plan to defeat HYDRA is all very strategic and practical until he discovers that Bucky is the Winter Soldier, at which point all bets are off. All those comparisons between CATWS and spy thriller movies are apt, because the story structure isn't particularly superheroic: Cap goes out of his way first to identify the enemy, then to investigate what's going on, and finally to gather a team and face up to that threat. This is a perfect fit for Steve Rogers' characterisation as a commanding officer and as a guy who always goes out of his way to do the right thing, and it also highlights the significance of him risking everything to keep Bucky alive at the end.



The disaster movie genre has been around forever, but recently there's been an uptick in the number of summer blockbusters that illustrate their impact with colossal infrastructure damage. This may be Michael Bay's fault, and I don't find it very effective because with a PG or PG-13 rating in mind, no amount of toppling skyscrapers will feel meaningful.

This feels particularly bizarre when you consider America's obsession with urban terrorist attacks. Hollywood movies regularly include disasters that are ten or even a hundred times more devastating than 9/11, but they zoom out until all you're experiencing is grey concrete dust, tiny people running around like ants, and the distant vibration of a dramatic bass soundtrack. The true impact of such a disaster quickly becomes bloodless, distant, and sanitized.

I find it quite unpleasant to watch this kind of movie that implies vast amounts of civilian casualties, but cleanses that loss by removing its bloodshed and viscerality. I'd rather have a supervillain cause the meaningful death of one character we actually care about, than have him destroy fifty skyscrapers full of nameless civilians whose deaths are reduced to a silent, PG-rated nonentity. I'd rather have Obi-Wan Kenobi say "It was as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced," than watch another CGI shot of buildings falling like dominoes, with no sign of who was inside. CATWS wasn't perfect in this regard, but it had three things counting in its favour:

1. Whenever action scenes took place in a public space, it was a situation where the heroes had no choice but to stand and fight -- or drive wherever there was still space on the road. There were very few situations where the good guys could have caused the deaths of innocent bystanders, which is more than you can say for Man of Steel.
2. The inevitable "huge things crashing into each other" scene was when Team Steve took down the Helicarriers, and there was an actual reason for them to be crashing, unlike the endlessly disaster-prone skyscrapers I keep seeing in other movies. Also, the people in the Helicarriers were explicitly shown to be enemy combatants, and Steve already gave them every opportunity to leave their posts.
3. The scene where Natasha desperately yells at civilians to get to safety. (Which, incidentally, is one of the very few scenes where one of the heroes actually has a chance to do something to help nearby civilians, because most of the time they're already running for their lives as well.)

Take a look at Avengers, Star Trek Into Darkness and Man of Steel. All three include scenes where major population centres are heavily damaged by attacking alien forces, but Avengers is the only one that attempts to humanize the situation. Captain America is on the ground, coordinating police to get civilians to safety, while the rest of the Avengers keep the Chitauri attackers inside a five-block radius to avoid more buildings being damaged. In Man of Steel and STID, buildings collapse and thousands of civilians die invisible offscreen deaths that in the case of MoS, are at least partly the fault of Superman himself. Meanwhile in the Marvel universe, an entire movie (Iron Man 3) was dedicated to the trauma of that attack, with Tony Stark exhibiting classic PTSD symptoms and building hundreds of Iron Man suits in an attempt to shield himself from (possibly imaginary) threats.

Superhero movies often seem to use civilian casualties as a kind of points system: "Choose between saving a schoolbus full of children, or saving your girlfriend!" The goal of superheroism is to protect the helpless from superpowered threats, but I feel like The Avengers is the only recent urban-warfare example that does this in an practical fashion. In the MCU, the main characters interact with the rest of the world in an organic and believable way, and CATWS was the most ambitious example of that so far.

This genre is always going to require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. For example, the concept of secret identities has always been kind of ridiculous, and is now even less plausible than it was before. Given the level of surveillance technology now available, Spider-Man and Batman would have been unmasked within days of becoming public figures. However, for those stories to keep being told in any recogniseable fashion, the issue of secret identities must simply be ignored. And personally, I don't have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is when a hero repeatedly defeats various supervillains in a very public and dangerous way, and everyone else just keeps... living on as normal.

Character-wise, one of the most significant worldbuilding decisions in the MCU was to make all of their heroes completely public. Steve Rogers is famous enough that Sam Wilson could recognise him in the park. Tony and Pepper are already celebrities, of a sort. All of the Avengers are now mythologised with in-universe memorabilia. In fact, the only characters with anything remotely resembling secret identities were SHIELD agents like Hawkeye, Fury and Black Widow, who are the least "super" of the main Avengers team. Following CATWS, even Black Widow is a public figure, appearing on TV to testify about the SHIELD/HYDRA document leak. She is now the Edward Snowden of the MCU.



The MCU doesn't really require the kind of suspension of disbelief needed to continue watching Spider-Man movies, where New York cops continually fail to shoot the Green Goblin out of the sky. First of all, the scope of the MCU allows us to get a closer look at things like SHIELD, which explains how superhuman/alien phenomena have stayed secret for so long. SHIELD also shows how normal humans react to the sudden appearance of people like Thor and Captain America. Secondly, the hero/villain conflicts in the MCU are not confined to just the hero and the villain, but have a solid foundation in the world "outside." Even Malekith in Thor: The Dark World (probably the most two-dimensional villain so far) was shown in terms of the real consequences of his actions, with that tear-jerking Asgardian funeral scene.

Most importantly of all, the human characters in the MCU are just as significant and powerful as the superhumans. Nick Fury is undoubtedly more powerful than any of the Avengers: he's their boss. Peggy Carter and Howard Stark helped found SHIELD, an organization that spent decades shaping the way the world would react to people like Thor and Iron Man. Pepper Potts and Jane Foster both have an ongoing impact on the world around them. Phil Coulson is the catalyst that brings the Avengers together in the first place.

In CATWS, we see this expand to its greatest extent so far, with Agent 13 and crowds of other SHIELD agents making the decision to ignore their orders and fight alongside Cap. By elevating the importance of human/civilian characters, the MCU creates a far more complex and believable world than most other superhero movies -- and all without disempowering its heroes.

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Continued in:

Part 6: Costuming and design: Steve & Bucky
Part 7: Costuming in CATWS: Nick Fury, Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Part 2 -- HYDRA, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe

Previously: Part 1: "Trust No One" -- Steve Rogers as the ~gritty superhero America deserves.

When it came to using HYDRA as the antagonist once again, Winter Soldier's writers were caught between a rock and a hard place. At face value, the concept of an evil organization infiltrating SHIELD is perfect for the Winter Soldier storyline ("You shaped the century.") and can be linked in with real-world concerns about PRISM and drone strikes.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers couldn't really create a new, more plausible evil conspiracy when they already had HYDRA ready and waiting in the sidelines of the Captain America mythos. This meant they then had to try and legitimize a scenario where thousands of SHIELD agents decided to join a blatantly evil secret society with roots in a Nazi cult -- without ever being detected. And, in many cases, without a clear-cut explanation for why they joined in the first place.

With a villain as wide-ranging as HYDRA, they had to give us a few entry characters to illustrate different aspects of the organization. Zola represented the cartoonishly evil Nazi backstory, while Alexander Pierce had a more pragmatic explanation for why he believed in HYDRA's goals. The weakest point was Agent Sitwell, as he was seemingly introduced as the "human" side, almost like the evil equivalent of Coulson's benevolent middle-management schtick in Avengers.

I understand why they chose Sitwell: He's an established character, and having him turn traitor was proof that HYDRA had been there all along, lurking under everyone's nose. Except by putting Sitwell in that role, we're now supposed to believe that this previously friendly dude has secretly been really evil all along, to the point of conspiring with lecherous senators and plotting to kill millions of people.

And yet the movie never provides us with an explanation for why he decided this was a good idea, or why nobody ever noticed. By bringing Sitwell front and centre like this, they accidentally highlighted the lack of plausible motives for becoming as a HYDRA spy.



Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Sitwell is the only Latino character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So while we're meant to be feeling betrayed that a familiar character turned out to be a bad guy, I think many fans are more likely to feel betrayed about the fact that it was Sitwell, specifically. After all, Sitwell isn't actually a person, he's a character who a team of filmmakers decided would best serve the story by turning evil and then dying.

Let's take a look at the trajectory of the two main SHIELD agents we see as background characters throughout the MCU: Coulson and Sitwell. Now, I love Clark Gregg as Coulson, and I think he deserves his role in Agents of SHIELD. But CATWS basically tells us that out of two recurring characters with similar roles in the franchise, the white guy was pushed to have a well-developed storyline and a huge fanbase, while the Latino character's most significant contribution was to inexplicably become an evil minion, and then a corpse.



Just to counterbalance what I've said about Sitwell's role, it's also worth pointing out that CATWS is still way more diverse than any other superhero movie in recent memory. Which is kind of a dubious honour considering Hollywood's incredibly low bar for this kind of thing, but whatever.

Out of the central cast of good guys (Cap, Falcon, Black Widow, Fury, Maria Hill and Agent 13), only one of them was a white guy, and everyone had distinct and engaging characterization. (N.B. You can read my thoughts on X-Men: First Class here. With such a big ensemble cast the X-Men series has the opportunity to reach miles ahead of any other current franchise, but they wind up shooting themselves in the foot over and over again.)



I just hope that Marvel isn't going to just going to reach this point and then plateau. There's a lot of talk in comics fandom about how the Marvel universe is far more diverse than DC, and how Marvel Studios is better than anyone else when it comes to movie adaptations. However, we're still at the point where Marvel is praised for the Thor franchise being "girl-friendly" because it has emotional depth and three female characters who aren't love interests. CATWS manages five whole women, which seems mindblowingly impressive until you notice the fact that a) the movie doesn't even pass the Bechdel Test, and b) virtually every background character is a dude.

Just to clarify, I'm not all up in arms about CATWS, and obviously I enjoyed it both as an action movie and as an addition to the MCU. This is just a reminder that even in a relatively well-thought-out movie like this, we're still measuring our standards of diversity and gender representation by the extremely low bar of "average Hollywood blockbuster," a genre that currently boasts such masterpieces as Expendables and Transformers.

Having successfully established a couple of female side-characters like Maria Hill and Agent 13, perhaps Marvel can now work their way up to something vaguely approaching gender parity for the background cast (LOL, this will never happen), or even give Black Widow her own movie. Because seriously, it's kinda ridiculous that Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy got there before her.

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Continued in:

Part 3: Black Widow and Falcon
Part 4: The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes
Part 5: Worldbuilding in the MCU
Part 6: Costuming and design: Steve & Bucky
Part 7: Costuming in CATWS: Nick Fury, Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D.

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Part 1 -- Trust No One.

Previously: The costumes and characters of The Avengers -- Captain America.


I've been rather entertained by the number of reviewers who smugly namechecked Edward Snowden while writing about this movie, but they do have a point. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is about as "realistic" as you're going to get in the superhero genre, in a way that I found far more satisfying than the stereotypical ~gritty reboot~ atmosphere of the Dark Knight trilogy.

Whether or not you're a fan of Nolan's Batman movies, I think it's fair to say that they were masterminded by someone who doesn't have much affection for the superhero genre, which is quite funny considering the overt silliness of The Dark Knight Rises. CATWS provided an excellent balance between a relatively realistic concept (SHIELD's PRISM-inspired surveillance helicarriers), and the inherently optimistic nature of Captain America as a character.
Steve Rogers may do a lot of punching in this movie (perhaps too much punching, dare I even say it), but his true superpower is his status as a role model and leader. In the end, it's Steve who decides that SHIELD is beyond salvation, Steve who inspires Falcon to join the fight, and Steve who persuades SHIELD agents to ignore direct orders because it's the right thing to do.

He's the guy with the guts to go first when confronting everyone from schoolyard bullies to his own superior officers, and you can really understand why people rally behind him as a figurehead. He doesn't have the firepower of Thor or Iron Man or the political sway of Nick Fury, but he's the one trustworthy rock in the shifting moral sands of SHIELD and HYDRA.


It's a little depressing to compare Steve Rogers to the bastardized version of Superman we saw in Man of Steel: a guy who needlessly fought a battle in the middle of Metropolis when he could've just flown it out into a field somewhere (hello, civilian casualties), and who then snapped the neck of his enemy. Meanwhile Captain America -- not just a soldier but also one of the few superheroes who wields an everyday gun -- primarily fights with a shield, and ends his final battle scene by lying down and surrendering because he'd rather die than kill a friend. I just wish there had been another scene like when he coordinates the civilian evacuation in Avengers, but that would've been logistically impossible because all of the public battles were desperate chase scenes across DC motorways.

The superhero genre has spent a long time trying (and usually failing) to bring compelling antagonists to the big screen. Either you get an excellent actor to play someone so utterly batshit that their motivation doesn't matter (i.e. The Joker), or you use a shades-of-grey villain with an comprehensible motive (i.e. Loki or Magneto). Then there's the additional problem of the end-of-movie showdown, which is usually only interesting on the first viewing, and in some cases not even then.

The Avengers has the best battle scene I've seen so far, because it pays attention to each of the characters' individual strengths rather than just being a rockem-sockem war of attrition. Captain America: The First Avenger was sadly one of the worst examples in this regard because Red Skull was a terrible villain, and the movie would've been vastly improved by just adding 20 minutes more of the Howling Commandos instead.

CATWS seems to have learned from its prequel's mistakes, and thus the structure of the final showdown follows a similar model to the Avengers, with the added bonus of having no specific Bad Guy for Steve to punch into submission. Instead, Steve and his allies have to deal with the far more amorphous problem of HYDRA, which now has less to do with battling a preposterously evil-looking Nazi cult, and more to do with the moral ambiguity the government establishment. You can tell by process of elimination that Alexander Pierce is the bad guy, but he's not all that different from Nick Fury -- which is kind of the point of this entire movie.

One of the central tropes of the superhero genre is the "two sides of the same coin" nature of a successful superhero/villain pairing. Superman mostly fights aliens (with the exception of Lex Luthor, who is the opposing figure for Clark Kent rather than Kal-El), Spider-Man deals with animal-themed scientists, Iron Man goes up against a lot of engineers and people with robot armour, and so on. Obviously there are exceptions, but as a rule, the most popular superhero/villain pairings are between characters who mirror each other in some way.
In CATWS, there's no central figure to take the position of the Red Skull. The waters are far murkier this time round. Bucky is Cap's direct opponent, but none of us really want Cap to "defeat" him. Professional kickpuncher Brock Rumlow (you know, the punch-kicky man) is evil cannon fodder. Zola is an expository prop. Alexander Pierce is the closest we get to a supervillain, but his power is more about what he represents than what he actually does. I'd actually say Cap's main "enemy" in this movie is the loneliness of his life in the 21st century.

The film never explores this explicitly, but CATWS is a story about a man with a death wish. Steve Rogers may not actively attempt to kill himself, but he tells Sam Wilson that he doesn't know how to be happy, and the opening action sequence involves Cap throwing his shield and helmet aside to have a pointlessly macho showdown with Batroc. His overall mood throughout the film is that of a lonely, unhappy person who no longer has a strong reason to keep going. He's sticking with SHIELD because he thinks they're  the only viable option, not because he actually believes in what they're doing.

The most depressing thing is that the film's "happy ending" is Steve finding out that his best friend is alive, but this is tempered by the fact that Bucky has spent the past seventy years going through unimaginable trauma. And I'm still not entirely sure if Steve had any intention of surviving the helicarrier being blown up, since he didn't make much effort to do anything except save Bucky. All this, from the supposedly cheerful and un-gritty Marvel Studios.
Steve Rogers is a fundamentally friendly guy who operates best when surrounded by a unit of soldiers he can trust, and CATWS dropped him into the polar opposite of that scenario. The tone is somewhere between a Cold War spy thriller ("Trust no one.") and a Bourne movie with Cap as the fugitive -- and the lack of a specific enemy means Cap is out of his comfort zone in more ways than one. He's forced to fumble his way through the unpleasant internal politics of SHIELD, where he is treated as a pawn by both Fury and Pierce, and has no one to turn to except Natasha and some guy he met while jogging at the park.

Honestly, I think this movie would've benefited from milking the "all my friends are dead" angle some more, or at least including one more emotional scene where Steve mourns or talks about Bucky. Hopefully we'll get some of that in the sequel. As it is, I was very satisfied by the way Marvel struck a balance by inserting their most wholesome superhero and into what may be their most unpleasant story concept so far.

CATWS was politically and culturally relevant without really supporting any ideology other than "freedom," and was about a thousand times more coherent than the incomprehensible mess of references in The Dark Knight Rises. Even taking into account the handful of ridiculous moments like Zola's bunker scene, I think this movie should be the new gold standard for realism in the superhero genre.

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Continued in:

Part 2: HYDRA, Sitwell, and diversity in the Marvel universe
Part 3: Black Widow and Falcon
Part 4: The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes
Part 5: Worldbuilding in the MCU
Part 6: Costuming and design: Steve & Bucky
Part 7: Costuming in CATWS: Nick Fury, Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D.

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Agents of SHIELD: It's actually good now!?

Previously on Agents of SHIELD.

Since there's no episode of Agents of SHIELD this week, I thought now would be to catch up with my reviews. Sorry I haven't posted in a while! I've been busy launching a publishing press that prints and publicises original novels by talented fanfic authors. You should check us out! There are book excerpts on our website (young adult satire! queer romance lit! urban fantasy noir!), alongside cover art and info about why a project like this is such a good idea for people in fandom.

If you don't watch AoS, or if you (understandably) lost interest after a few episodes, then you really need to reevaluate your decision because this show has improved A LOT. I have no idea what happened between episodes 5 and 6, but if you read any of my earlier reviews, you'll know that I was very critical of the first half of the season. Now I'm wondering just what the hell was going on, because a switch flipped during episode 6 and the show has been steadily improving ever since. Here's my rundown of the season so far:

• Episode 1: Entertaining, for a pilot episode (and I usually hate pilots).
• Episodes 2-5: Increasingly frustrating, both in terms of general quality (dialogue, characterisation, episodic storylines, etc) and as a sci-fi/genre show. Almost no worldbuilding, character development, or emotionally compelling scenes. There is no way I would've kept watching, if not for Clark Gregg + the Marvel connection.
• Episode 6: Suddenly?? Actual emotions are happening?? Agent Ward almost does something interesting enough for me to stop hoping he'll drop dead, and FitzSimmons are brilliant.
• Episode 7: Super fun. Simmons and Skye get to be hilarious together. SHIELD Agent Victoria Hand is introduced, and I greatly enjoy the fact that she is much taller than Coulson. We FINALLY get two of the main things I was hoping for: a real look at SHIELD's unethical behaviour as a quasi-governmental organisation, and some details of the inner workings of SHIELD HQ.
• Episode 8: Directed by Jonathan Frakes (!?) AKA Commander Riker from Star Trek: TNG, and director of two Star Trek movies. Real, solid links to the Marvel movie universe, played out in an interesting and reasonably unpredictable way. Ward and May hook up, to my utter astonishment. More on that later.

Which brings us to the most recent episode, "Repairs," a ghost story that finally makes good on the expectations I had for Agents of SHIELD in the first place. I'm actually quite stunned by how quickly this show transformed from being almost unwatchable (unless you're a seriously involved Marvel fan or a small child) to being smart and entertaining. And that's down to a sudden change in not just one, but multiple aspects of the show.

Team Building
Even though Joss Whedon is only distantly attached to AoS, it was definitely marketed as a Whedonverse show. As a result, people had certain expectations. Whedonverse shows have snappy dialogue and a smart balance between geeky humour and depth of emotion, but most importantly, they always focus on groups of misfits coming together to form an extraordinary team or family. On a superficial level, the first episode of Agents of SHIELD really did look like it was heading in this direction. Coulson brought together the team like Ocean's Eleven, there was an interesting mix of personality types, and everyone was just as photogenic as your average Whedon show.

However, for the next four episodes they stalled out. Either the team relationships didn't develop at all, or the characters were put in scenarios where they acted like they'd known each other for months, even when we'd seen little to no believable bonding onscreen. They were stuck in limbo between "too close" and "too distant," with few human touches no social middle-ground. With the exception of May and Coulson, most of the team interactions for the first five episodes felt oddly false, so I was surprised by the number of people I saw posting on the Tumblr tag about how much they loved the relationships in AoS. That is, until I realised that most of those fans were either a) very young, or b) not really talking about canon.

We all love found-family stories, and we're so used to reading fanfic or watching TV shows about snarkily affectionate teams that sometimes, we end up extrapolating that dynamic onto relationships that haven't yet been formed in canon. Two recent examples are Teen Wolf and The Avengers. A lot of Teen Wolf fanfic has the main cast of characters acting like a wolf pack full of affectionate, familial relationships, whereas the canonical characters are all split into antagonistic factions who only grudgingly trust each other for short periods of time. The Avengers is slightly different because in many of the comic books, they are really close as a team. But at the time of the 2012 movie, the team are all essentially strangers to each other, and are yet to move in together at Stark Tower. As a result, there was always a pretty big gap between the Avengers team I wanted, and the one that actually existed in "reality".
Obviously I have zero problem with this happening in fanfic because, you know, that's the whole point of fanfic. I just find it kind of baffling to see people reinterpreting canon to fit in with those ideas, but IDK, each to their own. The result with AoS was that until the last handful of episodes, there was a significant divide between the "real" character relationships, and the alternate versions that existed e inside many people's minds. (An imaginary show that I personally would've preferred to be watching, because it sounded way better than the one onscreen.) Luckily, after nine episodes we've finally reached that point in canon. The team now have a believably casual rapport, and they've been through enough perilous situations together that they've had a chance to bond in a realistic way.

Unpredictability

I never had high expectations of AoS being a world-class thriller or boasting the same quality of dramatic writing as, say, Battlestar Galactica or The Good Wife. Still, the first five episodes were so predictable as to be actively frustrating, and that's despite the fact that I personally enjoy this sort of combination between sci-fi and heist caper story elements. The most frustrating episode was "The Girl in the Flower Dress," which focused on a storyline so ancient and stupidly sexist that it seemed like the kind of thing most Whedonverse shows are parodying in the first place. A 30-year-old "girl" acting as a honey trap to seduce an innocent everyman into a life of crime, only for him to be shot down by the Good Guys while she escapes to be sexy and evil another day. In a general sense I'm actually quite interested to see how the Project Centipede story arc pans out, but this was not a good way to introduce it. ("The Girl in the Flower Dress" was one of the only two episodes that was both written and directed exclusively by men, BTW.)
"F.Z.Z.T." (1x06) won me over because it convinced me that they might actually kill off Simmons. Because Fitz and Simmons are the only characters with a pre-existing relationship, they were the ideal choice for the first majorly dangerous scenario of the season. When this episode aired, I remember a friend and I basically being like, "Holy shit, I can't believe this crappy show actually made me tear up." The alien virus was a Chekov's Gun that had to endanger someone by the end of the episode, but the way the story unfolded was satisfyingly unpredictable and emotionally engaging.
My favourite recent development is the May/Ward fuckbuddy relationship, which pleases me on many, many different levels. First of all there's the fact that it makes sense. Neither of them has the time (or the inclination, I suspect) for a serious romantic relationship at the moment, which was one of the reasons why I was dreading the possibility of a Skye/Ward romance. Luckily, the May/Ward thing seriously limits the likelihood of Skye/Ward EVER happening, which frees up Skye to take on a role I've been hoping for from the start: the "kid" of the team, with Coulson as her surrogate dad. I really enjoyed the scene where Skye says that May needs to get laid, and Ward is just like, "..." Sometimes, Skye can be SUCH a tween.

AoS has a surprisingly great attitude toward casual sex, particularly when you remember that the first half of the season felt like a kids' show. May and Ward have an unspoken bond because they're a pair of trained killers in a team of relatively naiive young "civilian" agents, and because they went through the same experience with the Asgardian staff in episode 8. But it's not a romantic bond, and their interactions are never filmed in a ~sexy way, unlike with Skye and her hacker boyfriend, where it made more sense. Finally, it's nice to see such a mature and in-character depiction of a older woman/younger man dynamic. Good luck finding a TV relationship like this where it isn't either played for laughs and/or cougar-related drama, or accompanied by a ton of gratuitous sex scenes.

It took me a long time to warm to Ward because TV is already riddled with good-looking, angsty white male heroes. He's just so unbearably generic. The revelation that he'd had a ~bad childhood~ was the nail in the coffin for me, because it's Hollywood's go-to excuse for the shitty behaviour of every angsty white male action hero of the past bazillion years. It got to the point where I was actively annoyed whenever he came onscreen, because it felt like he was taking up a space that could've been given to a far more interesting type of character. He seemed like a typical example of that thing where family-friendly shows create a flippant, "safe" depiction of a character who, in reality, should be complex and horrifying and not particularly likeable. Ward is a trained killer who works for a morally ambiguous organisation, outside the civilian legal system. The show was treating him like he was a repressed-but-charming jock.

Links to Marvel movie canon

Marvel movieverse stuff in AoS was always going to be an optional extra, rather than a major component of the show. I understand that it's tricky to include many details without messing with canon that's being written by someone else, not to mention the legal issues involved with including anything from the comics. Still, I was hoping that AoS would at least give us a taste of how everyday people are reacting to the superheroic and/or alien additions to their world. Too bad there was probably more of that in the actual Avengers movie than in episodes 2-5 of this show.
I doubt you'll be surprised to learn that I loved the Thor: The Dark World episode. The Asgardian cult were relatively believable (given, you know, the ridiculous subject-matter), and the actual Asgardian guy was hilarious. Not only was he the polar opposite of warrior characters like Thor and Sif, but they added this brilliant detail of him just being this... gross old sex-pest professor who creepily hits on younger women all the time. I really hope he comes back at some point. And I'll be interested to see if Ward's anger issues end up being a recurring thing, because they're definitely the most interesting thing that's happened with him so far. The scene where shirtless Ward freaked out at Skye and FitzSimmons was especially good, because you could really feel the combination of masculine rage-panic (Ward) and fear (everyone else) in the enclosed space of the lab.

In future episodes, I'm hoping to see more of the outside world, and the way normal civilians are experiencing the supernatural (or at least, pseudo-scientifically supernatural) events of the Avengers franchise. I could do with more ~superhero fans~ for example, although the villagers-with-pitchforks scenario of episode 9 was great as well.

Miscellaneous

• This didn't really fit into any of my categories, but I SUPER LOVE Melinda May now. LOVE HER. Also, her interactions with Coulson are hilarious. He just... talks and talks. And talks. While she stands there and twitches like 0.5 of her facial muscles in long-suffering bemusement. They have such great chemistry.
• I got WAY too into the "Did I fall asleep?"/"For a little while," exchange in Coulson's dream sequence last week. Realistically I know ths was just a bit of fan-pandering rather than a hint of a serious link to Dollhouse, but I loved it anyway. Whenever someone on TV asks, "Did I fall asleep?" I always expect the answer to be "For a little while," so it was gratifying to see it actually happen, for once.
• Not to be a raving misandrist or anything, but I note that episodes 7-9, the best so far, were all written or co-written by women, and the upcoming 10th episode is written and directed by women. Good. Very good.
• Actually, I'd recommend taking a look at the Wikipedia list of writers and directors on this show, it's a really interesting selection. Obviously most of them have worked on vaguely similar shows (Torchwood, X-Files, Whedonverse, etc.) but did you know episode 4 was directed by B'Elanna Torres from Star Trek: Voyager??
• I can't tell if Skye's dobule-agent hacker status has been resolved yet. I guess maybe they're saving something for the finale?
• Did I mention how much I loved "Repairs"? Some of the scenes in that episode were seriously creepy. I wonder if Tobias the Stalker Ghost was ending up in Svartalfheim, or what?
• I think I already said this in one of my reviews, but I'd really appreciate a scene where we see one of the female characters fixing their hair and makeup. May and Skye both wear at least two shades of eyeshadow at all times, and Skye's hair looks incredibly high-maintenance. It would be refreshing to see a show like this acknowledge the work that goes into looking that good, instead of tacitly implying that women find it incredibly easy to look perpetually gorgeous while hacking into the Pentagon or flying a spy plane or whatever.
• Next week's episode involves Mike Peterson (J. August Richards' character in the pilot episode) in some kind of black leather superhero jumpsuit. You're welcome.

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Captain America vs. Agents of SHIELD.

I love the new trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but I get the distinct impression that it's going to kick Agents of SHIELD in the balls. Without going into too much detail, AoS is suffering from a bizarre problem of portraying SHIELD agents as "the good guys" while having them do objectively terrible stuff like wiretapping, kidnapping and shooting civilians, and dumping American prisoners overseas with no money or ID. In most episodes so far, the antagonists have seemed more sympathetic (from a real-world standpoint) than the ostensibly likeable heroes, which is actually more confusing than the way SHIELD was depicted in The Avengers: ie, as an ethically ambiguous government agency, run by a decidedly shady individual. CA:TWS seems to be going the Avengers route with regards to SHIELD and Nick Fury, which is seriously going to screw with AoS's weirdly happy-go-lucky attitude towards acting like assholes in the name of homeland security.
This trailer is really promising on so many levels. Captain America has one of the few origin stories that I actually enjoy on its own merits, unlike Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, whose origin stories are all very overplayed. Cap appeals to me as a hero for the oppressed and downtrodden, in a way that I don't think is really covered by the other classic superheroes. A lot of his power is tied up in marketing and patriotism, which has the potential to be very subversive because he looks like this all-American cheerleader dude but Steve Rogers' own principles are a lot more liberal/socialist/anti-establishment than you might expect. There's a reason why there's a whole subgenre of fanfic dedicated to Steve Rogers in the 21st century, making public media statements in favour of LGBT rights and feminism, you know? So I'm really psyched to any possible hints of this in the trailer, including Cap walking past a giant banner of his own face. WHAT WAS THE PUBLIC REACTION TO AN AMERICAN ICON RETURNING FROM THE DEAD?

I didn't actually think much of Captain America as a film in itself. It's a great origin story and I loved the casting, but the central supervillain story is pretty dull, and the final third of the film is weak as a result. Overall I don't really rate it as highly as Iron Man or Thor, which is odd because I do love the concept. Which I guess is why I'm more prone to reading Captain America fic than Iron Man. The Iron Man movies basically give me what I want to see in Tony Stark's story, but what I wanted from a Captain America movie was way more focus on his pre-serum life in 1930s Brooklyn, his relationship with Bucky and the Howling Commandos, and the way he tackles becoming a public figure. For me, the most exciting moment in this trailer is when someone tells Cap that he "shaped this century". That line has a real ring of epic superheroism to it, in a way that the first Captain America movie never really managed.
The other main thing I'm looking forward to is the way this movie links to the aftermath of The Avengers. Iron Man 3 did this to a certain extent, but it was definitely focusing inwards on Tony Stark's own problems, whereas this movie is an ensemble cast featuring Black Widow and Nick Fury in fairly prominent roles. Also Falcon, who I am looking forward to SO MUCH, oh my god. Falcon!! I was surprised to realise that after watching this trailer, I was actually more excited by the appearance of Falcon than the hints of the Bucky/Cap storyline? I don't even know why. I guess Anthony Mackie is just that charming.

Some more deep & meaningful thoughts

• This movie may as well be called Captain America: Blue Steel. Chris Evans' face is so ridiculously sculpted and pouty, what the hell. PLUS: snazzy new modern haircut. CAPTAIN AMERICA IS A SUPERMODEL. Or an action figure. A perfectly sculpted action figure with frosted tips and an unrealistically exaggerated waist-to-shoulder ratio.
• Actually, maybe a better title would be Captain America: Red, White and Blue Steel. But whatevs.
• I'm quite impressed by the way this trailer told us ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the actual plot, and yet still managed to be really intriguing and exciting? 
• TWO helicarriers? Steady on.
• God, I hope there's a A LOT of sassy, bitchy Cap in this movie. People keep thinking he's stolid because he's so moral and heroic, but Cap dialogue can totally be deadpan and hilarious.
• Cap and Black Widow are bros. This is giving me life.
• I'm not wild about Black Widow's straight hair but this doesn't matter at all because Black Widow is amazing and deserves twelve of her own movies, stat.
• Speaking of Black Widow, is Scarlett Johannson the only woman in this movie? IN THE WORLD? I counted 973 men in this trailer but only one gurl. Step it up, Marvel. 
• There's gonna be a scene where Steve tragically draws pictures of all his dead friends, right? Right?

PREVIOUSLY: If there's no such thing as a Captain America venereal disease PSA, I'm gonna be so disappointed.

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Agents of SHIELD: Eye Spy.

Previously on Agents of SHIELD: The Asset.

This week's episode didn't really have enough... content... to deserve a full review. So! Have some bullet points.

• Clark Gregg really was performing at maximum Cute Dad status in this one, wasn't he?
• I can't tell if Skye's incredibly awkward ~emotional bonding~ dialogue is just bad writing, or if she's purposefully trying to get on Coulson's good side in order to better infiltrate SHIELD. Either way, this show still appears to think that it's OK for characters to literally narrate their character development directly to the audience??
• If Skye is trying to infiltrate SHIELD by getting all friendly with Coulson, I assume that Coulson will see through it. Then, in the finale, there'll be a revelation scene where he's all, "I'm disappointed in you, Skye," and then she'll decide to side with SHIELD after all. Coulson always plays the long game.
• Agent Ward was marginally less dull than usual. Partly because the glasses gave him a distinguishing feature so he could avoid looking like a walking mannequin.

• I read some interview with the actor who plays Ward, where he said he'd been given advice by Nathan Fillion on how to navigate being a central actor in a Whedonverse TV show. As in, how to tackle being passionately loved by thousands of superfans. But seriously: this guy is NOT Nathan Fillion, and AoS is only barely a Whedonverse show. It's Whedon-adjacent, at best. And Agent Ward is the kind of square-jawed personality vaccuum that would only show up in shows like Buffy or Firefly so the main characters could make fun of them.
  
• When Ward was tying to talk about girls with the security guard guy, I think it would've been pretty funny if the guard had just looked at him, completely stone-faced, and said, "No, I'm gay." That's a good gay joke, not, "Haha, the straight guy has to ~seduce a man." It would've turned the tables on Skye's comment about the guard being straight because he looked like a slob -- particularly since Ward is the most clean-shaven and in-shape guy ever, and is almost certainly straight himself.

• Was anyone else really disappointed when the weird mask dudes turned out to just be transporting diamonds? Particularly since the crowds didn't seem to be reacting to them NEARLY as much as they should've been. Honestly, I thought the first couple of minutes of this episode were VERY Doctor Who, including the music. The revelation that it was all about diamonds made the whole thing seem totally banal, after that. Particularly since having a crowd of guys in masks walk through a major public thoroughfare is a completely stupid way of keeping your diamonds safe.
• That being said, I think the secret eyeball spy people are the first genuinely interesting antagonist we've had so far.
• Did anyone keep their eyes open during the eye surgery scene? Anyone? Anyone? 

Do they all go to the same SHIELD hairstylist, or what? They look like triplets.

• THANK GOD Melinda May finally got something to do in this episode. I could've done with more interactions between her and Akela, though. Obviously. I'd like to imagine that Akela will be back in later episodes, but TBH that seems pretty unlikely.
• Are they spending all the budget on location shoots, or what??
• I really hope they go a little further with the whole FitzSimmons business. Have you noticed that Coulson actually refers to them in the singular, as if FitzSimmons is one entity rather than a nickname given to two people? SHARED CONSCIOUSNESS, PLEASE.

This episode was reasonably entertaining overall, but the dialogue is still weak, and the worldbuilding/character backstory is still nonexistent. NOT WEIRD ENOUGH. NOT INTERESTING ENOUGH. More detail, for the love of god.

The pitch for Agents of SHIELD was a show about the ordinary background humans of the Marvel movie universe. The normal folks like Coulson, who get the job done, but don't get much credit or media attention. The general expectation was that we were getting a slice-of-life show, but in a slightly weirder world than our own. Instead, Coulson's team are (STILL) a collection of overly simplistic cliche characters, who we barely ever see doing anything more "normal" than eating a snack and playing poker on their zillion-dollar secret airplane. The scientists have multiple PhDs before the age of 25! There's a cute young hacker! Both the agents are stoic and badass! Please. Rather than going for the personal angle, AoS is relying on single-episode storylines that just aren't smart enough to measure up to shows like Torchwood, The Middleman, or even the X-Files. To put it bluntly: it's bland.

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Agents of SHIELD: The Asset.

PREVIOUSLY: Agents of SHIELD, 0-8-4.

This episode was super important because it guest-starred our first Harry Potter crossover actor, future supervillain Professor Quirrell. Definitely a step up from last week, because the science maguffin was way more central to the overall plot. Last week's gamma bomb was kind of embarrassing because they made it out to be this catastrophically big deal, but in the end Fitz just used it to blow a six-foot hole in the side of the plane. Sure, "Gravitonium" is a silly name, but the whole Big Whirring Gadget/evil Tony Stark-alike idea is a classic sci-fi plot, and this show works best when it's playing around with familiar genre cliches. "The Asset" managed a decent balance between sci-fi ridiculousness, heist shenanigans, and character development. Way better than last week's decidedly transparent excuse to get the team to bond during their first mission.

The only problem with the underground bunker/pseudoscience schtick is that I end up comparing Agents of SHIELD to The Middleman... and AoS does not measure up. Which is kind of a bummer, because Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen are good writers, and AoS has the whole weight of Marvel behind it. Meanwhile, The Middleman had about a fraction of the audience, no well-known actors in the main cast, and was still snappier, funnier, and more consciously genre-savvy -- while still being goofy and child-friendly. I'm still enjoying AoS, but the backstory development and worldbuilding is disappointingly slow-paced and lacking in detail. Plus, they need to dial back Ward's screentime by about 90% and replace him with more Melinda May, for real.
Skye is becoming more and more likeable with each episode, mostly because they seem to be emphasising how young she is. The one thing I really DON'T want is for her and Ward to end up as a couple, particularly since he's now taking on a mentor role. Wouldn't it be great if Skye was just characterised as the immature teenager of the group, and Ward continued to be her mentor with no sexual tension whatsoever? Of course, it's possible that there's no romantic tension whatsoever, and I'm just reading into this because we're trained to expect ~romance between two characters like Skye and Ward. Sadly, I don't know if this show is smart enough to buck that trend. Unless they make some seriously shocking changes (ie, Ward turning out to be evil; Skye going full-on Rising Tide terrorist halfway through the season), any kind of Skye/Ward romance plotline will be a heteronormative yawnfest.

I was glad to see this episode focusing on one of my favourite topics: the unethical nature of SHIELD itself. It's just too bad that I can't tell which side the writers are trying to get us to support. In the Skye/Quinn scenes, they did the thing where the villain points out a bunch of completely true and accurate criticisms of the "good guys", but we're meant to discredit him because he's evil. A bit of ambiguity is a good thing, but it felt a lot like the scene went slightly too far and ended up characterising SHIELD as the bad guys.
If you look at the events surrounding Quinn, Dr Hall and the gravity device, SHIELD does not come out looking like a force for good. First of all, Dr Hall is functionally a prisoner when he's working for SHIELD: miserable, lonely, and transported around like dangerous cargo. Quinn is amoral and greedy, and frees Dr Hall for his own ends, but all Dr Hall wants is to do the right thing. He wants to destroy the gravity device, and save the world from further screw-ups -- from both Quinn and SHIELD. Dr Hall distrusts SHIELD so much that after years of working for them, he's willing to sacrifice his own life to avoid them getting their hands on dangerous technology.
Dr Hall aimed to sacrifice himself and Quinn's lackeys/shareholders in order to prevent more disastrous consequences. In turn, Coulson sacrificed Dr Hall in order to save his own team and everyone else in the building. The end result is that SHIELD now has another hugely dangerous secret weapon under its control, and has just helped create a new supervillain (even if they don't know abuot it yet). I'm not saying that SHIELD are 100% bad, or that they don't save people's lives... but they're doing some massively unethical stuff, and I don't think the show is working very hard at discussing this in an intelligen way. Plus, everything Quinn said about SHIELD targeting Skye's weaknesses is true. SHIELD is not the nice Big Brother: it's creepy as fuck.

Miscellaneous

• The agent that Coulson speaks to at the end of the episode was in The Avengers! Agent Tyler.
• But why, in a show where half the main castmembers are white men, are they airing episodes where all the main guest actors (Quinn; Dr Hall; the SHIELD agent trucker) are also white men?
• We're three episodes in, and Melinda May has still not really been given anything to do??
• More scenes where Coulson picks out suits, please.
• Agent Fitz eating popcorn! Luv FitzSimmons. LUV THEM.
• IDK about you guys, but I was totally fine with the line where Fitz suggests that Skye distracted Quinn with her boobs? I don't really feel like it devalued her, particularly since one of the main reasons she probably blended into the Malta party was because she's a hot girl, and hot girls are essentially invisible in a lot of situations because people assume they're just there for decorative purposes.
• Skye's hair and makeup are gorgeous, but I'd feel happier if we actually saw her working on them, rather than her just being another effortlessly gorgeous TV beauty queen.
• Ward has got to be one of the blandest characters I have ever seen. He's so bland I don't even dislike him as much as I did last week. I can't muster the energy. (Commentary from @queerly_it_is: "I can't decide if it's a sad accident or some kind of meta statement about white male hero characters." WORD.)
• Coulson continues to be the main highlight. The whole ~muscle memory~ thing was about 30 miles away from subtlety, but I don't really give ashit. Clark Gregg is awesome in this role, and right now his performance is saving the show from tipping over into sheer stupidity.
• I really enjoyed the opening scene. The trucker-guy agent gave us a fun look into the variety of jobs SHIELD has to offer.
• Let's watch Chloe Bennet's music video from when she was a minor pop star in China, and still went by Chloe Wang!

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Agents of SHIELD: 0-8-4.

Previously: Marvel's Agents of O.M.G.

Ah, the second episode. The one where the shine begins to wear off the frenetic energy of the pilot’s introductory scenes, and we must get down to the dirty work of establishing a believable character dynamic. The one where they spent all their budget on Samuel L. Jackson, so 90% of the story has to take place inside the plane. The one where Clark Gregg wears a really nice suit.

I already suspect that Coulson's superpower is removing skeeviness from situations that I'd ordinarily find stupid or gross. In this episode it was the old ~seductive latina~ thing, merged with the ever-popular "evil ex-girlfriend" trope. The only reason they got away with this is because it made sense within the narrative, and the Camilla Reyes/Agent Coulson interactions were just... really good, basically. The hot ex-girlfriend is a staple of episodic TV, because it's an easy way to introduce a single-use love interest without the hassle of building up a new relationship. If she's attacked to a manly hero dude, then she's usually there to reinforce his hetero cred and inject some romance into his character arc. If she's the ex-girlfriend of an unappealing or socially maladjusted male character, then she's a hilarious punchline.

The only show that springs to mind as being good at this is Starsky & Hutch, because it was the 1970s and everyone was dating like five people at once. Bizarrely, I get way fewer douchebag vibes from Starsky & Hutch than most mainstream cop/adventure shows airing in the 21st century.
I found it quite easy to buy into the fact that Coulson has a history with Camilla Reyes. Not because Clark Gregg is Dreamboat #1 and therefore prime Peruvian secret agent affair material, but because of the characterisation points I mentioned in last week's review. Phil Coulson's defining traits are all tied into his kindness and reliability. He is nice, sensible, and respectful. In other words, he's the ideal character for a casual ex-girlfriend storyline. He obviously doesn't have time for a relationship, he's pragmatic and mature enough to have short-term flings with no hard feelings afterwards, and when we get to the actual ex-girlfriend episode itself... Coulson's not gonna wind up looking like a douchebag.

The most noticeable thing in this episode was just how simple everything was. I'm getting the impression that Agents of SHIELD is aiming to be child-friendly, but unfortunately this is translating into the character exposition being kinda patronising. The main purpose of this episode was team-building, but they didn't need to have Coulson literally narrating his team's developing relationship when we could see it happening onscreen. Show, don't tell! Jeez. Avatar: The Last Airbender is suitable for eight-year-olds, and still contains some of the most sensitive and interesting characterisation I've seen on TV. If they can do it, so can SHIELD. Not to mention the fact that plenty of little kids watch Marvel movies like Iron Man and The Avengers, which are full of adult concepts and complex relationships between the main characters.

I'm really, really enjoying every appearance from Fitz and Simmons, but Ward is definitely still the weak link for me. Most of the team are still pretty two-dimensional, but that's OK. Coulson is good enough to keep the show ticking over until we get some more character development, and it's only episode 2. Unfortunately, dedicating this much screentime to Ward is not helping the situation. He's just another well-meaning white male soldier character in his late twenties, and he's really too banal to provide much of a foil to Skye's stick-it-to-the-man outsider attitude. I'd be more into Ward if he was gay, or explicitly very conservative/Republican/pro-surveillance (as a counterpoint to Skye's anti-government streak, and Coulson's benevolence), or even if he was just more of an asshole. But as it stands, I'm not watching SHIELD for another vaguely angsty young white male hero: we have the rest of the Marvel universe for that.

Aside from FitzSimmons (who I would happily see remain in their science-BFFs holding pattern ad infinitum), I'm most impressed by Skye. Not because I find her particularly likeable, but because her characterisation is by far the most solid in the team. Rather than being the outsider/audience-viewpoint character she was in the pilot episode, she now seems very... young. Which is kind of tricky to define, because TV tends to divide characters into either teenagers (Teen Wolf) or adults (Torchwood; X-Files) without much middle ground. And it's often very difficult to tell just how old the "adults" are meant to be, because any character between the age of 17 and 27 can potentially be played by a 25-year-old actor.

Even though Skye, Ward, and FitzSimmons all look about the same age, I think Skye is meant to be about 19 or 20. College-age, anyway. Whereas Ward is a military professional in his late 20s, FitzSimmons are both old enough to hold multiple PhDs, and May and Coulson are both around 50. Skye may be a brat, but she's brattish in a way that makes sense.
I loved the maguffinish nature of the maguffin. VERY X-Filesl. Nonspecific alien bomb threat! Gamma radiation! Science things! Who cares, as long as it all ends with everyone drinking Friendship Beer and watching a rocket launch. However, I did have a problem with the whole jock vs nerd schtick, which is the only thing I've seriously disliked about SHIELD so far. Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon are awesome, and I thought they were above writing well-trod cliches like an irritable jock character yelling "TELL IT TO ME IN REAL ENGLISH!" while a dorky scientist spouts technobabble and waves his arms around. There's a fine line between affectionate parody and just playing into old stereotypes, and somewhere in between the first two episodes, they crossed it. Here's hoping it's a one-off incident. 

Miscellaneous

• Sorry I didn't have much to say about Melinda May this week. I really like her, but right now I feel like we're still waiting for a May-centric episode? Mostly I'm just psyched to see a middle-aged female character onscreen. If they could move Ward into a background role and give May the rest of his screentime, that'd be great, thanks.
• LOVE the little cubby-hole beds on the plane.
• They had some pretty cool camerawork on the plane, just during the everyday walk-and-talk scenes. I think they're tilting or moving the camera somehow to give the illusion of movement, even though the plan is, you know... obviously a set.
• When Coulson told Skye to use a coaster, I was kind of hoping it would be a ~tech coaster~ that would make the bottle stick to the table when the plane turned upside down, or something.
• A couple of commenters mentioned the Tahiti/"It's a magical place," thing last week, and yeah, it's definitely... something.
• Simmons' costumes are still definitely my favourite. Ward and Skye are still just variations on generically bland TV clothes. Fitz is OK, but his clothes suffer from the fact that they don't look worn-in (to me, at least) so he looks like he just bought an entirely new wardrobe. Coulson, obviously, is Professionally Handsome as always.
• Skye/Ward is a terrible pairing. I anti-ship it. Nope nope nope. 
• This week on "stupid opinions I saw on Tumblr", I noticed someone describing the yellow inflatable life-raft as an inflatable pool. Dude. Dude. Why would they have an emergency inflatable pool on the plane??
• Skye has really great hair.

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