Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Success in Failure

Last night we got our first major superhero guest star as Lady Sif teamed up with the Agents to track down the villainous Lorelei.  This was the most entertained I’ve been by the show since the pilot.  Though the story wasn’t anything special — Lorelei seeks to raise an army to take over Midgard, brings Ward over to her side, they take over the plane, Coulson and company have to take it back — Sif’s presence energized the show and made it more watchable than usual.  I did like seeing Jamie Alexander as Sif get to do more than she did in both “Thor” movies, and Coulson response to Skye’s sad admission that the character had been sucked out of the plane being, “She’s Asgardian.  Open the hatch and let her back in,” represented a moment of self-awareness that I actually liked from this show.  More than all of this, seeing Sif work with the cast to take down a supervillain did more to make this show feel like it was set in the Marvel Universe than nearly anything else I’ve seen in the show so far.

The problem with that is we can’t have her showing up each week to go on more adventures with the team.  It’s a clear step up from seeing Bill Paxton as John Garrett over a week ago as while I like the actor, he didn’t come off as more than a fairly generic rough-and-tumble veteran S.H.I.E.L.D agent.  (I would’ve loved to have seen them try to address the character’s backstory.  Hearing about the time he got a cyborg body and teamed up with a ninja assassin to take out a demon-possessed presidential candidate would’ve made a great icebreaker.)  Yet the fact that the show required this special guest superhero to deliver one of its most satisfying episodes really feels like it has failed to distinguish itself in ways that aren’t connected to the Marvel Universe.

I originally wrote that the show was going to live or die by the strengths of its main cast and whether or not they can come up with more clever moments like Coulson using the truth serum on Ward in the pilot.  Frankly, I’m still waiting for anything resembling that level of cleverness to rear its head on the show.  Coulson’s bit acknowledging how badass Asgardians are?  Definitely fun, still a ways from the level of ingenuity I was expecting from this series.  As for the cast?  They’re alright.  I think the actors give respectable performances but their characters have yet to really define themselves beyond how they were introduced to us in the pilot.  Going back to last night’s episode, it’s probably not a good sign that Ward came off as more interesting being a scumbag while under Lorelei’s control.

So while this week’s episode may have succeeded in being genuinely entertaining, it did so in a way that only highlights how the series has failed to be consistently so in what we’ve seen so far.  Given that the season is winding down, I’m not expecting things to turn around in a major way with the remaining episodes we have.  Yeah, we’ll see more of Paxton, Deathlok proper is on the way, as is an inevitable tie-in to “Captain America:  The Winter Soldier,” and maybe we’ll even find out who the “clairvoyant” is.  The thought of all this doesn’t really fill me with anticipation as I feel like I’m continuing to watch this out of an obligation to follow the development of the Marvel Cinematic Universe than anything else at this point.

On that note, instead of a new episode next week, they’ve got a one-hour special promoting Marvel’s upcoming film projects.  I found myself appreciating it because skipping it will allow me to spend more time working through my gaming backlog.  I’m sure that’s not the response they were hoping to provoke in their audience, but I appreciate it nonetheless!