That’s Dr Zabo, aka Mr Hyde (well played by Kyle MacLachlan) talking to his daughter Daisy (the erstwhile Skye) about their relationship in the latest Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD (Season 2, Episode 10). Though you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the show itself, speaking directly to us, the viewing public. Maybe that’s not entirely fair, given the shows vast improvements since the Winter Soldier tie-ins at the end of last season, but damn, this show still struggles to get past it’s Buffy-meets-Iron man starting point. And sadly, no sooner do you compliment a show on its casting diversity, they go and kill off one of their black leads. I’d say we’ll miss Tripp, but really, beyond the initial cast, we’ve been given next to nothing to care about with the newer characters.
There’s still plenty of good here in places; the Koenig-LMD teasing is fun, even if I doubt we’ll ever see it paid off properly (As far as tech goes, it’s probably too advanced for the MCU – we haven’t even seen Ultron or the Vision yet, never mind completely lifelike decoy human agents). Skye putting 3 in Wards back when it was turned was a nice touch too and playing against how you’d normally expect to see this plot progress.
As I mentioned last week, the episode itself does give us our first glimpse of a Marvel Inhuman. The first concrete proof that Marvel are putting all its eggs in an Attilan shaped basket, and shunting mutants off to the side. Quite a surprise they’d lead this off so early, when the film itself is so far off, but I’m guessing they really want to lay their anti-mutant groundwork as early as possible.
TV-DCU crossovers abound, as Ollie drops by Central City (yeah, I know I covered part 2 last week, I’m idiosyncratic like that) in The Flash (Season 1, Episode 8). It’s almost like someone mentioned to DC that people might like character crossovers, can’t imagine where they got the idea from. This week sees the writers trying to move the Iris-Barry-Eddie love-triangle further along , kicking off with an only-mildly creepy bit of high-speed-stalking. Apparently Barry just ‘drops by’ Iris’ workplace whenever he fancies an eyeful.
Terrifying.
They’re essentially playing off the Clark-Lois-Superman relationship dynamic here, which in itself isn’t the worst idea. And I can’t see them fitting too much relationship building into the upcoming Superman-Batman film slamdown, so we’ve got to get our super-soap fill somewhere.
It’s beginning to worry me just how much Arrow (Season 3, Episode 9) wants to be a Batman TV series. It’s all there; unpowered hero, born rich, orphaned, trained in secret miles from home, high ranked police official as his best mate… it’s almost embarrassing. And now we’re doing Ra’s al Ghul. Is the statute of limitations on Batman Begins up already? So soon? Feels far too recent a memory to be digging that plot up.
Which is a shame, because this is good. I’m enjoying it plenty. Sure, some of the performances are terrible, the dialogue clunks along in places, motivations frequently appear to be assigned at random… but it rolls along at a good pace, the casting is largely good, and the action choreography is excellent. I find myself wanting to find out what comes next (Spoiler: it looks like whatever it is rhymes with ‘Pazurus Lit’.
Also, nice cameo from Dee Snyder as Dinah Lance.
In other news, Constantine (Season 1, Episode 7) was on. There were some angel-ly bits, there were some devil-ly bits, there was some random occulty stuff, a Welsh guy said a few things in cockney, and … I still can’t bring myself to care. This is getting cancelled, right?
No Gotham this week as it’s on hiatus until the new year, and I think everything else is joining it. Which will hopefully give me a chance to catch up on The Strain as promised, and I’m aiming to get to The Leftovers and Extant as soon as I can. At some point I’d like to talk about the Global Frequency pilot as well. I maybe tipping my hand a bit, but to me that’s one of the biggest missed opportunities in recent years. If anyone’s got any suggestions for shows that I should be being covering, ideas for future series retrospectives, or just general comments on format, drop me a line at [email protected], post a comment below, or holler over at the forums.
