The Asset/MacGuffin/What Have You: Dr. Franklin Hall.
Here we are again with my look at the first three episodes of Agent’s of S.H.I.E.L.D., as I try to catch up to a regular schedule. With Episode 2, (“0-8-4”), the Agents seemed to have gotten some ridiculum mixed in with their gravitonium, resulting in some of the most insulting forty-five minutes of TV I’ve ever sat through. Clearly, things could only get better from there. Episode 3 (“The Asset”) is shockingly good after the kind-of disappointing pilot and the truly terrible “0-8-4”. It’s almost like it was written by a different team – even though it wasn’t.
I actually don’t have much negative to say about this one. Yes, there’s a lot of sci-fi gobbledygook, but that’s kind of what we’re here for. Yes, they cast Malta as a tax and regulation-free haven for unscrupulous capitalists. (Though, guys, Malta is part of the EU). And, yes, there is way too much Skye, for which there really is no justification. What we do have is an audacious heist with cool sci-fi tech and the agents getting to do some actual investigating.
The episode brings a credible threat couched in Marvel U super-science, with a decent Iron Man-style evil capitalist/scientist in the vein of Obadiah Stane, Justin Hammer and Aldrich Killian. There’s a twist that makes nice use of Marvel’s classic “with great power…” trope – even though Spider-Main isn’t part of the MCU – and we’re given a tease of a possible new supervillain.
Frankly, this is the first time the show makes good on its promise, even without any superhumans. (I was told there would be super humans on this show!) The setting actually kind of looks like Malta, a landscape which should be familiar to those who’ve been watching Game of Thrones, even though it’s probably somewhere in SoCal. The Evil Industrialist du jour, Ian Quinn, has an absolutely lovely mansion, which looks properly nice and expensive. His underground lab looks pretty credible, in addition to being the setting for the most spectacular action sequence in the show thus far. Hell, it’s actually better conceptually and in terms of filming than what’s in a lot of films, finally living up to the MCU. It also features Coulson finally throwing down, making a tough decision, and being the kind of bad-ass that we know he’s supposed to be. Plus, the episode was this close to featuring a brave monkey in an adorable hat.
The episode still looks like, well, a TV episode. Considering that it’s the same writing team, maybe we can thank director and longtime Whedon co-conspirator David Solomon for some decent camera moves, nice location scouting, and yes, a better script for an episode that shows the series’ actual potential and cinematic look. Even if it is, as I said, too Skye-centric. If S.H.I.E.L.D. can build on what went well in this episode, keep the stakes high, and avoid the awful fact-checking errors that made “0-8-4” such a farce, the show may be able to live up to its superheroic roots. I’ll be back with more thoughts every week, as we see if these agents can make it out of the academy.
