Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review - Episode 11: The Magical Place

[HBaskerville]

Bob, I am amazed at how much effort you are putting into this in hoping that it does get better. Marvel does some cool stuff, this show isnt one of them so treat it for what it is now and not for what you hope it becomes.

You put so much effort into ripping apart any non-Marvel superhero stuff that it comes out very poorly when every review for this show ends up like "It seems like the next episode will really start the good stuff"

Spot on.

 

[Entitled]

I'm not really understanding why the operation on Coulson is seen as such an abomination by all the doctors (and the show in general).

Even if we assume that euthanasia is objectively right and not as controversial as it is, a hurting patient's sobs under operation, surely don't count as a bindingly responsible and conscious declaration of demanding assisted suicide.

It seems to me that the show is just paying lip serice to a naturalistic fallacy, about how leaving the dead be dead is good, because resurrection is unnatural and inherently wrong.

 

[Halbert]

I saw a lot of fluids being pumped around when Coulson was having flashbacks. Do you think they gave him some form of the super-soldier serum as part of his resurrection? We've seen Coulson do a few surprising physical acts in the series so far; it's believable enough.

Another possible explanation for the "why" of this could be that there's another component of Coulson's revival that is carried with him and is completely unique; his heart might be an alien implant, or perhaps there's alien tech added into his brain and it's not just memory manipulation.

Edit: How the heck did the CENTIPEDE folks get Mike Petersen back?! I can't believe they allowed the remains of that event to go unobserved for any period of time.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Thoughts on Nick Fury bringing Coulson back as a wild card he could use against a corrupted SHIELD--it could be the cinematic universe's rendition of Fury's Secret War, but why they'd do that if they can't do Civil War and Secret Invasion and all the important stuff after that is absolutely beyond me. I mean, I know why they'd want to, but missing half the key players in any major event like that is just...weird. I kinda doubt that's the angle they're going with, anyway. Seems a bit too obvious a thing for Joss to employ it, but it's not like that's stopped him on other occasions.

Can they even use the Skrulls? Or are they contended as a FF enemy? Who has the rights for races that are fought by the entire Marvel Universe, and not just villains usually associated with certain characters?

And I'm kinda sad that Coulson as the Vision seems to be going to hide under the rug. I was kinda hoping that would be a thing, but I guess he can't go play with the Avengers if he's supposed to be shooting another season of a show.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Judging from a lot of the comments above mine, it sounds like you guys deep down WANT this show to fail. At least Bob sounds like he wants it to improve. I agree about that anticlimax about CENTIPEDE, before the reveal about Mike. I do like the theory Bob put about WHY Fury brought Coulson back. Maybe to find out how S.H.I.E.L.D. is going bad, he had to replicate the success of an old Soviet Project: Winter Soldier.

 

[mrverbal]

Supposition: Mike Peterson is in a room controlled by shield, not centipede. We know they just crashed a bunch of labs and took much of 'pede's technology. Why WOULDN'T they try and build themselves a super soldier who was forced to obey?

Alternate supposition: Parts of shield have been running Centipede all along. This makes less sense, but might still work.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

So they might be going back to the 'SHIELD are kind of a bunch of dicks' thing they had going on in the old Spiderman cartoons...

 

[aaron552]

After seeing the answer to the whole 'What Happened to Coulson' issue, it raises a question: If the Clairvoyant really is able to just look into people's heads and see what they're up to, and knows everything that S.H.I.E.L.D. is up to, then it should have already known what happened to Coulson. I mean, it goes 'Oh, that guy who was dead isn't dead, I want to know why', and then the next logical step should be to look into Nick Fury's head, and gradually progress through all SHIELD personnel until you get an answer. Which, given the explanation we have, should have worked.

So either a) the Clairvoyant isn't actually clairvoyant, b) it can't read Fury and the doctors because of countermeasures or power limitations, c) it was trying to achieve some other aim with Coulson, or d) there's a big damn plot hole.

I'm going with option a (and a little b) for these reasons:

* It's been repeatedly stated that Telepaths and Telekines don't exist
* We don't actually know that "The Clairvoyant" is telepathic. We only infer that from the name.

My theory is that the Clairvoyant simply has access to all, or nearly all, forms of electronic communication, surveillance, and storage. This is how he would know "what the President dreams about". This could be obtained via hacking, sleeper agents (a favorite of CENTIPEDE), etc. He could even be some form of Artificial Intelligence.

Speaking of sleeper agents,

Alternate supposition: Parts of shield have been running Centipede all along. This makes less sense, but might still work.

Or perhaps CENTIPEDE (or the Clairvoyant) has sleeper agents in S.H.I.E.L.D. or, even better, has control (via those creepy prosthetic eyes) over extremely high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. people.

 

[aaron552]

Also, it looks like the "Coulson as The Vision" theory might be just a red herring.

I wouldn't be on that yet. "The neurological damage was... catastrophic". Sounds like his brain was toast. What if (going full-on crazy here) they *transferred* his memories, personality, etc. to another body (perhaps a "synthetic" one). This means that his original body could have actually died (again) and they transfer the memories to a new synthetic body every time he dies (and this is just the first time we've seen it)

Of course this is going way out on a limb with no real evidence to support it other than a handful of lines from the doctor.

 

[PuckFuppet]

Killing simmons to motivate fitz would be called 'girl in the freezer' and most definitely not what they should do.

I don't think killing one character off, or at least making the assumption that the character is dead, would explicitly invoke this trope. Within reason the trope, or at least the broadly negative connotations the trope has, only applies to situations whereby the character is killed off by some method directly involving a specific antagonist.

 

[Li Mu]

Bob, I am amazed at how much effort you are putting into this in hoping that it does get better. Marvel does some cool stuff, this show isnt one of them so treat it for what it is now and not for what you hope it becomes.

You put so much effort into ripping apart any non-Marvel superhero stuff that it comes out very poorly when every review for this show ends up like "It seems like the next episode will really start the good stuff"

Are you suggesting that Bob is allowing his faboyism to get in the way of actual objective criticism? Of course! He does it in every review he makes!
I simply had to stop watching his weekly film reviews because he wasn't reviewing the films for what they were, but for whether they were what he wanted them to be. He's not a critic, he's a fanboy.