Okay, but in all seriousness. What do I think of this pilot? It was good! Was it fantastic? Mind blowing? Joss Whedon's finest work? No. But pilots are very rarely the best example of what a show has to offer. I have every hope that this new project can go from being a decently good time to being absolutely fantastic. I'm already seeing the seeds of obsession start to grow among the Whedon fanatics out there. (I might... perhaps... be among said fanatics, which might be why I'm watching the show in the first place...)
As is often the case with new shows, my first concern is characterization. Do I like these characters? Do I think they have good chemistry together? I'm going to go through our six main characters and discuss what I like/dislike about each of them. Then, I'll go ahead and give a brief plot summary. Here we go!
Agent Phil Coulson, played by Clark Gregg. From the setup of this pilot, it doesn't seem like he's the protagonist. He's more of the hilarious boss character. Which is not a problem! I really love his character, and he had a few of the best lines in the episode. The most intriguing thing is that Coulson thinks he was in Tahiti while recover from his near death experience. But... according to Maria Hill, something else is going on. I'm really curious to know how Coulson was saved!
Grant Ward, played by Brett Dalton. I like this guy! He's the stereotypical lovable rogue character. He's not much of a team player, but he's so good at his job that S.H.I.E.L.D. needs him. While this character is a bit of a trope, I trust Whedon to do something interesting with him. He's the "new guy," so we experience a lot of this pilot episode through his eyes. I think my favorite part of his character was when he'd been given the truth serum. It was pretty funny.
Melinda May, played by Ming-Na Wen. Love. So much love. She's a super bad ass, I can already tell. I'm excited to see how her character grows, because she didn't have a lot of screen time here. I think she's going to be really reluctant for a while, and gradually realize that this job is what she wants.
Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons, played by Iain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge. I put these two together because the show already has. For the first part of the episode, we keep hearing about "Fitzsimmons," and then we meet these two characters. They are scientists, they talk in that famous Whedon-esque rapid-fire way, I and I already ship them like nobody's business.
Skye, played by Chloe Bennet. This is the character I am the least sure about. She's undoubtedly very smart, since she was able to hack into S.H.I.E.L.D., but her whole quirky-smart-girl thing got old pretty fast. I guess I need to give the character a chance to breath. Once I learn more about her, I'm sure I'll like her better.
Okay, so the plot for this week involved a guy named Mike Peterson (played by J. August Richards) who has Super Strength thanks to a secret science project that's giving people superpowers. He starts to lose control of his emotions because of the powers. Turns out, the last guys who had these powers ended up exploding. Oops. So, it's S.H.I.E.L.D. to the rescue. There's also this interesting group called the Rising Tide, which is trying to take down S.H.I.E.L.D. It ends up being Skye in her van. Instead of just getting rid of her, they decided to use her to help them bring in Peterson.
In the end, Fitzsimmons manages to find a way to save Peterson from exploding without killing him.
I know that the plot summary was pretty vague, but honestly I focused more on these characters coming together than I did on the action of the plot.
This was a strong opening. There were maybe a few jokes that fell a bit flat, and as I mentioned, Skye's character isn't doing much for me yet. I'm very excited to see where we go from here, though.
8/10
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I'd really appreciate hearing what you think!