Hey youtubers it’s Charlie and this week Agents Of SHIELD did a little ABC crossover
and paid some fanservice to the Coulson May shippers.
It was really May’s episode but we learned a lot more about their history together as
agents.
Lots of stuff to get through so let’s start with top 5 moments and then I’ll do my review.
Also heads up, there was some major DC Justice League Movie stuff that went down this morning
but I’m going to do a separate video about that.
Careful for spoilers in case you haven’t seen the episode.
I’ll wait just a sec...okay, here we go.
Number 5 - Someone Else is writing Cosmic Code all over the place
I think this is Skye’s Father.
As far as we know, he’s one of the few other crazy looking people who has knowledge of
the Obelisk.
As for why he’s writing it on the back of 500 year old paintings of the Christ Child,
we don’t know.
The painting itself was a red herring, and now
that coulson has it.
I suspect it will just get lumped in with Skye’s mission to decode the symbols.
If you didn’t catch it, Coulson’s mental breaks where he carves all over the wall.
Those are coming more and more frequently.
Eventually, he’ll just start spouting gibberish about life, the universe and the meaning of
everything like Garret last season.
That’s why he wants a contingency plan.
Number 4 - Dancing with the Stars
Unless Dancing with the Stars does a cosplay edition, I will never watch that show.
But SHIELD did this cross promotion last night where Clark Gregg and the other actors guest
starred on Dancing.
Both tv shows air on ABC, so they’re just promoting each other.
It’s a business thing.
In the SHIELD episode, the Dancing was just an ode to classic secret agents stories.
I don’t really enjoy those kinds of stories anymore, so I felt like I was viewing the
whole thing from Skye’s perspective.
She’s a good avatar for all the younger viewers who look at this slow ballroom stuff
and go WTF is this.
As a point of interest it was a lot of fun to get the lazer focus on Coulson and May.
They brush over years of history together with some witty jokes and suddenly it’s
fun for me again.
I also got the sense behind the scenes, that Clark Gregg and Ming Na the actors had a lot
of fun doing these dancing scenes.
There is a lot of choreography that goes into this.
Number 3 - Clark Gregg Double O Seven
They make their move to get the painting and in the process, make fun of
a lot of tropes from classic spy movies.
Namely the gadgets.
They probably could have just smashed their way down to the basement and it would have
been fine.
Like May said, they already knew they were there.
So who cares about the lazer grid.
If it wasn’t clear during the Dancing, they’re trying to make fun of spy movies.
I really love the classic Bond Movies, but let’s be honest, they’re totally hilarious
when you watch them now.
That’s why modern spy movies look more like the Bourne Franchise.
The gadgets themselves do feel like they totally fit inside the Stark Tech world of SHIELD.
I like the way the show balances it’s use of gadgets.
Number 2 - Doctor Whitehall Does His Own Dirty Work
As far as TV Villains right now, I feel like he’s one of the best, we haven’t really
had enough time on Arrow or The Flash to get to know those villains, so I’m interested
to see who the worst is at the end of everyone’s season.
Like will SHIELD have a better TV Villain than the other shows.
I might be having more fun with the character just because I’m familiar with his work
inside the Whedonverse on Dollhouse and Much Ado About Nothing.
It feels like he’s tailor made for this very calm collected evil nazi person.
That speech he gave Raina too, that was good.
He threatened that he’d torture her for a couple weeks with unnecessary surgery without
letting her pass out.
If you ever watch other science fiction stories that do things like this.
Sometimes you’ll see the villains talk about activating different pain centers in the brain
so that your body doesn’t have the chance to adapt and it ends up being a much more
painful process.
Very terrifying, very good performance.
He’s setting the bar for Ra’s Al Ghul on Arrow.
and my Number 1 - Face Off May
This really was her episode.
Coulson and everyone else were just guest stars.
I love the way they humanize these crazy situations with little character bits like “May Hates
Coffee”, or letting Clark Gregg Punch Ming Na in the Face.
That was just some great special effects work.
Yes the gadgets are ridiculous, but in the context of this episode, they totally worked
for me.
May’s fight scene was also probably my favorite of any tv fight scene this year.
Arrow has amazing fight choreography, but this was a gloves off moment for the Cavalry.
If it were legal to post clips of tv shows I would just make montages of her fight scenes.
I could make an entire youtube channel that’s just AMV Fight Scenes.
Let me know what your favorite moment was and do you think Raina will hand over the
Obelisk?
I kind of hoped she’d manifest some crazy power and blow the car up.
There weren’t a lot of easter eggs I noticed so I’m just going to head straight to my
review.
If you did see any big ones just write them in the comments.
Overall I gave the episode a B plus for doing such great character work with May and Coulson,
while at the same time, making fun of all the cheesy spy movies.
It was like a nice Whedonverse Cheese Spread.
I could have done without the dancing, but it didn’t take me out of the episode too
much.
It felt a little like an episode I would show to my parents if I wanted to get them to watch
SHIELD.
They grew up with all these cheesy spy movies, and Dancing with the Stars has a much older
Demo than the comic book shows.
So you can see how Dancing with Agents of SHIELD is a bit of a hat tip to older viewers.
I totally love cheesy things in my tv shows, Gotham is a good example of a cheesy comic
book show that I totally love.
So Whedonverse cheese is always appreciated.
Ming Na just keeps on proving why she’s the biggest badass female on tv right now.
Let me know of all the big female characters on tv right now who do you think is the most
badass.
Just pick from any of your favorite shows.
We’ll make them fight Agent May to the death during sweeps week.
Next week the big news is Adrianne Palicki is debuting as Mockingbird from the comics.
The title of the episode is A Hen in the Wolfhouse.
If you saw the promo, it’s of her inside a HYDRA base.
The title is a play on the saying A Wolf in the Henhouse.
It just means that she is a SHIELD double agent like Simmons.
So she will be beating the crap out a lot of HYDRA people.
I’ll probably post that video next Wednesday morning.
So be sure to subscribe to get it.
and like I said, a ton of DC Movies after Justice League got announced, Jason Momoa
Aquaman, a new Green Lantern Movie, a Flash movie, it’s crazy.
So I’ll talk more about that in my Arrow video tonight.
And just to follow up on robert downey jr in captain america.
for those wondering, Marvel typically doesn’t comment when big stories like this leak out.
But the original story and the 40 million dollar payday were reported by Variety and
they are one of the more trusted news sources out there.
So you should believe that at this moment, this is what’s happening.
The movie isn’t getting made for a while, so there’s always the chance details could
change.
In which case I’ll post more updates.
Right now click here to learn more about what’s going on with that and click here for my SHIELD
episode 3 video.
Thanks for watching, now let’s all high five and meet back up for Arrow tonight!