Week of August 13, 2023:

Lockup (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. s4 e5) released October 25, 2016 (where to watch)
The Good Samaritan (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. s4 e6) released November 1, 2016
Scott Hardie | January 22, 2024
This comment contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame. Reveal it.

Scott Hardie | February 7, 2024

I'd like to clarify what I wrote about the moral rot of AOS in my comments about "Lockup."

I don't have a problem with stories about people who think they're good but who agree to do bad things. In fact, those stories can be fascinating! Deep Space Nine remains my favorite Star Trek series, and it was constantly forcing its heroic characters into impossible moral quandaries in which they sometimes they made unethical choices. That show's biggest legacy is probably Section 31, a secret espionage agency within the United Federation of Planets that operates above the law and does appalling things in order to preserve the Federation without breaking its self-delusion of utopia. They're very much like the S.H.I.E.L.D. depicted in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The difference is, Deep Space Nine knew that Section 31 was evil. Its characters knew that they were evil. Its stories sometimes allowed them to "win" anyway, but they were never depicted as heroic for conducting assassinations, abductions, sabotage, and other malfeasance. The show wanted the audience to wake up: Section 31 was a metaphor for the American espionage network of the Henry Kissinger era, betraying and undermining the rest of the world in pursuit of perceived national interests while allowing us ordinary Americans to preserve the unfounded fantasy that our country was a "beacon of hope" and "the land of the free" and a "model of democracy" and other nonsense. We were villains on the world stage who lied to ourselves that we were heroes.

Which brings me back to Agents of S.H.i.E.L.D., a show that does not have the same nuance. Granted, it came along at a later point in time, after 9/11 and Iraq and Afghanistan and "enhanced interrogation techniques" and the Patriot Act and other events in which Americans made the foolish trade for security over rule of law and personal freedoms. AOS wants to entertain its audience within that shitty new world rather than challenge them. (I would argue that the show is often too dull to succeed even as mere entertainment, but its many renewals demonstrate that plenty of people disagreed with me.) AOS rarely seems to have any viewpoint about the actions of its spy agency, and on the few occasions when it does characterize their amoral actions somehow, it seems to be a mixture of "we make the hard choices no one else can" free license and a occasional self-condemnation that rings hollow because it's quickly forgotten and undone by the next bad thing that the characters do.

I complain about AOS a lot, and that's not entirely fair. If not for this project, I would have stopped watching it much earlier when it became clear that the series wasn't for me. Plus, its setting within a superhero universe makes me question its amorality in ways that I wouldn't if it was a standalone series. But ultimately, I just can't accept the fact that the show thinks that its characters are the "good guys" doing the "right thing." They so often do shockingly terrible things to each other and to the world in pursuit of, well, what really? "Protecting" ordinary people, I guess, which is as specific as the show gets in justifying their actions. That's not enough.

I need AOS to demonstrate an understanding that the spies' actions are bad. It can justify them any way that it wants, and its spies can even possess a sincere belief that they're heroes, but the show itself must prove that it knows what it's portraying is wrong. Until it does so in a convincing way, I will continue to reject it.


Erik Bates | March 9, 2024

Lockup: So there it is. The mysterious book that people have been looking for for a very long time, that even Nick Fury couldn't find, was ... wait for it ... buried in the family home of the guy who killed the last guy known to have the book.

Alright. So... we knew who had it at some point in the past? We knew that someone killed him? We know where that guy's family lives. How has nobody thought to look into this before?

I'm still watching this series out of obligation to this project, and I can't until we get to shift gears into a different movie and/or series again. It's getting tedious, and I can't figure out how they lasted this long when far better series exist and didn't survive.

I knew that Ghost Rider's desire to kill people "who deserve it" was going to cause trouble in this episode. But come on... you had one job --- to protect your family, and what do you do? You let your uncle to continue making his way through a prison riot so you can go back and kill a guy. I just can't with this show right now...


Scott Hardie | March 19, 2024

Erik, I laughed so much at your point about the Darkhold's "hiding place." Thank you. :-)


Erik Bates | March 23, 2024

The Good Samaritan:

Cool to see Nicholas Cage make a cameo and pass the Ghost Rider torch.

That’s my interpretation, and you cannot take it away from me.

I did not see that twist coming, though!



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