Here Are the Reasons Why Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is Finally Getting it Right in Season 2

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had an extremely rough freshman year, but in season 2 the show runners and writers have found the right formula for success to become a must see series in 2014…

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

When Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. debuted in 2013 there were grand expectations for the first television series from the comic book company responsible for cinematic masterpieces such as Iron Man and The Avengers. To up the pressure even more, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was being executive produced and led by Joss Whedon, who directed the pilot episode and put his name and face all over the series despite the fact that he actually had little involvement outside of script and storyline approval.

The show debuted well enough. The ratings were solid. Clark Gregg returned as Agent Phil Coulson, a character who first appeared in very brief flashes through a series of Marvel movies charting the last few years. Originally he died in The Avengers, but he was miraculously brought back to life to lead Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the mystery of his return was supposed to be one of the major plots of the first season. The other characters introduced were a hodge-podge of new names and faces, no one recognizable to the comic book universe, but instead created specifically for the series. Coulson would lead the team as they went on the search for ‘specials’ aka people with abilities or strange, unexplainable crimes that fell under the team’s auspices.

The problem was the show lacked any real heart or story that carried much resonance with the audience. It was clunky episode after clunky episode with a procedural approach to storytelling that just fell flat as each new week brought about a new adventure and a crime to solve like CSI Marvel had made it to the air, while the underlying plots about Coulson’s mysterious return or new agent Skye were so convoluted or stupid that no one really paid much attention. To compound matters when answers were somewhat given throughout the course of the first season, they were not only pointless but really gave no actual resolution to the problem.

The show also tried to get interlaced with the Marvel universe of movies such as their ‘crossover’ with ‘Thor: The Dark World’ but the episodes did nothing to further the overall story or actually make you feel like this was part of the bigger universe of films or stories that would eventually show up in theaters.

It all changed when ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ was released in theaters. The movie (spoilers), showed the downfall of S.H.I.E.L.D. thanks to an internal invasion of the villainous group known as HYDRA, who first appeared in the original Captain America film. As it turned out, HYDRA had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. decades ago and had quietly been running shadow games to eventually take over. The fallout from the HYDRA/S.H.I.E.L.D. battle in the sequel to ‘Captain America’ had to spill over into the series as well, and that’s when things finally picked up on television.

The shows all flowed one into the next and it became must see TV as Coulson and his team battled HYDRA on all fronts both internally and externally. The final three or four episodes were so good it almost made me forget about the abysmal start to the season where it got to the point that I considered giving up all together. Thankfully, I stuck around and the show got much better and the finale was one of the best hours of TV all year long. But still given the show’s checkered past, I wondered how the series would adapt and move on for season two.

Well, I’m happy to report through the first two episodes of the season, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is getting it right. The show has seemingly moved away from the strict procedural storytelling machination that trapped them into easily solved crimes that held no long standing ramifications for the series. The ‘villain of the week’ format has been abandoned (thus far) and instead the show is giving one succinct story with a few other offshoot plots that twist and interlace with the featured story very well. It’s still very early in the season, but two episodes into the sophomore season and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has managed to not only keep me intrigued, but I’m back to the point where I can’t wait to see the show week to week instead of the begrudging feeling that I had this series stuck on my DVR and it was going to come back to haunt me at some point.

Now I must preface by saying again that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is only two episodes into the season thus far, so the wheels could still fall off, but I’ve been nothing but impressed with what the show has managed to do while separating itself from the first year for the most part. Here’s a breakdown of the ways Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has managed to improve upon the first season and make season two worth watching each and every week.

Serialized Storytelling

There are essentially two types of shows when it comes to dramas on television — procedural vs. serialized.

The easies way to explain it is procedural storytelling is a week-to-week format of the show. Think CSI or House or Law & Order — each week a new case or plot is introduced and the characters work during that lone hour to solve the crime or the disease or whatever the story is for that particular episode. There are always underlying plots that play out over an entire season, but if you watched one episode and then skipped the next four, chances are you could pick up again midseason and not skip a beat (for the most part).

Serialized storytelling is one big plot that develops and plays out over an entire season. Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, The Sopranos — these are the classic serialized dramas. They may have a stand alone episode here or there, but these series were dedicated to a featured plotline or story each season that played out over the course of 10 or 15 or 20 episodes. The Walking Dead is a good example of another serialized drama in today’s age of television. One episode blends right into the next and there’s no way to miss a week because the revelations and changes that happen over a single hour or two of television completely alters the course of the series.

When Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. started it was set up as a procedural series and truth be told, there have been some very successful superhero shows that worked this way in the past. Smallville was very much a procedural show for the biggest part of 10 seasons although as the series developed, the stories became more involved and intricate, which pushed them away from a ‘week to week’ type of layout. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was another series that was a procedural in many ways, giving a new bad guy to the viewer each week while an underlying story developed that eventually played out by the end of the season.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. tried to follow the Buffy format and why not — it was coming from the same man who created Buffy (which is one of the 10 greatest television shows of all time in case you were curious). The problem is Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t draw viewers in the way that Buffy did week to week. The characters were so horrifically stereotypical that none of them were interesting enough to follow and because each new week brought a different story and villain, there was no way to get attached to them much either.

The new season has started to go away from that format and it’s working out splendidly thus far. The first two episodes felt more like one continuous story as the agents battled to find and capture a piece of material that dates back to the 1940’s, which also allowed Marvel’s new series Agent Carter to make a brief and unexpected appearance on TV. There was still the threat of HYDRA in the air and now even the U.S. government was going after the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the wake of the events of ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’. Hopefully, the show continues to at least develop plots that last over multi-episode arcs instead of the plot of the week format that made me tune out very early on last year.

The villains at the heart of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. last season were a confusing mix of famous names and new faces, none of which really captured the imagination until the end of the year. Now, there’s a growing threat looming overhead and we know big brother is watching. HYDRA is the big bad that will continue to threaten S.H.I.E.L.D. in every episode, and the war will brew and simmer until it eventually boils over. It’s a great story that worked at the tail end of last year and it appears the show runners realized how much better everything gelled instead of the mish-mash mysterious threat that never really materialized into much for season one. They’ve also managed to revamp the story behind Coulson’s resurrection and add a level of alien intrigue that could easily play into the next Avengers movie or possibly even the sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy. Instead of waiting for the next Marvel film to come out so they can crossover, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is operating like a lone entity that will influence the movie world. It’s a smart approach and works much better for this kind of series.

Characters We Care About

One of the biggest issues of the first season that I already touched on were the completely dull and vanilla characters that were introduced alongside Agent Phil Coulson. Grant Ward was the grown up boy scout, clean cut and acted to the letter of the law with impunity. May was an unwilling field agent drawn back into battle by her old colleague. She carried a steely resolve and an ass kicking style that rivaled any man on the planet. Fitz and Simmons were the science nerds — Fitz, the fidgety every-geek who could have been implanted into ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and the show wouldn’t skip a beat and then there was Simmons, the brilliant yet beautiful science officer with a smile like a tall glass of lemonade and an adorable accent that would melt the heart of the iciest pessimist.

For some reason the show also spent a painstaking amount of time building up Skye, who was an anonymous computer hacker that landed on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar and the series decided she should be the central focus for about 80-percent of the episodes. Who is Skye? What is Skye up to? How did Skye become a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent in about two weeks? Why should we care about Skye? Those were all questions that came up, the latter of which was the real detriment to the show during season one. She was not a compelling character and she got thrown in our faces week after week after week.

This season has managed to add some real intrigue to at least a few characters that have made the show a much better watch. Ward, who was by far the most annoying do-gooder in the history of television, ended up being a double agent secretly working for HYDRA and after he was finally captured, he’s now living in an isolation cell in the basement of the new S.H.I.E.L.D. building. In a three minute scene in the debut episode, Ward carried a kind of creepy calm while revealing that he had tried several times to commit suicide while being held captive. Ward has plenty of secrets rattling around that brain of his and while the Hannibal Lecter routine with him being behind bars all season long might eventually wear thin, right now it’s been the best part of the show so far. The cerebral interactions with Skye and the dark brooding nature of Ward have been captivating.

Also, the big reveal in episode one showed that Fitz is still dealing with the fallout from brain damage he received last season, and he’s just not doing well right now. Simmons is gone and there’s no signs (as of yet until episode three this week) where she disappeared to in her new assignment. From generic geeks to interesting case studies, the producers finally got it right with these two.

Now there are still faults with character development. May still serves no real purpose outside of being Coulson’s babysitter and Agent Triplett is like a new version of the old Ward, but with so much other stuff going on these two duds can be overlooked in the grand scheme of things.

Overall, the characters have gone from being background noise to actually improving the show and really that’s the mark of any TV show that will survive. If you don’t create characters the viewer cares about or roots for or at least wants to see what they’ll do next, the show is certainly destined to fail. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was on its way to the dump last year, but through two episodes of the second season, everyone has a story to tell and I’m interested to hear it.

Embracing the Crazy

One thing I absolutely despised about the first season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was the way they constantly had to explain every little thing going on in terms of people with abilities, alien artifacts, etc. It’s as if they expected that the viewers had never ever heard of a Marvel movie or a comic book for that matter. Every time the team would run across something strange, the show would spend several minutes trying to explain the mystery behind the object or the person they discovered instead of actually delving into the plot of the story.

This year, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is embracing the crazy.

The object that landed as the central focus of the first two episodes still hasn’t been explained and probably won’t for a good long time. They didn’t discuss ad nauseam every small minutia surrounding the object or trying to explain why it’s not what it seems it could be. They just dove right into the fact that it’s something bad, bad people want it, and let’s go. Same thing with the appearance of Carl Creel aka Absorbing Man. He was just a creature with the ability to absorb and become whatever material he touched. There wasn’t a 15 minute debrief about his powers, how it’s impossible for any human to have these powers or trying to debunk who gave him these powers. He had the ability, he was using it to his advantage and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. needed to stop him. Simple enough.

Hopefully more of this mentality is perpetuated in the second season of the show. One of the big reasons Guardians of the Galaxy was one of the best films of the year is because director/writer James Gunn embraced the crazy right away, which in turn helped the audience to love it as well. Maybe the success of that film helped pave the way for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to just go for it and stop explaining every tiny detail about the weird shit they were dealing with episode to episode.

In closing let me just say that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is two episodes into the new season so they could very easily fall off the rails again and there’s plenty of time to do it. But through the opening two hours, the series has picked up where last season left off and created an interesting enough story for me to get sucked in for the next couple of months to see where this all goes. Hopefully the sins of the past won’t haunt the future of what could still be a really, really good TV show.