Review: "Marvel's Agents of SHIELD"

I was predisposed to like "Marvel's Agents of SHIELD" (which, for the purposes of actually getting this written in the next century shall be referred to as SHIELD henceforth). I'm a Marvel zombie from a long way back and have loved nearly everything they've done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Iron Man back in 2009. It wasn't a hard sell: a weekly show featuring perhaps one of the most underrated heroes in the universe, Agent Phil Coulson, dealing with the paranormal and super every week with a ragtag group of misfits? I'm in.

However, the show went past those expectations and fell short of them in varying degrees, all in all making for a fantastic experience that probably could have been a much shorter season. However, I'm not sure it should have been.

Let me explain. This review has become as complicated as Phil Coulson's past.

The idea behind SHIELD, as I understood it, was to expand the universe past the movie screen and give us something every week in the same milieu but without directly referencing The Avengers or whatever. And, it did that. In the first episode, we dealt with Extremis technology (see "Iron Man 3") and the events of the Attack on New York (see everything since the Avengers). We even had cameos form Cobie Smulders as Agent Maria Hill and SLJ himself as the one and only Cdr. Nick Fury.

But, after the initial novelty wore off, we were left with a bunch of characters that, while I cared about them, didn't seem to really have a purpose...until the last seven episodes of the season. Calling it "Uprising" the show seemed to flip everything on it's head. And the show then got really...really good.

But, the problem is there were about a dozen episodes that, while exciting and full of geek fodder, had nothing of substance. Episodes that could link to the Marvel Universe, Cinematic or not, were exciting but all of the threads that had been set up in the beginnings of the show took a long time to get resolution.

Maybe that's a condition of the times that we live in that we can't wait for a show to develop and grow without feeling that it owes us something. And, I'm not saying it does or doesn't. What I am saying, however, is that SHIELD ended strong. I don't want to give anything away, but it ended in a way that makes me excited for the future, not dreading another season of meandering plots that will only matter at the very end. It's almost as if SHIELD has earned that trust that, no matter where they lead me, it will be worth it in the end.

Let's just hope they remember that next season.