Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review: “A Wanted (Inhu)Man”

Kyle’s Review

It doesn’t take much time to spot the difference between Marvel and DC’s television script writing: DC (Arrow and The Flash) focuses most of its writing efforts on the folks with powers, while Marvel centers its writing with the folks without powers. Non-powered characters in the DC TV universe are likely to be written like pod people, but Quake (aka Skye, aka Daisy) has little going on besides assembling a super team of inhumans. Yes, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. insists on shipping—that’s shorthand and verb form of relationship—Daisy and Lincoln but let’s face it, that ain’t happening. I’ve seen more onscreen chemistry between two rocks. To be fair, those were two sexy, decorative rocks, but the fact remains that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s human characters have more substance.

And we get a lot from those human characters in “A Wanted (Inhu)Man.” Fitz helps Simmons readjust to life on Earth—that’s going to be a long, difficult, and rewarding process. Simmons reveals that she needs to go back to her distant planet prison for some reason—that should be interesting. Coulson has to make a deal with the devil, better known as the U.S. government agency tasked with hunting down inhumans—that’s gonna get hairy in places. Bobbi struggles with her rehab and her relationship with Hunter: she wants to be in the field to help Hunter on his mission but she can’t—aww. And Hunter kills an old chum in order to infiltrate Hydra, and the wide-eyed moment he realizes his friend is gone has to be one of the best moments in this early Fall television season.

As you can see there’s plenty to love in “A Wanted (Inhu)Man,” but we know the story will shift from the human element to the inhumans the closer we get to the Inhumans movie, and there isn’t a lot to like on that front for the time being. I’m sure Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will step up its character development of Daisy and the rest; I’d just prefer a more immediate sign that things will change for the better.

There weren’t that many new elements added this week, so we don’t have an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets page for “A Wanted (Inhu)Man.” But I did find the following logo for the upcoming Secret Warriors.

Looks like Skye (aka Daisy aka Quake) will be busy in the coming months.

The Flash Review: “Flash of Two Worlds”

Jim’s Review

Well, if you followed my live tweets of the show, you can probably guess I found plenty to pick on this week. That doesn’t necessarily make for a bad show, but in the case of this one, it sort of does.

The biggest thing that bugged me this week was the dialogue. Having Barry talk about Wells, and Caitlin about Ronnie was sloppy. Essentially, we had characters simply tell us what their motivations and emotional statuses were. Barry being a jerk to Jay felt forced, and it shows the writing team still needs to work on its lighter touch.

Joe’s new meta-human squad sidekick felt tacked on. Her character wasn’t developed, so it wasn’t that tense to see her strapped to a bomb.

What I liked about this episode was Cisco moving closer to his superhero fate. I didn’t buy his unwillingness to investigate or reveal it to the group, but it’s some much-needed character development.

All in all, I think this week was a step back. The season still has some potential, but I’m hoping next week we get some real momentum.

Kyle’s Take

“Flash of Two Worlds” tried to do too much too soon. Dr. Stein spoon fed us the multiverse theory, and that was okay, but the lectures didn’t end there. Every character, including the ones we just met, vomited their life story at the slightest provocation. Storytelling of this nature would feel out of place even if you didn’t skip ahead five months from the events of last season to the beginning of this one but it’s especially out of place here.

I think you’d know if you had 52 rifts in space-time well before a five month period. And what was Jay Garrick doing during that timeframe? Garrick came out of the largest rift, which happened to be in STAR Labs. Did it take Jay five months to find the floor Barry was on? Fortunately, there were a lot of comic book mentions in “Flash of Two Worlds” (here’s a link to our secrets page) but it’ll take more than good Easter eggs to message the kinks in The Flash’s storytelling. I’m still hopeful for this season.

iZombie review: “Zombie Bro”

Kyle’s Review

Liv ate some frat boy’s brain this week and she developed a nasty case of the “bros,” bro. I’m serious, bro. Every other word out of her mouth was bro, bro, so “Zombie Bro” is a great title for this week’s iZombie episode…bro. It’s hard to stop once you get started—bro.

Anyway, iZombie took a break from the usual take down Max Rager arc and spent some time in Blaine’s World whenever it wasn’t marinating in Liv and Major’s strained relationship. The marinade of choice was a massive kegger for Liv, while Major and Ravi tripped balls on Utopium. The two threads led to some hilarity but the humor was undercut by what Liv and Major have kept and are keeping from each other. Ravi may be conducting a scientific experiment—yeah, right—but Liv and Major are running from their problems.

“Zombie Bro” could’ve taken the easy route and made a frat boy the perpetrator of the crime but it went in a different direction: a son avenging his father’s death at the hands of a drunk driver. This added another layer of substance abuse to this episode and substance abuse awareness was the real message iZombie left its viewers. We may not have seen the last of this message either as Major was left alone in his room taking another hit of Utopium.

iZombie had the best season premiere of all the comic book based shows on the CW and its streak of strong shows continued with “Zombie Bro.” I loved how comedy undercut the serious topics touched in this episode but at the same time, humor didn’t cheapen the points iZombie made.

Blindspot Review: “Bone May Rot”

Kyle’s Review

Another week of Blindspot and we get another plot to destroy the world—or at least a large portion of the human population. Blindspot might need to ease off the throttle just a hair or else its viewers may get fatigued. Don’t get me wrong, “Bone May Rot” isn’t a bad episode by any stretch but there’s only so much world in peril we can stand before we cease to suspend disbelief. Take a page from Arrow season two, Blindspot, and give us a villain that has a slow burn, allowing the story to build up to a maniacal plot to destroy the Earth. Blindspot could be getting us there soon—I hope.

As for “Bone May Rot,” this week’s clues from Jane’s body were pretty clever. I don’t want to spoil anything here but the moment at CDC headquarters was a nice touch. I also liked the reason for why these bio-terrorists would unleash incurable diseases on the populous, even though the reasoning is a little old hat: there are too many people on this Earth and Mother Nature can’t support them all. And the recurring characters—many are still unnamed or their names are seldom mentioned—are gaining some depth. There’s some sexual tension between the African-American male agent (I guess his name is Edgar but I had to check IMDB) and the Latina female agent (Tasha, according to IMDB). Tasha has some additional issues—I won’t spoil them either. And then there’s Ashley Johnson’s Agent Patterson—I actually knew her character’s name without checking IMDB—may be in some hot water with the higher ups. She shared a scene with her beau, a puzzle nut, where she divulged files from the team’s classified mission. If you served a second in military intelligence, you’d know she’d be making little rocks out of bigger rocks if her supervisor caught wind of Patterson sharing secrets with a civilian, and Patterson reeks of stink.

Despite the massive suspension of disbelief needed for Agent Patterson’s side story, I enjoyed “Bone May Rot,” but I’m left wondering how Blindspot intends to update the info on Jane’s body. Chuck had a built in method of updating the intersect: upload intersect 2.0 into Chuck’s brain. But who would spend the time and money to knock out Jane Doe, laser remove her tats, and give her fresh ones? I don’t know but I’m sure they’d have to be one sick son of a—I guess we’ll have to keep watching for the big reveal.

Oh, and the last few minutes of “Bone May Rot” may have dismantled everything built between Agent Weller and Jane Doe. Okay, maybe not. Blindspot hasn’t done too good of a job hiding Jane Doe’s true identity and the final minutes use a hokey plot device to throw viewers off the scent. I’m not buying it.

The Awesomes Review: “The Awesomes Reloaded”

Kyle’s Review

“The Awesomes Reloaded” takes on a superhero trope by having a villain hypnotize the team and create an alternate, utopian reality for each team member: Prock is a cop and a hero, Frantic is a high school track coach and respected, Impresario is an artist, and Concierge is a librarian. Okay, that last one’s a little off but Concierge does like a place for everything and everything in its place so she’s down with the Dewey Decibel System.

It’s fun to see The Awesomes in different roles and the roles The Awesomes choose for their characters work on a comedic level. But what makes “The Awesomes Reloaded” well worth the watch is that it doesn’t skimp on the ongoing story arcs. Perfect Man still prefers Prock and company to the new Awesomes, Livewire and Prock’s impending parenthood takes center stage with a new extended family member learning the good news, and the villain behind this episode’s whole mess is none other than this season’s big bad.

In short, everything worked with “The Awesomes Reloaded,” The Awesomes are well on their way to another solid season.

Bob’s Burgers Review: “The Land Ship”

Kyle’s Review

“The Land Ship” featured Tina and that’s always a good thing. Of all Bob’s Burgers’ characters, Tina has the most depth—okay Bob has quite a bit of depth too and so do many others, but Tina’s the epitome of an awkward teen trying to become the adult she’s supposed to be—as she struggles between doing the right thing and fitting in with the crowd.

With all that said I’m predisposed to liking most stories that feature Tina, but I’d have to say that “The Land Ship” was good not great. This might be a case of too much of a good thing. Bob’s Burgers is in its sixth season and there are plenty of episodes that showcase Tina’s insecurities and struggles with morality. Heck, there are some that have a parallel story of Bob going through similar struggles, and that might be where “The Land Ship” falls a little short.

Bob and Linda’s side story plays up the yucks—and there aren’t that many to be had—instead of linking to Tina’s main arc; Tina’s story is the main arc as the title of the episode is “The Land Ship” and her story is the only one that directly involves the land ship. I don’t know. Something was missing from “The Land Ship.” All the pieces were there but they didn’t quite fit like we’re used to seeing them fit. “The Land Ship” wasn’t a bad show. It just wasn’t as good as many other Bob’s Burgers episodes. With a couple of good seasons in a row—and three other fine seasons before them—it might be difficult for Bob’s Burgers to maintain its streak of good to great shows, but I think they’re up to the task.

Heroes Reborn Review: “The Needs of the Many”

Kyle’s Review

Heroes Reborn introduced the event that will unite most—if not all—its principal characters, but I’m not sure what the event is. It looks like Malina, the young lady who will “save the world” along with a few other characters, spread the aurora borealis across the entire Northern Hemisphere at least and perhaps the entire world. If you’re confused as to why she’d do something like that, so am I. I think Malina is calling all evos but your guess is as good as mine.

Luke (Zachary Levi) comes clean to his evo assassin wife Joanne (Judith Shekoni) about his newfound powers. These two’s relationship and Carlos Gutierrez (Ryan Guzman) taking over his brother’s gig as a superhero are the highlights of the series so far, but with so many characters and very little to bind them, too many of these characters get lost in the white noise.

I’m not even sure what the big threat is for this mini-series. It looks as if we may have a light versus dark (the classic dichotomy of good versus evil) conflict as—spoiler alert perhaps but I’m not sure—a mysterious kid with “shadow” powers is shown at the end of “The Needs of the Many.” This shadow kid might be the sister Quentin (Henry Zebrowski) is looking for but again, I’m not sure. That’s right, Heroes Reborn hid the kid’s gender from viewers for reasons I don’t understand.

For being almost a quarter of the way through the mini-series, we don’t have a lot of clarification. There’s being subtle and hiding characters’ intentions but Heroes Reborn takes this too far. Fortunately, Heroes Reborn is a mini-series so I’ll keep watching a while longer.

Arrow Review: “Green Arrow”

Jim’s Review

Arrow returned this week, and while I wouldn’t call it a homerun of an episode, I did see a few things I’m excited about.

Much like Flash, Arrow tried to cover a lot of ground in its premier. They wanted to catch us up, and they tested my willingness to accept how much can really be covered in five months, especially where how far a city can fall without making national (if not global) headlines. In short, Star(ling?) City is a war zone now, but Oliver seems far more unaware of the situation than is believable.

Speaking of Oliver and Felicity, their lovey-dovey, kissy-kissy routine nearly sent me into a diabetic coma. I get that a lot of fans have been waiting to see this, but there comes a point where I can only believe Diggle didn’t want Oliver around because he got tired of looking at his puppy eyes.

My big hope for this season centers around the villain, or at least the fact that he doesn’t appear to be a villain of the week. I really felt this show was strongest during season 2, and part of that reason was Deathstroke. He provided a tension that was allowed to boil over throughout the season, and it looks like they could be doing that with this villain, too.

The tension between Thea and Oliver felt a bit familiar. She’s mad that he’s talking down to her again. We’ve seen that, so it feels a little stale. Diggle is still angry about Oliver’s duplicitous behavior from last season, which while understandable, is getting a little old. Even Diggle’s wife wants him to let it go now. The feud between Captain Lance and Oliver was given a slightly different angle with a surprise toward the end, which adds the possibility for that to be fleshed out and made more interesting, but the key to this season being better than last, for me, is in letting the big villain be a central, ongoing conflict. I think it could happen, and I’m optimistic after the premier.

Kyle’s Take

I like the idea of a central villain we can root against but I’m mystified why every comic book TV show has to pretend like things happened over the course of the summer. Can’t we pick up where we left off the season prior? Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. uses this device as a means to incorporate things that happened in Marvel summer movies but the DC TV universe doesn’t tie into the DC movie universe, so it doesn’t make sense to jump ahead months into the future unless you have a really good reason. The audience is left playing catch up and as a result, we get season premieres that flail around in the mud for a spell. Still, this was an entertaining episode of Arrow—I could’ve done with less kissy face, too—and there’s enough to be excited about for this season of Arrow.

There were plenty of Easter Eggs in Arrow’s premiere as well. Check out our Arrow secrets page here.

iZombie Review: “Grumpy Old Liv”

Kyle’s Review

Another comic book TV show and we get yet another summer months catch up with the premiere. iZombie second season jumped a few months from the events of its first season’s finale but I guess it was necessary. When we last saw Liv, she refused to give her kid brother a blood transfusion (for fear of giving him the Zombie disease), Blaine and Major were cured of their zombieism, and Liv was all out of antidote.

Since all of these threads were fairly well interwoven, iZombie didn’t take nearly as long as some of the other Fall TV premieres to get the ball rolling. Besides, all iZombie needs is a fresh murder mystery and set of brains to work their way through Liv’s system. This week’s mystery may not have tied into all the aforementioned threads but iZombie juggled these threads very well and the brains that Liv ate gave her a delightful grumpy old woman disposition: she is the oldest zombie in town after all.

I won’t spoil this week’s mystery solution here, but it had nothing to do with iZombie’s typical supernatural themes, yet it was satisfying and welcome. This season of iZombie—or at least the first episode of this season—is focused on the human element and the episode ends with a fantastic twist. Again, I won’t spoil the big reveal but let’s say that roles change, Liv’s life is turned upside down—even more so than last season when she became a zombie—and this season’s big bad is leaps and bounds above last season’s.

Verdict:

iZombie was one of those guilty pleasures I had from a year ago. The premise sounded dumb but it surprised me with its fusion of police procedural, dark comedy, and zombie motif, so I kept watching it. iZombie’s second season may reward viewers further for their patience. It’s too early to tell, but iZombie might challenge for the CW’s best comic book based TV show this year.

The Flash Review: “The Man Who Saved Central City”

Jim’s Review

The season 2 premier of The Flash was about what you would have expected. We spent a lot of time catching up, getting glimpses of the fallout from the events of the season 1 finale.

In terms of tone, there was everything that made the show’s first season successful. Unfortunately, I think we’re already seeing the return of the big gripes from last season, too. We had a flash-in-the-pan villain, and while there may be a payoff as Atom Smasher was used to drop a big name for the future, but Atom Smasher himself was underdeveloped, and his conflict with Barry was overshadowed by the team’s internal conflict.

Speaking of the team’s internal conflict, the whole idea of Barry wrestling with whether or not to “go it alone,” or to accept the help of his friends feels like another rehashed story line. I was also disappointed to see Caitlin’s character regress back to simply missing Ronnie, but I am interested to see if Martin will replace Dr. Wells in the team. That seems to be where they’re headed.

Aside from the name Atom Smasher dropped, I think the teaser for next week’s episode was the real exciting part. Since it’s in the previews, I’ll call it fair game to say Jay Garrick coming to the show opens up some really interesting possibilities, not just for The Flash, but for other DC screen properties.

All things considered, it was a slower start to season 2 than I would have liked, but there certainly appears to be plenty of reason to stay excited about the show.

Kyle’s Take

I guess we’re not mentioning the name dropped here. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more.) We do mention the name Atom Smasher mutters in our Flash secrets page. You can check that out here.

I have to echo Jim’s underdeveloped villain comment. The Flash has a wealth of interesting villains. He isn’t the Green Arrow. Arrow had to borrow characters from other franchises to round out his rogues. Heck, Arrow even borrowed from The Flash. It pains me to see a character like Atom Smasher tossed aside, especially when he has a deep and rich past that ties into Jay Garrick’s arrival.

Still, I can’t wait to see what The Flash has in store.