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[Liveblog] Agents of SHIELD

The post game commentary, generally non-spoilery:

You know what I love about this episode? They came up with some bullshit retcon to explain why everyone in Avengers during the Battle of New York was running around and talking to thin air. Nicely done, Whedon. Nicely done.

Agent May (Ming-na) is my new senpai. That is perhaps all you need to know.

But really, this first episode was everything I could have wanted. It was playful, it was full of nerdery and comic book references, there were badass fights. It followed the tone of the Marvel movies well. So if you like those movies, there you go. I also felt, weirdly, like it had a somewhat more PG Torchwood vibe to it. This is not a bad thing, trust me. I liked Torchwood a lot. I cannot WAIT until next week.

And… the Agent Coulson thing. (Oh come on, that isn’t really a spoiler. They’ve been waving that one in our faces since the first advertisements.) I still feel conflicted about it. Agent Coulson was amazing in the episode, and it’s clear that he’s going to be the heart of the team… just like he was in Avengers. If he weren’t there, they’d need someone just like him. But there is part of me that just always resents the “no one ever dies in comic books” thing. Now there’s a bare hint that there’s more to what happened than just Nick Fury being a lying dickbag, so we’ll see. I’m curious where they’re going with this and…

Ugh, I just love Coulson. I can’t help it. Damn you Clark Gregg. DAMN YOU. I can deal with the story fuckery so we can have Agent Coulson, ultimately, even if I’m mad about getting my emotions jerked around in Avengers. I know, I’m the first person ever to complain that Joss Whedon didn’t actually kill a character.

Anyway, liveblog below the fold!

 

1900: OH MY GOD IT’S STARTING MY BODY IS READY.

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tv

[Liveblog] Sleepy Hollow, episode two

Well, I think it will be liveblog-ish. I’m actually kind of excited about this episode. We’ll see if I’m disappointed. (Though I already know Sleepy Hollow will never disappoint me like The Following did, because there is always sassiness in it.)

Aaaaand here we go!

Thank you Ichabod voiceover for reminding us what happened last time.

2001: Running through the woods, you’re running through the woods, chased by Blucifer’s family.

2002: Ah, it’s a nightmare. You know, if my dreams foreshadowed plot like seems to happen in TV, I’d have gone to work naked and chased my cats endlessly through the Kroger while being peppered with thrown shoes.

2003: Ichabod’s dead wife is now explaining the whole plot again. You can tell she’s a witch because she’s wearing a sexy black dress. And what do you mean one of you? Didn’t she try to make the point she wasn’t an evil witch?

2004: Hello no shirt and… slightly floppy poopy drawers.

2005: Seriously, they’re claiming that John Cho ran into the mirror so hard he turned into a pez dispenser? DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW ANATOMY WORKS?

2005: The recap continues as we point out what a fish out of water Ichabod is, but that’s okay because he’s being adorable and unable to figure out how showers and lights work. I do love the sticky notes everywhere.

2006: Abbie has been sternly warned to not embarrass the Captain while he’s gone. I smell the inevitable embarrassment coming.

2008: Ichabod likes him some donut holes. Abbie, this is really not the time to go dissing the man’s dead wife.

2009: Ichabod’s main functions, I think, are to look adorably confused and say dark and portentous things while staring moodily at the camera.

2009: Welcome back, Pez Dispenser Cho. He has wrinkly old lady neck now. The vague grodiness of this is weirding my housemate out. It’s lovely.

2010: I like the title sequence, but could we have a color other than gray please?

2013: Someone needs to explain inflation to Ichabod. And I look forward to the foreshadowed story of why his dead wife didn’t like him. And I love his outrage at a 10% tax. I can tell the writers are having some fun with that.

2015: Apparently the healthcare plan you get with being a demonic minion doesn’t come with a plastic surgery option. Poor evil John Cho.

2016: In which Ichabod figures out the thing the audience knew immediately.

2016: What I want to know is how the demon can raise John Cho from the dead and make him barf up a necklace, but can’t manage to put a necklace on a post and deliver his own damn cryptic message.

2018: Geeze, now random people are making evil John Cho feel self conscious about his old lady neck.. Rude. (Though he does look nicely gross and dead, doesn’t he. Apparently so gross and dead that he killed the starter in this guy’s car.)

2019: Well known fact: witches summon their own theme music with their auras. (Hm, I can already smell a music collection for this series…)

2021: More review and backstory, this time about the sheriff. Oh wow, Abbie had a shady past. That’s kind of neat, how she got to be friends with her old partner.

2023: Ichabod apparently knows way more about this supernatural shit than he let on before…

2027: THERE’S BODIES EVERYWHERE CHOPPER GO CHOPPER GO oh wait, wrong thing.

2028: Serilda? Cerelda? She has a name that is impossible to spell, she must be a witch. And an evil witch.

2029: Well, hello man in tight black shirt who is randomly hostile. Hi Luke, have you pissed on the door frame yet? Geeze what a portrait of wounded and back patting masculinity. (Oh, he’s the ex. Oh. Blahblahblah.)

2031: Oh wow, they keep nice toys in their fire cabinets. None of this plain old fire axe bullshit.

2032: It’s a tunnel, Abbie. Isn’t that kind of obvious?

2037: A cache of gunpowder. I’m sure this will not be significant later in this episode or a future episode. Just in case something needs to be blown up. As you do.

2038: Evil John Cho, you are the creepiest police officer ever.

2039: “It’s getting dark.” *puts on sunglasses*

2039: Ah, today Ichabod got eidetic memory from the Power Of The Month Club.

2040: Oh dear… they made her an evil witch and Romany. Er.

2041: OH SHIT THE NOISE WAS JUST THE CAT RUN KID FUCKING RUUUUUUUN

2047: The kid is saved by adoption. COP OUT.

2047: Oh god Abbie never do that again.

2048: Poor evil John Cho. You just can’t catch a break. And all he wants is some thanks from the evil undead witch but nooooooo.

2048: “We’ll cover more ground if we separate.” Okay Ichabod has an excuse, he’s never seen a horror movie. BUT COME ON ABBIE.

2049: Evil John Cho can just stop his bitching now. He might have old lady neck, but he can apparently disappear at will. FAIR TRADE.

2053: And we have returned to the gunpowder cache. That was quick.

2054: HOW ARE THEY NOT COVERED WITH BITS OF WITCH?

2055: Aww, Ghost Sheriff. NO ONE STAYS DEAD IN THIS GODDAMN TOWN.

2057: Well, at least he’s sassy. He’s incredibly unhelpful, though. Number 49, really? COME ON.

2058: Ah, her sister is in room 49.

2059: She’s doing chin ups. That’s how you can tell she’s a tough girl. Getting a definite Sarah Conner vibe from her, and there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that.

And that’s it for this week. I’m looking forward to next week. If that’s the demon guy, they’ve made him look nicely creepy.

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liveblog tv

[Liveblog] In Which I Watch the First Episode of Sleepy Hollow

Technically speaking, spoilers for the first episode follow.

As pilots go for shows, I felt like this one was incredibly well put together. The show knows what it wants to be, who the main characters are, and laid out the major over-arching plot and premise for the show. Ichabod (Tom Mison) and Abbie (Nicole Behari) had incredibly good chemistry considering that this was the first episode. The special effects are a bit cheesey, particularly whenever they bring in cgi, but they didn’t actually lean on that too much. I thought the writing was pretty good, the dialog was mostly snappy (though it got a bit stilted and you’re trying way too hard to be clever in a few places) and it ought to be fun the same way Supernatural is fun.

And that’s because the concept is silly in the same way Supernatural is delightfully silly. Same Book of Revelations quasi-Biblical stuff, which I know is a wonderful mine for supernatural fun. The Headless Horseman is no longer a nameless Hessian who is just pissed off he took a cannonball to the face; he’s now Death himself, doing his part to end the world. Ichabod is now linked to the Horseman with some sort of magic, and he was also married to a witch apparently, though she never told him. (You can tell she’s a real witch because later in the show she appears in one if his dreams wearing a low cut black dress.)

Considering one of the selling points touted for this show was that it had writers who previously brought us Transformers and the new Star Trek, my expectations were admittedly not high. But I certainly enjoyed the pilot more than I enjoyed any of the Transformers movies. And no one ran away from an explosion in slow motion, so there’s that too. (Okay, I know that one was probably Michael Bay’s fault, not that of the writers.) The characters certainly had enough dimension to keep me interested even if the tropes made me roll my eyes a little now and then. (Gosh, thank goodness Abbie’s partner wad a Scrapbooking Guy so we could hey the back story info dump out of the way.)

What I honestly struck me the most was I felt the show did make an effort to have a diverse cast. One of the main characters is a woman of color, and there were other prominent non-white characters. (This has been on my mind thanks to the recent #DiversityinSFF talk if nothing else.) And I’m really excited about Abbie as a character because Nicole Beharie gave her some depth right off the bat. I’m looking forward to seeing her develop more. I’d be interested to hear the thoughts of others on this point, for certain.

All right, Sleepy Hollow, you’ve got me. You had fun, and you have sassy characters and some silly supernatural bullshit. AND A HEADLESS GUY WITH AN ASSAULT RIFLE. That’s really all I expect out of a Monday night tv show. I’ll keep watching.

(Liveblog below)

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