New shows
My new fall shows so far:
Sleepy Hollow
I will definitely keep watching this one, as it's a fabulously campy show and the leads are amazing. It kind of reminds me of those Nicholas Cage movies about the Declaration of Independence with its take on history, but with Biblical apocalypse stuff thrown in for good measure. Good clean (except for the beheadings) fun.
Some of the inaccuracies are bugging me so far, mostly because it seems like they're doing just enough research and then missing the point along the way: ie, reducing the Revolutionary War to being just about taxes and not about lack of representation, etc. The horseman with the bow and white horse should also be Conquest/Pestilence, not Death, but I'm hoping this will be pointed out later on.
Honestly, though, I'd watch this show for nothing else than Ichabod encountering modern technology and Abbie snarking at him and being awesome. I'm also hugely excited to see more of Abbie's sister. Looks like Clancy Brown will be sticking around at least a little bit, and for now we still get John Cho as well, so that's nice. The captain character is interesting and has some potential, and how much do I love that his last name is Irving? A lot. The names of all the characters are pretty interesting, much like in Once Upon a Time, so those little things make me happy.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
This one I wasn't entirely crazy about, tbh. I'm hoping it's just Pilot Syndrome and that the show will get better, but it didn't blow me away.
Coulson was great, and I'm glad we may get to learn about how his life was saved (or if it even was) and all the fallout from that. I worry a little about overexposure with him, as he's the type of character that can suffer if you learn too much about him, but for now it was good. Except for the random shouting, b/c that seemed a bit OOC to me.
Great to see Agent Hill, if only for her snark and the line about the little poop with knives in and her obvious annoyance that Coulson didn't understand her porcupine drawing.
Ming-Na is the other main reason (other than Coulson) that I'm on board for this show, and I hope we get to learn a lot more about her. It was nice to see her have an obvious reputation within SHIELD as an awesome agent, with none of that "but she's a woman!" crap we usually get. Still, it's odd that her whole character note was "does not want to be in the field", yet when it came down to it she was just fine in the field with no hesitation. Hopefully they'll expand on this a bit more.
The two scientists are cute, but insanely young to be such experts and mostly there for exposition. I'd like to see more global participation in SHIELD, so I guess the UK is a start.
Also, yay Ron Glass!
Things I Didn't Like:
- Main white agent guy. Didn't even catch his name, he was so bland and typical and so not the kind of character I like. Some of his scenes revealed some pretty sexist characteristics, as well. I'm just not interested at all at this point.
- Lack of diversity. This team is very, very white (though evidently Chloe Bennett is half-Chinese, born Chloe Wang). I would much rather keep J. August Richard's character, as he was leagues more interesting than Agent Whatshisname.
- I'm on the fence about Skye, the curiously well-groomed for living in a van hacker, partly because I feel like we've seen this character from Joss before, but also because there was a lot of Telling instead of Showing when it came to her skills.
- Really didn't like the line about "sweaty cosplay girls" hanging around outside of Stark Towers. It felt like a reference to the whole Fake Geek Girl thing, which needs to die like now.
- Not really feeling the team chemistry yet. For me, the appeal of shows like this is that family aspect of the teams, and these people don't have that.
- As much as I liked seeing J. August Richards, it got uncomfortable watching him go from a potential superhero to an unstable lab experiment, almost literally an "Angry Black Man" who had to be put down by white government agents. Shooting him in the damn head was not the best thing to do there. He had so many great points in that last speech of his, but then had to be taken away by a kind of shady government agency that did enough questionable things during this pilot to not really put themselves in a very good light. It just didn't sit well with me.
I dunno, the show just doesn't feel all that fresh to me. It feels a bit dated, dialogue included. It also looked like they filmed it on the cheap. I do find it interesting that they're already "registering" potential superheroes, which could lead to them pursuing the Civil War storyline, and that we may get some more examination of the post-alien-invasion Earth and how that impacts everyday people. But generally I'm just "meh" about this right now and not sure I care enough to give them very long to hook me.
Sleepy Hollow
I will definitely keep watching this one, as it's a fabulously campy show and the leads are amazing. It kind of reminds me of those Nicholas Cage movies about the Declaration of Independence with its take on history, but with Biblical apocalypse stuff thrown in for good measure. Good clean (except for the beheadings) fun.
Some of the inaccuracies are bugging me so far, mostly because it seems like they're doing just enough research and then missing the point along the way: ie, reducing the Revolutionary War to being just about taxes and not about lack of representation, etc. The horseman with the bow and white horse should also be Conquest/Pestilence, not Death, but I'm hoping this will be pointed out later on.
Honestly, though, I'd watch this show for nothing else than Ichabod encountering modern technology and Abbie snarking at him and being awesome. I'm also hugely excited to see more of Abbie's sister. Looks like Clancy Brown will be sticking around at least a little bit, and for now we still get John Cho as well, so that's nice. The captain character is interesting and has some potential, and how much do I love that his last name is Irving? A lot. The names of all the characters are pretty interesting, much like in Once Upon a Time, so those little things make me happy.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
This one I wasn't entirely crazy about, tbh. I'm hoping it's just Pilot Syndrome and that the show will get better, but it didn't blow me away.
Coulson was great, and I'm glad we may get to learn about how his life was saved (or if it even was) and all the fallout from that. I worry a little about overexposure with him, as he's the type of character that can suffer if you learn too much about him, but for now it was good. Except for the random shouting, b/c that seemed a bit OOC to me.
Great to see Agent Hill, if only for her snark and the line about the little poop with knives in and her obvious annoyance that Coulson didn't understand her porcupine drawing.
Ming-Na is the other main reason (other than Coulson) that I'm on board for this show, and I hope we get to learn a lot more about her. It was nice to see her have an obvious reputation within SHIELD as an awesome agent, with none of that "but she's a woman!" crap we usually get. Still, it's odd that her whole character note was "does not want to be in the field", yet when it came down to it she was just fine in the field with no hesitation. Hopefully they'll expand on this a bit more.
The two scientists are cute, but insanely young to be such experts and mostly there for exposition. I'd like to see more global participation in SHIELD, so I guess the UK is a start.
Also, yay Ron Glass!
Things I Didn't Like:
- Main white agent guy. Didn't even catch his name, he was so bland and typical and so not the kind of character I like. Some of his scenes revealed some pretty sexist characteristics, as well. I'm just not interested at all at this point.
- Lack of diversity. This team is very, very white (though evidently Chloe Bennett is half-Chinese, born Chloe Wang). I would much rather keep J. August Richard's character, as he was leagues more interesting than Agent Whatshisname.
- I'm on the fence about Skye, the curiously well-groomed for living in a van hacker, partly because I feel like we've seen this character from Joss before, but also because there was a lot of Telling instead of Showing when it came to her skills.
- Really didn't like the line about "sweaty cosplay girls" hanging around outside of Stark Towers. It felt like a reference to the whole Fake Geek Girl thing, which needs to die like now.
- Not really feeling the team chemistry yet. For me, the appeal of shows like this is that family aspect of the teams, and these people don't have that.
- As much as I liked seeing J. August Richards, it got uncomfortable watching him go from a potential superhero to an unstable lab experiment, almost literally an "Angry Black Man" who had to be put down by white government agents. Shooting him in the damn head was not the best thing to do there. He had so many great points in that last speech of his, but then had to be taken away by a kind of shady government agency that did enough questionable things during this pilot to not really put themselves in a very good light. It just didn't sit well with me.
I dunno, the show just doesn't feel all that fresh to me. It feels a bit dated, dialogue included. It also looked like they filmed it on the cheap. I do find it interesting that they're already "registering" potential superheroes, which could lead to them pursuing the Civil War storyline, and that we may get some more examination of the post-alien-invasion Earth and how that impacts everyday people. But generally I'm just "meh" about this right now and not sure I care enough to give them very long to hook me.