Sleepy Hollow & Agents of SHIELD - thoughts
Spoilers abound below -
So far this season I've watched 2 new shows, Sleepy Hollow on Fox and Agents of SHIELD.
[Spoiler (click to open)]Sleepy Hollow - I caught the premiere of Sleepy Hollow while on vacation in Kauai and was pleasantly surprised. I had zero interest in this show when I heard about it...blah boring, whatever. Turns out, it's pretty stinking good! They've immediately set up a really cool mythology on the series and it's set to be a Fox darling in that it looks like monsters of the week will be running wild on the show. I like the two leads. The guy who's Ichabod is strangely hot, he's got a John Corbett vibe with his looks and a very sexy English accent - ohlala! There's the fish out of water thing w/ the show with him freaking out over 21st century stuff that's always amusing. His partner Lt Mills is a tough chick but nicely balances being freaked out by the weirdness around her. The two play well off of each other.
Mythology set up - Ichabod decapitated the horseman during the Revolutionary war - turns out he was one of the four horsemen and bringers of the Apocalypse. His wife Katrina had been a witch and put a spell on Ichabod to wake him up again when the horsemen would rise again to complete their task. Headless horseman arose looking for said head and Ichabod woke from his dream spell. Abbie Mills got to see the Headless horseman after it killed her mentor and left him headless. She, we learned, had seen something as a kid (along w/ her sister) that shows that she's supposed to be on this crazy journey to stop the horsemen with Ichabod.
I do wish they had crafted the show in a way that it wasn't fully procedural - I'm so bloody sick of cop shows it isn't even funny. BUT at least it's unique and the entire cast is engaging, the writing is smart and sophisticated. Let's hope that even though it's not doing so great right now in the ratings that Fox will stick with it.
Agents of SHIELD - I'm a newer Joss fan - meaning I didn't watch Buffy and only watched part of Angel. Love Firefly and did watch Dollhouse for a while. One thing I loved about those 2 shows were the strong ethno-diverse casts - even if he had abundantly white folk in the cast, they didn't all look the same. Agents of SHIELD this is NOT the case. I don't know if this is supposed to be this way or not but other than Ming Na Wen who's Asian, there isn't a single non-white, non-brunette person in the cast (excluding Coulson.) This made watching the pilot, IMO very jarring and confusing. If you were only casually paying attention it was easy to get Simmons, Skye, and Agent Hill mixed up. Fitz and Ward both have brown curly hair - yes one is taller and handsome, but they still look similar.
I also flat out don't buy Skye as an uber smart hacker chick. I guess she's actually 1/2 Asian, but I just look at the girl and think she looks like Alyssa Milano (kudos to her, Alyssa is gorgeous.) Her looks don't bother me as much as the fact that someone who "lives in a van" shouldn't have beautiful glossy hair and wear designer clothes. She should have her hair thrown off of her face, willy-nilly and should have worn either funky or functional clothes. She's lacking that anarchist attitude also that Eliza Dushku could've pulled off in a snap.
All of that being said - the show is flashy, it's got a nice high budget. The pilot could've used being 2 hours I think, but It was ok. I liked the Superhero of the week storyline, you really felt for Michael the poor test subject Dad. I like Coulson and I LOVE Miranda May - she's got that stoic fierceness that we all love about Zoe from Firefly. The geeks are pretty cute, I just think Ward needs some development, so far he's pretty but flat.
They set up things for a good fun show w/ danger lurking around every corner, I just hope that they find their rhythm and they work on building more mysteries to keep things continually interesting.
So far this season I've watched 2 new shows, Sleepy Hollow on Fox and Agents of SHIELD.
[Spoiler (click to open)]Sleepy Hollow - I caught the premiere of Sleepy Hollow while on vacation in Kauai and was pleasantly surprised. I had zero interest in this show when I heard about it...blah boring, whatever. Turns out, it's pretty stinking good! They've immediately set up a really cool mythology on the series and it's set to be a Fox darling in that it looks like monsters of the week will be running wild on the show. I like the two leads. The guy who's Ichabod is strangely hot, he's got a John Corbett vibe with his looks and a very sexy English accent - ohlala! There's the fish out of water thing w/ the show with him freaking out over 21st century stuff that's always amusing. His partner Lt Mills is a tough chick but nicely balances being freaked out by the weirdness around her. The two play well off of each other.
Mythology set up - Ichabod decapitated the horseman during the Revolutionary war - turns out he was one of the four horsemen and bringers of the Apocalypse. His wife Katrina had been a witch and put a spell on Ichabod to wake him up again when the horsemen would rise again to complete their task. Headless horseman arose looking for said head and Ichabod woke from his dream spell. Abbie Mills got to see the Headless horseman after it killed her mentor and left him headless. She, we learned, had seen something as a kid (along w/ her sister) that shows that she's supposed to be on this crazy journey to stop the horsemen with Ichabod.
I do wish they had crafted the show in a way that it wasn't fully procedural - I'm so bloody sick of cop shows it isn't even funny. BUT at least it's unique and the entire cast is engaging, the writing is smart and sophisticated. Let's hope that even though it's not doing so great right now in the ratings that Fox will stick with it.
Agents of SHIELD - I'm a newer Joss fan - meaning I didn't watch Buffy and only watched part of Angel. Love Firefly and did watch Dollhouse for a while. One thing I loved about those 2 shows were the strong ethno-diverse casts - even if he had abundantly white folk in the cast, they didn't all look the same. Agents of SHIELD this is NOT the case. I don't know if this is supposed to be this way or not but other than Ming Na Wen who's Asian, there isn't a single non-white, non-brunette person in the cast (excluding Coulson.) This made watching the pilot, IMO very jarring and confusing. If you were only casually paying attention it was easy to get Simmons, Skye, and Agent Hill mixed up. Fitz and Ward both have brown curly hair - yes one is taller and handsome, but they still look similar.
I also flat out don't buy Skye as an uber smart hacker chick. I guess she's actually 1/2 Asian, but I just look at the girl and think she looks like Alyssa Milano (kudos to her, Alyssa is gorgeous.) Her looks don't bother me as much as the fact that someone who "lives in a van" shouldn't have beautiful glossy hair and wear designer clothes. She should have her hair thrown off of her face, willy-nilly and should have worn either funky or functional clothes. She's lacking that anarchist attitude also that Eliza Dushku could've pulled off in a snap.
All of that being said - the show is flashy, it's got a nice high budget. The pilot could've used being 2 hours I think, but It was ok. I liked the Superhero of the week storyline, you really felt for Michael the poor test subject Dad. I like Coulson and I LOVE Miranda May - she's got that stoic fierceness that we all love about Zoe from Firefly. The geeks are pretty cute, I just think Ward needs some development, so far he's pretty but flat.
They set up things for a good fun show w/ danger lurking around every corner, I just hope that they find their rhythm and they work on building more mysteries to keep things continually interesting.