touch my face and watch me try to breathe again

[musesfool]

Reading Wednesday on a Thursday:

I'm not going to split it out because I am still rereading my way through the Amelia Peabody series. I finished The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog, though I was wrong about the identity of the kidnapper, it does introduce Bertha (I kept thinking her name was Bettina or Bethany - I knew it was a B but I couldn't

Comments

[delle]

I wish I had coherent, logical, canon thoughts about why I dislike AoS. I simply don't like Coulson as a lead character and Clark Gregg simply can't carry an entire show.

I was rewatching the end of Thor the other day, where Thor tells "Son of Coul" that they will be allies, provided Shield returns all the "things you took from Jane". Jane quickly says "stole" and Coulson quickly corrects to "borrowed". THAT'S the Coulson I like, the one I'm invested in. The shades-of-grey Shield agent that threatens to taze Tony Stark and "watch Supernanny while you drool on the carpet". He's not a hero, he's not an Avenge, he's a government agent, an agent of a very grey, straddling-the-lines-of-legality somewhat-secret intelligence agency. And that's not the character I'm seeing weekly on my TV.

[musesfool]

Yeah, I think Coulson was not the best choice to center a tv show around - he's much more entertaining when he's bouncing off larger than life personalities in a smaller role.

And yeah, the show seems keen on erasing all the shady areas that SHIELD works in - that the movies understand! - and instead making them unequivocal good guys! Or at least presenting them that way despite their actions still being shady.

[viridian5]

AoS immediately began to chip away at all the game-changing canon about SHIELD I liked from Winter Soldier, which is even more galling since I really liked Winter Soldier and thought Agents of SHIELD a waste of space. If the show even acknowledged that in show canon itself SHIELD and Coulson do very shady things it'd make it a little more bearable, but instead Coulson is presented as some big damned hero doing (horrible) things for a heroic organization. I think Agents of Nothing would have been more interesting, but instead it's immediately rebuilding SHIELD to be what it was(!) and putting it in the hands of someone who frequently behaves in ways Captain America would not approve. (I doubt Coulson will ever get called on that in the show either, that his own hero would be disgusted with him.) Why should a crap TV show's canon trump the movie's?

[musesfool]

If the show even acknowledged that in show canon itself SHIELD and Coulson do very shady things it'd make it a little more bearable, but instead Coulson is presented as some big damned hero doing (horrible) things for a heroic organization.

YES. I agree 100%. It's galling to me that they're doing this, when Cap 2 clearly understood the ambiguities involved in SHIELD, even if it pulled its punches. Captain America would absolutely have some harsh words for Coulson and his team, but the show will never allow that to happen.

[papparadzze]