July 02 2016
Esquire Mag opines on 10 shows that were "saved with one fix".
Agents of SHIELD and Angel make the list (with some possibly dubious reasoning). Possible spoilers for non-Whedonverse shows.
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Honestly, I think it's "Switch" was flipped when they killed off Doyle and brought in Wesley. Then again I'm one those weirdos who loved the first season of Angel. "City Of" is pretty high on my list of favorite episodes.
Elf | July 02, 08:33 CET
If I were going to put anything on the list, it'd be the addition of Bear (yes, the dog) and then Shaw and Root as regulars on Person of Interest. I loved the show from the first season, but once they expanded the team it went from great to amazing.
NYPinTA | July 02, 10:28 CET
Clearly, the Hydra reveal would have worked better earlier in the season without losing a good part of the first season audience who just weren't that into watching CSI: The Bus. But they were already locked into the series and movie release dates.
The idea that the original long term series idea was "Let's take the most powerful military/law enforcement agency in the world with an unlimited budget and mandate; and have them triumph over relatively weak and ineffectual villains of the week, is kind of ludicrous."
RobynH | July 02, 11:26 CET
Angel&Faith | July 02, 13:30 CET
The personal stakes were still pretty big early on, as well -- I always wanted to know how and why Coulson was resurrected and the skittery/brain-threading nightmarish robot SHIELD had putting him back together was a pretty awesome reveal. Did we ever receive concrete reasons as to the "why", though ? Did Fury (in his one season-ending appearance) give much info about that ? I vaguely recall Phil telling him that they'd need to have more of a conversation about that. Or did Ron Glass' doctor/scientist character tell us much (I forget whether or not that character got killed off) ? Was it just because they didn't feel that SHIELD could be lead by anyone better than Coulson ?
There were a number of good episodes in Angel's first season and the best of them hinted at what the series could be, but nothing reassured me more than "To Shanshu in L.A." Thought that was a pretty damn good finale at the time (haven't been through the Buffyverse a second time -- aside from watching repeats a pretty often during thr initial airings -- so dunno how it would hold up) and the Darla reveal at the end was incredible.
Kris | July 02, 17:34 CET
Agree with Blackadder except that I think the first series worked quite well. But yeah, it did improve when Atkinson decided to play smart.
SHIELD, Office US, Parks and Rec, agree with all that. The rest I haven't seen except the Simpsons, which is/was a great show but after about 10 years I just decided to move on. But I bet if I were watching it for the first time I'd think it was great.
Although I must say I don't necessarily agree that all of these shows were "bad" in the first place.
[ edited by batmarlowe on 2016-07-03 03:25 ]
[ edited by batmarlowe on 2016-07-03 03:26 ]
batmarlowe | July 02, 18:24 CET
But it turned out that all of that was layering in the show's own backstory. I remember being really annoyed several episodes in that every "monster" they had to deal with each week seemed to somehow be related to something Walter and 'Bellie' had dealt with in their lab. It seemed too pat. Then [SPOILERS] it turned out that that was the point and the whole show opened up (and we really didn't have to wait that long for it to do so). It's almost like the showrunners planned it that way.
Vague That Up | July 03, 07:36 CET
I agree with the AoS commentary... Whedon shows are always about the struggle against soulless, monolithic authority structures, and that doesn't work too well when the protagonists are all *part of* a soulless, monolithic authority structure. I'm just disappointed that the show had already bled so many viewers by the time it got to that point.
AndrewCrossett | July 03, 19:38 CET
Madhatter | July 03, 22:57 CET
NYPinTA | July 04, 07:15 CET
I am so tired of articles that talk of the Hydra twist on Agents of SHIELD as a "fix" that the show did or had to do in order to "fix" a "bad show". Do they really think that this was something that they decided on a whim halfway through the season? Let alone something they decided because they thought "oh, we need to fix our bad show"? The Hydra reveal and SHIELD getting disbanded was something that was always going to happen during season 1, because it was going to happen in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Do these media writers really think the writers only found out about it once they saw the movie? Do they know how much in advance movie scripts are written?
I also wish they would do some research. AoS writers have explained multiple times that they knew, as soon as the show was ordered, that SHIELD was going to be disbanded in CA: TWS, that they planned the entire season around that, and that they always knew Ward was going to be the Mole. (Jeffrey Bell said that they were leaving out the option to change their minds about the latter, if "it doesn't work out", but they did not. Among the things they did change, he named giving Raina a bigger role than what was initially planned, because they loved Ruth Negga.) But they also had to keep the secret and never mention the "H-word", because, obviously, they could not spoil the movie. They knew the movie would come out at some point around episode 15, 16 or 17, it was just a matter of later finding out the exact schedule.
Also, unpopular opinion: while the show was not nearly as good in the beginning as it would become later, because it seemed like a procedural at first, it was never bad, nor were any of the main characters "boring". It seems like simply a case of people having inflated expectations (both because of Marvel and because of Whedon's name) and giving up too early. The only episodes that were bad were the second episode and the episode with Lorelei. And, while it seemed like a mere procedural at first, the continual storyline started shaping much before the Hydra reveal, with Deathlok, Clairvoyant mystery and the mystery of Coulson's resurrection/TAHITI. I'd say it got consistently enjoyable and interesting at around episode 10 (well, apart from the Lorelei episode, which I despise, because of its tone deaf sexist writing and idiotic/annoying premise). Also unpopular opinion: it's not a good idea for new viewers to skip any season 1 episodes. You need to have a decent amount of time with the original team and regular SHIELD operations to get the full emotional impact of later events, when it all falls apart.
As for Angel, it was never an ensemble show. But even if one thinks of it as an ensemble show, I don't see how there was ever a point when it "became" one. Doyle was as much a prominent character as Fred or Wesley or Gunn were later.
[ edited by TimeTravellingBunny on 2016-07-07 09:43 ]
TimeTravellingBunny | July 05, 11:16 CET
The only time when something like that almost happened was with the "Real SHIELD", but, while they made some really good points, the narrative discredited them by making them do the same thing, in an even worse way: keep secrets and secretly infiltrate Coulson's SHIELD, while criticizing Coulson for keeping secrets. I was happy when May finally called out Coulson on his hypocrisy in one of the late season 3 episodes, but calling him out is not going to make her stop fulfilling his orders.
I'm always torn about AoS, because, on one hand, I love the show, but on the other, I'm always wondering whether I'm supposed to agree with the protagonists' often questionable decisions and inconsistent ethics, or if I'm supposed to see it in a critical light. Am I really supposed to think that Coulson is a great, competent leader? Are SHIELD supposed to be heroes, or a highly problematic organization? The most interesting thing about the Hydra reveal in Captain America: TWS and AoS season 1 is that it's easy to see why Hydra so successfully infiltrated SHIELD: while they may have different goals, there really isn't much difference in their methods.
Look at Victoria Hand. She was such a convincing red herring because she really wasn't a good guy, even though she was a SHIELD loyalist. First we see that she's ready to sacrifice SHIELD members without a second thought; something that Skye, at the time, found really shocking and unacceptable, and Coulson agreed with her. (Oh, the days when Coulson was still the humanitarian side of SHIELD. And the days when the show's protagonists seemed to think that throwing your fellow agents under the bus for the "bigger" reason of the mission is not really OK. Come season 2, and Bobbi Morse was there to explain to us that it's actually totally OK and nothing to feel bad about.) We're told Hand is a real rule follower, very strict. Except she's not really a rule follower, either, or she stopped being one when she realized Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD. First she was going to blow Coulson's entire team out of the sky on a mere suspicion that he may be Hydra - no proof, no trial, no hearing, nothing. Then she does the "we're Hydra" fake-out with Simmons and Trip. What would she have done if Trip hadn't openly refused to serve Hydra? How many people would have agreed out of fear, or just pretended to go along with it, to buy some time? (I don't even think Simmons would have openly said no, so it's lucky Trip was there.) What happened to the people who did that? And then, finally, she wants to have Garrett extra-judicially murdered on the way to the Fridge. But she doesn't do it herself, or order it to one of her men. In hindsight, that's probably exactly why she was happy to have Ward come aboard: she had misjudged him as a not-too-smart, trigger-happy action guy who will be willing to shoot Garrett, just like he shot Thomas Nash - and it suited her to have a member of Coulson's team do the dirty work, rather than her own.
TimeTravellingBunny | July 05, 11:41 CET
I think there is a big clue in the title itself. When it changed from S.H.I.E.L.D. to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. In retrospect, that telegraphed the reveal in a hidden, yet instantly obvious way.
RobynH | July 06, 20:01 CET
The Dark Shape | July 07, 15:14 CET