Fantastic show with a few dips. The opening has Luther basically as a rage-monster. But that's not what Luther is. It's how Luther appears. Looking back it feels out of character for him.
Most seasons of this show could be summed up as "Cop has to deal with a crisis at work while someone else is giving him a personal crisis at the same time and neither of them can wait". Most of Luther is pile-on. There's a killer AND someone's trying to blackmail Luther. Things happen and next season he has a reputation for being bent when he's anything but.
Idris even from the jump has a strong screen presence and a slightly awkward posture. One that becomes iconic. I wouldn't be surprised if people walk like Luther. Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson) is a criminal I didn't expect to stick around. I thought she was almost interesting in her initial appearance but when Luther took the exceptionally interesting choice of befriending her to keep her under control that was wild. Their relationship isn't like a lot of the other cop-psycho relationships. She's not used as a source or a way to tap into the criminal element. Luther actually does a pretty good job of that himself. Idris gives you a Luther that's always tired, always compelling to do right even when it looks wrong, and never too concerned with what other people think of him. It's as admirable as it is sad how many people close to him end up dead. All over silly nonsense. Pettiness. The casualness with which a Luther-friend will get shot for basically no reason somehow never stops hurting. You feel for Luther having to add yet another tally to his board that he didn't want and wasn't able to stop and yet somehow will be blamed for.
The seasons are short but impactful. I'd want them to be longer but the show would have to restructure itself for that. Still it'd be nice to give Luther some breathing room for a minute.
Today in Jingoistic Action: The TV series....
Chris Pratt returns to his Zero Dark Thirty Roots. He sells it. In theory you should be distracted by your memory of his more goofy comedy characters but it's more than just a baseball hat he sells his character to the point where you don't really think about it.
Now Sleep...
It's a dark show. Night night time show. But actually it's not awfully lit for what it is. You don't spend episode after episode turning up the brightness on your TV because you live in a house and not a pure black room. Visually it's comprehensive and that's always appreciated. Now in a metaphorical sense. It's also pretty dark. I never saw Zero Dark Thirty because there are limits to how much jingoism I can take. But there's a lot of violence to "salivate" over that exists only for that purpose. It's not torture porn or anything but if there was a dog in this series it would have been killed violently in a way that hurt.
A Tale as Old as Time...
The story here is compelling enough. It starts out with James Reece (Chris Pratt) losing all of his men in a botched raid. When the higher ups want to blame the dead soldiers for losing control, Reece refuses to go along with the narrative that insults his dead comrades. Eventually he thinks he finds a conspiracy and there's a lovely bit of ambivalence as to whether Reece is imagining it or not. Very like the series Evil on network TV.
It's a really well done show. I just don't care about it. It's nothing they've done wrong. All the parts are there but Loki is just a character who is somehow less interesting than Iron Man or any of the avengers outside of Hulk preMCU. This is like the opposite of Hawkeye where there was a character I didn't like but the show was very engaging and made me care for it. Loki is ostensibly a better show, bigger budget, longer runtime, more big names in the cast but, ehh.
It's all well put together and in the end I just still don't care.
In the end we have a good show. A focused show with a story to tell and I can't understate how much that's appreciated. Buuuuut, there are issues. My first issue is our main character Darby Hart the "Gen Z amateur sleuth" and as I expected she's only "amateur" in the sense that she is literally not getting paid. I wasn't sure they were going to do that but they did. Darby isn't interesting as a sleuth. When you think about the great detectives Darby doesn't really do much detecting. She's not obsessed with deduction like Holmes. She's not obsessed with details like Monk. She doesn't create stories like Sean Spencer or Richard Castle. They try to mask it a bit but her thing is that she cares ("The dead speak to me"). To the exclusion of everything else most specifically to the exclusion of the relationships she has with the living. That's not bad per se. It's just not the character of a Gen Z amateur sleuth main character.
Then there's the tech. I mean it started off good. I'll say that. But the longer the show went the more I had to squint to ignore all the tech issues in this show. From awkward conversations ("Vee Eye or emacs") because somehow no one told them you pronounce it "V-eye" or that vim
is a thing. The concept isn't just that eight guests are invited by a reclusive billionaire. It's eight hackers. Which makes Darby as a tech savvy hacker less interesting. I mean they do try to frame her as the "computer hacker" and everyone else as just in the sphere of various general hacking but nah everyone here is a level of computer hacker and they do make it a point to say that a few times. So when Darby hacks, it's like why? Why do I care about this? That combined with the flubs in tech representation both big and small kinda damage this tech-happy murder mystery.
What the show does do well is all the none screenplay bits. The acting, the filmwork, even the soundtrack that I recall. I wanted to keep watching. I expected to hate Darby and find her awkward but she's not. She's understandable. She's relatable. I care for her and wanted to see her struggle though even when she was making bad bad impulsive decisions. Emma Corrin just kinda shines even when the writing doesn't. Honestly she's not alone the entire cast was excellent. Especially looking back.
The murder mystery, like the show, started off well. I cared about the characters. I cared about the victim. I didn't lean anyway towards the suspects. Plenty of room and scary situations for Darby to navigate. It was a great recipe. No idea how the cake ended up tasting so bad though. The back end kinda flops. I don't think there were enough breadcrumbs for the killer's reveal. Ironically enough I just finished A Haunting in Venice after this so they actually have something in common. But Haunting is just better. Which is unfair because it's leaning on the tower that is Agatha Christie. Still this could have ended a lot better if they had a more interesting endgame. The pacing was there. the characters were ready it just..... didn't.
Ending Spoilers:
an Christ almighty the less said about "AI that's going to kill someone" the better. It's a stupid plot point. Just when you think everyone's finally realizing that all these AI tools are moronic and useless suddenly these shows come out and make AI out to be this magnanimous force. Here the AI is the killer. In The Creator the AI is the savoir. It's all so stupid and dumb and shows you haven't been paying attention to what AI is and what it can do. It's like all the robotics nerds obsessed with sex dolls that can tell the weather and laugh at your jokes like that's going to replace women in Asia where there are too many men and not enough single women to support them emotionally. The "AI did it" is going to become "the butler did it" very soon and that's unfortunate because it doesn't deserve that level of trope support. AI will help you cheat on an essay but it does so so poorly the idea that it's nearly sentient and almost capable of erasing humanity pains me to hear people say out lout with their mouths. The only way AI could be dangerous is if people give it too much authority. Like making AI the CEO of your company is a bad idea. (Or to take another example from real life: Using AI to decide whose claim gets accepted. The AI had an 80% failure rate) I maintain they're only doing it on paper and that's a GOOD idea because it gives you a perfect scapegoat. Unethical and evil but an effectively "good" idea.
I had a great time. This was a very successful suspense drama. It's not perfect but it didn't dwell too long on the annoying bits and bits they were. Tiny niggling things. Overall the show was an extremely fun ride. I don't understand all the hate reviews I'm seeing for it. The pilot had a lot of awkwardness. They introduce their custom social media like we've never heard of social media and it's cringe as heck. But you shrug and you get past it and aside from the awful name you never have to really question it.
But the good outweighs it so much. I like the characters. I even like most of the antagonists. The season arc is fun. It opens in a mystery that, minor spoiler, turns out to be a lie. And yet it opens the doors to many more mysteries that DO manage to become something of matter. Everything unfolds in a nice slow burn. This isn't an action spy thriller. This is a suspense drama. And it holds up on that suspense. Holding back the truths you want to know but not teasing you along with no resolution.
The characters fit well. Mickey is an angry kid who lost his parents and he does things angry grieving kids do. Sometimes wrong but never weird. Arthur "Spoon" Spindell is the heart/comedy relief of the group and while there are some issues with everyone calling him spoon for no reason at the drop of a hat. He's a very focused guy. The definition of loyal most than any other character there. All said and done I can't wait to check out the book this was based on. Should be an interesting experience.
Le Sigh
I mean the acting is honestly solid. More than even. Sam Jackson brings his A game. Olivia Colman is. a. delight. She's everything I think they wanted Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character to be. She's so charmingly Machiavellian. Just fun to watch on the screen. Especially when she's with Sam Jackson. Don Cheadle gets to bring out a level of acting that honestly I don't think his character has required of him until now. War Machine is kind of uninteresting. He's so interesting if not for other projects I could easily have forgotten that Don Cheadle is an excellent actor until now. I'm not even talking about the spoiler part. Ben Mendelsohn was fine. Kingsley Ben-Adir wasn't the best thing ever but he was fine. Emilia Clarke was.. was she even there? I'm not saying she sucked but she was more invisible acting than Ben-Adir.
Honestly it was the writing. I know little of the Secret Invasion storyline from the comics. I know the Skrulls can imitate people and from there you have a body snatching mystery where you don't know who is who. It's a storyline with potential for adaption in live action. Never knowing who is true and who was replaced? Why wouldn't you love that? The first problem is that in the comics it's obvious what secret invasion means. It means you've being invaded by a secret means and who is secretly a shapeshifter. In this series the Secret Invasion is more like... we're being invaded and Nick Fury wants to keep it a secret. WHY does Nick Fury want to keep it a secret? Because. That's it. Just because. He's taking it personally is just such a poorly written idea that not even Jackson can really sell it. I think we're supposed to think that he's just so tired of losing people including the one that dies in the first episode that he can't stand to lose anyone else and will thus wage the war against invasion all by himself. But... that doesn't make sense. That doesn't feel like Nick Fury in any incarnation.
For a storyline that was all about skrulls replacing people we get exactly one replacement. ONE. They made a whole TV show about shapeshifting aliens and only one actually mattered. The whole show felt like it was after thought into existence. One hidden alien, two double crosses, three uninteresting bombs, four main characters and five golden rings.
The show talks up Super Skrulls as an interesting development but like many things superhero related it's eyes were bigger than it's stomach. I don't understand how anyone would think they could tell anything interesting on the scale they were going for in six episodes. the whole math of Super Skrulls just made the show more disappointing. Skrulls posing as important humans would have been interesting enough. But Skrulls posing as Super Heroes would have been an awesome reveal. Instead we end up with a generic Might vs Might fight between two CGI characters that have the same powers. The cookie cutter Marvel ending.
I mean who would have thought Hawkeye of all things would be the show to last so long without being bettered. Moon Knight was well acted but flat. Ms Marvel had an amazing start and a wash of a finish. She-Hulk at least knew what it wanted to be even if it was clumsy and bulky about doing it. But Secret Invasion felt like a bigger waste of time than The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and while that was a pretty show I still have no idea what happened in that show. It was a ton of (good looking) flash and then Emily VanCamp became a bad guy.
Not as good as the two other versions. But it was... okay at best.
There's a single episode I hate int his show. Everything else is perfectly fine.
As far as single season shows go. This was effective. Giving me but the natural and the supernatural and the surreal all at once. Pacing was great, the characters were fun and true to themselves to the bitter end. Lots of great teams in here. The sisters of the coin. The resistance a bunch of bros who are hyper masculine but somehow not toxic. It's got a good length to it. I could easily watch it again.
It's not exactly what I expected but I was a fan. My major criticism is that ironically the show focused so much on it's human characters that the epynonymous AI character "Mrs. Davis" sometimes doesn't show up for huge chunks of the show. Which honestly IS fine. It's just odd for a show called Mrs Davis. If the show had been named for Simone it probably wouldn't be a big deal. There's a lot of love in this show of all types and that's all right.
Fun enough. It's a watchable recreation of the series. It does successfully avoid being trapped under the shadow of the film. In the final episodes however I find myself thinking of all the secret pseudo government agencies on TV. Omega here is ripe for crossover with Phoenix from MacGyver.
I've wondered for years what the treatment for True Lies sequel would be where would the story go. This show kinda devolves into a casual spy sitcom with all that entails. I like Steve Howey well enough. He does a variation on the dope character he played in Reba but here he's dopey and martially skilled. I'd watch more of this like I would watch more of new MacGyver. Ginger as Helen is kinda fun. She's not Jamie Lee Curtis' Helen but she definitely playing the same surprised wife character.
Unfortunately it's so far kinda lacking in the gravitas of the original. In part because you can't just tell a story about a husband and wife anymore. Any given story has to be about a group of people so this show like many others is weakened by the need to spread narrative drama around to the rest of the cast. Maria and Luther used to date and now they don't. Ordinarily I might care about that Erica Hernandez is super attractive but here it feels like the filler it is. Especially because nothing really comes of it.
I picked this up on a whim and the first episode was hilarious. Rachael Bloom has had a bit of a TV-style "glow up" since her F Me Ray Bradbury days. As the first season came on it showed it wasn't just going to be a fun musical ala Galavant (which I sincerely loved) but something that played with more than the tropes of musical theatre but also the tropes of it's namesake. The Crazy Ex. First it was with the perspective and then it was with the characters.
Further seasons just managed to get better. Unlike Glee they didn't sacrificed what we loved about the story in Season 1 to just improve the music in further seasons. They kinda did both. With quotable lyrics and songs you'll never get out of your head. Rebecca grew to be someone we empathized with even more as we watched her we rooted for her and there are twists and pitfalls and all along you can look back and see the story was about Rebecca who she is and why and how that affects her ability to navigate her life. The aspects of the show I didn't like are so minor they're not even worth mentioning in a series review.
Easily recommend this to anyone who wants a good time and more importantly you'll know in three episodes (if not one) whether this show is for you. If you loved what you see you're gonna have a great time for four seasons of content that has pretty study legs.
I don't know what the flying toaster MTV was doing when they made this. But it made me laugh. It's so quotable. I wish it had gotten two more seasons because too long and they would have tried to reach into the lore of the show but with two more seasons would really could have had more fun exploring the premise and the wackiness of the characters.
The irony of this episode is that there's this running thread that Ian is taking it personal because everyone wants to shut down Ziggy but.... Ian isn't. Ian is very distinctly citing that Ziggy runs EVERYTHING. The idea that "oh we'll just go analog" doesn't work like that and it's silly to see everyone try to suggest it. Aside from that this episode doesn't really do anything other than put Ben in a dress again (and for the record I'm not offended by that).
It was an interesting enough leap. It was a bit murder happy all things considered and one thing I'm realizing is that like with the OG quantum leap I don't care about anyone else other than the leaper and the hologram. The show keeps trying to make a big deal about Ben's relationship with the other people working in the lab but in part because I don't see that relationship in the first episode, I don't care. Everyone time someone goes into the holochamber it's supposed to be this big thing but every time I am legitimately ambivalent. It matters not at all. Which is odd considering how much I do care about their interpersonal relationships OUTSIDE the imaging chamber.
What started off a bit silly ended up being one of the greatest SciFi shows I've ever seen. It's a grand old time.
What started off a bit silly ended up being one of the greatest SciFi shows I've ever seen. It's a grand old time.
Well to this I can only say the following: tilt's head Huh?
I'll give you this, for a six episode series. WOW does it pack a bloody punch. It's got some amazing tension right from the git go almost leaning in to horror as no one bothers to turn on lights throughout the entire series. The score builds, you expect a shadow to pop out and every once in a while someone does. Little Benjamin does a perfectly solid job of being the stoic Isaac. For his profile Capaldi wasn't as big of a role as I expected but when he was used he was excellent. Jessica Raine was a wonderful leading lady.
Very quickly this transitions from a natural thriller into a supernatural one and then in your head you play the guessing game. Is it ghosts? Is it time travel? Is it Aliens because as The Doctor (or was it Sarah Jane) once implied the others are stupid choices. Something has to explain the things Isaac appears to see and talk to. Something has to explain the flashes of (stronger than) deja vu that Lucy has. Something has to link the schizo grandmother and her son.
Then there's the ending. Honestly as great as episodes 1-5 were. I'd let pretty much anything go with episode 6. I kinda wish there was a second series so we could get a more conclusive ending but what we have here in the terminal side is an ending you'll have to watch two or three times to really let it sink it.
I recommend it. Aside from the lighting where no lamps are on it's a very tight series. It fails to come together in the end. Well I wouldn't say that. We do get answers and those answers are satisfactory. It just fails to do anything with it. Having run out of episodes the series ends before we really can see where it's going next.
I'm not afraid of an open ending. I think The Matrix (1999) and Awake (2012) Season 1 both ended with fantastic open endings. They brought all the elements together. Did something and then showed us where they go next.
This show is sad and depressing. Americans will scoff at the idea of arranged marriages and then seriously consider relationships like these. The show bills itself as you have to get married in 10 days but in reality you're picking from a pool of applicants in much less time than that. Only the slowpokes pick on day 10. You lockdown and pick someone for marriage in like 5 days. it's ridiculous. Especially for people so performative and emotionally immature.
They all talk like they want real love lasting long term relationships and they have zero interest in getting to know one another. Nick and Vanessa Lachey should both be punched in the crotch for this nonsense. Bring back old style dating shows where the goal was just a date and not "Go directly to marriage do not collect 200 text messages". As oversexed and undignified as shows like Fifth Wheel and Elimidate or even Studs were, at least they weren't suggesting you get into a legally binding contract over a TV show.
I wish people would stop making me watch this. I thought I was done with last season but i can already tell I'm gonna have to do it again.
Hilarious cast, pound for pound I'd put Kims up against The Office for 2nd hand cringe. There are episodes I had to pause and come back to hours later. But I think Kims has some of the funniest cold openings that I'd put up against Brooklyn Nine-Nine which has somehow become the barometer for cold opens. Simu however was right. The characters could have used more growth and there were certainly a lot of room for it that just wasn't explored especially in the final two seasons.
Well worth watching. I think it had a sweet ending kind of a "See you tomorrow" saccharine adorable ending. Not so overly emotional like the ending to the big comedies where you cry as you see these characters off to their big life changes. This is more low key and it kinda works with the nature of the show.
They already made this show. That said I liked it so I'll give this a shot.
If you can buy-in, I maintain it's a fun ride. The fight choreography works for TV. It's got a pretty interesting Sci-Fi concept. But Dollhouse is a show that's tough to recommend. Primarily because of it's concept. Something they lampshade in the first season and they constantly drop in is that for a show that sleeves personalities into bodies and yet needs to protect the bodies. It sounds like prostitution with fancy words. And basically it is. If WW84 caused you to throw up a little in your mouth and you seriously rate that film negatively purely because of the narrative shenanigans surrounding Chris Pine. Then just stay away from Dollhouse.
What this show does well is showcase great actors doing great acting. You won't see this level of acting again until Orphan Black and even then I think I'd put some of these dolls a little ahead of the impressively consistent Tatiana Maslany. The casting is just phenomenal. An impressive amount of new talent considering how many Buffy the Vampire Slayer actors ended up in this show.'
It's just a shame it never ended up anywhere. The show is about a company that sells their agents out to you with whatever persona you want programmed in. But .... why? It starts off trying to showcase all sorts of uses like getting an expert negotiator or a fun girlfriend, or n outdoorsy girlfriend, or a body guard who doesn't realize they're a body guard, or thief or an old girlfriend. The idea that people would pay for these things makes sense. But the idea that people would pay ludicrous amounts of money for them just doesn't make sense. You can pay a girl to date you for half that money and just user a portion of that to ensure discretion. Programming someone to be your best friend and unexpectedly motivated to protect you isn't that much better than just hiring a body guard and having them pretend to be your friend. The show goes through great pains (some of the time) to stress to value of authenticity. These people don't pretend they become. Thankfully the show doesn't drag on about that point but by not doing so it fails to actually close the loop and justify WHY this technology should exist in this world.
But if you are willing to let that go.. it's a fun enough ride. I enjoyed it so much I've seen it three times basically. Dollhouse is a really fun show. It has some great epilogue episodes that expand the fiction. Great actors and great acting. And a pesky little problem with it's central premise.
What a fun time and satisfying conclusion. Heck yeah the murder mystery genre is BACK!
All the twists and turns you want without any of the double crossing you get in the spy genre. All ending in a pretty solid conclusion.
As long as you're not the sort of person who is looking for the killer yourself You can sit back and watch our "bumbling... or is she?" detective do her interviews and drill down to the murderer complete with just enough tangles. I don't mind but I know some people really get annoyed when they can't follow along with the mystery and find the proof themselves. In this case the proof is so inconsequential I refuse to believe anyone would have noticed it on first watch. Yet it's not entirely inplausible that in the telling of the story that inconsistency didn't stick out.
A fun cast, a fun mystery. I mean seriously. How Great Is This Party?!?!?!
Welp I haven't watched this since it first air back then I didn't know about the books and I was too young to consider there might be books I might be able to find and read. Since then the book series has rapidly become one of my favorites after binging books 1-17+short stories two years ago.
Since then coming back to this show I enjoyed as a youth and was sad to see it get cancelled, obviously I have thoughts. First of all this is a bad adaption. Not Wheel of Time bad but more Legend of the Seeker bad. That said as I've said repeatedly The Borne Identity has proven that a bad adaptation doesn't necessarily make bad media. Unlike The Wheel of Time I think the Dresden Files had room to grow. It has 12 episodes and a much easier plot to get into compared to WoT. The first few episodes kinda show this. They're nothing like the books. Honestly most of the series has nothing to do with the book except for general concepts. I could easily see the season being a big setup to get you invested in Harry and what he does in order to then start to filter in more book stuff. There's a lot of missing characters who would be perfect to show up. Mister is mentioned but Mouse is missing, as are Michael, Mac, and I think Marconne. But we do get some essentials, Karen, Morgan, White Council (via Ancient Mai), Bob.
I think it's a good enough show that could have found it's footing. The casting was perfectly fine. I liked the actors for Dresden and Karen and Bob was excellent. The show just never settled well enough to be comprehensive in anyway. It would have imo been better to try the monster of the week formula as a means of introduction. The final episodes at least did have some good emotional beats that felt earned at least.
Now being a reader of the books I do hope one day we get another stab at it though like Wheel of Time I worry about the scale. TDF starts off small enough focusing on a wizard in Chicago and the wizard things he does but after a while it starts to ramp up to such a scale that if I hadn't watched Supernatural I'd say would not be feasible on Television.
The most consistently laugh out loud comedy series I've ever seen. Every episode has had me bust out in full laughter. It's an utter delight of watching actors miss cues or forget lines or have props trigger incorrectly or often collapse. Something that successfully managed to never overstay it's welcome.
How long till producers realize we'll watch people date without giant gimmicks. Just bring back fifth wheel or Elimidate or something. Bring back Blind Date. Blind Date was amazing. Two people a date and plenty of vo snark. Sometimes they hit it off, sometimes they didn't and there wasn't the extreme pressure there is now in dating event shows.
alright here we go. This is the episode where the plotlines finally arcs off. The pilot was all hints but nothing to pull you back. This is the episode that matters. In the first episode Ed Helms' Nathan Rutherford is blinded by his own version of history suffers from what we refer to as white fragility. He can't take the idea that his dream gets overwhelmed by everyone else around him. Something most people who don't fit his demographic have to live with every day something that Regan point out to him this episode. Their relationship is interesting. Because they genuinely like each other as far as they're each concerned they're both being very good friends to each other. The show however goes lengths to show that this isn't really true. More importantly Regan herself begins to point that out to Nathan showing a good degree of self-awareness.
It's definitely going to be interesting seeing how far they take this both in terms of her relationship with Nathan and their relationships with their respective communities.
Black Jesus is an amazing show. I mean they named the nerdy kid from the suburbs Trayvon. Jesus keeps it hood but keeps it peaceful constantly stressing the need to believe in Pops. He's the type of character who will sling a rock to defend the homies but forgive the attacker and heal his wounds and have a 40oz for everyone. He's always entertaining.
Black Jesus contains one of the most accurate portrayals of Jesus of all time. He's kind, he cares about everyone. He biggest super power is that he loves you. You being everyone his homies, his enemies, his homies' enemies. His love is all encompassing even when he chews you out. It's one of the most impressionable and heartfelt series I've ever seen.
ahh and the scene remembers Chadwick. Star of many excellent pieces of media of which this isn't one.
The Good Place is a great show. Well worth watching. There are twists and turns of a major and minor sort but the show had incredible steam through those twists managing to keep a cool head on it's shoulders and still keep fighting even after it's strongest punch. The characters are lovable. Our four primary humans are a small cast but we get to know them well. We get to see them in all sorts of alternate versions as they pretend to be other people and actually become other people. And as much as I like symmetry I like that the show takes a few chances with the balance and doesn't waffle back and forth on it. I didn't approve of all of them but they are consistent and the relationships do feel real even if some of them are unbelievable. The cast is diverse as befitting the theme and the stories are thematic. There's not a lot of variety but there is a central focus. It doesn't meander very much which is awesome. There's very few episodes which one could call filler. Even if there are arcs and entire seasons you might not like.
And last but not least the humor never stops. It's a sitcom about moral philosophy and while that's played for laughs in Season 1, it's still played for laughs in Season 4. Just now with some heart. It's a great show that doesn't stick the landing at the end but had such a strong performance it never needed to.
I just finished episode 5x20 and I felt I needed to write this down and reiterate something I say almost every season when I watch Agents of SHIELD. I hate SHIELD. They're a terrible organization that take away fundamental human right. I don't understand how everyone can see everything wrong when it happens to the X-Men but when SHIELD does it suddenly no one cares what's right and wrong. It's only what's legal that matters.
The Storylines are Super Compelling
That aside it's a testament to the writing of this series that it's one of my favorite shows five seasons in. For a show that has been subjected to the whims of the movie franchise it's spun off from. It's only gotten better every times something bad happens to the MCU. When Captain America revealed Hydra was hiding in SHIELD the whole time. It killed the entire premise of the show. Which was amazing. The show which was stuttering shifted gears into good. Season 5 spent most of it's time in an altered timeline with a reduced cast and it was one of the best arcs in the series. In 5x20 we finally see the impending Infinity War showing it's effect on the series. One of their human antagonists is becoming a threat (that I feel I would recognize if I read the comics). It's compelling it's mostly well written. The characters are interesting and dynamic.
And yet... I still HATE SHIELD. I hate Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie the most. he out of everyone represents everything wrong with SHIELD. He's also weirdly religious. I don't mind that he's religious but he's weirdly religious. At random times in the series he'll debate Christian ethics like he's debating with atheists. (i.e. "How dare you kill that man. Don't you know the good book says to never kill? I don't care that he's a giant blue mutant with knife like dredlocks and he was trying to kill everyone in the city. We're supposed to be better than that.) I hate how SHIELD controls people "for their own good" even though they haven't demonstrated any need to be controlled. Then because SHIELD is interfering with them things happen and suddenly everyone is dangerous and thus SHIELD has been "proven" right.
There's a LOT of fights about things that don't matter in SHIELD but that's just TV for the most part. I hate it and I wish SHIELD didn't do it. For an organization that is so quick to forgive SERIOUS betrayal they certainly hold grudges over minor matters. It's just so inconsistent that it feels engineered to make sure the main characters are never on the same page and always in the midst of strife which is just so bloody unfair.
Time Travel Gave Me New Reasons to Hate SHIELD
SHIELD enters time travel in Season 5 and I'll avoid spoilers but I hate everything about it after they return to the main timeline. In short they go to the future. Things have happened. They return home and now they're trying to change things so that future doesn't happen. In the course of that they have used THREE different understandings of time travel. Each of which is basically incompatible with the others to the point where nothing makes sense. Either the future is set and they can't change it (Then why are you trying, but sure that does mean those of you who saw yourselves in the future are immortal) or the future ISN'T set and you can change it (then WHY WOULD YOU BE INVINCIBLE you were invincible in the original timeline not this skewed one where you traveled to the future) or time is a series of loops which actually makes sense. It allows them to use the future knowledge like they're trying. it allows them to break the loop but again if you're going though cycles like Happy Death Day or The Matrix then each loop could break at any moment and no you are not invincible. I bang on this point because in the time travel arc it become a MAJOR point that based on what they saw some characters will not die so they work to change the future with the understanding that they will not die. Which doesn't make sense.
I have many many issues with Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D. and it's in spite of them that I highly recommend it. I don't expect most people will take issue with a government body telling people what to do and where to go. They can buy in without seeing the analogies to real world marginalized people. The cast isn't overly beautiful like Quantico but awesomely diverse in both demographic and character. Watching the movies impact these minor characters in the Marvel universe is fun and it's a testament to the show that it's not the only fun thing.