Tag Archives: Life Model Decoy

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Agents of SHIELD – S1E6 – F.Z.Z.T. – REVIEW

Spoilers abound! Read this only if you’ve already watched F.Z.Z.T!

Episode 6 of Agents of SHIELD, “F.Z.Z.T,” starts out normally. There’s a new super-powered mystery to be solved. This time, it’s a scout leader whose dead body is both electrically charged and hovering in the air. The good news is that it takes the team only half the episode to solve this one. The source of turns out a be a Chitauri helmet carrying some kind of space virus.

FZZT floaty

 

It was cool that the Agents of SHIELD TV show went beyond just passively referencing the Avengers movie here and brought in an actual prop that kickstarted this episode. It definitely helps the show feel like it’s securely grounded in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What was also cool about this plot was that there was no sinister villain hungry for power. The people who died thanks to the Chitauri helmet weren’t murdered. It was just wrong place, wrong time. Of course, it at first looks like one person is out to kill his friends, but when he dies and the SHIELD team recovers the helmet, everything is resolved and there’s no villain lurking in the shadows.

Chitauri Helmet

What follows is without a doubt the most intense half an episode we’ve had so far this season. I honestly had no idea if Simmons was going to make it out of this one alive. When she and Fitz failed in their final attempt at creating a cure, I was ready to yell at my TV, “You can’t kill Simmons!” But this is Whedon we’re talking about. He totally could.

Part of the reason that I love this episode so much is for the amount of screen time that Fitz and Simmons get. There is definitely chemistry between the two of them. We’re treated to their back story, which is great,except that it’s given to us in this frame that Simmons is about to die. If this was Lost, she’d definitely be dead for all the back story we got on the two of them.

When it’s revealed that the EM pulse from Simmons as she dies will blow the whole plane out of the sky, killing the entire SHIELD team, I breathed a sigh of relief. They can’t kill the whole team. There’d be no show. Then Simmons jumped from the plane…just as Fitz realizes they figured out a cure. It’s like a nerd version of Romeo and Juliet.

IAIN DE CAESTECKER, ELIZABETH HENSTRIDGE

If Simmons dies, we riot!

I literally cheered when Fitz tried to get that parachute on and Ward jumped out of the plane to save Simmons. This episode was INTENSE. At the end of the day, Ward saves Simmons and I don’t throw my remote at my TV over her death. Whedon, you played with my emotions like an episode of Parenthood here, and I thank you for it.

In Agent Coulson news, we get a BIG reveal tonight. Coulson undoes his shirt and shows off the massive scar where Loki blasted him in The Avengers. Someone told me that this is proof that Coulson is not a Life Model Decoy. I still think he’s a LMD, and that whoever designed the Coulson LMD went into very good detail. I’m guessing we won’t find out until the end of this season at the earliest.

Coulson Scar

Agents of SHIELD is crossing over with Thor: The Dark World in two weeks. In other words, make sure you see Thor: The Dark World. See you next week!

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Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD: Episode 102: "0-8-4" – Review

4/5 – But the last 5 minutes makes me want to give it 5/5.

The second episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD aired last night. During the preview at the end of the first episode, we were teased with the phrase “Oh-eight-four.” In last night’s episode, we found out what an 0-8-4 is. It’s the code for an object of unidentified origin. The last 0-8-4 Coulson dealt with was Thor’s hammer in the dessert. This 0-8-4 takes the team out of the country to a South American jungle.

The episode began excitedly, with a gaping hole in the SHIELD plane’s hull mid-flight. We then immediately flashback to the start of the mission. I know this cold open with the plane in distress was used to lure in viewers, but I think I would have preferred finding out about the hull breach when it actually happened. This opening telegraphed Camilla’s betrayal too much.

Speaking of Camilla, when she first started flirting with Coulson, I started to think that Coulson was like Will Ferrell’s character Detective Gamble in The Other Guys. Hot women are just throwing themselves at him. We find out later Camilla had other plans.

Another thing about Coulson: he bleeds. After he gets punched in the face, Coulson is clearly bleeding from the mouth. If Coulson is some kind of Life Model Decoy, he’s an advanced one, with blood pumping through his veins…or tubes.

If Coulson is a LMD, I hope we get a scene that involves a decapitated head with wires sticking out.

FitzSimmons continues to delight. They are easily my favorite part of the show.They remind of  equal parts Doctor Who companions and Ron and Hermione from Harry Potter. I would watch a FitzSimmons spin-off.

Fitz (left) and Simmons (right)

Ming-Na Wen’s character Agent May is my other favorite. She’s just so bad ass. I like that  the mysterious bad ass agent with a past on Agents of SHIELD is a woman. It seems like a refreshing change of pace from most shows. But I honestly wouldn’t expect any less from Joss Whedon.

Melinda May is the Wolverine of Agents of SHIELD.

The only downside to this episode is that it felt a bit uneven. While the episode served to bring this team of disparate individuals together as a unit, the build-up in the first half of the episode was on the slow side. The focus shifted a bit too often, but I guess that’s a problem when you’re still introducing a cast this big to the audience. I’m hoping future episodes, once we know everyone, will be a bit more streamlined. But the episode still has all the wit and charm you’d expect from a Joss Whedon show and I don’t see that stopping, so I can’t complain too much.

This episode’s fanboy service comes to you courtesy of the SHIELD team’s airborne mobile command center, whose call sign is SHIELD 616. In the Marvel Universe, 616 refers to the Earth where all the classic Marvel superheroes live. Captain America, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men, if you grew up reading Marvel comics, chances are you were reading the 616 universe. This term originates from a Captain Britain comic from the 1980s, in which Captain Britain discovers he’s a member of an interdimensional group of Captain Britains. He’s the Captain Britain of Earth-616.

Did you catch the blueprint of the SHIELD 616 behind Coulson’s desk?
Marvel will be selling this blueprint at NYCC 2013.

How awesome was Nick Fury’s appearance at the end of the episode? It felt like an after the credit scene in a Marvel movie! The fact that we got Samuel L. Jackson in this episode makes me hopeful that we’ll get some of the other bigger names from the Marvel Cinematic Universe showing up in future episodes, even if it’s just for a cameo. Maybe a debriefing with Thor after the team handles a problem of Asgardian origin, or an appearance by Jon Favreau as Tony Stark’s head of security Happy Hogan if the team needs to secure something on Stark property.

“Does the SHIELD 616 look like a bitch? Then stop treating it like one!”
Two episodes in and the only complaint I really have with Agents of SHIELD is that it conflicts with Brooklyn 99, my other favorite new show of the season.

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Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD S1E1: "Pilot" – Review

Without a doubt, the new series that I was most excited for this fall was Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. In September, I was counting down the days until the show premiered. I pre-ordered the SHIELD agent badge and ID for New York Comic Con. September 24 could not get here soon enough.

My expectations were high. I started to worry that they might be too high. What if this Agents of SHIELD series turned out to be a train wreck like the 1999 David Hasselhoff Nick Fury made-for-TV movie?

Never forget.
On second thought, forget. For the love of all that is good, forget!

Tuesday, 9/24, 20:00 hours arrived. I was bolted to my seat at 19:57.

This was the pilot episode? Aren’t pilot episodes supposed to suck? This was awesome! Marvel/Disney is definitely giving them the budget they need. Thanks to the budget, the show fits into the Marvel Cinematic Universe not just in story, but in style too.

While the SHIELD agents don’t have superpowers, I’m very happy that the show will feature people with powers. I’m sure I’m not the only one who hoped that the super strong character that turned out to be Michael Peterson was in fact Luke Cage. Michael Peterson on the show and Luke Cage in the comics come to their powers through similar means. Maybe since Skye wiped Michael from every database we’ll see him reemerge with Luke Cage as his new alias.

Not Luke Cage…yet.

Let’s talk about Coulson for a minute. There’s definitely more to his return from death than it being all a set up by Fury to fool the Avengers into forming and that Coulson was cooling his jets in Tahiti. Dr. Streiten (Ron Glass! Shepherd! Yes!) and Maria Hill basically say as much when Coulson leaves them. Streiten is surprised Coulson still believes the Tahiti story and Hill counters that Coulson can never find out the truth. I think Coulson has definitely been completely lied to. I don’t think his death in Avengers was planned in advance. Life Model Decoys were mentioned in the Avengers movie, making me believe that this Coulson we’re seeing today is a Life Model Decoy that’s been programmed with the original Phil Coulson’s brain patterns. For those of you unfamiliar with the Marvel comics from which Agents of SHIELD is based, a Life Model Decoy, or LMD for short, is basically a very advanced android that looks, sounds and feels like the real person, but is in fact a robot. Think of it as half clone-half robotic decoy. For you Battlestar Galactica fans, Coulson is basically a toaster now. Or at least, that’s my theory. Whatever the explanation turns out to be, I’m glad Clark Gregg is a part of this show.

Everyone who is still human, take a seat. Not so fast, Coulson!

One quick thought on Maria Hill: With How I Met Your Mother wrapping up this season, I wonder if Cobie Smulders will have a much bigger role on Agents of SHIELD starting in season 2.

Cobie Smulders stars in How I Met Your Hydra

The pilot episode’s script had the right amount of both suspense, action and humor that you’d expect from a Joss Whedon show. I loved the porcupine/poop-with-knives-sticking-out-of-it bit, as well as Agent Ward’s “Gramsy” line when he’s being interrogated by Skye. The best though might have been Simmons announcing that she’s not Hermione. Aw yeah, Harry Potter reference.

Agents of SHIELD tied very well into both Iron Man 3 and Avengers. I like that Extremis heavily factored into this episode and that gamma rays played a part in powering Michael. I also like that SHIELD has been given a shadowy enemy to hunt down with this new power broker business. I just hope the show doesn’t turn into a “monster of the week” show like the first season Smallville.

I think Joss Whedon has done a great job of making a show that is accessible to both long time Marvel fans, fans of the Marvel movies, and people who are just walking in cold and who want a dose of sci-fi with their police procedural.

Other random thoughts on the episode: I think they’re setting us up for Skye-Agent Ward romance, but I’m more interested in Fitz and Simmons. Having Lola’s wheels turn down and fly at the end was the best form of fan service imaginable, though using the phrase “journey into mystery” in a line of dialog was a close second.

Flying car! Okay, this is SHIELD!

I loved the first episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. I’m in for the long haul. Expect to see a review here for every new episode. Next week we find out the answer to the question of just what is an Oh-8-4.