Agents Of SHIELD Season One
It gets better! Honest!
Release Date: 20 October 2013- 2014 | 15 | 946 minutes | £ 34.99 ( Blu- ray)/£ 29.99 ( DVD) Distributor: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment Creators: Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen Cast: Clark Gregg, Ming- Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker
Last year,
before Agents Of SHIELD debuted on TV, the cast and crew hit San Diego Comic- Con and they were treated like rock stars. You can see it all on a featurette in this box set: how happy they looked; how thrilled they were to be basking in geek love. Alas, we all know what happened next. The show was sniffed at by critics, derided by viewers and, ultimately, deserted by many of the exact same geeks who screamed at Agent Coulson and his cohorts as they grinned on stage.
The sad thing is, it was justified. The series starts off on a Joss Whedon- directed high but rapidly loses traction, floundering with a cast which doesn’t gel, plots that are
Working with bigscreen revelations, the show clicked
ordinary and, inevitably, a lack of the oomph you get from the Marvel movie projects ( for “oomph” read “superheroes”). Agents Of SHIELD, while admittedly boasting a sweet, ‘ 80s A- Team vibe, a sunny disposition and breakneck pacing, somehow seemed just too damn average. But then along came Captain America: The Winter Soldier and with it Hydra’s sneaky infiltration of SHIELD. And everything changed. The show, working alongside the big- screen revelations, suddenly clicked. The characters became a team, the writers raised their game; hell, even the plank- like Agent Ward became interesting. If the first two- thirds of this season run on sugar water, the final third is powered by jet fuel. So if you’re one of the many people who gave up on SHIELD, it’s time to give it another go. They got there in the end. Promise.
Extras: ABC special Marvel Studios: Assembling A Universe ( 43 minutes), the featurette on SDCC, five short behind- the- scenes snippets, some VFX comparisons, an amusing gag reel and eight deleted scenes. There are also three commentaries, which range from “a little slow” to “holy cow, don’t ever let Clark Gregg or Ming- Na Wen near caffeine again!” Unsurprisingly, these prove to be jolly good fun. Jayne Nelson When the cast does a table read, instead of “Opening Credits” they all yell “MARVEL’S AGENTS OF SHIELD!” as loudly as they can.