how to fix Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

yes, i used all the .s in the acronym. i'll stop now.

also THPOILERTH for all of Agents of SHIELD and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (hereafter referred to as Cap 2) below.

anyway, now that season 1 is over and the show got its greenlight for season 2, it's time to rant about how to make it better.  i watched every episode this season, sometimes wondering why i even stuck with the show.  it seriously sucked in the beginning.  but i was also watching 2 other shows that were much better and made me look forward to each new episode to see what was going to happen, not just in hope something interesting might happen.

so here is my recipe on how to fix Agents of SHIELD for the next season.

1.  Character development

2.  Character development

3.  Character development

seriously.  now that the season's over, it seems like in retrospect, the writers were so hamstrung by the Cap 2 reveal that they felt like they couldn't even do basic character development for fear of giving away too much ahead of time.  The only episode with any real character development was episode 6, "FZZT" where FitzSimmons got some seriously emotional screentime and their relationship really opened up for the viewers.  but for the rest of the series, practically everyone was a blank.  Skye wanted to know who she was.  Coulson wanted to know why he wasn't dead.  May kicked ass.  Ward fought a lot and sulked even more. 

and i'll admit, it's very cool to see a strong female character kicking ass, but May is otherwise a blank, and arguably at the end of the first season, she still is.  we don't really know why she's called "the cavalry" or why she hates it.  we don't know why she can throw away the berserker staff and Ward couldn't.  we don't know anything about her relationship with Nick Fury or Coulson, despite hints that she and Coulson have worked together before.  i'm not even sure we know who her SO was (unless it was Fury, which sort of sticks in my mind). 

Ward was equally frustrating for the same reasons. he was blank and violent.  he didn't get any character development until episode 21 out of 22.  seriously?  the repeated glimpse of something traumatic in his childhood triggered by the berserker staff was so frustrating as to not be insightful at all.  which boy was he?  which POV was his?  what the hell was even going on?  yes, his position in the team changed, but that still doesn't tell us who he is or why we should care about him.  quite frankly, if they demote him to guest star status next season and replace him with Trip, the show won't have lost anything.

4.  More organic tie-ins with the MCU

the show was explicitly conceived as sort of behind the scenes at SHIELD.  its main conceit is that the team members aren't superheroes and indeed are all original characters with no comics backstory to inform them.  but when other Marvel characters were introduced, it was either clumsily or dumbly.  the berserker staff is an example.  it's like "look, an Asgard/Thor reference!"  except it was so clumsy and earthbound that it never really felt like there was any kind of connection with Asgard.

the other silly thing was devoting episodes to recognizable characters' origin stories.  that's not integration, that's a flipping cameo, seriously.  passing comments to Bruce Banner and Romanoff might help, but what they really need is an episode either like "Yes Men" where Lady Sif and Lorelei show up and are already established with arcs in their own perception (requiring only some exposition to get the team and non-comics-reading audience up to speed) or the finale, when Nick Fury shows up and plays an integral role in the episode.

the thing that really drove me crazy in the beginning of the show was that it spent so much time world-building at the expense of character development.  you don't need to do world-building.  the world is already built for you; it's called the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  the writers/creators didn't want to do a superhero-cameo-of-the-week show, and i agree that that format would weaken it, but for goodness' sake, there's a ton of shit you can draw on without having to reinvent the wheel every week.

5.  Engage the questions you raise and do serious arcs

this also drove me crazy.  what happened to the Rising Tide?  why did Skye stop receiving their text messages?  for that matter, what happened to her locked-down Rising Tide phone?  Skye's switch from "SHIELD is evil" to "SHIELD is good" was flipped like a switch and never seemed realistic to me.  there was no inner conflict between "I spent most of my life fighting these guys and now that I see they're real humans with real stories like me maybe I was wrong." (see also points 1, 2, and 3).

also what about Ward and Lorelei?  it was pointed out several times on the internet that Ward was effectively raped.  i remember watching the sex scene with them and thinking, "he doesn't even have a chance to say 'no'."  what about Fitz and Lorelei?  personal agency is something that science fiction and fantasy deal with a lot, and both Ward's and Fitz's loss of agency to Lorelei could have provided for not only a decent insight into their characters, since i assume the would have dealt with the aftermath dramatically differently, but also it would have given the show the chance to escape the Star-Trek-like non-continuity feel and also provide an ongoing connection with the MCU (see 4).

and what the hell happened with all the information Natasha Romanoff made public at the end of Cap 2?  it was like this never happened as far as the show was concerned.  especially given Coulson's dramatic "no more secrets!" line, i expected to see the team hoovering up that info and sifting through it for hints about, well, everything.  especially Skye.

6.  Hire B. J. Britt full time and add Trip to the team

one asian chick who knows martial arts is not diversity.  with the exception of May, the regular cast of SHIELD is lily-white. bringing in B. J. Britt as a fully developed Agent Triplett will make the show more interesting for its diversity and also because in general Trip is a more interesting character than Ward, who was basically a clone of May.  Yes, there was J. August Richards and Ruth Negga, but neither of them were regulars.

one thing i do like about how SHIELD handled these characters, however, was that their race is a non-issue.

7.  If you must have a romantic involvement, TripSimmons is preferable to FitzSimmons

there are several reasons i prefer this pairing, but one major one:  it allows Simmons to keep her own agency.  she's obviously attracted to Trip and vice versa, and she thinks of Fitz as her "best friend in the whole world."  one of the conventions i hate with a passion is the idea that because someone is attracted to someone else, that person has an obligation to attempt to reciprocate.  it will be better plot and character overall if Simmons decides she loves Fitz and she always has, but like a brother/best friend.  it will also add depth and maturity to Fitz's character to have him get over or at least deal with his feelings for Simmons and wish her happiness in the relationship that she wants.

8.  Stop being so predictable

i don't know if i've just been exposed to way too much of this stuff (science fiction, fantasy, comics), but i called almost every twist this whole season, except the HYDRA reveal from Cap2 and John Garrett as the Clairvoyant.  here are the things i predicted:

- Victoria Hand is not the Clairvoyant, but she thinks Coulson is
- A member of Coulson's team is working for the Clairvoyant
- John Garrett is a villain (i thought he was working for the Clairvoyant too, actually)
- Either Fitz or Ward are HYDRA (i made this prediction after seeing Cap2)
- Whichever one of them is not HYDRA is going to die or otherwise be removed from the team

ok, ok, i also didn't predict that Skye was anything other than human.

so that's what i think would improve Agents of SHIELD and really make it a show i look forward too every week.  i am glad it got renewed for season 2, and i did generally like the show.  and i know a lot of shows stumble and suck their first season (see Star Trek:TNG).  i want to like SHIELD, i like the MCU and the movies in general.  please make SHIELD a good show, not just one we watch hoping some day it will be good.