Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E20, Scars

Although tie-ins were once a fixture,
This episode sidesteps that stricture,
And only devotes
Its first couple notes
To a plot point from their latest picture.

Bobbi thinks she's with May, unshaken,
But quickly learns that she's mistaken.
The May that we see
Is Agent 33,
And Ward secretly has Bobbi taken.

Now Raina, precog, sounds the chimes,
And warns of impending SHIELD crimes,
But as much as it grieves her,
Still no one believes her.
She's cried wolf too many times.

Gonzalez wants peace, no one blames him,
But an impulse to catalogue claims him,
And the threat of a cage
Provokes massive outrage,
Skye's mom kills Gonzalez and frames him.

It does seem an odd way to go,
And a break with the character flow.
Skye's mom was a pillar,
But now she's a killer.
Why? I guess the plot said so.

Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E19, The Dirty Half Dozen

With Mike and Lincoln off the field,
And Coulson with no choice but to yield,
Seems they're all forsaken,
Or otherwise taken,
They by Hydra, Coulson by SHIELD.

Hydra wants their prisoners' condition
To bring their own plans to fruition.
With minimal winces,
Phil Coulson convinces
SHIELD to go on a rescue mission.

Though at times they just scrape by,
They get back their people and fly,
Especially now
That their team is endowed
With a freshly returned agent Skye.

Raina's visions brought about
Skye's new, SHIELD-convergent route.
But post this collision,
She has one more vision:
That Age of Ultron's coming out.

Of late, the show has a good spine,
But feels it must pad out the time.
To that end, we have scenes
About what it all means
That it could have covered in one line.

Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E18, The Frenemy of My Enemy

Fitz is still in last week's scrape,
Agents trailing behind like a cape.
He calls friends to sort
Out a little support,
And they talk him through how to escape.

With not enough people aboard,
Coulson puts pieces back on the board.
So despite the treason,
And against all reason,
He tracks down and then recruits Ward.

Cal is intent on restoring
His fam'ly with feelings outpouring.
And he uses his clout
For a father's day out.
That ends up surprisingly boring.

We're almost glad when things emerge
And Hydra pours forth in a surge.
And Skye chose to invite
SHIELD for the firefight.
Meanwhile Hydra and Coulson converge.

Skye gets teleported and grabbed,
Hunter gets shot, Hydra gets stabbed,
No one wins the brawl,
And most crushing of all,
Both Lincoln and Deathlok get nabbed.

Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E17, Melinda

With Coulson a late escapee,
And Fitz on the lam with the key,
The show takes a breather
To focus on neither,
But three stories concurrently.

First, we find out what's so extreme
That it managed to curtail May's dream,
And what she went through
Is that she once had to
Kill a child to save her whole team.

Skye's story, by contrast, is calm,
And she takes to her life with aplomb,
And especially
When she learns guide's ID,
And gets to spend time with her mom.

And, fin'lly, May with the new crew,
Trying desperately to sort through
The myriad plans
That have passed through her hands
And find what Coulson's been up to.

The crosscutting sometimes gets clogged,
But the whole thing is hardly a slog,
And after that bout,
We get to find out
That Raina might be a precog.

Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E16, Afterlife

Spoilers, obviously:

With SHIELD determined to stalk,
Coulson's left to wait out the clock.
But he proves tricky prey,
And soon gets far away,
Now joined by Hunter and Deathlok.

And Skye, never to be outdone,
Finds the Inhumans' place in the sun.
And, as is tradition,
Gets three-scene exposition
That could have been covered in one.

May's in the cell once used by Ward,
But her ability strikes a chord,
Olmos lets her live,
And then offers to give
Her a seat on alterna-SHIELD's board.

With Skye as a one-woman bomb,
Raina's presence threatens her calm.
So "The Elders" decide
That Sky should have a guide,
Who turns out to somehow be Skye's mom.

Coulson wants to clean SHIELD's clocks,
But also free Skye from her locks.
Ward will be recruited,
And, also, Fitz looted
That little black mystery box.

Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E15, One Door Closes

To kick off the story to tell,
We watch a flashback for a spell,
How Bobbi and Mack
Countered Hydra's attack
On the darkened day that SHIELD fell.

Today, both are back from the field,
But their secrets will soon be revealed.
Though 'fore Coulson can brace,
The team's secret base
Is invaded by alterna-SHIELD.

Once Olmos has breached their redoubt,
He wants intel for Coulson to spout,
And to break the locks
Of a strange little box,
But May rescues, then sends Coulson out.

Team Olmos thinks Skye is just mental,
And sends a team who's less than gentle,
But Skye receives quarter
From the teleporter
Who zaps her to Inhuman central.

Although he's been given the sack,
Coulson is still on the track.
He'll have to be blunter,
And so he and Hunter
Will team up to take SHIELD back.

The Talking Picture, Ep. 23: Whatever Happened to DC Movies?

Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E14, Love In The Time Of Hydra

Last time, big secrets were revealed
And we glimpsed the new playing field,
And who should appear?
Edward Olmos is here,
As head of a parallel SHIELD!

They say Coulson's in no mental shape
For anything more than red tape,
And by that same coin,
They ask Hunter to join.
He says no, then makes his escape.

Ward remains quite hard to find,
And alarmingly un-confined.
He lives day-to-day
On the run with Faux-May,
Both with vengeance quite firmly in mind.

They infiltrate an army base
To meet an old goon face-to-face.
But for all Talbot's spittle,
It comes to quite little,
And doesn't do much for the pace.

Skye is now out of the lab,
But is now somewhere equally drab.
So her seismic plot-age
Is confined to a cottage
For some superpower rehab.

Some bridges were finally burned,
But given Hunter wasn't turned,
It's folks with no mission,
Just growing suspicion
Of things that we've already learned.

Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E13, One Of Us

Skye's dad wants these powers of hers
To be free of S.H.I.E.L.D. saboteurs,
He starts a project,
Going 'round to collect
Some superpowered prisoners.

The team has its own problems to spar,
And things only get more bizarre,
But though they're detained,
Skye's dad's campaign
Puts him squarely on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar.

Meanwhile, May gets her ex, with glowers,
To consult with them for a few hours
And though Skye is annoyed,
He still plays Sigmund Freud
To help her control her new powers.

The team wants to live and let live,
But Skye's dad doesn't want to forgive.
Mercy is refused,
But that's all defused
When Inhumans take him captive.

Just to add to a well-crowded field,
Some more layers start to be peeled,
For when Lance inquires,
It quickly transpires
Someone's started a parallel S.H.I.E.L.D.

Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E12, Who You Really Are

Lady Sif appears on a beach,
Her memories just out of reach.
But even given that,
We never get at
Just why she's so stilted in speech.

The ep, using this, of course links
To some fish-out-of-water hijinks,
But all of this play
Is just pointless delay,
And not as funny as it thinks.

It was a nice little tweak
For the alien creature they seek
To tie into the arc
When we had him marked
As one more monster of the week.

Seems he's a Kree soldier, disguised,
And he gets them full apprised.
For us and the crewmen
The source of Inhumans
Gets succinctly summarized.

But all this talk gets Skye thrown,
And she goes all human cyclone.
After that twist and shout,
All her secrets are out,
But Bobbi's got one of her own.

Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E11, Aftershocks

Last time was our heroes' close shave,
Underground in an alien cave,
Where old Whitehall died,
Tripp got petrified
And Skye caught the Terrigen wave.

Now, Skye has had a good restorer,
But poor Raina's come out the poorer.
She thought she'd be divine,
But the show seeks to mine
Inhumanity for body horror.

Coulson and Co. then enlist
Their pris'ner's unwilling assist,
So that each Hydra brother
Will turn on each other,
Which is really a nice little twist.

Jemma's concern is just that
Skye's condition will be a plague rat,
But we have the acumen
To know she's Inhuman,
And for comics fans, this is old hat.

The show takes a chance to reload,
But happ'ly declines to be slowed.
It's smooth as a harp,
The dialogue's sharp,
And it's just a first-rate episode.

Limerick Review: Agent Carter S1E8, Valediction

With theatre-goers en masse

Killed off before much time can pass,

The truth will soon out,

But Sousa the scout

Gets dosed with the angry gas.

Howard shows up, fashion'bly late,

To set the record vaguely straight,

And to prove he's an ace,

He helps out with the case,

And offers himself up as bait

But he falls into the baddies' snare,

And gets hypnotized at their lair.

Things start getting grim

As they hypnotize him

Into almost gassing Times Square.

But Peggy to action is spurred,

And the evil plot is deterred.

And she beats the toughs,

Not through fisticuffs,

But simply through well-applied words.

Throughout the tale we see conclude,

It kept us consistently glued.

And that had better please,

'Cause from the ending tease,

It looks like it's getting renewed.

Limerick Review: Agent Carter S1E7, Snafu

Now, Peggy's got reason to frown,
As her own friends take her downtown,
They press and they press
To get her to confess.
But she ends up dressing them down.

Jarvis comes, a story to tell,
And to get Carter out of her cell,
He goes off-book
To get her off the hook,
But it only lasts for a spell.

They quickly find the real mole,
And try to suss out what he stole,
But that's blown asunder
When the chief falls under
The doctor's hypnotic control.

But the enemy's very precise,
And give our heroes the slip twice,
There's happy delusion,
And widespread confusion,
And one heroic sacrifice.

The villains have one last hurrah,
That Kingsman has made a bit blah,
And their final jest
Turns out to be to test
A gas bomb in a cinema.

As we start to wrap up every thread,
And the villains turn out to be Red,
To solve all our queries,
It seems that the series
At last is coming to a head.

Limerick Review: Agent Carter S1E6, A Sin To Err

Carter and Jarvis get the names
Of several suspected dames
Who might have stolen the spec
To a bunch of Starktech,
So they have to find Howard's old flames.

While Carter takes her time to think,
The S.S.R. search for a link.
And none of them knows
He's right under their nose
And it's the creepy Russian shrink.

Then, after a witness confessed,
And they match a birthmark she possessed,
They think Carter's the spy,
So it all goes awry,
And they place Peggy under arrest.

While the roommate B-plot is fun,
Peg spends most of her time on the run,
But, since at end-of-day
She's captured anyway,
There's not much achieved when it's done.

And yet, let it be understood,
The ep does no less than it should.
What it's really about
Is to leave us no doubt
That Carter is just that damn good.

Limerick Review: Agent Carter S1E5, The Iron Ceiling

Though by no means was this show flopping,

It needed one more tasty topping:

For what's a spy show,

I'd like dearly to know,

Without any proper globe-hopping?

Russia thinks that its chance of winning

Is improved by kids fighting and spinning,

So they built a camp

To train each deadly scamp,

And we see the Black Widow's beginning.

Our heroes to Russia embark

To get some tech stolen from Stark.

They run into trouble,

'midst rubles and rubble,

But ultimately find their mark.

Dear earnest Sousa, meanwhile,

Has been sifting through Peggy's file,

Her work on the sly

Makes him think she's a spy,

And he starts acting strangely hostile.

But the real Russian agent's at home,

In the building from which Peggy roamed,

She invades Carter's room

While our girl's in gloom

And picks through it with a fine-toothed comb.

Reprising roles from World War II,

The Howling Commandos come through,

And those who might wanna

See Neal McDonough

With mustache again will thank you.

There are clever touches, alright,

Like some backstory given in flight,

Or that the kid slaves

Are taught how to behave

By reciting out lines from Snow White.

With little enough to regret,

This might be the best episode yet.

And each devotee

Will return next to see

How she deals with a domestic threat.

On Superheroes

I have heard a variety of arguments to the effect that this new crop of superhero movies are all the same. Obviously there are similarities in tone between, say, Spider-man and the X-men, or between Spider-man and Iron man, or between X-men and the Avengers, or between Thor and Green Lantern. There is undeniably some truth to this, and your toleration for those common elements is going to vary depending on how much you just like the genre. But it’s also dangerous to generalize - after all, there’s very little connecting “The Dark Knight” and “The Avengers” aside from some superficial similarities between Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark.

But a closer examination of even those two characters reveal that sure, they’re both billionaires, but their relationship with their respective moonlight roles reveals that equating the two is like saying the lead characters of Lincoln and There Will Be Blood are the same because they both have prominent facial hair and are played by Daniel Day-Lewis. Iron Man doesn’t have a dual identity - he is just Tony Stark, all the suit does is make him harder to punch when he annoys you.

Batman, on the other hand, is more complicated. I’ve already written a bit about this, but Bruce Wayne really no longer exists - he is an act designed to draw attention away from his vigilante activities by night. All that’s left of him is the specter called the Batman.

As for the tone of the Marvel movies, yeah...they do get a little samey after a while, but while the combination of spectacle, snark, and strong characterization isn’t exactly original anymore, it’s a formula that works and that produces pretty entertaining movies. Certainly I prefer it to, say, the MIchael Bay formula of massive spectacle with bugger all else going for it, or the Fantastic Four movie’s approach of awkwardly trying to be a more whimsical X-men without really understanding what makes the characters special in their own right. So yes, you have Iron Man 2 desperately trying to be Iron Man 1 and failing, but then you have Iron Man 3 trying to be Lethal Weapon and mostly succeeding.

That segues awkwardly but not illogically into something else I wanted to organize my thoughts on: super-hero methods. I think the preferences in any given time period in superhero storytelling as regards this feature will tend to reflect the dominant fears of the time. During periods of high street crime, I imagine you’ll be more likely to see heroes like Spider-Man and Batman taking down muggers and convenience store robbers. In times of war, you’ll be more likely to see heroes like Iron Man and Captain America taking on conflicts that threaten the globe. In times where we fear things like terrorism, like now, we’ll be more likely to see stories about heroes taking on large, cosmic, and largely unknowable evils, favoring heroes like Green Lantern and Thor. The Avengers movie managed to combine the second two.

However, there is one somewhat encouraging trend in these stories - increasingly, it’s less about a war on crime than it is about the hero taking on his or her own demons in the form of a specific enemy. That is, it’s more about examining the character than it is about about an uncomfortably fascistic power fantasy for paranoid shut-ins.