Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 1

DVD Wholesale Quick Overview:

All these Marvel movies came out with Agent Phil Coulsen, Nick Fury and SHIELD showing up. I saw The Avengers without knowing Thor’s story & saw Phil Coulsen get killed in the movie. When I heard there was going to be a SHIELD TV show, I was put off the show even though Joss Whedon’s name was attached to it. After having watched The Avengers & seeing Coulsen killed off, I couldn’t see how the show would be viable centered around him. I was wrong. Over the last few months, I have been catching up on the Marvel movies. I still haven’t seen Iron Man 2 and the first Thor all the way through yet. That should help me understand The Avengers a second time through. Marvel’s Agents of Shield goes in tandem with almost all the Marvel movies.
I didn’t expect a large bulk of the season to be the mystery of how Coulsen is alive and walking about when he was killed in The Avengers. Tying in with the Captain America movies, the villanous organization Hydra is looking to get the miracle cure of Coulsen & use it for themselves. Behind the rebirth of the Nazi organization is a mystery man known as the Clairvoyant who seems to know everything except for how Coulsen survived. Joining him as his right-hand is a lovely black woman named Raina (Preacher’s Ruth Negga) in a an Asian flower print dress he calls Flowers.
If you could imagine where the season is headed, one member of the team is a secret Hydra operative.
While many are familiar with Coulsen and Nick Fury (who appears in two episodes), all of the agents are new to audiences. There is Sky, a former hacker, who is recruited to join SHIELD, a bad-ass agent named Melinda May, two agents from the UK, Fitz & Simmons, the muscle agent Grant Ward and assorted other SHIELD agents who pop up along the season.
Part of the arc of the season is a man with super-powers named Michael Peterson who becomes known as DeathLok, a tool of Hydra, played by Angel’s J. August Richards. Yes, the mystery of how Coulsen is alive is somewhat explained, but it opens up even more questions. It is very good to see the talented Ruth Negga in something besides Preacher. I am now watching Season 2.
Watch the Marvel movies and watch this show to see how fun things get with the material.

-Dean L. Kaufman

I am a Marvel Comics fan boy and I subscribed to the whole season before it started, excited for the opportunity to enjoy another work by Joss Whedon involving characters set in a universe that I have grown up loving. Having said that, I would also say that I have been very critical of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D because I expect nothing short of a marvelous [pun intended] story.

What I didn’t like:
Let’s start with the negative, because that was my early impression of the show. Aside from episode 1, I felt that character development was a bit flaky in the beginning. Episodes 2 and 3 seemed to deviate too much from the main story, to the point where I could no longer relate to what was happening in the show. In my opinion, these early episodes did not focus so much on character development, instead they seemed to focus on the fancy new SHIELD tech and special effects. I didn’t feel that immediate connection with the characters that I had in Whedon’s previous work (i.e. Firefly). It wasn’t until episode 4 that I felt things really picked up.

What I did like:
After the initial hurdle of establishing the show, the story-telling got back to the usual Joss Whedon exemplary standards that I’ve come to expect. I like the cast, and I think their set chemistry is definitely becoming more cohesive as the show goes on. There is enough mystery surrounding certain characters with bits of backstory explained in each episode, which keeps things interesting. I really like that this show is in the same continuity as the rest of the Marvel cinematic universe (movies like Ironman #1-3, Thor, Captain America, Avengers) and in fact these movies are frequently referenced throughout the show as “current events”. Lots of Marvel “easter eggs” are dropped throughout the show. These give a real feeling of the scope of the Marvel multiverse, and appeal very much to my fan boy self.

In summary, the show started off a bit weak but got better and seems to be progressing in an interesting direction. I certainly wouldn’t describe the show as “dark”, but there are some darker elements explored in it with frequent comic relief interspersed. I believe the show had experienced some negative feedback early on in online forums, and while I’m not sure how much effect that feedback actually had on the shows direction, things seemed to change quickly. Perhaps we fans were too harsh in our initial judgements based on limited data, but in the end I would say this show is fun to watch and I like it.

– S. Sabnis

DVD Wholesale Main Features:

Actors: Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker
Format: Multiple Formats, Anamorphic, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Language: English
Subtitles: French, Spanish, English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
Number of discs: 5
Studio: ABC Studios
DVD Release Date: September 9, 2014
Run Time: 946 minutes