All right. As it was seen, S4 of AoS has hit its’
stride…by staying away, (well, trying to), from the previous seasons, especially
2 and 3. Yes, this is repetition, but, despite all of AoS’s successes, its’
ratings are still falling. Why?
A show can fail for various reasons. AFO (‘Animal
Face-Off’) failed because it was repetitive: while seeing various CGI models of
animals fight each other on TV is fun, AFO, sadly, made it repetitive, and so
it ended after just 12 episodes (1 season).
‘Deadliest Warrior’ (DW) has failed for a different
reason – it was subjective. For example, look at ‘Theodore Roosevelt vs.
Lawrence of Arabia’ episode in S3. Among the weapons, the show put the American
1896 Krag Carbine against the British Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Rifle (or
Lee-Enfield Mk III). The two ‘mid-range weapons’ were tied, but the truth is
that the Lee-Enfield had actually won, percentage-wise, and what’s more, one of
the reasons as to why the Krag vanished into the depths of history is because
while it HAD been used in the U.S. invasion of Cuba, and other wars (including
WWI, albeit to a limited extent), it was unwieldy and slow to load, which
became a very important factor in WWI and beyond. Yet, DW did not mention any
of this, and it did do its’ best to downplay the Lee-Enfield instead, numbers
or no numbers.
(This was actually another problem of DW – either the
experts, the show hosts, were correct when assigning the advantage to one
weapon or another, and in that case, the numbers/percentages served no real
purpose. Alternatively, the numbers/percentages were correct, and in this case,
the experts were no experts, but some blokes who did not know a better rifle if
it shot them in the ass. Given that Robert Daly, one of the show’s stars in
2011 claimed to be a former Green Beret, but in reality he was not…yeah, DW had
many problems. Period.)
Then again, we also have ‘Ancients Behaving Badly’ and
‘The Secret Life Of-‘, which ended after a single season because, not unlike
AFO, they had a limited amount of info/resources that they could use – but we’re
talking about TV documentary shows, and how about fictive ones?
Aye, they are trickier than the documentary shows. ‘Lost
Girl’, which suffered from a chronic revision of its’ backstory and mythology,
ended after 5 seasons, possibly because it became unpopular enough. ‘Primeval’ and
its spin-off, ‘Primeval: New World’ ended because the company that made them,
Impossible Pictures, (IP), went bankrupt, and frankly was clearly suited to
running short series, such as ‘Walking with…’ documentary series, or even
documentary films. OUAT (‘Once Upon a Time’) continues to air, as do various DC
TV series of the CW channel. ‘Legends of Tomorrow’, (LoT) for example, suffer
from a weak plot in S2 (S1 was better – so far), yet they are not doing any
worse than AoS does. Why is AoS in trouble?
Again, this is not unique. The aforementioned LoT is
not doing so hot itself, now that ‘Timeless’, a sci-fi (time travel) series is
being aired, (and it isn’t affiliated with Marvel or DC comics). It needs to
step up on its’ game…and maybe it has.
So has AoS, for that matter. It, along with the rest
of MCU, has gotten rid of Hydra, which has been causing problems ever since it
appeared in CA: TWS and spread to AoS and ‘Agent Carter’, sort of. If you look
at such sites as Tumblr, people are STILL arguing and fighting over Hydra,
whether or not it is Nazi or just fascist, and the various opinions don’t get
along, but…for the fact that none of them appreciate AoS, (and Marvel in
general), getting involved with Hydra – for different reasons, again, but
anti-AoS and anti-Marvel.
The same went for Grant Ward – people either loved him
or hated him, and fought with each other, and generally were anti-AoS in
regards to the show’s treatment of the man. Why AoS made the situation so bad –
they could have turned him back into a hero, (as they probably planned at first
post-S1), or killed him off back in S2, or just redeemed him, as they did with
Cal at the end of S2. Instead, they kept him on as a villain, (and in the
second half of S3, they replaced him with Hive, sort of), and this diminished
their fanbase further.
This, of course, was a more generic problem – AoS didn’t
appear to respect its’ characters, (still doesn’t – just look at J.T.
James/Hellfire), and that put it at a disadvantage in regards to other shows, (‘Killjoys’,
‘Dark Matter’, ‘Quantico’, ‘Blindspot’, etc.). And to make matters worse, there
was a mass exodus of actors at the end of S2, too.
There were other shows who suffered this sort of
problem – ‘Primeval’, for example, and LG, at the last season, but AoS S2
finale turned it into a killfest, which was too much of a good thing at best,
and just a killfest at worst. They were able to get over it by the second half
of S3, when Luke Mitchell, (Lincoln Campbell), left the show, turning S3, (and
especially its first episode), into some sort of a mockery of itself. Karma
being what it is, so far Lincoln was mentioned twice and shown (on a photo)
once, period. He may have been once an integral part of the show, but now – no.
This, kind of, brings us to ‘Lockup’ the episode. It
was a solidly made and delivered episode. On one hand, Daisy has to handle her
own demons, on the other – so does Robbie, on the third – Simmons has to help
the new director to deal with the senator who is connected to the Watchdogs on
one hand, and is friendly with the new director proper on the other. It is a
solid piece of planning, there are no particular plotholes, though there are
faint echoes of the second half of S2, especially before the bloodbath/exodus
of actors at its’ finale. But-?
There is no ‘but’, in fact. The show has begun to
deliver, but it just may be too late. It has developed a reputation during the
runs of S2 and S3, and it will not fix it anytime soon, especially since it is
also trying to incorporate some of the previous seasons’ elements, such as the
Watchdogs. We don’t know much about them, save that they are like the Guardians
of Humanity or Quarrymen, or some other fictional rip-off of the KKK…which is
probably how AoS (and the rest of MCU?) likes it. Hydra came with too much
baggage, especially from real life, so now the show is trying to go the other
way and it succeeds. Only the viewers don’t care about this sort of thing
anymore, in fact, they are probably busy watching other shows, period, so it’s
a case of ‘too little too late’ on top of everything else.
Anything else? No, not really. AoS is caught between
going with its’ old plan, which includes Daisy, and the other InHumans, and the
Watchdogs, and the new plan with the Ghost Rider, and his uncle, and the ghosts
and the evil book that ISN’T the Necronomicon, really. (Though I am sure that
Lovecraft would have disagreed). It is doing a decent job of balancing the two
plans, so for now it is going forwards in a good way.
Hopefully, it will continue to do so in the future
too.
No comments:
Post a Comment