AoS is back. Yay!
…As it does happen
with this show, it did deliver on the latest episode – it introduced Hell (Dr.
Strange’s Dark Dimension?); it pushed Coulson and May closer together (the two
had an one-on, one-off relationship since S2); it gave much more backstory to
Robbie Reyes/the Ghost Rider; it introduced senator Nadir’s InHuman brother;
and etc. And?
And nothing. AoS was/is one of those shows that when
its’ episodes work, they really work,
and when they do not work, they really
do not work. Here, in case of ‘Devils’, we got the former, but! It is a case of
too little, too late: the next episode, 4x08, is the mid-season finale, meaning that the odds are that
the entire S4 will be just 16, rather than 22 episodes long, are very good. ‘Course, there’s always a chance
of the second half of S4 being 14 episodes long, but given the still-low
ratings, I am not betting on it – we will just have to wait until 2017 to see.
As it was written before, AoS had problems, and
starting from S2’s finale, AoS was unable to handle and resolve them, at least
until the S3 finale. S4 is doing its’ best to have a clean break, but it has
not quite succeeded in accomplishing this earlier, as I have suggested earlier.
Moreover, with fewer episodes in S4 it has less space, and possibly less money,
to accomplish this break as well.
Where does it live AoS with its’ S4 (and beyond)?
Possibly in the same boat as the book ‘PRIMATES of the world’ by Jean-Jacques
Petter and Francois Desbordes – it is a wonderful and initially impressive
book, featuring numerous (nearly 300) species of lemurs, monkeys and apes on 72
colored plates, and is very aesthetically pleasing. But!
…But there is all that is too it, really. It does
contain information about the primates, scientific rather than fictional, but
it is generalized, unsorted, and is delivered at a compressed and rapid pace:
minimum written information, maximum of illustrations and depictions. This
approach is homogenous too, which makes things worse.
To be more precise, there are other guidebooks that
have drawn illustrations rather than photographs; Luke Hunter’s guide to the
carnivorous mammals of the world is one of them. Again, it uses drawings rather
than photos, but the textual content
of Mr. Hunter’s book is very different from that of Mr. Petter: it is heterogeneous
– the textual entries are clearly of very differing lengths, as it should be.
Both the snow leopard and the brown hyena, (for example), are predators and are
related more closely to each other than to the grizzly bear, but they are just
as different from each other as they are from the grizzly. Ergo – the entries
of different lengths.
With ‘Primates’ it is different; the text is
generalized as much as possible, and the format shows more creativity than
common sense; I mean, you can put
down the primates’ family tree in not a straightforward, back-to-front format,
but rather a radial, left to right manner, but it doesn’t work as well. Or, you
can sort the primates out primarily by continents rather than by infraorders,
suborders and families, but it doesn’t work as well either – there is a reason
why the Catarrhini are usually called the Old World monkeys and apes – they are
found in both Africa and Asia; the Old World monkeys (Cercopithecidae)
superfamily have subfamilies whose members are found both in Asia and Africa;
while the apes’ family contain several genuses that are found in Africa and
Asia as well. Mr. Petter did the best he could, but even so, he had to
distribute his ‘flavor text’ about the Old World monkeys, the great apes (orangutans,
gorillas and chimps), even about the Lorisoidea primates (aka the
non-Madagascan lemurs) between African and Asian groups; it works, but not as
well if he and Mr. Desbordes had sorted the entries evolutionary style – the lemurs,
the tarsiers, (the link between the lemurs and the higher primates), the
monkeys and the apes. Straightforward and simple. Mr. Hunter actually did this
with the carnivores – one biological family after another, from cats to
weasels. Mr. Petter and Desbordes just did not do it – well, history will judge
them, if their contemporaries will not.
How does this relate to AoS? Well, as I tried to
explain, ‘PRIMATES’ tried to create an aesthetically pleasant and scientific
guidebook, (well, a quasi-guidebook, maybe) and failed. ‘PRIMATES’ is not much
more than a picture book instead. AoS has tried to become an
accessory/supplement to MCU – and failed. It tried to tackle ‘real-life’ issues
in the second half of S3 (racial, international, etc.) and it did not work. S4
has new elements, but it also has a lack of any real-life issues, though it
tries to do so with the InHumans as ‘the other’ in this season, but it does not
really work. Of course, Marvel itself had thought that presenting Captain
America (Steve Rogers) in comics as Hydra would be some sort of a clever
anti-Trump statement, but it didn’t work, and just caused further friction among
its’ fans.
In other words, AoS is back to being just entertainment
– and for a while, (S3, S2 too), it was not even very good entertainment, and
now that it has been sent to ten o’clock in the evening, things aren’t looking
good for it. Yes, starting from S3 AoS tried to be good (as a TV show), but
apparently it was not enough. In real life, bad guys sometimes win, and good
shows are cancelled. ‘Course, being caught between the Netflix’s ‘Defenders’,
who are coming up nicely, and CW’s DC ‘Arrowverse’ AoS is the underdog and it
shows, especially in the ratings.
However, what about ‘Dr. Strange’? Can the latest MCU
movie not help AoS and etc.?
‘Dr. Strange’ itself is primarily an entertainment
movie, not unlike Disney’s ‘Moana’ that appeared in theatres not so long ago,
only without ‘Moana’s’ depth. Okay, that was uncalled for, ‘Dr. Strange’ and ‘Moana’
have the same amount of depths – these days Disney owns Marvel as well. ‘Dr.
Strange’ is a Disney movie with the main character become a hero, and a typical
hero at that. At least CA: CW utilized the talents of its’ cast rather than
special effects to carry it forth – and it worked. ‘Dr. Strange’…did not, and
while it also worked, CA: CW is still the better movie by right.
Therefore: AoS is in trouble off screen, regardless of what it does on screen and things will not get better anytime soon, it
especially with the midseason hiatus coming forth – this sort of thing is always bad for the ratings. Pity.
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