Today, several things have happened. Firstly, AoS has
made a brief resurgence with an online mini-episode featuring ‘Slingshot’ –
Elena Rodriguez, one of the recurring characters from the second half of S3. It
feels like a shortened episode of AoS, where Elena – and the episode is placed
before S4, during the six months that Daisy was AWOL from S.H.I.E.L.D. – hunted
down one of her former nemeses, one of the corrupt cops from Columbia that had
killed her cousin. Elena does not kill him, she proves to be the better person,
but the man still dies, having been gunned down by friendly fire.
What can we learn from ‘Slingshot’?
It is a cameo episode – each of the six parts features
one or more main cast characters, including Jeffrey Mace. (Is he about to stay
beyond S4 finale and the entire LMD mess?) Each time one of the main characters
appear, they move the plot forward and help the audience bond and sympathize
with the titular heroine. It works…about as well as any other AoS episode
works: the mid-season finale was not just kind of underwhelming, but it also
had very low ratings; lower than the mid S3 finale, for comparison. ‘Slingshot’
is unlikely to make much of an impact, especially since it is just 30 minutes
long, and AoS returns on January 10th, about a month from today. NCB
herself and her character also are not liable to make much of an impact – Elena
Rodriguez is not different from Kara Palamas, Joey Gutierrez or even Robert Gonzales;
maybe AoS is trying to be politically correct by being racially diverse
cast-wise, but as the elections in real-life U.S. have shown, real life (in the
U.S.) and its depiction on TV are two different things.
But related, of course. With comics, it is one thing –
a person may have any kind of views on politics, society, etc., but if they buy
a comic, they still spend money, and as I have written in my previous rant, if
a comic-book character isn’t a beloved comic-book character, and the comic
itself isn’t a medium via which a reader communicates/bonds/etc. with that
character, both the comic and its’ characters become yet another commodity that
can be bought and sold…or not, and just be left on the shelves, period.
With a TV show like AoS, it is different. People are
still paying to watch it – but they are paying not for AoS specifically; they
are paying their general cable/satellite/etc. bill for their television, so
AoS, (for example), does not get money from them directly, unlike the comics.
For them, ratings are more important if they are to get paid. They will not get
paid – Hell, the show itself might get cancelled – if the ratings are low
enough and people just are not watching the show in question during the time
slot. (And yes, AoS has a problem with this too – are Marvel and Disney trying
to kill the show? Who knows.) This is what is happening to AoS. Elena’s
character just is not enough to save the show anymore.
…As I have written in my previous rant, AoS is not
suffering from bad actors or bad acting; rather, it is suffering from a number
of other problems, including recycled ideas. In case of ‘Slingshot’, we have
the same 0-8-4 that was used to kill ‘Ramon’ that appeared in the episode 1x02,
‘0-8-4’. Seriously, it seems that after months and years of AoS being aired,
there are far fewer novelties amongst its’ ideas that there could be. Honestly,
sometimes it seems that AoS would be better off just emulating the ‘Secret
Warriors’ comic than doing what it has done – following its’ own thing just led
it nowhere, to lower and lower ratings, period. Elena herself has been playing
a growing role in the main series, but this has not affected ratings, period. AoS
just might be gone too far downwards to be saved by a ‘renovated and improved’
character.
AoS aside, For Honor is back with new characters.
First, there is the warlord of the Vikings. He is a heavy hitter like the raider,
but armed with a shield, he is also better armored and faster than the raider;
he is slower than the berserker is, but still better armored. A more
balanced-out character, then.
With the Samurais’ shugoku, it is less
straightforward. He is certainly slower and bulkier than the orochi is, but I
am not sure if he is more balanced than the kensai is; certainly, his kanabo –
the Japanese greatclub – delivers more ‘oomph’ than the kensai’s kodachi sword
does, visually speaking. In game mechanics, this might be different; we will
have to see.
Finally, we have the Knights’ peacekeeper. Essentially,
it is an assassin-type warrior – no actual armor, a sword and a dagger for
weapons. The peacekeeper is fast but unarmored, not unlike the berserker of the
Vikings or the already-mentioned orochi of the Samurais…
Overall, this all is terribly exciting: ‘For Honor’ is
a wonderful game and I cannot wait until February
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