S.H.I.E.L.D., Watchdogs - March 29

And so, yesterday's episode, "Watchdogs", had come to TV. What can be said about it? First - the useless/pointless trivia bit - the Watchdogs were a right-wind terrorist group that weren't, or aren't, that different from the F.O.H. who harass the mutants (remember the initial X-Men movies with Stryker in it? Earth-10005 rather than Earth-TRN414? Never mind). They're funded by Hydra so, yeah, they suck - but read on.

As they reeled from the departures of Lance and Bobbi, the Agents came across the Watchdogs - who are currently being run by a former agent, Felix Banks, from S1. Yeah, this guy, who was killed by Deathlok but not quite: now he's stuck in a wheelchair and directs his people via holograms. Now what?

Well, it is another sign/indication that AoS is getting its continuity together, as more of the previous seasons' elements are returning to the show. After the mess that S2 had done, trying to assimilate Hunter and Morse before casting them out into their spinoff, S3, especially the second half, is fixing the mess...but the damage has been done. "Parting Shot" had even lower ratings than "The Inside Man" had, and "Watchdogs" have more in common with it, than "The Inside Man".

More precisely, the last two episodes had a very dark, very oppressive atmosphere, and tried to incorporate real-life American issues, not unlike how 'Agent Carter' began to do in S2. Only, if AC has done it in a relatively light-hearted manner, AoS seems to going increasingly oppressive and depressing, especially now that Lance and Bobbi and their sarcasm are gone. Of course, they themselves were best in small doses, but without them AoS doesn't have even that. Agent Mack can be also called "Alphie'? Ha-ha, and this brings us to "Watchdogs" main real-life component: race and racial stereotypes.

In the world of literature, one Russian author has published a book on the U.S. Civil War (in 2008). It was more of a propaganda piece than an accurate one, but he did raise some good points, including how the U.S. mass media (TV shows, movies, etc) tended to associate 'the bad guys' with Confederacy and its values, (real or imagined). Well, in "Watchdogs" we have all-white terrorists harassing 'freaks', and at the end - two people of color, the Mackenzie brothers. Yay. The leader, Felix, is an Anglo-American, even though S2 had at least two 'negative' characters who were neither: Gonzales (a Latino American) and Weaver (an Afro-American woman). Gonzales got killed in the massive character kill-off at the end of S2, and Weaver is a colored character, so there are problems in depicting her as a villain. Honestly, there is something of a debate going around non-mainstream characters and their treatments in TV shows, such as '100', so yeah - AoS, who is already trying to prevent it, I think, isn't going to go for controversies: instead it is going for good old reliable cliches, including the issue of color. How nice.

The same goes for depicting/handling of this cliche. Mack single-handedly, (with some help from his younger brother), defeats 5 or 6 Watchdogs, all of whom seem to be Anglo-American. Honestly, he seems to be some sort of a mix between Charles Gunn from Angel (AtS) and Gord Cantrell from The Sixth Gun comic. Well, considering that he didn't make much of an appearance in either "The Inside Man" or "Parting Shot", this could mean...

...This could mean, in combination with him being out of commission at the end of this ep, is that he won't appear in the upcoming episodes either. Nick and Adrienne have already left the show for good; maybe the same goes for Henry Simmons? Yeah, in one of the online articles (well, quote lists), an AoS site suggests that there could been a Mack/Slingshot romance in the works, but at the end of the episode in question, ("Bouncing Back"), Slingshot seems to be paired more with Joey instead; considering how flippantly AoS treats the episodes' scripts, and especially dialogues, Slingshot's relationship is up for grabs-

-That, the fact that actors seem to be leaving the show, and the fact that the InHumans have appeared only as a smattering of characters - only Daisy and Lincoln are main/recurrent S.H.I.E.L.D. characters with powers - and frankly, so far they served more as a plot device than characters, appearing largely behind the scenes, than as part of a plot. Yes, there's Andrew/Lash, and-

-and there's no sign of Philinda, which did appear in the epilogue "Bouncing Back" alongside Static Quake and the FitzSimmons. WTF? Mind you, after "The Inside Man", AoS took a new, different, darker turn, so perhaps the relationships were discarded, especially if Andrew is coming back...eventually. Considering that even the regular cast members don't appear on the episodes fully anymore, (May and Simmons' storyline on the last episode vanished completely at the end, with the two of them trying to bond over Andrew's situation and not quite succeeding), I wouldn't bet on it. Yeah, the odds of AoS not getting renewed for S4 are still very low, but with all the cliches that are being thrown around, and the number of viewers still very low after "Parting Shot", it is probably more up in the air than the cast and crew of AoS would like it to be.

Beauty and the Beast, ep 1 - Oct 11

Yesterday I watched the pilot episode of Showcase's "Beauty and the Beast". What can be said about it?

For a start, confronted with such fantasy shows as "Grimm", "Once Upon a Time", their own "Lost Girl", etc, where fantasy and mystery genres collide, Showcase made B&B more Gothic, rather than fantasy and also more modern. The Beast, Vincent, is an ex-veteran of fighting in Afgan, where he apparently started mutating into a "monster", while Beauty is police officer Catherine, who seeks to find the criminals who killed her mother and almost killed her.

Does this sounds cliched? Certainly, for the plot of Vincent (Jay Ryan) and Catherine (Kristin Kreuk) is very much influenced by "Buffy's" relationship between the titular heroine (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Angel the vampire (David Boreanas) back in the 1990s. This means that Vincent and Catherine's relationship will have lots of angst, with Vincent's friend J.T. (Austin Bates) providing the occasional comic relief (and Austin isn't very good at it).

That's the more Gothic plotline. The second plotline, apparently is Catherine and her partner Vargas (Nina Lisandrello) go around solving crimes, as Rizzoli and Isles do, only without the lesbian subtext, since Catherine's "one true love" is Vincent. (Otherwise, the whole "Beauty and the Beast" idea is null and void.) That said, the detective portion of the show is good, showing very intense psychological work, similar to Disney's idea (in "Hunchback of Notre Dame") - "what makes a monster, what makes a man"? Guess B&B are going to show the audience, while the FBI appears to be the show's main bad guys, fighting Vincent for unknown reasons, and also possibly being connected to the death of Catherine's mom.

Sounds exciting? Perhaps, yet Ryan and Kreuk pull off the Gothic angle much more poorly than Boreanas and Geller did. When those two interact, it's the weakest part of the show, at least of the pilot. Guess they're just not a good couple, they lack the chemistry!

And speaking of what was lacking, DW came back today to Spike channel, at least from the first two seasons out of three. Its episodes were intermingled with episodes of other Spike series, like "1000 ways to die" and "Repo games". Coupled with the fact that throughout September DW's Facebook page was bombarded with links to the show's clips, all connected... to the upcoming Halloween makes me wonder if DW doesn't plan to return with a fourth season or something like that, or at least a holiday special. Got to admit, it was missed and its' return was appreciated.

So, a rather lopsided new show, and an old one coming back (at least temporarily). It could've been worse.