It’s Pilot Season – 2013

The Fall 2013 television season is upon us. And that means we’re inundated with the worst the networks have to offer. Each year brings us new series; a few will be great, but most will be unwatchable trash. There’s far too many horrible series out there for me to review them all. So, I’ve decided to watch the three biggest pilots of this season and review them. Please note, my reviews are not necessarily what I think of the entire series, but simply my thoughts on the pilot episode.

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD

Yawn.

Holy fuck, we start right out the gate with a major shitfest. Even on paper, Agents of SHIELD sounds like a horrible idea. An Avenger’s show without the Avengers in it? What could go wrong? Recently, Fox picked up a show for the 2014 season that would feature Gotham city without Batman. People started making fun of it immediately and/or bemoaning how terrible an idea it is to do a Batman show without Batman. And you know what? Those people are absolutely right. Nobody gives a fuck about Gotham City without Batman. So, why would we give a fuck about SHIELD without the Avengers? The reason The Avengers was a massive hit was everybody wanted to see Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and Hulk together on the big screen. I guaran-fucking-tee you that nobody said, “Ooohhh I can’t wait to see Agent Coulson and some other nondescript guys in black suits!” And that is exactly what Agents of SHIELD is. It’s a generic spy/sci-fi series about a bunch of nondescript guys in black suits. Watching it is painful. You just keep thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if Iron Man just blasted through a wall and started kicking some ass? But it’s not going to happen. Instead, we see a bunch of non-superheroes acting like a bunch of idiots. Thanks guys, if I wanted to see that, I could watch any other genre of film or television. From a conceptual standpoint alone, this series failed miserably.

Avengers Assemble for a Giant Circle Jerk

The forces of Photoshop are here to save the day!

Ever since the 2008 film Iron Man was a success, comic book studio Marvel has been trying to get people excited for a movie starring several of its most famous superheroes. Four years, and four movies, later Marvel has finally done it. Marvel has been cramming all their other movies with unnecessary Avengers bullshit, just for the sole reason of getting people interested in the upcoming Avengers movie. Did Thor need a huge Avengers sub-plot where agents of SHIELD took his hammer and he had to get it back? No. Did Iron Man 2 need a huge Avengers sub-plot with Samuel L. Jackson trying to recruit Tony Stark into SHIELD? No. In fact, that particular bullshit ruined the entire movie. And I won’t even get started on what a hokey piece of shit Captain America was. Every time Marvel shoe-horned in an Avengers sub-plot into one of their movies, all it did was serve as an annoying distraction from the rest of the film. It’s almost as if Marvel was telling the audience, “Don’t worry about all this origin story nonsense, we just want to get this out of the way so you can watch The Avengers later.”

I was certainly not excited for The Avengers. In my attempts to become a world-class blogger, I typically watch a film 6-12 months after theatrical release, just long enough for my review to be irrelevant. I figured I would try something new this time. And since I am such a big fan of Summer Shit Spectaculars, not to mention excruciatingly long lines, and headache-inducing 3D, I really had no choice but to see this movie opening weekend. And how did it turn out? Well, it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it was going to be. I didn’t feel like Marvel was taking a huge fart in my face. But that doesn’t mean the movie was particularly good either.