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TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “Ragtag” By: Brandon Wolfe Agent Ward is boring. This is one of the immutable truths of the universe. The character is such a black hole that he manages to stand out as bland on a series populated entirely with flavorless ciphers. He is a perfect storm of dull, the yawn-generating point of intersection between generic actor, stock character and bad writing. Even going as far as to make him a surprise villain hasn’t managed to successfully nudge him into the realm of interesting. At best, it merely thrust an interesting development into his orbit. If ever a television character could be chalked up as a lost cause, too hopelessly humdrum to continue to bother with, it has to be him. Unfortunately, boring is where ‘ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D .’ hangs its hat, and so it sets up “Ragtag” as a means of finding out just what makes Agent Ward tick. His HYDRA turnabout seemed pretty clear-cut. We had previously been told that he was recruited

TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “Nothing Personal” By: Brandon Wolfe ‘ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ’ needs all the help it can get at this point, so it wastes no time this week bringing in a secret weapon in the form of Maria Hill, the agent played by Cobie Smulders in the films. Because we associate Hill with two good films instead of with this show, she is a sight for bored eyes. Now working for Stark Industries in the wake of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s implosion -- and the purpose of her new employment was left vague in ‘ The Winter Soldier ’, but is explained here as a means of personal protection behind Stark’s crack team of lawyers, making this the show’s first-ever instance of being useful – Hill is cornered on the street by May, who asks for help with Coulson, whom she worries might have been compromised by HYDRA during his resurrection. Hill, however, is resistant, so May strikes out on her own. Back at Providence, Coulson and the team are trying to piece together what happe

TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “The Only Light in the Darkness” By: Brandon Wolfe I want to like ‘ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D .’ Honest, I really do. For as much fun as mocking its ineptitude has consistently been, I still find myself rooting for it to turn it all around. I don’t know how it could possibly do that at this point without a top-to-bottom shakeup, but I see that Marvel logo at the beginning and that Mutant Enemy logo at the end and I want to believe that the stuff sandwiched in between could surprise us all at a moment’s notice and become the show we wanted and expected it to be. But “The Only Light in the Darkness” is not the episode where that happens. Ward is back with the group at Providence and informs Coulson of the inmates set free from the Fridge by Garrett, whom Ward lies and claims to have killed. One of the more notorious of those criminals is Marcus Daniels (known as Blackout in the comics, though no one calls him that here, because this show is no

TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “Providence” By: Brandon Wolfe It was generally agreed upon that ‘ Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D .’ improved a bit with last week’s episode, if just by its usual dire standards. The show’s problems, primarily its soul-deadening mediocrity on the plotting, character and dialogue fronts, remained in play, but with the events of ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ acting as a catalyst, and with a final twist that seemed surprisingly gutsy for a show that has been anything but, ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ managed to rise to a rare level of basic watchability. You take your victories wherever you can. ‘Providence’ does not present us with a series now crystallized into focus, but ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ is still getting along as far as it can by swimming in ‘The Winter Soldier’s’ wake. S.H.I.E.L.D. has officially fallen as an organization and the fallout has left it exposed and with only three bases confirmed as secure. Coulson’s team are now m

TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. “Turn, Turn, Turn” By: Brandon Wolfe *This review contains spoilers for ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’* ‘ Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ’ has been one of the more baffling disappointments in recent memory. This is a series that is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that is spearheaded by pop-culture maestro Joss Whedon and that stars Clark Gregg as the beloved, resurrected Agent Phil Coulson. Given its pedigree, this should have been one of the easiest slam-dunks imaginable, yet one would be hard-pressed to find anything the series has done right in its first season. From its blandly attractive cast to its pedestrian writing to its dull, nonsensical stabs at cultivating a mythology to its utterly uninvolving team of characters, ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ seems less like an extension of the wonderful Marvel film series and more like some lame syndicated show from the ‘90s that aired between Pamela Anderson’s ‘V.I.P.’ and

Former Big Love polygamist Bill Paxton — who showed off his action chops in movies like Twister — will begin an arc of at least four episodes on ABC's Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D . starting in late February or early March. "We wanted to bring in a rough-and-tumble former cohort of Agent Coulson [ Clark Gregg ] with a little bit of attitude and cigar-smoking swagger," says executive producer Jed Whedon. Paxton plays Agent John Garrett , who will work alongside agents Ward ( Brett Dalton ) and May ( Ming-Na Wen ) and "comes into the fold in a very surprising way," says executive producer Maurissa Tancharoen. "He is the type who wants to stay out in the field no matter how high-level he gets." In the comic Elektra: Assassin , S.H.I.E.L.D. turned Garrett into a cyborg to save his life after he was injured in the line of duty — but all Whedon will say is that "when Garrett got his promotion to Level 7, he refused to sit behind a desk and