Looks like Agents of SHIELD is finally going to end after the next season. What a great, weird, little show. It’s consistently been one of my favorite shows since about the midpoint of Season 1. www.wired.com/story/far…
@DrOct It should've ended last season. Is it any good this season? I've not watched it beyond the first episode.
@pratik It's been great this season! They wrote the end of last season before they knew they'd be renewed, but definitely left enough threads to pick up this season. I think the shorter season this time around has been good. Things have moved quickly.
@DrOct @pratik I’m realizing that one of my complaints about short-season programs is that you don’t get enough character development, since it’s always competing for time with “pure” plot (moving the overall narrative/story forward)—that was the locus of my main complaints about the otherwise-great Riverdale S1, for instance.
However, when you take something that’s a few years old with well-established characters like Agents of SHIELD, the shorter season seems to work OK. We’re still learning new things about characters (SPOILER ALERT: that episode with you-know-who and you-know-who, for instance), but things are moving along at a pretty good clip; it definitely feels like we’re in the right place in the season right now, while still fitting within a summer.
@smokey I'm not sure the length of the season was the problem for character development in Riverdale. Season 1 was fun, but I think with the hindsight of the next two seasons it's clear that the problems with the writing were just becuase the writing isnt' very good, not because the season was too short or anything else. They never got any better about character development or sacrificing character motivation at the altar of "what the plot needs this week."
But with Agents of SHIELD, I think there are two things working in its favor: 1) We already know these characters (as you point out), so there's less need for development, and when they do it they can build on what's come before, and 2) The writing is good and the writers are good at doing a lot of character work with even just a few short scenes.
Also, it's a show that seems to care more about character development in general. That episode you mention was almost entirely character development with only minimal plot advancement but it didn't feel like it bogged the show down at all. Also because the rest of the season has been moving so quickly it felt like a nice short break to have an episode that was almost entirely character driven rather than plot driven.
@DrOct I think you’re right on all points 👍 (With Riverdale, I think I tend to look at S1 as the measuring stick and the rest failing to measure up, as opposed to seeing the series as a whole…in which case, the short S1 was better than the rest because it allowed less time for mistakes/going off the rails, not because the writing vastly superior overall—and they had to do some character development then because we had no idea who these people were to begin with….)