Getting ready for Agents of SHIELD midseason premiere

There are only a few days left before the midseason premiere of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD on March 8th. A lot has happened to Agent Coulson and his group. There have been some setbacks, some victories, and some twists and turns. Before we think about the future of SHIELD, let's take a quick look back at SHIELD's past.

SEASON ONE Introduced us to a resurrected Coulson and his mobile response team meant to deal with mysterious situations in a world of miracles. The big bad of this season is called the Clairvoyant while Coulson searches for the secrets of his return to life. While handling some strange cases and working to take down the Clairvoyant, the team grows and SHIELD collapses (this is in direct connection of the MCU movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier). Hydra moles within SHIELD are exposed including a member of Coulson's team. The Clairvoyant is also revealed to be a SHIELD/Hydra agent. This story arc concludes with the Clairvoyant's defeat and a setup for next season dealing with Skye's father and the side effects to Coulson's resurrention.

 SEASON TWO Introduced us to Skye's parents and the Inhumans (people given powers by alien crsytals). Coulson's team fights for SHIELD to regain public and government trust. As Coulson learns of his connection to the Inhumans and his leadership is called into question. It is reveled that Coulson isn't the only SHIELD agents left trying to do good, but these agents don't trust Coulson and try to unseat him as director. Inhumans also plot against SHIELD. As this story arc finishes up, Skye is the first of Coulson's Inhuman agents, the rogue Inhumans are defeated, and Coulson makes a sacrifice. In the aftermath, Simmons disappears.

 SEASON THREE Focuses on Coulson's team working to get agent Simmons back as well as the growing population of Inhumans. We meet the government's reponse to Inhumans in the ATCU. Also the threat of a rogue Inhuman who is killing other Inhumans is revealed. As our heroes pursue the Inhuman killer, it is revealed that he is someone close to home. Coulson tries to foster an alliance with the ATCU and works to bring Simmons back. Ward works with Hydra who are also interested in the place where Simmons is; only to find an ancient power. At the end of the first half of the season, Fitz and Coulson bring back Simmons while Ward brings back something else.

That brings us to now. Are you ready for "Bouncing Back" on March 8th (the next episode of MARVEL's Agents of SHIELD)? What was your favorite part of Season Three so far? Leave a comment...

Did CWs Flash jump the KING Shark?

I've already said before that when it comes to superheroes, I'm rather bias. So when my buddy Loose asked me about this week's episode of the Flash on CW, I was ready to talk it up. The meta of the week was King Shark and the Jaws references were awesome!



SPOILER ALERT! if you haven't seen the episode, you are about to enter spoiler land...

The after the final act of the episode we see the continuation of the scene from the last episode where Zoom reaches through the breach and apparantly kills Jay Garrick and pulls him through the breach. Ok, first thing here... why is he so close to the breach? I know its about to close, but still that just seems silly. Its not like he wasn't spending most of the episode trying to stablize them...but I digress.

So Zoom carries Jay's body and drops it in his layer as the mysterious man in the metal mask looks on from his cell. Then Zoom takes off his mask and reveals that he is Jay.

Ok. So if you saw the episode, then you saw Zoom's face. While I kind of figured that was coming, having my chat with Loose got me to thinking. He said that he was disappointed in the reveal of Zoom and that Flash had "jumped the shark!" If you don't know the expression, GOOGLE it. While I appreciated his pun (King Shark/jumped the shark...try to keep up), I asked what he meant. I liked the episode. The Jaws references like "I think we need a bigger Flash..." were cool, the guest appearance of Diggle and Lyla, while we watched Barry, Cisco, Wells, Wells' daughter, and Catlin deal with the consequences of their Earth 2 visit, Jay's death, and the fact that all the breaches were closed. I even enjoyed how the CW had Wally West continue to be a cocky jerk when dealing with Barry. So I liked the episode and I didn't know what he was talking about... then he said Zoom... And then it made sense. Zoom's reveal was almost a parallel to the Reverse Flash's reveal. Wells/Thawne was a mentor to Barry, kept secrets and manipulated others, and as the Reverse Flash he overpowered and outclassed Flash. So Jay Garrick/Zoom is the basically the same. He's someone that the team trusted and he's been manipulating things.

Still though, I think a better Zoom reveal would've been Barry's dad or Wally West maybe. For Zoom to be Jay at best seems like lazy writing and at worse is bad writing. Eventhough I concede that Jay Garrick being Zoom wasn't the best writing choice, I'm still going to watch the Flash. And while I think there were better choices, its not a game changer for me at this point. I still love Cisco enough to watch the show for just his nerd commentary.

What do you think? Did the Flash jump the shark or did he just kick King Shark's butt? Leave a comment about your opinion.

DC Legends of Tomorrow in 4 words

Four words...
Strong characters...weak story

SPOILERS WARNING!!!  If you haven't seen the DC Legends of Tomorrow pilot parts 1 and 2, you might want to stop reading.



Ok. Thanks to the CW shows The Flash and Arrow we have a cast of interesting character interpretation for this time traveling super team show. I say interpretations because all of the heroes in the Legends show aren't original, but versions of comic book characters. Unfortunately for the show, it suffers from having so many cool characters that it can't seem to get out of its own way.

The show's premise, time traveling to stop the evil Vandal Savage. Ever since the tv show The Voyagers or the Back to the Future movies, I didn't mind time travel as a backdrop/plot device for a story. Its been done before and it will be done again. Unfortunately the CW has done time travel with The Flash so much that its getting a little old. In fact several members of the team faced Vandal Savage in the series prequel episodes of The Flash and Arrow and were saved due to The Flash traveling back in time. DC Legends of Tomorrow time "expert", Rip Hunter, talks about the ramifications and problems with corrupting the time line...case in point As our team of heroes travels back to the 1970s, Professor Stein almost misses meeting his wife for the first time and thus erasing their marriage. Also a piece of the Atom's suit falls into the hands of Vandal Savage which could've provided him with 2016 tech if he managed to reverse engineer it. Then Rip Hunter proceeds to help his heroes kill Vandal Savage's troopers in an all out but utterly pointless battle at the episode's climax. While admittedly fun to watch, I wonder what effect on the time line their deaths will have...oh its okay though I guess because they're evil.  Is the team going to have to have Atom sit out on missions due to how easily his technology fell into the wrong hands and nearly corrupted time? Still, for as easily as they got it back, maybe that's something that will happen every episode.

They figure out a way to kill Vandal Savage, but they don't succeed because Hawkman isn't the one who has to deal the final blow, its Hawkgirl who must do it. Information that while the Hawks didn't know seemed to be clear to Rip Hunter who chose not to tell them until after Hawkman was killed.

Vandal Savage is immortal, but when did he develop the super powers that all the campy slasher film villains have? The disappear without a trace power.

The battle at the climax wasn't the only seemingly pointless battle for our team within both parts of the pilot.

What's even more interesting is that our team fails at every turn. Vandal Savage is one step ahead of them and if that's not enough, our heroes just can't stop messing up. These are the folks who are going to save the world?

Still the show is visually stunning and stimulating to every superhero loving bone I have. I'm really surprised that I found so much fault in the show actually. If I found merit in the Fox Fantastic Four remake it says a lot about DC's Legend of Tomorrow that I had any issues with it.

What did you think of DC Legends of Tomorrow?

Top 25 list of Twilight Zone episodes

The Twilight Zone has been a part of me almost all of my life. it started in middle school when I would stay up on the weekends and watch an episode while the rest of the house was asleep (the opening eye used to freak me out). After I got older,my sister and I would watch Twilight Zone marathons together. My sister moved away (we still call and text each other during TZ marathons), but thankfully my wife and I watch the Twilight Zone marathons now. So the Twilight Zone has not only been a part of my life, but my family as well.

Part of my love for the show has been seeing some of my favorite actors like Burgess Meredith, Roddy McDowall, and Peter Folk in their past performances. It was kind of cool seeing them after I had admired them in the present.

I noticed these articles posted by twitter folks @WendyLovesJesus @TheNightGallery which listed their favorite episodes:

25 Episodes in Search of a Favorite Twilight Zone

Will My 25 Favourite TZs Please Stand Up?

So I was inspired to write my own top list.

1. To serve man
2. Will the real Martian please stand up?
3. Living Doll
4. Invaders
5. Dead man's Shoes
6. The Obsolete man
7. Eye of the Beholder
8. The Howling man
9. He's alive!
10. The Hunt
11. The Monsters are due on Maple street
12. The Brain Center at Whipple's
13. The Little People
14. The Shelter
15. A most unusual camera
16. The Old Man in the cave
17. Third from the Sun
18. What you need
19. A short drink from a certain fountain
20. The Fear
21. The Mirror
22. A penny for your thoughts
23. A nice place to visit
24. People are alike all over 
25. Hocus-Pocus and Frisby

It was difficult picking only 25...Honorable mentions to episodes: Its a Good Life, Uncle Simon, a game of pool, From Agnes-with love, and I shot an arrow into the air.  

I linked each episode to a Wikipedia page, although I suggest viewing the episodes. It seems that sometimes things are lost in translation as well as sometimes you get your own meaning from each.

The series went on for 5 seasons and over 160 episodes. While I've been watching the show for over three decades, I still haven't seen every episode and probably never will. Who knows, maybe if I let myself get too obsessed with watching I may just find myself watching episodes IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE....

What are your favorite Twilight Zone episodes?