And Then We Came to the End: The Final Season of Breaking Bad

Final seasons are very hard to do.  When you have a show that has run for a few seasons, all of that accumulation of story leads to threads that feel like they need to be tied up.  With so many different masters to serve, results are often mixed at best.  One way to do it is The Sopranos way.  Its final season is one that largely abandons traditional plot in favor of drifting in a fog of overwhelming malaise, giving off the feeling that everything is coming to an end not with a bang, but a whimper.  Yet it could only get away with this because it was a show that never really cared about plot in the first place, preferring to deal in anticlimaxes and slow deflation.  The final season of The Sopranos will come up alot in this post, not only because it was split into two parts much in the way that Breaking Bad's was, but also because by bucking the usual trends of what we expect from a final season of television, it manages to be a major success.

Then there's the Breaking Bad way of doing a final season.  Breaking Bad is another show that benefits from having its construction be tailored in a way that suits a relatively mess-free conclusion.  Throughout its 5 season run, it remained so laser-focused that it never grew to an unwieldy size in the way that many other shows do.  It also wasn't a show that was very heavy on mythology, so there weren't any real notions of needing to "answer questions," like fans demanded of Lost and Battlestar Galactica.  By the time season 5b (which is what we'll use to denote the split halves of season 5, in true Sopranos fashion) rolled around, the show had mostly cleared all of the pieces off the board, leaving behind only the necessary players for the endgame.

That's an apt metaphor to make, since much of the beginning of 5b felt like an intricate game of chess between Hank and Walt.  Each of them are smart, prideful, determined men hellbent on winning, and watching them make moves to try to get a leg up on one another was a jolt to the early stages of the season.  It's some of the ballsiest storytelling that the show has ever done, making decisions in one episode where other shows would take four.  Though Hank tries to play a slow game when he first has the revelation that his brother-in-law is the infamous Heisenberg, Walt forces his hand, setting off the explosive confrontation between the two of them in Hank's garage.  From there, you them both lining up their pieces, with Hank trying to approach Skyler, Walt taping a confession that implicates Hank, and Hank getting Jesse on his side.  It's kind of crazy how far away all of that starts to feel, as it begins another passage around the time of Hank's death, both in terms of plot and tone.

I consider myself an agnostic person heavily leaning towards atheism, but for some reason, I really love shows that explore the idea of God in a very abstract sense, usually in the form of souls.  The Sopranos' final season was all about the loss of one's soul in a way.  The entire season was littered with moments of the show walking characters to the edge and asking them if they want to step back or dive into the black, and it's made all the more compelling because they're so unaware of this.  It's never explicitly said, but it's clear that there is a reckoning hovering just out of view.  Similarly, there is no mention of God in Breaking Bad, but it exists in a world that's clearly guided by the hand of some moral judge.  Just take a look at the plane crash at the end of season 2.  It's a moment that I don't love -- I feel like it goes out of its way just to make a thematic point -- but the point is one that reverberates throughout the series.  Actions have consequences, and the final season specifically hammered down on that idea.  The question was never whether Walt had lost his soul -- that's a given.  But would he ever become aware of it?  That very question is what makes "Ozymandias" such a magnificent episode -- it's the beginning of Walt truly understanding what he has wrought.  Hank is dead, Skyler and Walt Jr. consider him a monster, and even Holly doesn't recognize this man, calling for her mother after Walt absconds away with her.

The Albuquerque setting has always been one of the many things that makes Breaking Bad so unique, and season 5b seemed to utilize the desert setting more than any other season since the first.  It's not just for the sake of visual beauty either; it's because the whole half-season (or at least the back half of this half-season -- so many halves!) is all about erosion.  There's an argument to be made that "Ozymandias" is the true end of the show, and if that's so, then the last two episodes are the start of a new mode -- the denouement.  It's the first show that I've seen that truly devotes a large amount of time to the slow decline, the ending after the ending, instead of just allocating ten minutes to it (to reference The Sopranos again: that final season doesn't count because the entire show was about a slow decline).  I've seen some complaints about "Granite State" being uneven, and they're valid, but the solitary scenes of Walt in his New Hampshire cabin are so overpowering that they outweigh any of the busy work going on in Albuquerque.  Here we see a dying man with all of the time in the world to ruminate upon his failures and disappointments, his body fading in the same way his moral compass did so long ago.  It's no coincidence that the finale features numerous scenes of Walt being ghostlike, lurking in the background and watching the world function in the wake of his actions.  But it's not just Walt who faces erosion, everybody of significance gets chipped at during this final stretch: Jesse is enslaved; Marie loses her husband; and Skyler, most strikingly, sits alone in a dim house, a hollow version of herself.  Like the scene after the cold open in "Ozymandias," the episode that begins this meditative falling action, everything just slowly weathers away.

As for the finale itself, I think it did a great job of delivering the goods to the various subsets of the show's fandom.  There's that clockwork sense that everything is connected, as its revealed that the return of Gretchen and Elliot into the picture is a way for Walt to finally get the money he's made to Walt Jr.  There's the scientific ingenuity from the first few seasons in the contraption that Walt builds to take out Uncle Jack and the neo-Nazis.  But of course, my favorite moments were the ruminative portions, like the final scene between Walt and Skyler.  For the last few episodes, we saw Walt cling to the idea of family, the excuse he uses to feel like it all wasn't for nothing, so to see him admit to himself what we knew all along -- that he mostly did everything because he liked it -- was a really powerful moment.  It's one of the many scenes in the finale that made me feel for these characters that I thought I stopped having an emotional connection to two seasons ago.  

Of course, the ending has led to a large amount of internet hyperbole and annoying, near-sighted "BEST EVER" proclamations.  So is Breaking Bad the best show of all time?  Well personally, I'm not really interested in these kinds of conversations.  They're so clouded by a recency bias, diminishing the art of television by not respecting its history in the same way that we do with film.  Forget The Wire, The Sopranos, or Deadwood; when people blindly anoint Breaking Bad as the best of all time, they usually do so without even putting shows like St. Elsewhere or Hill Street Blues into perspective.  In the same way that we wouldn't go around shouting that a film that came out this year is the best of all time, maybe we should take a while to reflect on a TV show before we determine its placement in the pantheon of great television.

Is this the best final season of all time?  Well, like I said, final seasons are hard to do, and this one was not without its flaws.  First, I've always thought that Todd and his neo-Nazi family connection was a bit too convenient, and having them be the villains of the season made sense thematically (showing the gate that Walt opened for the kind of ruthless people who thrive in this world), but never quite worked for me.  That, coupled with the incorporation of Lydia into the show, felt like protruding threads in a tightly wound narrative.  Speaking of tightly wound, there were times where I felt like 5b (and 5a, for that matter) leaned too heavily on plot and led to it feeling a bit engineered, and Breaking Bad was always at its best when it had gears turning, while also giving off the impression of loose improvisation.  This mechanical nature of the final season never felt more pronounced than in "To'hajiilee," where characters make decisions mostly because it feels like the plot demands it, rather than it being what they'd actually do.  It results in a terrific and tense ending, but one that's cheapened by the leaps needed to get there.  It's still an incredible season despite those small quibbles, but the fitful, moody nature of The Sopranos' final season will always be something I respond to more.

Is this the best series finale of all time then? It certainly deserves to be in the pantheon of great finales, along with The Shield, Cheers, and Six Feet Under (a big fat "ugh" to that show in general, but almost everyone can agree on the finale); but I wouldn't call it my favorite.  The final 20 minutes of the episode, which I've deliberately neglected to mention until now, have an inevitability that makes it feel a bit perfunctory as a result.  Plus, once again, I've got to give a shout out to The Sopranos.  Shortly after "Felina" ended last night, many people on Twitter were quick to start up a "Breaking Bad = closure" vs. "The Sopranos = open-ended" argument.  Whether they love it or hate it, everybody tends to reduce the Sopranos finale to its ending, but what they forget is that the rest of "Made in America" is so beautiful and mesmerizing, which is why it's still my favorite series finale.  But regardless, "Felina" was terrific stuff and I felt satisfied when the credits rolled.  Most importantly, it stayed true to the characters until the very end.  Walt may have had his moment where he gets to return to the place he felt the most "alive," and happy music plays in the background, but we know the real deal.  He's left a wake of destruction and all of his loved ones are either dead or irrevocably damaged.  Once and for all we understand that he is not the one to root for, and while Heisenberg might be a name that's talked about in hushed whispers for a while, eventually it will fade.  In the end, everything dissolves.

Pilot Talk 2013: Week 2 of Fall's TV Pilots

Every TV season, networks bring out a new crop of shows, in hopes that they'll be the next big hit.  Pilot Talk is devoted to figuring out whether these shows are worth your time based on the first episode.

Back in the Game (ABC, Wednesdays at 8:30 PM)
My brother said it best when he saw a promo for Back in the Game, and remarked "this feels like it's more suited to be the plot of a movie."  The thing is, the show will quickly move away from focusing on its premise in the pilot, where we see Maggie Lawson's character start up a little league baseball team comprised of all the kids who were rejected from the rest of the teams in the league.  Until then, we'll probably be stuck with episodes that are as tedious as the pilot is.  The central relationship between Lawson and her father is supposed to be the anchor that keeps everything moored, but their dynamic is way too toothless and squeaky clean to generate any laughs or drama.  The entire rhythm of this show just felt off, wobbling along at its languid, laughless pace.  Overall, Back in the Game feels so confused.  It has all the trappings of a family sitcom, but the pilot is littered with cringeworthy lowbrow humor.  Nevertheless, it's a good fit for ABC's Wednesday comedy block, so I guess that's something.
Grade: C

The Blacklist (NBC, Mondays at 10:00 PM)
The Blacklist is a deeply silly show.  It's a blatant ripoff of Silence of the Lambs, it features James Spader hamming it up all over the place, and there's some really dumb plotting.  Yet it moves along at such a breakneck pace that you don't even notice how much the show is straining credulity at any given moment.  And sure, James Spader is chewing scenery in this pilot, but all of the scenes between him and the also strong Megan Boone are quite fun to watch.  It seems like his character is conveniently best buds with every terrorist on the planet, but you just sort of roll with it because the show does.  And for every bit of bad exposition (like the info dump in the form of a mission briefing), there's some really smart exposition (the self-profiling scene) to balance things out.  Basically, I'm kind of taken aback by how much I enjoyed The Blacklist, even if I was reluctant the whole time I was watching.  It's very stupid, but if it can keep delivering something as thrilling as that incredible highway setpiece in the middle of the episode, I'll stay on for the ride.
Grade: B

The Crazy Ones (CBS, Thursdays at 9:00 PM)
I think I've cracked the Robin Williams Code.  Nobody actually thinks he's funny; he just commits to one of his bits and goes on for so long that eventually audiences come around through the sheer power of attrition.  He's just trying so hard that you get groggy enough to laugh in delirium.  And Robin Williams is working very hard in the pilot of The Crazy Ones, to the point where the show feels completely overwhelmed by his presence.  I didn't enjoy this show, but I laughed at it more than many other comedy pilots because, I don't know...it just sort of wears you down.  It's a shame that Robin Williams derails things with his interminable bits, because the rest of the cast is lined with funny people.  Say what you will about Sarah Michelle Gellar as a dramatic actor, but she's got great comedic timing, and James Wolk is just as game.  I could see a version of this show being a solid comedy if they just dialed down the Robin Williams factor, but I doubt that'll happen.
Grade: C+

The Goldbergs (ABC, Tuesdays at 9:00 PM)
Hey, did you know that The Goldbergs is set in the 1980s?  If you didn't, you'd quickly be reminded of it in the first few minutes.  And then the next few minutes after that.  And the next few minutes after that.  There isn't really much else to the show than the fact that it tosses out references REO Speedwagon, Flava Flav, jean jackets, Back to the Future, and everything else that signifies the decade.  Perhaps the show pushes its "HEY LOOK AT THE 80s" message because even it knows that it's so bland, there's nothing else there to talk about.  There's a family at the center of it all, but they're all archetypes -- the nerdy kid, the wacky mom, the hard-nosed dad.  Yet the one character who feels the least like an archetype, the older brother, is also the one who induces the most groans in the pilot.  Oh, and did I mention that this show is set in the 1980s?
Grade: C-

Hostages (CBS, Mondays at 10:00 PM)
Like The Blacklist, its night and timeslot competitor on NBC, Hostages is a deeply silly show.  The problem is that it doesn't embrace its silliness at all.  Where The Blacklist zealously bathes in the pulpiness of its premise, Hostages tries to take the idea of a surgeon (Toni Collette) being forced to lethally botch a surgery on the president of the United States seriously.  With that premise, you wouldn't think that the show could be boring, even if it was terrible, but Hostages is absolutely somnolent.  Much of the episode takes place in Collette's house, where her and her family are being held hostage, and it's supposed to be tense, but it ends up being listless and enervating.  And I haven't even mentioned Dylan McDermott, who's giving a performance worthy of his work on American Horror Story in terms of its awfulness.  Or the bad dialogue, like a woman being told "you're a 10, honey."  It's not even very coherently edited either.  This show is just kind of a mess -- a soporific mess.
Grade: D+

Lucky 7 (ABC, Tuesdays at 10:00 PM)
This pilot could've been an interesting exploration of the lower-middle class and what they do to get by, and then once they win the lottery, it could transition into telling a story about these same people adjusting to their newfound wealth and realizing that it's not enough to fill the holes that existed within them.  Lucky 7 is decidedly not that, and unfortunately it trades in what could've been a quiet and nuanced show for full-on melodrama.  But I don't want to critique what the show could've been, let's talk about the show we got.  My main gripe is that it just doesn't earn any of its emotion.  We don't get enough definition from these characters to be invested in what winning the lottery means to them.  There's a scene near the end of the episode where one of the characters has a teary breakdown, but who is this person and why are we supposed to care?  It tries to sell you on the idea that these people who just work at a gas station together are like a family, and it doesn't work at all.  I really wanted to like this one because of its premise, and there are moments that make me want to watch the second episode, but not enough to make me actually do it.
Grade: C+

The Michael J. Fox Show (NBC, Thursdays at 9:30 PM)
The Michael J. Fox Show serves as a bit of a meta-narrative for Michael J. Fox's real life story -- it's about a beloved, award winning actor returning to TV after being diagnosed with a debilitating disease.  Lest we misunderstand the motives behind the show, Fox's character quickly comments on the fact that he's returning because he wants to work, not because it would make a inspirational puff piece.  And the show as a whole combats any suspicions of emotional manipulation by frequently making Fox's character and his Parkinson's the butt of jokes.  Unfortunately, the Parkinson's becomes a double-edged sword -- it gives the show a strong focus and point of view, but the pilot leans far too heavily on it as a source of comedy.  Maybe they just need to get it out of their system in the first few episodes before they move away from relying on it, but for now it's pretty tiresome.  The biggest problem, however, is the thing that is plaguing many of the new comedies this year -- it isn't very funny.  Really, only the always entertaining Wendell Pierce generates any laughs in the first episode.  Luckily, the cast is strong enough that even when the script isn't making you laugh, the actors work to at least make you smile.  Plus, the whole thing goes down pretty easily, which is more than I can say about some of these other pilots.
Grade: B-

Mom (CBS, Mondays at 9:30 PM)
People always talk about Anna Faris' underutilized talent, and now that she's the lead of a multi-cam sitcom, it seems crazy that the world was trying to make her a movie star when this is the perfect medium for her strengths.  She's got this big theatricality to her, and it's basically engineered for the format, which is almost like a stage play.  Couple that with Allison Janney, who plays the mother with whom she has a strained relationship, and what you've got is a show that's much better than its Chuck Lorre Productions pedigree would lead you to believe.  Faris and Janney sell the material, but the reason why the comedy works is because much of it comes from a real emotional place: resentment, struggle, and disappointment.  The pilot deftly hides exposition in conflict, and the fraught relationship between Faris and Janney really centers everything.  It's a multi-cam sitcom, so of course it feels the need to underline things a little more than I'd like, but I came away from it quite surprised.
Grade: B

Trophy Wife (ABC, Tuesdays at 9:30)
The Trophy Wife premiere is very much a premise pilot -- relying heavily on narration to start off the episode -- but it sets things up very economically.  It's also another show that proves that it's much easier to make a funny show when you've got a great cast.  Malin Ackerman may be known by many as "that horrible actress from Watchmen" but anybody who's seen Adult Swim's Childrens Hospital knows that she's got incredible comedic chops.  She's very good at displaying daft charm, and that comes into play when she has do a huge physical gag in the middle of the episode that ends up being the biggest laugh of the pilot.  The kid actors are also surprisingly tolerable, mostly because they stay out of the way, although I'm not sure about the youngest one yet (who gives me Manny from Modern Family vibes -- not a good thing).  If there's one quibble to make, it's that the show feels a little overstuffed, introducing not one, but two ex-wives of Ackerman's husband (played by Bradley Whitford) to deal with.  Regardless, there's alot of upside to this, and I can see it becoming one of the major successes of this TV season.  It made me smile alot, which classifies it as a solid episode of comedy, but an even more impressive pilot.
Grade: B+

Pilot Talk 2013: Week One of Fall's TV Pilots

LOOK AT THIS STUPID LOGO

Every TV season, networks bring out a new crop of shows, in hopes that they'll be the next big hit.  Pilot Talk is devoted to figuring out whether these shows are worth your time based on the first episode.

Ahh, another year, another season of networks delivering their (mostly mediocre) new shows.  For the past few years, I've been trying to watch as many pilots as possible, which is always pretty tortuous, and I end up mostly just watching all the comedies and skipping out on the dramas that I don't care about.  Sitting through a half-hour sitcom that isn't very good is one thing, but a terrible hour-long drama is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.  Apparently, I hate myself though, because I figured I'd try to watch and review almost every pilot in this fall season now that I've got this blog.  Who knows whether I'll make it to the end, because the rigors of college are calling and early screener buzz doesn't bode well for my enjoyment of this process.  I'm planning on putting one-paragraph reviews of all the pilots that air in a given week all in one post.  This first one is being posted in the middle of the week because Whedon Week pushed my scheduling back, but expect the rest of this series to release at the end of every week.  So let's start out by taking a look at the three Fox pilots that aired last week.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox, Tuesdays at 8:30PM)

The most refreshing thing about Brooklyn Nine-Nine was how well-structured it was.  The pilot hits all of the notes that it should, introducing you to these characters you're going to be watching in the first act, showing you they're funny in the second, and deepening them in the third, all while telling a story that gets wrapped up by the end of the episode.  It seems like such a simple, bare-minimum requirement, but so many pilots fail to do so (see: the show below).  Luckily, Brooklyn Nine-Nine's got more to it than mere competence.  Not only is the police department setting (which we haven't seen in a network comedy since 1982 with Police Squad! and Barney Miller) refreshing, but the cast is surprisingly diverse.  Most network shows are determined to fill their ensembles with as many white people as possible, but this cast has two Hispanic actors and two African Americans (whose characters are the two highest on the chain of command), and feels like it more accurately reflects the way a police precinct in Brooklyn would look.  It certainly isn't perfect, but pilots rarely are.  Andy Samberg is one of those guys who can be very funny when properly managed, but in the wrong hands his silly charm can easily transform into grating immaturity.  There were times where he ventured into the latter territory, and in the future he'll need to dial it back, or else his character will become tiresome.  The first act also probably spends a bit too much time with the set-up and is largely laughless, but the episode becomes much sharper when the pace picks up and the laughs increase in the second act.  Brooklyn Nine-Nine's got all of the necessary pieces -- great cast, writing staff with a high pedigree, the dynamic between Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher -- and I can easily see the show finding a way to put those pieces together perfectly and becoming one of my favorite comedies.
Grade: B+

Dads (Fox, Tuesdays at 8:00 PM)

Much has been said about the apparent racism in the Dads pilot, and yeah, it certainly is racist.  There's a joke about the size of an Asian man's penis, one of the titular dads mistakes Vanessa Minnillo for a maid just because she's Hispanic, and Brenda Song is forced to dress up in a Sailor Moon outfit to impress Chinese businessmen.  But aside from that, the show is more offensive simply because of how terrible it is.  Throughout the course of this episode's 30 minutes, I found myself thinking that the show felt like it was made by somebody who doesn't understand how to make television, despite there being many TV veterans involved behind the scenes.  The whole thing just seems so poorly constructed, shuffling along for an interminable half hour, without a laugh to be found.  A scene between the two dads trying to pass the check off on one another at a diner is the closest scene that comes to being funny, but even that's pretty dismal.  And maybe the racism would be slightly more tolerable if there was any kind of perspective to it.  Instead, we're just supposed to automatically love these characters and laugh at every offensive thing that they say, but they're all vile human beings.  Dads isn't even an entertaining kind of terrible, the kind you can sit back and hate-watch.  This pilot wore me out, and left me more depressed than any episode of a "comedy" should.
Grade: F

Sleepy Hollow (Fox, Mondays at 9:00 PM)
Based on the logo at the top, the inane trailer, and the fact that it's got three of the biggest peddlers of schlock in Hollywood (Len Wiseman, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci) at the helm, I was expecting Sleepy Hollow to be the worst new show of the fall season.  But it's surprisingly got a few good things going for it.  Like all Fox shows, the pilot is absolutely gorgeous, and there's an atmospheric sense of wonder in the early scenes.  It also doesn't wait around to get to the point, strapping you in and telling you "There was a guy who cut off another guy's head once and now they're both back.  You know the drill."  It doesn't stop there either, seemingly throwing everything at the viewer: magical priests, a glowy eyed horse, mystic birds, mysterious white trees, a police file labeled "occultism," a woman burnt for witchcraft revealed to be an actual witch, a head in a jar, a headless man with a machine gun, and some sort of ram demon.  And yet, my biggest problem with Sleepy Hollow is that it's just not crazy enough.  Sure, I just listed a bunch of things that seem to make it pretty bizarre, but all of those ludicrous elements are presented with such a bored shrug.  It's a show that tries to be campy but falls flat, especially when it attempts to derive humor from Ichabod Crane's fish-out-of-water situation, despite Tom Mison's agreeable charm.  I don't see how this show can last very long based on its premise, particularly when the first episode burns through about 40 ideas, but the writers need to find one brand of crazy and turn the dial up to 11 if there's going to be any hope that it gets better.
Grade: C+

Whedon Week: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Pilot Review

Well folks, the wait is finally over.  Whedon Week has come to a close, because the Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot aired last night.  And with the conclusion of the waiting is the end of all the hopes and fears that came with it.  That period of anticipation was when the show could turn out to be anything.  At its worst, it could be a gigantic failure, detrimentally affected by its status as a TV show, and filled with corny instances of people saying "Oh hey, you just missed Tony Stark a few minutes ago..."  At its best, it could tap into the magic of Joss Whedon, perfectly melding comedy, drama, and action-adventure to tell the kind of small-scale stories that happen on the periphery of the Marvel world.  With just a pilot to go on, it's hard to tell which of the two options this show is, but I'd lean more towards the latter.

The first half of the episode is a slick introduction to the world and its characters, taking steps toward developing the kind of group that makes every other Joss Whedon show so strong.  Of course, the question on everybody's mind is "What's the deal with Agent Coulson"?  The pilot does a good job of providing an explanation for why he's alive after being stabbed to death by Loki in The Avengers, while also making it clear that there's a deeper mystery going on under the surface.  Whedon chooses to have two different characters be the entry-point into this world, which is an interesting, albeit slightly unnecessary choice.  Out of the two, Skye, the computer hacker, is definitely the more fun one.  Chloe Bennet fills what I call "The Dushku Role," offering up a heap of sass, but replacing edginess with and enjoyable effervescence.  On the other hand, there's Agent Ward, the stoic lone wolf of the group.  For now, both he and Agent Melinda May are mostly there for the action, and their characters are the least defined so far.  Meanwhile, Agent Simmons and Agent Fitz are the most Whedon-y of the bunch, and are the best as a result.  Over the course of the pilot, you get a complete sense of their dynamic, and the way they frenetically bounce off of each other is a real delight to watch.  The cast may not be as fully formed as those on other Whedon shows, but I can see them gelling together as the season progresses.

When Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was first announced, many people brought up Gotham Central, the DC comic about that focuses on the police officers in Gotham City, as a reference point.  It's an apt comparison to make since it focuses on S.H.I.E.L.D., the everyday heroes whose work gets overlooked in the midst of all the capes and cowls.  But it's also reminiscent of the Kurt Busiek comic, Astro City, in the way that it deals with the denizens of a city coming to grips with the existence of superheroes walking (and flying) among them.  It's an interesting expansion of the world we've only seen highlights of in the Marvel films.  And while there may be something hokey like a character saying "He's got the best spy score since Agent Romanov," there are also very cool nods to the movies, most notably the Extremis arc from Iron Man 3 coming into play.  Joss Whedon shows have always been instilled with a deep mistrust of authority, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. takes his pet theme and turns it on its head, asking "what happens when you are the mistrusted authority"?

I've seen some complaints about the pilot, stating that it's too straightforward, and I'm willing to admit that the show feels a bit safe so far.  It's never more evident than in one of the final scenes, which teases a moment that feels like the kind of shocking and dark turn that Whedon is know for, only to reveal a rosier conclusion.  Still, I balk at the claim of the pilot lacking surprises when it features that terrific scene where Coulson injects Agent Ward with truth serum.  Aside from that, there are little moments of spark that come in the form of quippy lines and snappy direction throughout the episode.  The real concern is whether the show can ever truly develop a unique personality with so many cooks in the kitchen.  ABC has alot invested in this show's success, which leads to the kind of stifling network interference that ruins shows.  The behind the scenes rumors about script difficulties don't do much to dispel the fear that ABC isn't letting Whedon and his crew just be great.  For now though, let's put the worrying aside and enjoy this pilot, which is solid enough to hope that the show can blossom into something special.

Grade: B

Whedon Week: The top 30 episodes of Joss Whedon's shows

This was, by far, the hardest list to produce.  How do you narrow a total of 294 episodes down to a list of 30?  After a long and difficult ranking process, I finally was able to do it.  I wanted to try to have a well-distributed representation, or else it would mostly just be Buffy episodes, due to the fact that it's my favorite, and the nature of the show allowed for there to be more standouts.  So the order might be a little wonky, so as to not clog the top 10 with one show, and also because every episode here is so good that it doesn't matter whether something is 24 and another is 23.  I tend to have pretty different favorites from others (I love "Doublemeat Palace" -- that's all you need to know about me), so I imagine many Whedon fans would be pretty annoyed by this list, seeing as there are some big ones missing.  But overall, I'm pretty happy with it.