Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Created by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen.

Produced by ABC Studios, Marvel Television and Mutant Enemy.

Note: What follows in the paragraphs below isn’t insider knowledge. It’s speculation. And because that’s so, there’s no formal need for a spoiler warning. However since what follows below is informed and thoughtful speculation, and since those who fetishize spoiler warnings tend to get cranky in the absence of them, let’s allow that this can serve nicely as that.

Good? Onward then.

Here’s what you need to know about Agents of SHIELD. It’s the story about the latest, and most advanced to date, version of SHIELD’s LMD program. An LMD, as every funnybook reader who wasn’t born yesterday knows, stands for Life Model Decoy. They’re basically android replicas of real people, whose original purpose was to act as decoys for the human on which they are based. At first they were good for little else, and then only briefly, since their ability to mimic a real living person was rudimentary at best. But SHIELD scientists have been tinkering with them all along, as one does, making incremental advancements for decades.

Agent Phil Coulson (sometimes brilliantly), played by Clark Gregg is an LMD version of the original, who died in action (during the Avengers movie). He’s such an advanced model of an LMD that he has no idea he isn’t actually the real Phil Coulson.

In order to test how well he does function, the leaders of SHIELD have more or less set him loose to pick and choose his own missions. To further to explore his limits, they’ve chosen to complicate the test by saddling him with a number of SHIELD’s oddballs, loners, burnouts and general broken parts, to see how well an LMD can function in the cauldron of field missions, whilst leading a team of misfits. They’ve even thrown a rookie recruit in there, who’s almost entirely unsuited for SHIELD membership, and wouldn’t be allowed within a mile of sensitive SHIELD intel, if it didn’t serve a greater purpose – much in the same way real espionage agencies sometimes allow actual intel to slip into the hands of an enemy power, in order to make them believe something false, buried among the true stuff.

Under the guise of giving him a boatload of leeway, earned because of his past accomplishments and expertise, SHIELD has intentionally made the test as hard on its subject as they could. In fact, they wouldn’t mind too much if this were a test-to-destruction, since that’s the only way to really determine the limits of a new invention.

I’ve heard complaints from some viewers who can’t believe in the premises underlying the story – that a tight-assed espionage/military organization like SHIELD would ever allow a band of misfits to be assembled into a single team, then give them all the best toys, then let them pretty much choose their own missions. Put that way, it does seem an unlikely thing for any (even fictional) government bureaucracy to do. Unless that’s all part of the plan to see what this new Coulson thing can truly do, when largely left to his own devices. Then it makes perfect sense.

As I said above, this is only speculation. I have no access to inside information. This may not be at all what the story’s actually about. They may have assembled a cast of loners and misfits for no better reason than that sort of nonsense is the beloved, time-honored Hollywood cliché, suitable for endless repetition. Look at the endless number of Hollywood style Cops, Fighter Pilots and Military men who’re ceaselessly celebrated and rewarded for how often they don’t obey the rules, can’t fit in, and do everything by the seat of their collective pants. Agents of SHIELD may just be the latest iteration of this rule.

I doubt that though, for two compelling reasons. First, some of the creative personnel involved in this series have shown a past tendency to delve into those hoary old clichés and find new and original ideas to glean from them. Second, if this isn’t the case, then I’m a better writer than that bunch, which I am clearly not.

Therefore my guess must be right. No other possibility. Ipso facto reducto absurdimento! Case proven.