Agents of Shield: Season 4

When Agents of SHIELD first launched back in 2013, I had high hopes for it.  As the seasons wore on though, it became clear that Agents of SHIELD was just never going to recover from its conversion from a Firefly-inspired episodic adventure show (most of season 1) to a Buffy-esque supernatural serial drama (seasons 2 and 3).  Five episodes into Season 4, I can conclusively say I was wrong.  Season 4 is awesome.

I think that at some point, the production team for MAOS (Marvel's Agents of SHIELD) got slapped with a serious wake-up call.  I imagine that that point was when Daredevil launched, and was way better.  Both shows come out of Marvel's TV division, so the same people (in a sense) are making all of these shows.  Based on my math, Season 4 is about as quickly as they could really take action to imitate the Netflix model and get their show back under control, and most importantly, make it good again.  Because the problems with MAOS were always related to storytelling and not to their pithy dialogue or acting, I imagine they will not have too much trouble going forward.

The first segment of season 4 is entitled "Ghost Rider".  That is because the action revolves heavily around the introduction of Ghost Rider.  Not Johnny Blaze, but Robbie Reyes (who I'm told is the newest "Marvel NOW" character to use the title).  I anticipate that the second segment of season 4 will revolve around some other similar comics character (rumors suggest the Punisher).

This is very exciting to me because I've always wanted Agents of SHIELD to be good, but it has never seemed like it's had a well-though out structure until now.  As of Season 4, they have finished their original myth arc.  It seems as though going forward it will likely be more like the Netflix shows, but will explore "low-tier" characters against a backdrop of SHIELD.