![]() ![]() However, the show treats him as an idiotic monster because he dares to be uncomfortable with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s attempts to micromanage his whole life. To be seen for what you really are.” Okay, phrased like that, he sounds like a bit of a sociopath. “You want to be recognised for your gift,” the eponymous handler goads him. So Chan’s desire to make a living and to pursue the fantasy of the American Dream is presented as a character vice. Although Coulson concedes that his file didn’t hint at sociopathy, “It did say he was a bit of a tool.” In The Girl in the Flower Dress, Chan’s dissatisfaction with how his life turned out is portrayed as nothing short of sociopathic entitlement. The Pilot seemed to take him at face value, even as it suggested that maybe he just wasn’t up to handling any sort of power with any sort of responsibility. Peterson is portrayed as relatively sympathetic, even if the show patronises him a bit. They seem to have been sold on the fantasy of doing great things and accomplishing the impossible, only to realise that the world doesn’t work that way. Peterson and Chan are both presented as hard-working stiffs who struggle to make ends meet. That’s obliviously bled through in the way the series has tried to deal with surveillance culture – hey! Coulson’s a cool guy! who cares if he reads your emails? – and it reverberates through the treatment of Peterson and Chan. I’ll admit that I’m quite surprised at how incredibly conservative the show seems to be. Chan is just an even less-developed version of Peterson from the pilot – the guy who was promised the American Dream, only to end up just scraping by. ![]() Given that these three episodes have been the first, third and fifth episodes, it seems that “lame supervillain origin story” is going to be the series’ procedural of choice. The plot is a hybrid of The Pilot and The Asset. And not just because the show seems to be shaping into another generic procedural. The Girl in the Flower Dress feels familiar. The show needs to find its own voice rather than offering a half-hearted imitation of another. is never going to out- NCIS NCIS, so even trying seems like a cynical move. However, it feels like a bit of a shame to take a pretty impressive premise and to turn it into a clone of another show that has been successful enough to secure its own spin-offs. After all, NCIS is the other show to beat on network television on Tuesday nights. Maybe the NCIS comparison is too harsh, but it’s something I keep coming back to when I watch it. It should be, as Coulson himself has already argued, “a front row seat at the craziest show on Earth.” Sadly, it actually seems like a front-row seat to a mediocre network procedural. It should something inviting the audience to suspend their disbelief. After all, this is what Agents of S.H.I.E. It’s a fairly basic and obvious connection, but it would feel more substantial than anything else in The Girl in the Flower Dress. As such, “magic” seems a pretty nice hook for any piece of fiction involving superheroes – those larger-than-life icons and recognisable characters capable of impossible deeds. More than that, though, magic is a common metaphor in stories about entertainment, because it allows writers to explore what entertainment actually is – the line between what the audience knows to be real, and what can’t possibly be the ability of impossible objects to influence and even move them. “Only tricks.” It’s an interesting hook, disguising incredible abilities as magic, and exploring what “magic” might actually mean in a universe populated with gods and monsters. “There’s no real magic there,” he concedes. When a pretty girls goes home with him, she asks him about his interest in magic, and he reflects that he’s become a bit disillusioned. A street magician is doing tricks that are completely impossible – controlling fire with his mind. ![]() ![]() There’s a moment early on where it looks like the show might be on to something vaguely interesting. ![]()
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