S.H.I.E.L.D.

It’s been known for a little while that ABC was in the process of developing a live action drama based in the world of the Avengers. You know, that wildly successful movie that came out this year and made buckets of money? Yeah, it surprised me that they would milk that cow some more too.

The good news is that god of geekdom Joss Whedon is attached to develop and write for the show. What this show would be was anyone’s guess, but with Whedon attached, us geeks were quite excited.  I’ve enjoyed every show he’s made so far, to varying degrees.

Firefly was by the best, though it never had a chance to get bad. Buffy was great for the first 5 seasons, but faltered a lot in the last season and a half. Angel…I loved Angel in the first 2-3 seasons, thought I couldn’t finish it. Interestingly enough, Dollhouse had the opposite effect. I almost checked out at the beginning but with it and really enjoyed the season and a half.

I also attribute a lot of the success of Avengers to Whedon’s work on it. You could clearly feel his dialogue and style throughout the movie. He was the ideal candidate for a superhero movie.

With the recent announcement that the ABC show will be titled S.H.I.E.L.D. we start to get an idea of what the show will be about. The super secret covert operation that runs the Avengers from behind the scenes. I don’t expect any reprisals of roles from the movie characters, though it’s possible. Colbie Smulders has primarily been a TV actor and could be a major character in the series since How I Met Your Mother will be coming to an end soon.

A lot depends on what the focus of the show is. Is it S.H.I.E.L.D. pre-Avengers which mostly stayed in the shadows? Or Post-Avengers when the world has been invaded by aliens and you don’t get to cover that up?

Will we see the return of the Helicarrier? I’m mixed there. On one hand, its friggin’ cool. On the other, having your base aboard a flying fortress supership just smacks of the 80’s.

There are a lot of questions still to be answered. But one thing that is certain, with Joss’ success with Avengers and the fact that the show is on ABC and not Fox, we have a decent chance of the show surviving a few years. But will the shift to mainstream kill the fundamental essence that are Joss’ shows? I hope not.