So the premiere was today and I have a convenient little TV tuner, so I figured why not?

The episode starts off with blatantly cryptic narration reminiscent of that fucking horrible cut of The Avengers where Maria Hill bookended the film as part of some kind of interview or something.  Not a good start.

We quickly move on to an out-of-work father and his kid when suddenly, random building explosion!  Because… those happen.  The father leaves his kid to save the day by…

…punching walls, fuck yeah!

Strong Dad rescues a woman from a burning building and runs off, but unbeknownst to him, he’s seen by a passerby.

But enough of that interesting shit.  Let’s move on to a bland spy!

This guy is Agent Ward.  He’s a spy.  That’s his entire character.  He does some run-of-the-mill spy stuff with gadgets, finds a hidden compartment, takes a small pouch and none of the money (I guess to show he’s not a thief just in case your mind didn’t automatically go straight to “spy”) and confidently walks away when, predictably…

Yeah, he’s caught in the act.  Time to turn on the smooth charm, Agent Bland.

So some hired thugs come in and get owned by standard secret agent martial arts while what appears to be the mission preparation music from Soul Sacrifice plays in the background.

Quick cut to a meeting with Agent Hill.  “What does SHIELD stand for?”  There is literally no reason for her to be asking this question.  I thought this was going to lead to a “I’ll tell you what it stands for” line or some clarification because he did something wrong.  Nope.  What follows is a BLATANT AND POINTLESS EXPOSITION DUMP about what SHIELD is and what it does.  Maria Hill, are you ever not fucking terrible?

Luckily, we don’t have to suffer through Agent Hill for too much longer as Son of Coul arrives to save the episode.

We learn that the narration from the start of the episode is from “Rising Tide,” a mysterious something that knows something.  Oh, and Agent Hill is hiding something from Son of Coul.  I’m betting it’s that he’s a robot.

After the break, we see Strong Dad in a diner with that passerby (Apparently named Skye) accosting him.  She warns him about SHIELD and puts on this annoying peppy act.  She comes across as a conspiracy theorist and stalker.  Which means she’s either secretly awesome or exactly that.  I will say this: “…since that puppy with vertigo!” was a great throwaway line.

Back to Agent Ward, who gets to know the rest of Son of Coul’s team: two Brits and Melinda May.  Who is Melinda May?  Well, we know she’s kind of a big deal for some reason.

This is a major problem with Agents of SHIELD: it’s in love with name-dropping people no one’s heard of or cares about.  Anyway, Team Coul flies off to a lead regarding Rising Tide.  At this point I’d like to get this out of the way: Agent Ward seems to have a chip on his shoulder regarding his current situation and what he believes his qualifications are.  He’s like Ichiro Ogami at the very start of Sakura Wars.  In case you don’t know, Sakura Wars was a tactical RPG / dating sim, and Ogami was the main character in a potential harem situation.  Armed with this knowledge, know that Ward is astronomically more bland than Ogami.

Oh, and Rising Tide?

What follows is an annoying interrogation where Skye acts all smug and superior for no reason.  I want to punch her in the nose.  Oh, and she lets slip about something called “Centipede.”  Gee, I wonder if this is going to be something that becomes immediately relevant?

Bingo.

Turns out, Strong Dad had this alien tech grafted to his arm…s?… by some doctor.  This is supposed to be Chitauri tech?  Why do I get the feeling this series is going to be littered with Chitauri tech that will make zero sense for them to have?

Either way, I’m loving this plot thread more than the SHIELD thread.  Then again, I’m kind of a sucker for origin stories over… whatever the hell you call the SHIELD story.

The rest of Team Coul is investigation some blown up lab or somesuch.  Yawn.  On the plus side, we get a pretty hilarious truth serum scene in which Agent Ward is hit up with the truth serum.

Strong Dad tries and fails to get his position at the factory back.  He rapidly goes batshit supervillain with a hero complex.  Faster than a psychic in Supernatural season 2.  Oh yeah, his name’s Michael Peterson.

Back to Team SHIELD.  Technobabble and trying to figure out what happened in the lab.  Ho hum.   Oh, and after having fun with Ward on truth serum, Skye decides to be helpful.

Back to Strong Dad.  He visits the woman he saved in the hospital and it turns out SHE’S THE DOCTOR!  I actually called this a while back.  Turns out a previous patient that had those centipedes grafted on his arms went nutso.  Strong Dad looks really off-balance.

Sigh… back to SHIELD.  They use Little Thief from Ace Attorney Investigations to make a recreation of the lab explosion scene, and they notice the centipede.  That took way too long.  Skye sends them information on Centipede, which contains a cocktail of Super Soldier syrum, gamma radiation, alien metal, and….

Mike “saved” Skye from a SHIELD agent and brought his son with him, completely unaware he’s about to blow into gory glorious fireworks.  Meanwhile, the show rips off music tracks from Torchwood.

No need for any more caps.  SHIELD surrounds Mike, Mike gets desperate and throws a tantrum, a third party in a cop uniforms hows up and starts shotgunning, third party cop gets put down, standoff, cheesy speech.  Mike gets shot by a sniper (firing special tech designed to put people literally to sleep), and… I guess his Extremis gets cured?  What follows is a hilariously bad set of cheesy nods of approval from the entire SHIELD team.

Wrap-up, Skye gets invited to join SHIELD while they’re about to respond to something, aaaaand…

All in all… meh.

It has a decent premise and has some promise, but the cast is fucking terrible.  Coulson can’t carry this by himself like Michael Rosenbaum’s Lex Luthor carried Smallville for years.  Mike was by far the best character, and it doesn’t look like he’s a recurring character.

I will give it a fair shake, since I know most shows tend to have godawful pilots, but man… That pilot.  On the other hand, I knew going into it that it would take a LOT to get invested into the cast.  I now know it’ll take even more than I expected.

Honestly, this is pretty much a blander Torchwood.  Season 1, even.  At least the characters are just uninteresting or make me want to punch them in the face instead of godawful monsters like Gwen and Owen that I wanted to see purged from the face of the earth.