It turns out he really was a poop.
Maybe he was fluent in three and learned two in the woods?
Yeah, I suppose I shouldn’t have said “SHIELD” exactly, but one or two enlightened characters. Wasn’t that one of the main points of the short? All these low-to-mid-level agents don’t appreciate women as agents, but Howard Stark and whoever else is behind the scenes are smart enough to know better?
If Ward has a moderate flair for languages, picking up a few in SHIELD isn’t that big a deal. I’m sure they have methods that are at least as good as DLIFLC at Monterey.
And great camouflage for the agents. Dress a woman like a secretary and a black guy like an elevator operator or train porter and they’d both be invisible to the bad guys, who certainly lack the enlightened sense of the good guys. If your enemies want to underestimate you, make it easy for them.
I think Gladiator just won a No-Prize.
Can you explain this? There are many shows who kill off a character in the first episode, but I’ve never heard of such an actor being part of the main credits. I’m surprised that SAG would allow that.
And really, why the hell would anybody in the audience care about someone killed off in the first episode?
He was in the woods only six months before Garrett came back. Then there are 4 1/2 years of training of some kind that included weaponry. Garrett was getting him prepared for entrance to SHIELD, so languages should have been a part of that.
Maybe they’ll have a closet gay, too. He can make funny little gay quips only he, his friends and the hip modern audience gets. Then die.
I was never big into Buffy, but decided to give Angel a shot and the character Doyle was immediately my favorite. They killed him first ep or so. Turned out the actor had problems that may have had something to do with his getting booted off the show. He killed himself shortly after leaving the show. Joss kills cool people in real life too! :eek:
Ward may not have spent the remaining 4-5 years in the woods. Garrett could have been hauling him around the world on fake passports too, getting him the best personal training wherever they went. Top agents are just a notch below super heroes. That is, super powers or not, they have aptitudes and inborn discipline and drive that sets them above the rest of us. I’m okay with that. He’s like La Femme Nikita. Garrett was evidently a high-enough level agent he was allowed to recruit & groom potential agents with a fair amount of leeway. Garrett himself could vouch for the period of time he was off the grid, so his background check for SHIELD academy would check out. Like Kirk, Ward probably breezed through half the training.
ETA: What I don’t get is why generalists are called Specialists. Fitz & Simmons are specialists, but they’re just called agents.
I looked this up. He was killed in the ninth episode and died three years later of a drug overdose.
I know they left this ambiguous, but it’s seriously nuts to think that he lived in the woods for five years getting advanced training out of whatever Garrett put in the back of his pickup.
Though that’s nowhere near as nuts as knowing that Hydra let a whole prison’s worth of superpowered psychopaths armed with alien superweaponry out into the world and all they’ll do is pop up one at a time to give future episodes a plot.
And his stated reason for doing that IIRC (killing off Jessie(?) in Buffy), was to show viewers that no one was safe, that anyone could die at any time. Because, you know, fighting monsters and all that.
Let’s sum up.
A totally meaningless red shirt gets killed in one series and an actor gets booted for drug use in another.
So no main character ever has died in a first season because “Whedon likes to kill them off.”
Got it.
Joss prefers to kill off characters after everybody has invested some emotional connection into them. That way it hurts more. There are people who still haven’t forgiven him for Tara, and I personally still want to kick him in the balls over Wash. So I don’t think there is any way in the world Ward is going to bite it tomorrow night. He’s too good a villain to waste that way.
You are essentially correct. Whedon has a reputation because main characters have been killed off in his shows but not necessarily in the first episode. There was at least one case where a recurring character was added to the credit and then killed in the same episode (being vague for spoiler reasons). I think that’s where this all comes from.
Oh, I thought they killed him sooner than that. It’s been a long time. I did like him the most though, and didn’t bother keeping up with the show much after that. Anyway, back to Agents of Shield…
My hunch is that Joss really hasn’t had much to do with the running of the show. He wrote the general “bible” for it, came up with some characters and maybe tossed in some ideas for arcs. But I’d bet that’s about it. Jed and Maurissa are doing all the heavy lifting. Joss is too busy with Avengers 2 to be involved with AoS much. As far as I know, Jed isn’t quite as evil as his brother.
And, just to further clarify, Jesse was not a main credits character.
He was introduced in the episode as if he were going to be a regular–he was a friend of Xander and Willow, exchanged some quippy pleasantries with Buffy, was made to look as if he were going to be part of the gang. And then he got killed. But he was never in the opening credits.
Whedon has said (on the DVD commentary, among other places) that he wanted to put Eric Balfour in the opening credits of that first episode, precisely so that viewers would make that he’s-in-the-credits-so-he’s-safe assumption and be all the more shocked by his death. But he wasn’t allowed to, because of SAG rules about credits.
I also agree that Whedon’s reputation for killing off characters is a touch overblown.
How many people remember the first episode of CSI?
The episode was based around the character of Holly Gribbs, a new investigator joining the team on her first day. The episode established Holly’s background and followed her through her introduction to the other characters and the routine of forensic investigation.
And then she was shot and killed by a suspect.
Or Hill Street Blues, for that matter? Hill and Renko were supposed to die at the end of the first episode, but were saved when Bochco relented.
According to Wikipedia, which cites the DVD commentary, it was budget that was the issue, not SAG rules. They couldn’t afford the extra title sequence.
Fuckin’ A. :mad: