Agents of SHIELD - A Structural Analysis - Part 2

For Part 1 of this post, which explores the character-driven structure of Agents of SHIELD, see this post. Part 2, below, explores how the showrunners experiment with differently structured plots each season.

2) Gradually More Complex Narrative Arcs

Part 1 demonstrated that the Agents of SHIELD showrunners have been playing with the structure of their seasons since the beginning, largely through the dynamics of protagonists and antagonists. The reality of “pods” for each season can also be determined through the actual plot that the seasons run through. Sometimes these pods are defined by subtitles (as in seasons 3 and 4). Other times they can only be seen through particular turns in the overarching plot. Within each larger pod the showrunners, even from the very beginning, have inserted “mini-arcs” that pay off particular characters, themes, and questions while pivoting to new ones. These pods and mini-arcs can best be discerned through outlines of the plots for each season. Those outlines are below. The titles for the Pods and mini-arcs (except for some for seasons 3 and 4) are my own.

Agents of SHIELD - A Structural Analysis - Part 1

My partner and I only watch one or two TV shows. With two kids and a lot of other things going on, there isn’t much time for anything else. One of our current must-see shows is Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (and that’s the last time I’ll use the periods). ABC recently renewed SHIELD for a sixth season. In both the week leading up to that decision and in the days since, many have written about SHIELD’s remarkable transition from a show that shed viewers like a molting starling into a vital (but little-watched) phoenix program, renewed every year.

One article on the subject caught my eye both for its attention to one of the show’s much-heralded innovations -- the use of “pods” in its creatively rich season 4 -- and for the ways in which I realized that the articles’ analysis of the seasons missed the mark. The article traces a trajectory of development from a mostly procedural first season, through a serialized second season, into a subtitled third season, and a “pod-ed” fourth season. What this narrative does not see is the way that the showrunners -- Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen and Jeff Bell -- have been playing with structure and narrative since the very beginning. In reality, SHIELD has been doing "mini-arcs" with internal, compounding climaxes since the very beginning. It's just experimented with seasonal structure in several different ways.

SHIELD's experimentation with structure can be observed through two lenses: 1) the use of protagonists and antagonists; and 2) gradually more complex narrative arcs from season to season. Let’s explore both lenses. In order to reduce the amount of scrolling, I've divided this into two posts. You can access the second post through a link at the end of this first one. Obviously, there are spoilers for all five seasons of Agents of SHIELD.

Also...

Odd thing, my last post lists the day I began to write it, not the day it was posted.  I wonder if I can change that.  Anyway, faithful reader, I hope that you will also notice that I added a little "widget" to my "about this blog" section.  It's a calculator of a program that I'm working through right now called National Novel Writing Month, or nanowrimo for short.  Basically, it involves writing as much as you can in the month of November, hopefully enough for a 50,ooo word (175 page) novel.  The writing is straight from the hip, no editing, just writing, writing, writing.  I am doing this with the intent to break my habit of over-editing as I write, and to help me to discipline myself to writing more.  As you can see, on day one I did not accomplish much, but I am going to keep trying, going to keep writing.  So, you can follow my progress!

If you want to learn more about nanowrimo, just go to www.nanowrimo.org.

Thanks again, faithful reader!

To Disobey One's Conscience Is Neither Just Nor Safe.

I'd like to talk about the following videos and articles.  If you want the post that follows to make full and complete sense, please watch them and read them before you read the rest of the post.

Battle Ground Virginia - Karen Tumults

McCain Condemns/Encourages Mentality - The Moderate Voice

McCain/Palin Supporters Gone Wild - The New York Times

Raw Anger and Ferocity-the Associated Press

Palin Unleashed - The Washington Post

The Sidewalk to Nowhere -Youtube

Keeping up the Attack - The New York Times

Good Guys and Bad Guys - CNN 

The Truth of the Lies - Factcheck.org

I'm sorry.  I'm sure that's a lot to digest.  I know it was a lot for me.  I've been haunted by these things for the past two days.  It's been hard for me to continue with homework, hard for me to work with all of this weighing on my mind.

I've resisted stating my opinions on this political race for a long time.  Here and there, I've scattered seeds of how it might relate to fear and love and how we ought to act.  But my conscience calls me to do more.  And, as Martin Luther (the monk-turned reformer) once said:  "To disobey one's conscience is neither just nor safe.  God help me.  Amen."

I am afraid.  I will tell you that truth right now.  I am afraid of our fear.  Fear can do horrible things, can cause horrible things.  And fear leading to hatred is even worse.  As Martin Luther King Jr. once said:

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity.  Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity.  It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.  Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.  Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

-Strength to Love, 1963

What I read in these articles, what I see in these videos, is fear turned to hate.  I readily admit that many of the writers and videographers of these pieces are probably biased.  I readily admit that I might be biased.  But I cannot ignore the plain fact that the people in these articles and videos, yelling "terrorist," and "kill him," and "commie @3$*$#@" and a whole host of other things have been scared into hate.

It is the unfortunate nature of elections to divide us.  But when that division turns to hate, people get hurt.  I'm worried.

As a biracial child, the uncle of two beautiful quadri-racial boys (I think I just coined that term; their father is African American and Central American, their mother Chinese and Dutch) I am struggling against an overwhelming fear.

I cannot, in good conscience, support John McCain because of his lack of good judgment, and the rhetoric of his campaign.  Let me clarify that I am not starry-eyed over Barack Obama either.  He has made many mistakes, and told many half-lies and untruths and has said many partisan things.  But the tenor of his arguments and the driving force that I see in his campaign is one of hope and not anger, calm and not strife, unifying and not dividing.  Over the last few weeks, however, I have become more and more convinced that John McCain, a good man, a strong man, an honorable man, has been corrupted by his own campaign.  As much as he has a right to say that he has been a maverick (and he has truly reached across the aisles and bucked the system), I think that he is no longer.  The nasty politics of Washington have tainted him.  More than this, I think that he lacks foresight.

I question his judgment because of what has happened recently in his campaign.  Could he not have foreseen that relating Obama to a Terrorist, questioning if we know who Obama is, playing down his patriotism and calling him "that one," during the debate could lead to hate?  Could he not have foreseen that using a William Ayers line of attack on a presidential candidate who is mistakenly called a muslim and whose name is often linked to a known terrorist, simply by the changing of one letter, would lead to people wondering if Obama is a terrorist, fearing him, hating him, calling for his death?  Could he not have foreseen, or at least controlled the rhetoric of the people who surround him, who pray that God would protect God's honor by defeating Obama, who tangentially relate Obama to "bad guys," who "pal around with terrorists," who send smear after smear against Obama, who incite crowds by linking Obama to Osama with bombing the Pentagon?  McCain, in his ads, has called on the American people to question the judgment of his opponent.  It has only caused me to question McCain's.

And even though I applaud McCain for trying to tone down the rhetoric, it obviously hasn't worked, and he still, a day later, uses the same tactics.  His running mate uses the same tactics.  Other people in his party use the same tactics.  And McCain has the audacity to mention that he doesn't want to tone down his constituents' ferocity, just ask them for more respect?  It's the ferocity that scares me.

I worry for Obama and his family, and my family.  In a world where racism still lives, where some jump at any chance to condemn and fear and hate and kill, I fear.  I do not think that everyone is acting in fear.  I do not believe that most people would kill out of hate.  But it only takes a few people with a desire to kill to cause incomprehensible damage in this world.

For those of you reading this blog who are questioning who Barack Obama is, whether he is related to terrorists, whether he was actually born in the United States, whether he is secretly trying to ruin the U.S., I've collected some facts for you.  If you've received a chain e-mail linking Obama to any number of questionable people and questionable things, I've covered that for you too.  Here are a few links:

Does Barack Obama Have Kenyan Citizenship?

Did Barack Obama say "we are no longer a Christian nation?"

Was Barack Obama born in the United States?

Did Barack Obama replace the U.S. Flag on his campaign plane?

Did Barack Obama snub troops in Afghanistan?

Did Barack Obama write that he would stand with muslims and had animosity toward whites?

Did Barack Obama say that the National Anthem had a war-like message?

Is Barack Obama a Muslim?

How can I learn which chain e-mail to trust?

All of these links are to Factcheck.org, a wonderful website that has a whole host of articles that (as impartially as possible) seek to debunk lies about both candidates.  Believe me, there are a lot of things that Barack Obama has said that are misleading or downright false, and FactCheck.org calls him out on them.  As far as I can tell, this website (recommended by many magazines and websites, both liberal and conservative and everything in between) is trying to get to the real truth behind the half-truths and political meanderings.  

I'm not asking you to vote for Barack Obama.  This post is not a political endorsement of any kind.  Please, follow the issues, find out what qualities you respect in a leader, make sure you really know what's going on and then vote for the candidate in whom you believe.  But I am calling you to search out your own heart, to look at the rhetoric that you have been listening to, to re-read the e-mails you've probably been sent.  I'm asking you to consider what those e-mails do to you, whether they make you angry and afraid.  I'm asking you to try to conquer your fear, as I am trying, with love.  I'm asking you to make an effort, every day, to learn the truth, and more importantly, to spread the truth.  I'm asking you to stop others when they spew forth hate, about either candidate.  I'm asking you to start standing up for those who have been oppressed.  I'm asking you to put a stop to the downward moral and ethical spiral that seems to be taking over our nation and our world.  It stops with us.  It stops now.  Here I stand; I can do no other; I cannot and will not recant.  God Help me, Amen.

A Change in Tactics (or Is That Strategies?)

During my Writing as Faith Practice course this morning I had a revelation, of sorts.  Really, it was an ongoing realization that began last week with a meeting with my Field Education Mentor (a pastor who is guiding me through the experience of working a 9 month internship at a church).  I realized that I really, truly am afraid of being misinterpreted.  I utterly despise being unclear, or being seen as unclear, or having my words twisted.  This is something, I think, that many people fear.  It is tied, I believe, to my fear of failure, and, even further back, to a desire for acceptance.  I want to be accepted, and feel that I will be shunned if I fail (even though I know this is not true, it is still a fugue roiling round in the back of my mind).  A part of failing is failing to communicate.  Another is being perceived to be something else, something that I don't want to be, and being perceived as a failure through that.

Let's be concrete.  Say that I write on this blog an analysis of a particular work of literature, perhaps THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV.  In doing so, I write something that misrepresents my view of Dostoyevsky and his writings.  People then comment on the blog about my misrepresentation.  I realize that what I wrote was not true to what I desired to evoke.  I feel failure.

Now, this is a small failure, certainly, but one of the things that I fear.  I, perhaps too readily, depend upon public opinion for validation of the things I do.  I know this about myself, and have known it for some time.  Oddly enough, one of the things I have been battling is this feeling that I am less passionate about things because I have not let myself take risks, and have tried to block out other's opinions of myself.  By not being as emotionally available as I could be, I feel that I have, to some extent, blocked off my passions.  This has worried me.  I am caught between acknowledging what people say about me, hearing their true concerns and then viewing my life from an objective, healthy point of view, and putting up defense walls and trying to be everything to everybody.

Let me put it this way: I want to try to hear what others say and to look at my life through their eyes, yet I want what they say about me to be good (or at least neutral).  So, while I am more open to others (in some respects, as in listening to them), I am actually also less open to them ( as in not revealing my true, full self to them).  And I feel that this has also affected the way I view and interact with God.  I am open to God, to new words, to new directives, to a new hope, but I am not open with God.  Perhaps that difference in preposition is truly what I am talking about, being open to, but not open with.  This leaves me with a numbed sense of passion, and, in some respects, has led to the difficult discernment problem in which I find myself.

Now, in my class this morning we discussed the necessity of good writers to be vulnerable, to dive in, both to reading other great writers, and to dialoguing with those writers, and to being misinterpreted by their readers.  A good writer must both be open to and open with.  I am a self-conscious over-editor.  Every sentence I write I immediately analyze for accuracy (I just did it then, I added a word to make the sentence make more sense).  This means that when I finish writing (if I get into writing at all) I often end with something less personal, less emotional, more filtered.  I am constantly worried about what others will think of my writing, whether or not it is good enough for others to read.

This blog is an attempt to force me to simply put writing out there and to allow it to be responded to (AH!  dangling preposition.  I tried to think of a way to fix this sentence, but couldn't since I'm headed to class in 10 minutes.  Wait...."to simply put writing out there and to allow others to respond to it."   Still not the most concise or most-well-written sentence.  Sigh.  I included this as a snippet of what goes on in my mind as I write).  Meanwhile, I initiated early on in this blogging a policy (or tactic, or strategy...first presidential debate anyone?) of comment moderation.  This ties to my fear of being misunderstood or misrepresented.  So, I have taken the small, but for me, bold step of removing comment moderation.  I can still delete comments (I believe) but now your comments should appear right away, without any screening from me.

One small step for Marc...

Thanks for reading, O Faithful Reader!