Finally finished up Agents of Shield: Season 3 (again, I refuse to watch ANY TV live), so I figured I'd post my spoiler-free review. In a nutshell, eh, it was alright I guess. Talk about an up and down season, similar to Season 1 where I decently enjoyed certain sets of episodes while really disliked other sets. Overall, the show continues to lack certain things like a tonal consistency to the movies (too cheesy and stupid at times - those primitives were AWFUL), enough decent characters (only really love Coulson, Fitz and Simmons), a good crossover/integration to the movie universe (crossovers are minimal, forced, and a one-way street), decent action (too many contrived stupid fistfights - I'm looking at you May - use guns at times you idiots!!!), and a decent story line. I will say that AOS in general does do a decent job of throwing in some good twists, but don't all shows? Also, the twists don't seem to buoy the marginal story lines enough overall either. I also don't necessarily love that they are using the Inhumans right now, simply because I don't think they are doing a very good job of it. If they were kicking butt and taking names, sure, whatever, but they aren't. In the meantime, they are mucking things up for introducing the Inhumans into the movies where I think they could have done a better job of it. We'll see on that front. In comparing Seasons, Season 1 was the season of a terrible start, but a decent ending. Season 2 was the best season where they weeded out some of the cheese and contained some decent storytelling, whereas Season 3 was just up and down all across the board with many of their previous issues resurfacing, and probably ends up somewhere close to Season 1. However, I'll rank it lower than Season 1 simply because they should know better by now.
In the end, my guess is Season 4 will be the last season, and I'm probably okay with that. The show is following a lot of the same trends that Arrow did in its Season 3 as well, which is another show I'm okay with just calling it quits on. I used to love Arrow and its Season 2 was its best season as well. In the end, all of these studios only have so many resources, and with the way these shows are going, I'm okay with them shifting those resources elsewhere where they can start anew and fix many of their mistakes with new material. When comparing what Marvel TV is doing on their ABC side of things (AOS and Agent Carter), it pales in comparison to what they are doing on the Netflix side of things. I also just wish both the movies and TV side could work out their differences to the point where this TV/Film shared universe model actually works the way it should with much more and much better crossovers. I know that part might be wishful thinking. Lastly, if you are interested, I'll update my MCU rankings here soon and post with AOS: Season 2 included. Based on my review, you could probably guess approximately where it will land.
