201309241915.jpg
In case you hadn’t heard, tonight on TV, nerd culture becomes enshrined for all time as REAL CULTURE. Please note that is a joke, since I can’t go 15 seconds without hearing someone quote Star Wars at me. But nonetheless, it’s an exciting night for Marvel fans and fan culture as two shows are debuting that will set the conversational agenda for the rest of the week or possibly even fortnight.

First of course, there’s Agents of SHIELD, which debuts in less than an hour on ABC. We’re one of the five people who haven’t seen the pilot yet, but even without seeing it, Disney’s plan of continuing the Avengers excitement as a weekly down tempo TV show starring Agent Coulson is sheer marketing genius. Of the 15 million reviews online, this is one.

Besides Clark Gregg, the show stars pilot Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), black ops dude Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), hacker Skye (Chloe Bennet), human weapons guy Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker), and in the biologist role, Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge). Everyone is going to watch this right? Circle back tomorrow for the over nights and we’ll see just how smart Disney was.

201309241916.jpg

And at 10 on Syfy there’s Fangasm, the Jersey Shore of nerd culture as 7 wacky roommates who like nerd stuff try to drum up conflict. We know too many people on this show to review it but here’s one from MTV Geek.
Reality TV fans, meet your Sheldon Cooper.
Bonus: Kate Kotler interviews castmember Molly McIsaac.

We’re told some of the cast are actually normal people who just like genre fiction but that couldn’t be right, because nerds are a sect like Shakers or Zoroastrians. After tonight, we’ll find out for sure. And if you watch either or both be sure to come back here and let us know what you thought.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

10 COMMENTS

  1. Agents of SHIELD will not survive if the only ones that watched it are nerds; unless mainstream viewers watch it in vast numbers, and I mean those who have no idea who Whedon is, Agents of SHIELD will die the way that Firefly died. And I don’t care if it’s backed by Disney — that doesn’t mean jackshit in the die by the ratings world of prime time television.

  2. Avengers and the Iron Man films only made enough cash to fill up Uncle Scrooge’s money bin, and they all prominently featured Clarke Gregg/Agent Coulson and SHIELD. I think they’ll do all right for awareness and viewers.

    Kind of curious why they used new character names instead of the various established SHIELD agents from the comics (like Alan Quartermain) though. Saving those characters for films maybe?

  3. Great. So nerds are now “cool”
    What would have been great was a good show aimed at nerds that also happened to be cool…but I guess that’s too much to ask

  6. Disney/Marvel/ABC uses new characters so they don’t have the “Nick Fury, Jr.” problem.

    Yeah, that’s right. Turns out the Nicholas had a son with an African-American woman, and that son, once discovering his deadbeat dad, decides to take his name and continue on with the family business.

    Because, just like John Stewart on JLU, everyone reading the comic now expects Nick Fury to be African-American.

    Also, SHIELD in the 616 is such a background organization that I only know of a handful of agents by name: Contessa, Nick Fury, Dum Dum, Sharon Carter, Mockingbird. Most Marvel fans, I suspect, wouldn’t be able to name that many. (Or even remember the Howling Commandos.)

    So new characters make more sense, just like Agent Coulson. If it works in TV, then you bring them over to the comics. Each of these characters is a tabula rasa, which makes them easier to write, AND you don’t have a pack of fanboys foaming at the mouth because so-and-so isn’t playing Batman right.

    And yeah, it’s a great era for Geek TV: Arrow, SHIELD, Once Upon A Time (x2 + movie), Game of Thrones, Big Bang Theory, Under The Dome, Walking Dead, and probably a lot more SF/Fantasy/Horror series I’m forgetting.

  7. Who would have thought. The success of Revenge of The Nerds have finally been extended to our time. Geek Culture is now mainstream. Geeks used to be outcasts but not anymore. A lot of people now a days seem to love everything geek. If they didn’t then there would less comic book movies and more musicals. I’m not sure if everyone is truly a geek. Some people just like to be involved with the trend of the day, and then move on to the next trend. Right now geek culture is the latest trend. We’ll see how it lasts I guess. I do hope that they utilize all that Marvel has to offer in this new series as they did in Smallville. I did like how they involved the Super soldier and Extremis storyline into the pilot. If they stick to the comic book theme and use all the imagination of Marvel Comics to their advantage then it should be a successful series.

  8. I still don’t know how I feel about this whole geeks being now cool idea. From my experiences I don’t think it is true. I always will be out and talking about comics or sci-fi stuff and people always look at me weird still. I’ve said this before but I really do think it’s just the idea of being a geek is cool right now instead of actually being one. The fact that a lot of people I have met that have gone to comic conventions and never read a comic in their life just really bothers me for some reason. We live in a time where I have heard people say, “I’m such a nerd. I play Pac Man.”

    I know I shouldn’t be a hater and people are sick to death about talking about this whole “fake geek” concept but let me put it this way. Imagine being a fan of a really bad sports team for the longest time and everybody gives you crap for it. Then all of a sudden your team starts doing super well and makes it to the play offs and everybody hops on the bandwagon and likes your team now. Most people would naturally hold a resentment to those new “fans.”
    Maybe it is because when I was younger I was picked on for liking this kind of stuff and now all of a sudden it’s cool. it is kind of a shock.

    But yeah, definitley got to check out agents of shield.

Comments are closed.