Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

[Moristans]

Like the crew of Serenity were clearly just regular people. They weren't even especially good at what they did.

Agents of SHIELD is like cream of the crop to the point that they might as well just be superheroes themselves and I don't find myself getting that into their characters. Sorry I can't relate to super scientists and Jason Bourne, I guess?

Yeah, kinda, considering it the premise of the show, but I wouldn't expect an outfit like SHIELD to have to make due with less than the cream of the crop. Even if we are dealing with flawed characters, I would expect them to be very good at what they do. Maybe having Buffy-like demon killing powers would be a bit too far on one extreme, but I wouldn't expect SHIELD to try to muddle through with the Serenity crew either.

Maybe it is because of the way the characters are written that the show doesn't seem to get the most out of it's premise, but I feel like it's more like the situations that the characters have been put in. I would actually hate to see a "Marvel Superhero of the Week" to show that SHIELD are just humans. I think if we see that, it will be a sign that the show's going downhill and they need to do something to save it. At the same time, they've made a pretty strong connection to the "Battle of New York". What's missing to me is anything in the show that reflects a world where New York was almost destroyed by an psychotic Norse God teaming up with aliens who open up a wormhole from another dimension to really highlight the fact that, despite how good SHIELD operatives are, they really are just normal Human Beings.

It took me awhile to get into Buffy but I was able to get into Firefly right off the bat. What made both of those shows so great, though, was Whedon's very adept use of anachronism to develop stories and characters. The whole premise of each show was based on anachronism and Whedon really did get a lot out of it.