I've watched Agents of SHIELD from the beginning, although not always as soon as the episodes came out. Currently I'm a few episodes behind (I'm on season 5 episode 12), and I get annoyed that they seem to keep trying to circle the show back around to the same problem it has had since the beginning: The character of Daisy/Skye isn't interesting enough to be the center of the show, and the actress isn't compelling enough to justify all the other characters' deference to her.
I think both the character and actress would be fine if she were a side character or just part of the ensemble, but the show keeps trying to put her in the center. The other characters are always sacrificing for her or trying to prop her up as some kind of superstar or potential leader, but it's almost never justified by the actual events of the show or the characterization. She's a petulant child more often than she's a competent spy, an overgrown teenager more often than a savvy operator. When she's a secondary character in a storyline I actually enjoy her presence on the show, but they keep making her a key player in dramatic situations or central plot developments and I just don't think it works.
The first season of Agents of SHIELD is widely regarded as some pretty weak television, but I think they learned the wrong lesson. At the time people noticed the lack of “superhero” content and the flimsy connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and attributed that to Agents of SHIELD trying to be a “spy show”. I think the problem was that early Agents of SHIELD was a bad spy show, a good one with minor sci-fi or superheroic elements could have worked just fine, like it did for the first season of Agent Carter. Instead it seems to me that they've been focusing more on trying to incorporate fantastical or adventurous stuff, but I think the “premise” of the show as a team of super-spies has suffered. This is compounded by the problem that the show needs to operate within what is dictated by the plots of the movies in the MCU, which has seriously constrained SHIELD from operating as a stable, established organization.
I don't hate the show, and I occasionally even enjoy it, but I get frustrated by how often they seem to emphasize the stuff that doesn't work and de-emphasize the stuff that does.
I love Agents of SHIELD, but you're absolutely right about the problem with Daisy as a central character. The show works best when it's written as an ensemble show, as a spy show in the vein of Mission Impossible. It's even quite good when it does urban fantasy.
Where they fall apart is trying to put a character which was never written as The Chosen One, in source media or the first couple of seasons, as just that. She just doesn't work in that role.
The characters of Coulson and May are both more interesting on an interpersonal level. I'm curious about their personal angst. I even thought Daisy's dad was an interesting character I wanted to spend more time with. Fitz and Simmons, for all that they are very much individually the fandom identification characters, at least have active chemistry when there on the screen together.
Daisy?
I really wish that they had gone with the original comic book version of Terra has borderline shady, willing to be swayed by evil and come back in a real sense. Instead, at least as depicted by the core characters, she can do no wrong.
This is a real problem.
The first season of Agents of SHIELD was like any first season Joss Whedon ever came out with. It was slow, it focused on establishing some things about the main characters, so that they could work together later. And if you give the guy time to work, he will deliver. If you just watch the first season of any of his series, you'll probably don't like his work (Firefly, anyone?).
I personally like the show a lot, I still think the characters are really, really well-characterized, and as much as I agree with you about Skye, I guess there's at least two major reasons for her to be one of the main focuses of the show - one being the great deal of affection for her that drives Coulson to do whatever he does, and the other being the constant theme of the dangers and limitations of having powers, which is a pretty weak one in 2018. BUt I honestly don't think that they are trying too hard to make her at the center of the show anymore, I think the highlights of the previous season, for instance, were Ghost Rider (who is linked with Skye at first, and then takes the lead) and the AMAZING performance of Fitz as a very convincing nazi-like Hydra doctor.
I don't quite understand what you're implying by the reference to Firefly. It had less than a season and is more universally appreciated by the people I know than any other show ever.
Sorry for the late reply, I have been busy the last few days :) The two shows don't share much in terms of content, but when it came out, Firefly was so underrated that they ended up canceling the show, only to regret it later. I'm mostly talking about narration. The fact is that Whedon has his way of leading his characters towards the "interesting" parts of the plot, and that's why some consider AoS first season as "weak television", as the author of the post has put it.
I stopped watching the show near the middle of the third season. It had a spot in our family rotation but it just felt like a drag each time it came up. We're much more enjoying the Netflix MCU shows.