I want to kidnap Colbie Smulders and trap her on this show so she never has to go back to HIMYM. She can bring Alyson Hannigan and NPH with her, even! Joss reunions for everyone!

I can support that plan.

Usain Bolt doesn't do anything useful. Stephen Hawking has already existed in multiple iterations through time, and this version can't go to the bathroom without assistance--I don't think the common person spends much time envying people in wheelchairs. Life's too busy for that.

But someone shows up and calls himself a god and flies and channels lightning, someone else transforms himself into a monster, etc, and they save one of the country's flagship city's from a (pretty fucking pointless) invasion of aliens? If you don't get freakouts I'd worry the populace had died inside.

Then again, I also supported Stargate command keeping the gates and the Goa'uld, etc secret, and largely because no one seemed to have a plan to deal with ensuing freakouts.

I am 100% behind Cobie in a way Scarlett never won me over.

I agree with both Matt and ita !. I like it as a metaphor for the 99%, but as itself? Yeah, I don't really see how the existence of gods and monsters raises the bar for ordinary humans in any way that Tony Stark didn't already. Stark is totally human and embodies what "the everyman" wants to be and almost no one can be: rich, powerful, and popular. (Honestly, no one gives a shit about smart, unless smart makes you rich.) At first I didn't even realize Mike P. was talking about gods and monsters; I thought he was literally talking about the 1%, as evidenced by his rage outburst at his boss.

I can see people freaking out over the gods and monsters. I can see people envying them. I just can't see the average person actually comparing themselves in any meaningful way with them. We admire them, dress up as them, take them as role models for certain qualities we want, but we don't decide we're shit and our lives are meaningless because we can't fly or turn into a rampaging giant.

At first I didn't even realize Mike P. was talking about gods and monsters; I thought he was literally talking about the 1%, as evidenced by his rage outburst at his boss.

Me, too.

I saw where he was coming from. Mike was struggling just to be a man providing for his family, and now there are these other people out there to show him another level he wasn't going to be able to achieve, people his son admired. He'd been actively trying to match superpowered heroes, and he was failing at that too. Last straw time.

He'd been actively trying to match superpowered heroes, and he was failing at that too. Last straw time.

Okay, good point, that.

At first I didn't even realize Mike P. was talking about gods and monsters; I thought he was literally talking about the 1%, as evidenced by his rage outburst at his boss.

I think the gods & monsters were the last straw. One more bar set impossibly high.

If the supers are a metaphor for the 1%, how different should the relevant speeches be?

I was thinking about how the pilot gave us another guy whose super-powers gave him rage issues, and I realized we also have:

-A crack female agent with issues with her past

-a crack male agent who's shown to have an affinity for ranged weapons and high places

-a tech genius

-A leader who was apparently dead for a while and is now alive.

It doesn't quite match up perfectly, even if you stretch it to cover Skye as "Untrustworthy outsider who triggers the first mission together" but it's kind of cute.