Maybe it's not. Maybe there are lots of boring procedurals I don't watch! But if that's all it's going to be, without stronger characters I'm gonna bail.

For the record, I wasn't talking about procedurals, but shows like Buffy and Angel, which is why I said monster of the week rather than mystery of the week.

The Scoobies rarely heard about evil happening somewhere and went to fight it just because. Most of the evil they fought affected them very personally. I mean there's a reason most episodes weren't just about Buffy out on patrol dusting random vamps.

I don't completely understand the distinction here. I can't imagine Buffy or Angel finding out about evil happening anywhere and not going to find it whether or not that evil directly affected them or not. It just so happened that evil kept finding them on their home turf. However, if it being personal somehow is a criteria for you, how does this episode not count? This mission was very personal to Coulson.

Except for the premiere, with Dr. Ron Glass saying "He can never know," which is about as dramatic of an anvil as you can drop.

True, I forgot about that. Also, can we have more Ron Glass now.

I dislike the LMD potential because I think it involves a level of cruelty to the people who care about Phil. I get that the Avengers aren't involved in this show for movie/TV separation purposes, but story wise there are huge swaths of SHIELD who know "Coulson" is around and working (the crews working on the plane, support staff for the team, etc.). Word will get back to the Avengers. Maybe Fury is OK with casually yelling at "Coulson" for wrecking the plane, but I don't see the Avengers shrugging it off so casually. So either there are massive amounts of handwavium going on or this is going to be addressed. And I don't see ongoing angst about "Our friend is dead but that thing that looks and sounds like him and thinks he's him is wandering around" is what Marvel/ABC is looking for in a relatively lighthearted show.

Also, with everybody so certain that there is no such thing as ESP, we're definitely gonna see a real telepath (or something kinda like it) at some point, yes?

Not until they change the premise of the show, no.

Yeah, I think Marvel has decreed that all powers on the show are science-based. No mutants, hence "registered gifted." Because they don't have the X-Men movie rights.

So this is a world where mutants don't exist? Got it. I guess I just thought that no mutants could be on the show not that they would deny the existence of mutants all together. Is that true of all the non-X-Men Marvel movies as well? Like in The Avengers/Iron Man/Captain America/Thor universe, there are never going to be any mutants or non-science or alien powered beings? I mean, I guess there haven't been but I didn't know there couldn't ever be. Huh. I learn something new every day from Buffistas.

Well, Scarlet Witch is in the next Avengers movie, and she's, well, a witch. Well, a mutant witch. And Quicksilver too. And they're the children of Magneto. Who is a mutant. They're both mutants. Except maybe not in the MCU where there are no X-Men, I guess.

Hmmm, well it's a little frustrating that they just dismissed the possibility of ESP so out of hand, then. I may be mischaracterizing (and I already deleted the show from my DVR because I have way too much TV and this seems like a show I won't be going back to watch) but it seemed like when Skye suggested that maybe there was some ESP/telepathy going on the response was "Silly, rabbit. ESP is for kids." I guess I'd just expect them to be a little more open to the possibility. I don't know. The fact that everyone was so emphatic about how it could not be no way, no how, just no struck me given the amount of randomly weird shit they come up against on a daily basis. I could've understood something along the lines of "We've never seen that. I doubt it. Probably not." But what it sounded to me was like "We know that doesn't happen" with a side of "silly fool". But maybe that was just me projecting. Or maybe they just wanted to really, clearly establish for the audience who is not paying attention (like me!) that in this universe, they don't get down like that.

kat,

I agree, I thought it was weird. Does Marvel not have anyone like that who can do ESP? X-Men has one or more people who could control people through minds, but did anyone show up doing that in this universe?