Pajiba

amy acker or gtfo.

Can we get a death-pool going to see who will die first?

Needs more Smulders.

Who, who and WHO?

No Amy Acker? JOSS, I AM DISAPPOINT.

Is this Shield or 90210?

I'm surprised that Enver Gjokai, Summer Glau or Eliza Dushku didn't make the cut.

Phil!!! See I told you Agent Coulson wasn't dead.

Isn't the series set before The Avengers?

Is it seriously? God, that's a terrible idea. I guess the status quo really is God and God is a little bit of an idiot.

Probably ... I really don't know.
Wishful thinking and tooting my own horn.

It will be tough, since I'm sure a lot of people will turn it off when the actual Avengers don't show, and keeping people around will be...challenging. I'm pessimistically enthused.

I think it's very doable. At least, assuming the cinematic universe doesn't become absurdly dense, which seems fairly unlikely, there could arguably be a lot of supervillainous threats occurring that it's not reasonable for the Avengers to confront (and really, you've only got two who qualify as super who could also count as on-call) and that SHIELD could deal with, plus standard terrorism (but, like, comic book-y?), not to mention the awesome potential for whole season arcs that serve as lead-ins to sequels or spin-off films. Keeping people around even with zero direct Avenger interaction (I hope they can manage a little bit, at least) should still be a completely manageable thing if you're even a little bit trying.

Perhaps. I do think there will be a drop off from the initial pool of viewers who think the Avengers will show up. How much depends on Joss and this cast.

Agent Fitz and Agent Simmon? At least when they hyphenate their kids' names it won't sound all awkward.

I dunno. "Simmon-Fitz" just sounds weird to me. It could work if they.....

Oh.

So excited I just peed a little.
How can they fuck this up. How will they... bets? Maybe they will show the pilot mid-way through the show? Or stick it on a Friday night in TV purgatory. Or add a plucky kid to the cast- Joss does like to try new things.

Most of the usual ways of screwing it up won't work here. A SHIELD series automatically gets a prime timeslot, because it's guaranteed ratings until proven otherwise. Joss right now has enough clout that he could just redo the shawarma scene for forty-five minutes with this cast, call it the pilot and still get it aired. And... okay, I can't guarantee there won't be a plucky kid, but so far the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems adverse to Robin-ing, so it seems unlikely.

At the moment, I'd lay the best odds for the show's failure on just Joss inexplicably pulling another Dollhouse (that is, he just makes something that's not good). And the odds on that aren't even very decent.

Seriously? Make it through the first half season of Dollhouse, then watch (beginning with the Patton Oswalt episode) as it becomes obvious that Joss and the writers say "fuck it, we aren't getting picked up anyway" and go thoroughly dark. It's kind of beautiful.

Yes, seriously. And I have because, hey, completist, but it is also not all that good.

FYI, that kid Ian De Caestecker was pretty great in The Fades, which Whedon fans should probably watch already if they haven't yet.

I was just typing the same thing. That was a cool show. Daniel Kaluuya was maybe even cooler, but I'll take De Caestecker. He was terrific, too.

Everyone on that was pretty good, including 40% of the supporting cast of Game of Thrones.

It's cool, it's cool, I'M SURE ENVER GJOKAI AND FRAN KRANZ WILL JOIN THE CAST EVENTUALLY.

Yeah i really hope Enver does. He is a classmate of mine from UC Berkeley (Other more famous classmate is Chris Pine, name drop) and he has an identical twin that can do body doubles too. He should be in all the Joss Whedon projects that require actions, which is all of them.

I was really hoping for those guys too. This is... disappointing.

God, I hope so. Enver was even a cop in the film, so he could end up proving himself and getting promoted to S.H.I.E.L.D.

That's actually such a good idea it's unclear to me why it didn't happen.

Well, isn't that a bunch of generically attractive people (aside from Ming Na, because damn).

Ming Na is unreasonably good-looking for a lady closing in on 50. In general, even.

I don't know most of those other names, but Ian De Caestecker gives me hope they may be more than just pretty faces. He was the lead on the UK series The Fades, which was often described as "Freaks & Geeks meets Ghostbusters." And if that doesn't sound good to you, I don't want to know you. (It was. Good, I mean.)