Let’s get the first part of this out of the way. I enjoyed "Eye Spy." At this point in time, I recommend the episode. Now, I want to get a little more analytical.
"High concept" refers to a work that can be summed up in a basic idea. It doesn't necessarily have to be a particularly new or interesting idea, but an easy-to-summarize idea.
For example...
Star Trek: TOS (A "wagon train to the stars"; or "Horatio Hornblower in space")
Dog with a Blog (A dog has a blog)
Hot Tub Time Machine (A hot tub is also time machine)
Superman: Red Son
("What if baby Kal-El landed in
Soviet Russia?")
Is this Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode high concept? …eeehhhh.
In "Eye Spy," the episode opens with hundreds of red-masked men with
briefcases, and a woman closes her eyes and kills a group of them,
stealing a briefcase with diamonds. Wow, that’s a cool teaser! Here’s where it falls apart.
The men in the masks were hired to ship the diamonds. There had been a
rash of diamond thefts, so they used hundreds of identical couriers to
move the diamonds. Okay... but that’s where that idea stops. Except… how was such a thing not a cause for alarm? I mean, hundreds of
men in red masks carrying briefcases would get the army deployed in real
life! And we live in a world without super villains!
The woman who stole the diamonds is a former protégé of Coulson’s with a
new cybernetic eye, which has a bomb in it to keep her controlled.
Words appear in her vision to give her instructions, and she uses her
cyber-X-ray-eye to see through stuff, which is how she found the
diamonds.
This. Should. Be. Huge. And it’s not.
This should be the concept that the episode revolves around.
"What if anyone could be working for the bad guys against their will?"
I mean, how do they know that people on the street aren't being
controlled in the same way? After all, the guy telling Akela (the eye woman)
to do stuff was being controlled in the same way. In this situation,
trouser-wetting should be instinctive. But no. What should be a paranoia-inducing, tense, frightening idea, the fact
that there are multiple people out there being controlled by someone
with unknown intentions… is ignored, or at least on the back burner.
This episode has good action, good humor (I learned you can say “penis”
on prime time TV!), good mystery, and good ideas. But the ideas are
brought up, they do their part, and they’re dismissed. And that
shouldn’t happen. I mean, controlled people with X-ray eyes? You think you’ve private
lives? Think nothing of the kind. There is no true escape; they’re
watching all the time.
Is this episode high-concept? No. Because this episode is not merely about a spy with an x-ray eye and the implications thereof. The plot focuses on too many things besides that. And in that way, this episode never really finds itself. Is this episode about a diamond heist? No, it's about a traitor! But she's not a traitor! And now the team has to pretend to be her for another heist! It shifts too many gears.
Speaking of gears, before I forget, Coulson. There must be something wrong with his insides. Akela asked what “they
did to him” after the Battle of New York. And she has X-ray vision.
Ergo, she saw something freaky-deaky in there. But what? I stand by the LMD theory. Either that, or he’s a cyborg. But, it will remain to be seen. Um, no pun intended.
See you next time! Also no pun intended.
(Originally posted on 10/17/13)
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