Board Thread:Television/@comment-1713281-20131004113215/@comment-1895174-20131122063617

ProfessorKilroy wrote: LoveWaffle wrote: Structurally, it is literally a bait-and-switch. The first five minutes of the episode is an extended trailer for Thor: The Dark World, and the rest of the episode has nothing to do with it.

Bait an audience with Thor 2 stuff, then switch it out for an unrelated story.

It also doesn't help that it highlights one of the biggest, if not the biggest, problem with the show. It wants to be something important, something that is as much a part of the MCU as the movies are, but it can't help but be some insignificant background adventures. Here was their best chance to be more than that, and they threw it away. The first 20 seconds was footage from Thor: The Dark World to explain the concept of Asgardians. The next 2 minutes was laying some groundwork for things to be covered in the episode, but instead of taking place on the plane, it was in London, cleaning up after Thor. Which does mean a lot of Thor-talk, so yes, it does kinda act as a trailer for The Dark World. But that's just more of an overblown reference. The bait-and-switch happened when they told us it was an episode that tied in to the movie.

I think that had they tied the plot of the episode into The Dark World, it would have been much more insignificant and background-y than telling a new story about an Asgardian on Earth, who will likely show up later down the track. They didn't need the footage to explain the concept of Asgardians. They've had no problem talking about other concepts - the Chitauri being a good example - in the past without including a mini-trailer for a current, popular film. The next two minutes was them walking around the sets (or something that looks like the sets) from Thor: The Dark World, fulfilling a requirement that the episode somehow tie-in to the movie in the same way a sitcom would be required to include some Christmas-y stuff in December.

The bait-and-switch happened in the writers' room when the decision was made to tack on an extended trailer for Thor: The Dark World for an episode that was not about Thor: The Dark World. We could have gotten an "Item 47" for the Thor movies. What we got instead was a self-contained episode that included a few elements that will probably never be picked up on again.