Board Thread:Television/@comment-1713281-20131004113215/@comment-1895174-20140515041314

Of course it's a matter of personal reference. That's the problem. If your "personal reference" doesn't include the Captain America movies, then the Hydra reveal is completely lost on you. And if you have caught up on all the required reading, what's the compelling reason to watch Agents of SHIELD? In terms of what it offers to the overall MCU, it doesn't do anything Captain America: The Winter Soldier doesn't also do but in 1/7th the amount of time and with better production values and more interesting characters. Speaking of which, the characters here aren't compelling enough to warrant a season of television just to tell their story. I don't know how you get "fill[ing] in the plot holes of what happened in-between each movie" out of Agents of SHIELD. It's done none of that. Like, not even remotely close. It was its own, standalone series up until Episode 17 when it inexplicably became a spin-off of The Winter Soldier.

There shouldn't be any required reading for a series like this. That's the way it is in the movies and the comics that inspire them. I don't need to see all of the Iron Man movies to get what's going on in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, nor do I need to read every issue Marvel prints in a month just to understand what Spider-Man's up to.