Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and the joy of filler episodes

[avrelia]

I am waiting for the series finale of the Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I’ve watched it since the beginning, and I enjoyed most of the ride very much, and I love the characters and cheer for them and worry about them… But here is the thing, as they moved to tighter storylines, where bad things kept happening to my favorite agents all the time, and as soon as they were out of one horrible danger they would get into even more strange danger. And eventually… it got hard to care. I knew no one was safe – but to sit and wait whom of my favorite characters (all of them) they are going to kill now slowly seeped a lot of pleasure. I mean, there are high stakes, but how many times can we kill Coulson? I miss filler episodes. They have such a bad reputation, but they allow viewers to take a breath between all those stakes that keep being high and higher, and they allow characters to be themselves, to interact, and to expand the world beyond narrow limits of mortal danger. The remedy to pacing problems is not to get rid of all the fillers, but to pace it, I guess… As a writer, I have no idea how to do it – I am painfully bad at plotting my stories, but as a viewer – I know that I am tired. And I try to calculate whom they can kill for impact, but I cannot find anyone on eth show whose death would mean anything at this point. I mean, Coulson is patently unkillable. Everyone else – either died (in any of the realities or time streams) or suffered so much the death would be…. Whatever. And “whatever” is not an emotion anyone wants to have about their creation, right?