Entertainment Weekly is bringing a bit of insight into the upcoming Agents of SHIELD series coming to ABC in September with a new interview with Joss Whedon. Whedon has had some solid and interesting things to say about the series overall with its role to stand by itself, to not be a character/superhero/villain of the week property and to be focused on the human side of things throughout the push to get it made. Now he’s got the money quote on some of the origins of the approach to it which goes back to his Buffy the Vampire Slayer days, which will fit right for fans of that show:
“This is basically a TV series of ‘The Zeppo’ [episode of ‘Buffy’], which was a very deliberate deconstruction of a ‘Buffy’ episode in order to star the person who mattered the least,” Whedon told EW. “The people who are ignored are the people I’ve been writing as my heroes from day one. There’s a world of superheroes and superstars, they’re celebrities, and that’s a complicated world — particularly complicated for people who don’t have the superpowers, the disenfranchised. Now obviously there’s going to be hijinks and hilarity and sex and gadgets and all the things that made people buy the comics. But that’s what the show really is about to me, and that’s what Clark Gregg embodies: the Everyman.”
Plot concept: Agent Phil Coulson puts together a small team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to handle strange new cases.[5] Each case will test the team in cooperation and ingenuity as they try to work together figuring out newly emerging superhuman individuals in the world.
