Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D

[Tango X]

Honestly, it'll be pretty much every scene with Scorch in it.

[AcidDragon]

I thought the scene where Scorch sets the doctor ablaze was pretty gruesome. I pretty much thought they weren't going to actually show it happen. Cool effect, though!!

[Caleb]

Looks like Graviton's back next week. Or someone with similar powers?

I thought this episode was actually better than the last. The Skye storyline was pretty good, and I actually didn't want to give Ward a solid kick in the nuts at any time during the episode. I agree that the Chinese seemed kind of stilted (nice example with Kyson Lee from Heroes), which is weird because I thought Ming Na actually spoke it - eh, nitpicking. I really enjoyed the episode, and I love that the show's improving with each episode. By the midseason finale, I'm predicting great stuff.

The sooner they get to hinting about the Coulson mystery, the better!

[S. Griffin]

Caught the first 15 minutes of it and then the last 20 or so. I thought it was okay. I think it's kind of hit its stride and it's gonna plateau for a little bit with standout episodes here and there. Ending was a little peculiar with the creepy guy in jail talking to the girl with the dress.

The guy who played Scorch. He had a really bad accent when he spoke Chinese. Like it was just awful. It bugged me whenever I heard it. Now I was born and raised in the US of A, but we spoke Chinese in our household all the time and man, that was like listening to a guy who just learned the language for the first time.

Especially when Melinda May and him were shouting to each other at the end. Melinda spoke it perfectly but he just butchered it. The Chinese dialog was also really bad and felt unnatural and a lot of words were mispronounced. I heard that something similar happened with the Korean actor James Kyson who they hired to play the Ando in Heroes who was Japanese and that his Japanese wasn't very good and people who spoke that language found it distracting. I can understand that after this experience.

Where is your family from, exactly? Louis Ozawa Changchien is half Japanese and Taiwanese. My buddy, whose parents are from Beijing and Shanghai married a girl from Taiwan and says that while she and his parents can have a conversation in Mandarin, Taiwanese Mandarin and proper Mandarin still sound pretty different.

[Tango X]

Where is your family from, exactly? Louis Ozawa Changchien is half Japanese and Taiwanese. My buddy, whose parents are from Beijing and Shanghai married a girl from Taiwan and says that while she and his parents can have a conversation in Mandarin, Taiwanese Mandarin and proper Mandarin still sound pretty different.

Hi SG,

My dad's from Shanghai and my mom's from Hong Kong with roots from Guangzhou. My dad speaks Mandarin and Cantonese. My mom speaks Cantonese only. I only speak Cantonese and I have no idea what's going on when people speak Mandarin. Your friend is absolutely right. From my dad's explanation, Taiwanese and Mandarin have a lot of differences in tones but the words are fairly similar so you can tell what the other person is saying. It's like Aussie English and American English. Cantonese, not so much. Louis Ozawa Changchien might actually speak Taiwanese but I'm not sure.

He sounded like someone who was just learning the Cantonese language for the first time because him and Ming Na were both speaking it as it's the dominant Hong Kong language. Ming Na's sounded right even though the dialog was unnatural because that's not really how Cantonese speakers carry on a conversation. Cantonese and Mandarin are extremely different and most of the time sound like completely different languages altogether. I think it would've been better if they said that Scorch was an American citizen who went to Hong Kong to visit family or something because his English is actually perfect in real life and he just put on that accent for the character.

[AcidDragon]

Funny, I said to my buddies that it'd be interesting if he was actually a Japanese citizen who lived in Hong Kong. I think at the beginning they said that he had just moved there for 6 months or something like that? That would explain him only living there for 6 months as well as his funky Chinese. I don't remember if they gave any more information regarding his origin.

[S. Griffin]

Where is your family from, exactly? Louis Ozawa Changchien is half Japanese and Taiwanese. My buddy, whose parents are from Beijing and Shanghai married a girl from Taiwan and says that while she and his parents can have a conversation in Mandarin, Taiwanese Mandarin and proper Mandarin still sound pretty different.

Hi SG,

My dad's from Shanghai and my mom's from Hong Kong with roots from Guangzhou. My dad speaks Mandarin and Cantonese. My mom speaks Cantonese only. I only speak Cantonese and I have no idea what's going on when people speak Mandarin. Your friend is absolutely right. From my dad's explanation, Taiwanese and Mandarin have a lot of differences in tones but the words are fairly similar so you can tell what the other person is saying. It's like Aussie English and American English. Cantonese, not so much. Louis Ozawa Changchien might actually speak Taiwanese but I'm not sure.

He sounded like someone who was just learning the Cantonese language for the first time because him and Ming Na were both speaking it as it's the dominant Hong Kong language. Ming Na's sounded right even though the dialog was unnatural because that's not really how Cantonese speakers carry on a conversation. Cantonese and Mandarin are extremely different and most of the time sound like completely different languages altogether. I think it would've been better if they said that Scorch was an American citizen who went to Hong Kong to visit family or something because his English is actually perfect in real life and he just put on that accent for the character.

That could have worked. The actor was born and raised in New York City, and since his parents are from two different parts of Asia where they speak two completely different languages, I kinda have to assume that English was the language they primarily spoke in that household. Maybe SHIELD could have been hiding his character in Hong Kong so he'd be harder to find/easier to monitor/protect/whatever.
Also, while I'm well aware that Cantonese and Mandarin sound very different, and I should have known they were supposed to be speaking Cantonese because the episode took place in Hong Kong, since you pretty much just said " his Chinese sounded bad," I assumed you were talking about one language instead of the other, completely forgetting about Cantonese, and thought maybe Taiwanese Mandarin might have been an explanation for his wonky pronunciation and dialogue.

[Tango X]

My bad, haha. I'm just so used to calling Cantonese "Chinese". My parents always tell me to be more specific but I've gotten used to my non-Chinese friends asking me if I "speak Chinese".

[Avalon]

Great ideas, guys. I can see how that would enhance the episode if SHIELD was hiding him in Hong Kong and like you said, explain his odd sounding Chinese. So Graviton might return? That's crazy. I hope he looks more like his comic incarnation than a gooey venom symbiote thing as depicted a couple of times. Actually it'd be nice if the field agents started dressing more like SHIELD agents. Like Melinda is the only member who seems to wear something that resembles SHIELD "standard issue". Ward wears a white or black T-Shirt at random with black dress slacks or jeans or a business suit. Nobody is in uniform. I hope by the later episodes this season, they get new uniforms that kind of match.

[Idiot Savant]

Completely agree Avalon...they need to get suited up and it'll make a more (pardon the pun) uniform show