Maurissa Tancharoen and Drew Z. Greenberg Reveal Favorite "S.H.I.E.L.D." Moments

[JamesG]

Maurissa Tancharoen

The Fitz–Simmons scenes where they’re trapped in a med bay pod in the bottom of the ocean in the Season 1 finale. Those scenes hit close to home, not that Jed and I have been trapped at the bottom of the ocean, but much of the existential sentiment in those scenes come from a very personal place.

Aside from that, Iain and Elizabeth’s performances went beyond our expectations. Go team.





Drew Z. Greenberg

My favorite thing I’ve ever written for TV kind of changes based on when you ask me. If you ask me after I’ve just spent a day with my friends’ kids, it’ll be Padme interacting with a flustered detective on "Clone Wars".

If you ask me when I’ve just chatted with some of "Warehouse 13’s" amazing, still-loyal fans, it’ll be “Trials,” in which Myka returns to her partnership with Pete for good and Claudia cements her friendship with Steve after he comes out to her.



But lately I find myself citing “Face My Enemy,” my first episode of "Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.". There were two things about writing that episode that especially delighted me.

One, I happened to draw the assignment at a time when I was jonesing to do a little comedy. I find if I go too long without getting to write jokes, or at least what I consider jokes, I start getting antsy.

(This is probably related in some way to my nervous habit of undercutting every legitimate emotional situation I face in real life by making wisecracks. It’s hard to believe I’m still single!)



But I never imagined MAOS would be the place I could scratch the comedy itch. And yet I showed up and my first episode was about May and Coulson going undercover at a charity event as a bickering high-society couple. And they were going to dance. I was maybe as happy as I’d been in years.

The lightheartedness of the undercover situation, of May flirting with their host, of Coulson enjoying the ruse so much, of the ballroom dancing itself (for which Ming and Clark rehearsed tirelessly) — it all gave me license to write with exactly the sense of fun I enjoy so much. It was, for me, pure joy.



But it also spoke to a deeper truth about these two characters: the fun was in stark contrast to the continuing dilemma they were facing together. Coulson might be going crazy, and May might have to kill him. And that was the second thing I loved about writing this episode.

All that fun was a reminder of the bond shared by these two characters, and it helped set up what I thought was the biggest reveal in the episode — that May cared for her friend so much, she would rather give up everything and whisk him off the grid than take him out as he’d asked.

(So, unlike real life, I guess this time I got to undercut the wisecracking with legitimate emotion. Huh.)



I remember thinking at the time that that’s what made me so happy to be working on this show: The world set up by Jeff Bell, Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon, the world I had just stepped into, was so well-defined, so confident, that there was room for me to come in and tell a story that included ballroom dance, May pummeling her own double in an epic fight, a discussion about nostalgia, a go-bag filled with Australian money and two old friends contemplating whether true friendship means being willing to shoot your buddy in the head.

All in one episode! I could not have loved it more.

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