Get past the show's parentage and Disney's synergistic presence, however, and "Agents of SHIELD" resembles any number of other series from the past built around crack teams charged with facing down fantastic threats — from "The Man From UNCLE" to "The X-Files" to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer's" Scooby gang — albeit with a souped-up level of hardware.

It reveals nothing to say the series picks up where the movie left off, with a shadowy government organization (it's an acronym for Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division) charged with "protecting the ordinary from the extraordinary," as the press release puts it. And here, anyway (take note, Tea Party), the government is a model of high-tech efficiency.

Since Samuel L. Jackson was too expensive, the SHIELD unit fielding this daunting assignment is headed by Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), who (and here's a spoiler if you're one of those holdouts who never saw "The Avengers") got conspicuously killed in the movie.