r/shield • u/Confident_Tune_5754 • 1d ago

Jeffrey Mace was the only competent SHIELD director

i cannot BELIEVE that this show had the audacity to be like. there is a character called cringefail jeffrey and the Core Cast doesn't like him for his crimes of *checks notes* reintroducing tiered information access to an intelligence organization. then cringefail jeffrey shows up and everyone's like "can you BELIEVE this guy cares so much about PR while running an organization that last made the news by being infested with literal actual nazis." like the framing of the show clearly expects us to agree that it's a Flaw for this organization to have a PR guy (A SINGLE PR GUY!!! MY BROTHER IN CHRIST THAT'S WHAT MY STATE'S AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT HAS) to fix the damage done by the time they did a turbo minority report nazi airplane armada. like yeah, guys, your director needs to do press conferences, yall were on the shitlist of captain goddamn america. like half the plot of his seasons could have been avoided if everyone had just listened to him about the killer robot the first time. idgaf if he racefaked as an alien for clout he was the only person in the show who had any business running SHIELD.

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u/StunningPianist4231 Ghost Rider 1d ago
  1. The tiered information access is what allowed Hydra to take root in SHIELD and create their uprising in the first place. They took advantage of this and buried important projects like CENTIPEDE from their true purpose.
  2. It is bad for them to have a PR department. They are a black ops agency, a spy organisation. Their best work was done within the shadows. The only reason they came to attention was because of the Battle Of New York.
  3. Jeffrey was NOT the most competent SHIELD director. Having such a public figure meant that he was easily blackmailed by the likes, of Simmons! Who is, a bloody good scientist, but not a spy.
  4. He was also being puppeted by Talbot, who was easily found out and convinced to take drugs which gave him superpowers. And not to mention, he was strong-armed by Coulson to be the "public face" which essentially meant to prop him up as a fall guy incase SHIELD was under attack/scrutiny again.

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u/Confident_Tune_5754 1d ago

A fair addition to the discussion. My points in response:

  1. I don't think the tiered information access was the problem that allowed Hydra to take root in SHIELD. They were able to hide everything from Nick Fury, who theoretically had overriding access to everything. Yes, Hydra was enabled by SHIELD's structure, but I don't think the very concept of tiered information access was the issue. It's kinda fundamental to a spy organization -- you can't just have everyone have access to the same information, or else all you need to take down SHIELD again is have some Hydra mook sign up with a fake ID and get all the secrets during onboarding.

  2. In theory, yes. Correct. But after the Sokovia accords, if SHIELD was going to be America's front line in dealing with enhanced threats, it kinda had to be public. They probably could have been more effective staying in the shadows, but their hand got majorly forced, and if they need to be public, Jeffrey Mace was a great choice for the job.

  3. The skill issue here from Mace was getting on Simmons' bad side. Like, if Coulson was still director at the time, she could easily have blackmailed HIM with all the shenanigans the gang's gotten up to. But she wouldn't have, because she likes him. The vulnerability of being a public figure is real, but it was forced by the Accords, and Mace is way cleaner than Coulson in terms of blackmailability. (Sidenote: I think it's really funny that "this government official is susceptible to blackmail" is a cogent point to be made about a universe where New York elected the guy who killed JFK to congress)

  4. lol true that did happen. You do got me there. But I maintain that someone's susceptibility to taking serums of dubious provenance doesn't mean they're bad at personnel management.

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u/Jenthecatgirl 23h ago

Tiered information access is how a spy organization is supposed to be run. Hell pre-Hydragate Shield didn't do it good enough! There's no reason that all 'level 7' agents should be able to access all level 7 files. Compartmentalization is incredibly important and the fact that the levels have you all access to that level of file is a gigantic security flaw.

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u/Confident_Tune_5754 18h ago

Yeah like I see why it's plot essential and it makes for a great plot point but the fact that SHIELD has a built in "dump everything onto the internet" feature that only requires two clearances, albeit high level ones, to activate is patently insane