I think Agents of SHIELD has a serious Global Frequency vibe going on in its first episode. In both, each has a shadowy secret organization manned by mostly misfits that see themselves as the only line of defense between civilization and a weird destructive unknown. And the first episode of both Agents of SHIELD and Global Frequency featured a living bomb that could go off at any moment that could only be stopped by team members of Global Frequency/SHIELD.
But if Agents of SHIELD was a riff on Global Frequency I didn’t mind it too much. It did enough stuff differently and Clark Gregg was brilliant as usual which was enough to differentiate the two.
*Global Frequency was a comic that was turned into a pilot TV episode for The WB that never official aired but was unofficially pretty darn good.
