As North American head of HYDRA, this legendary super-agent is meant to be an absolutely unstoppable Nazi scientist with the secret to eternal youth. Unfortunately he's just a bit limp. They could have taken it on a really interesting detour into neo-Nazism and the rise of the ultra-conservative right, but Agents of SHIELD was content to treat extremism as a relic and transmute his evil into a generalised desire to run the entire world. Apparently Malcolm McDowell told Reed Diamond to "smile and let the lines do the work", but he comes off looking less like Alex from A Clockwork Orange and more like a man who's just remembered that he's got leftover pizza in the fridge after a night out. You just don't get the sense that this is a man with the big picture in mind at all times, moving pawns and calibrating his next move. He's placid to the point of being catatonic. Diamond's German accent is a bit dodgy too, tipping a little too far into the "For you ze var ist over" zone of kitsch for him to be really terrifying. Don't get me started on the Benny Hill glasses either. I get that he's meant to look like Heinrich Himmler, but the man's head is clearly too big for those tiny frames.
