Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. : Episode 2 Review

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It was great, but there's one obvious bit that elevates it to being purely awesome - which I won't mention. The bottom line is that you really need to stick around for post end-scene tidbits, in Marvel studio productions.

I've been getting vibes of Indiana Jones and The A-Team, and although the idea of the team's varying members clashing felt a little cliché, that cliché seemed to work in the overall episode's favour. These are humans and largely ordinary types that can have conflicts of interest and ego problems, but that are obviously meant to be far more manageable than the regular heavy-hitters in that universe. Ward isn't Natasha Romanoff, and neither is May - but they're not meant to be. They're not meant to be high-profile types, and that works well.

I've liked seeing a little bit of Phil (Coulson)'s background, but his old flame was rather predictable. Old Hydra/Nazi tech, plus Tesseract energy? Yeah, it makes sense for her to want it to "stabilize" Peru. She'd stabilize it in a pretty awful way but, hey. That's what WMD's are for.

Above all, that's largely appeased my fears of the show devolving to a "Conflicted and Problematic Individual-slash-Antagonist of the Week", in that it shows that the writing team is confident enough to tackle bigger issues.

My one and only gripe is that Fitz and Simmons really do need to eventually split apart from one another. They're so thematically and functionally fused together that they mostly function as a self-generating banter and exposition machine on legs. Either that or, I dunno, Whedon and his team go Hellraiser and literally fuse them at the hip.

Other than that, Coulson really does feel like he's been pre-programmed to refer to Tahiti as "a magical place"... So can we nix the LMD* theories and postulate that he's been given an honorary bunk in Asgard in order to recover? After all, the comics' version of Asgard does have its fair share of tropical vistas, despite the mythology's Norse roots...

*LMD - Life Model Decoy: a Marvel plot device that is sometimes used in order to handwave apparent deaths. S.H.I.E.L.D. has been known to use excessively complex android replicas of decommissioned or M.I.A. agents in the past. One fan theory involves Coulson having effectively died in The Avengers, but an LMD having been programmed to take his place - complete with a lack of awareness of its own synthetic nature.

If this is ever confirmed, chances are Coulson could eventually join the ranks of the superheroes, as Marvel does have a number of LMDs-turned-vigilantes up its sleeves. I'm more inclined to edge towards the Asgardian theory, myself. Time will tell, I guess.