Duck Fox

Last year’s television season was a rough one for nerds. A slew of new fantasy/sci-fi series were picked up to series, but the majority of them were canceled. A few of the casualties included: The Tomorrow People, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, Believe, Dracula, Revolution and Star-Crossed. Thankfully, the consistently great Arrow managed to follow up a fantastic first season with an even more intense second season, but for the most part nerds and geeks were forced to flock to cable to get their weirdness fix. Or watch one of the more qualitatively uneven genre shows of the year: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 

While premiering with strong ratings and decent to outright glowing reviews, the series ended up garnering more and more criticism as its ratings declined throughout the year. A large part of the problem was the series was attempting to do something that had never been done before: bundle itself with the Marvel movie universe and build stories in this shared continuity. Comic books get away with shared Universes because creative teams are given far more access to characters—no need to work around an actor’s schedule—and can retroactively reverse certain decisions much more plausibly than a television show. Not to mention they work in only one medium. S.H.I.E.L.D., meanwhile, had to limit guest appearances of the more colorful characters inhabiting the Marvel Cinematic Universe not only because of the difficulty in scheduling or budgeting for guest actors like Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, but also because a huge plot point needed to wait for Captain America: The Winter Soldier to be released.

After the release of the film, the main characters discover HYDRA has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. to the highest levels, and are forced into a much more cynical world than the first half of the season portrayed. With enemies everyone, and no one who they could trust, a good portion of the season’s second half saw a demoralized Coulson ready to give up. By the time it was all said and done, Ward (Brett Dalton) had betrayed the rest of Coulson’s team, Skye (Chloe Bennett) was emotionally broken by the betrayal, Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) was revealed to have betrayed Coulson’s trust in order to do the right thing, and FitzSimmons (both the shipper name and the nickname for the lovable geeks Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons, played by Iain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge respectively) were traumatized at the hand of their former friend Ward when he trapped them in a container sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The only good thing that happened to the crew in-Universe seemed to be the arrival of Agent Antoine Triplett (BJ Britt) as a replacement for Ward.

The season premiere moves forward by taking its viewers into the past. Hayley Atwell reprises her Captain America role as Agent Peggy Carter, now working in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s predecessor the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Peggy and her crew (Cap’s other army buddies) lock and box the very first 0-8-4. We then jump ahead to Coulson’s ever reliable team working with a group of newbies on a bust. Among the newbies are Lance Hunter (Nick Blood), Alphonso “Mac” McKenzie (Henry Simmons) and Isabelle Hartley (Lucy Lawless of Xena fame). Hartley is the group’s leader, and is reasonably proficient in handling the new team during the sting operation. Unfortunately, despite some enjoyable banter the newcomers to Coulson’s crew do little to stand out from the pack, and by the episode’s end they are quite possibly simply killed off. After a quick tussle with the baddies, everyone regroups at Billy Koenig’s (Patton Oswalt) secret base, the Playground.

The group focuses on trying to recover the first 0-8-4, something called “The Obelisk.” Manipulating General Talbot to get access to the item is the easy part, the harder part involves dealing with a new villain named Crusher Creel, played here by Brian Patrick Wade. Comic fans will probably recognize him as Abosrbing Man. There’s a smidge of the procedural element S.H.I.E.L.D. was originally lambasted for throughout the rest of the hour, but the cohesion of the episode comes from the interaction between the characters who are still reeling from last year’s final arc.

Fans of Joss Whedon series should feel right at home with this season’s opener as it gives equal focus to the action and the interpersonal stories. In the latter half of the first season, SHIELD managed to effectively incorporate espionage elements into increasingly more serialized storylines exploring the many deficiencies of its main cast. Tonight continues the streak by dropping Fitz into a “break the cutie” subplot, where he’s still struggling to recover from nearly drowning. The twist at the end is heart wrenching: Fitz is not only incapable of creating a cloaking device for The Bus, but he’s actually been hallucinating Simmons since she left, unable to take seeing him with such a broken mind.

Ward, meanwhile, seems to be set on something of a redemption arc. He’s been attempting suicide since being imprisoned, apparently not able to face the decisions he made while working with Garrett. Skye gives absolutely no f$)%s about his problems while squeezing him for information on their current case. It’s a great scene, with the standing inches apart, separated by an invisible cage keeping Ward locked up. The disgust on Skye’s face is palpable, but underneath is a hint of yearning for the relationship she and Ward used to have, or at least a yearning for things to be like they were when Ward was still on the team.

The difficulty in gauging the quality of this series is, and will continue to be, its obsession with the slow burn of building plotlines. Tonight’s episode was respectable enough in and of itself, but there are moments where the series holds back for little other reason than it wants to continue teasing a storyline. A perfect example is Skye blocking Ward before he can bring up her father. Last season, Coulson’s revival and his mysterious obsession with Tahiti was the constantly teased plot. Finding out he was cured with alien blood while begging for death did make me a little queasy, but was hardly worth the wait. Of course, the snappy dialogue, and precise action sequences made the latter half of last season more than worth the wait. Things like the light hearted impersonation of the General and Absorbing Man’s impressive CGI and stunt work makes me think S.H.I.E.L.D. has finally found its footing.