Agents of SHIELD, Season 1, Episode 6: FZZT

If you haven't seen the episode yet, probably best not read the rest of this. Suffice it to say that this is the episode where, for me at least, the show comes together.

In this episode, we had a look at the Ftiz/Simmons relationship, confirmation that Coulson is really paying attention to the after effects of his death experience, a little bit - not too much - of Skye's reintegration into the team, and some actual humanity from Ward.

And everything came together well; it wasn't a monster-of-the-week, it tied into ongoing Marvel film-and-TV continuity, and it did proper character stuff.

I've worked out, by the way, why this series is off to a slow start - Joss Whedon and his people have always done better when their ensemble are the underdogs - this is true of Firefly and Buffy, and rather demonstratively not so for Dollhouse. But we're starting to see the first indications that SHIELD Major, as it were, isn't always going to be happy with Coulson's my-team-my-call attitude, and it's very possible they're going to run into trouble with the bigger agency as they go. Essentially, we're not seeing adversity much yet, and it's adversity that seems to get the sympathy in television.

I'm now looking forward properly to the next episode.

Posted by Drew Shiel at November 6, 2013 2:37 PM

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