Marvel's Agents of SHIELD 1x02: 0-8-4

The team is just flying around, minding their own business when a huge hole is blown in the side of their plane for no apparent reason. Coulson struggles not to get sucked out. Then it's 19 hours earlier, and I guess we'll have to wait to see what happens.

Against May and Ward's objections, and with Fitzsimmons(especially Fitz's) approval, Skye is coming on board as a consultant. Since she lives in her van, she doesn't have a lot of stuff, which is good, because there isn't as much storage space on the plane as you'd think. Her first assignment will be to join the team on a trip to Peru to check out the titular 0-8-4, which is an object of unknown origin. The last one SHIELD found was Mjölnir, so whatever it is could be pretty neat.

When they get to Peru, an archaeologist shows them a thingy embedded in the wall of a pre-Incan temple. It's at least 1000 years older than the temple itself. While Coulson, Skye, and Fitzsimmons take a look at it, May and Ward try to secure the area.

They don't do a very good job.

The guys in camouflage are Peruvian military police and their leader, Camilla Reyes, is conveniently an old pal of Coulson's. She gives him a peck on the cheek, and everyone puts their guns down. As they head off to chat about old times, some rebels attack and start blowing things up. There isn't enough time for proper examination and excavation, so Ward just rips the thing out of the wall and puts it in a bag. Coulson and Reyes put up a decent fight, but most of the team is pinned down inside the temple. So, Ward pulls out some kind of technological force projection thing and it shoots out a wave of energy that knocks the rebels down... for about three seconds.

Even so, they manage to make it to their vehicle, and everyone beats a hasty retreat to the mobile command unit. When they take off, they're heavy four Peruvian MPs, but that's better than leaving someone behind. As they're getting airborne, Fitz explains that the thingy is powered by tesseract technology and is spitting out a bunch of gamma radiation.

Probably not the best idea to keep it in a bag on the floor.

On the trip home, the team gets into a fight because, quite frankly, they don't like each other very much. But Coulson plays daddy and tells them to sort it out. Skye takes the wise approach and uses booze to try to smooth things over with Ward. At the same time, Reyes is in Coulson's office trying to seduce him.

It's a good try.

Fortunately, Coulson has seen TV, so he knows that she's just trying to distract him while the rest of her guys take over the plane. He manages to fight her off, and Ward disables two other guys, but one of the MPs gets into the lab and holds a scalpel to Fitz's throat, so they're forced to surrender.

Reyes sticks the team in the cargo hold and threatens to open the doors unless Coulson gives the authorization codes to SHIELD when they call and ask about the course change. May is hardcore, so she dislocates her wrist to slip out of her restrains and then knocks out the guard. Then it's action time. They bust through the door to the lab, grab their gear, and then strap themselves to the wall. Fitz uses one of his little drones to remotely activate the thingy, and it blows the hole in the wall.

So, I guess it's been 19 hours.

The sudden change in pressure allows the team to get the drop on the MPs, and gives Coulson the opportunity to tie up Reyes in a non-sexy manner. May retakes the cockpit, Ward beats up some dudes, Fitzsimmons and Skye retrieve the thingy, and then Skye uses an emergency life raft to seal the hole.

When they finally land at the secret base where they were headed, SHIELD launches the thingy into the sun, the team drinks beer, and Skye gets a secret message from the Rising Tide people. She tells them she's in.

Whatever that means.

Then Nick Fury shows up to tear Coulson a new one for blowing a hole in a brand new plane. And tries not to call him a motherfucker.

He's trying really hard. You can see it in his eye.

What I Liked
-Reyes explains to Coulson that he's having a mid-life crisis. If more people would just straight-up tell middle-aged men what's going on, the world would be a better place.
-Nick Fury talks about how nice the bar is on the plane. They really should've tried to get Samuel L. Jackson as a regular character, or at least a frequently recurring guest star. He's so much fun.

What I Hated
-19 hours earlier. Create the tension normally, dammit! Not with flashforwards.
-Bad ADR. I hear it so often on TV that apparently it is freakin' rocket science.
-Skye claims to have searched every data stream for evidence of the thing. What does that even mean? As fast as SHIELD's wireless network probably is, I can't imagine it's possible to search the entire internet in less than a minute. This show totally is NCIS.
-Ward's fancy force blaster is practically worthless. Seriously, it takes him longer to use it than it keeps the rebels down.
-Fitzsimmons spout pointless tech babble that makes no sense. I know they're supposed to be nerds, but I know nerds, and no nerds are actually that nerdy. They also say things that actually make sense.

Final Thoughts
This was better than last week's episode. The ADR was worse, but the acting and special effects were very much improved. Which is weird, because this is a marquee show, so I would've thought that Disney would've sunk a tonne of dough into the pilot to get people interested in the series.

The script was better, too, although they're still not really mining the source material. This week they fought the Peruvian military. That's not exactly something that requires fancy space technology or a specially-outfitted airplane. There are hundreds of obscure supervillains in the Marvel universe that they could be fighting, and instead they're dealing with South American rebels. That's not even really something you need a secret organization to do; you can just use the actual military for that. Sure, there was a fancy blaster thing, but a normal bomb-disposal unit could've handled it just as well and as easily. The show could still be Image Comics' Agents of SHEATH (I found out that SWORD is a real thing in Marvel), and there would be no difference. Why have a licence and source material if you're not going to use them?

All in all, I liked this episode more than last week's, but I'm really not seeing much reason to continue watching the show. Most of the characters aren't terribly compelling and the plots aren't that interesting. I'm still willing to give it a couple more weeks to find its footing, but there just needs to be more to it than what we've seen so far if I'm going to stick around for the long haul.