Marvel's Agents of SHIELD 1x04: Eye Spy

A bunch of guys in red masks with briefcases chained to their arms ride the subway in Stockholm. A girl knocks out the lights, kicks all their asses and steals one briefcase. Inside are a bunch of diamonds.

They search the interbutts and find a picture of the thief. Her name is Akela Amador, and she was a SHIELD agent who Coulson trained, and who everyone thought was dead. Also she has mind-powers. She sells the diamonds to a guy in Belarus, who gives her a key card.

The team tracks her down, but while Coulson and Ward go searching, she finds the van with Fitzsimmons and Skye and rams them over a ledge. They discover a video feed coming from an implant in her head. They also discover that someone's controlling her. May wants to call in and get a tac team, but Coulson won't let her.

May finds Amador via the video feed, and after the two of them fight, Coulson arrives and knocks her out with a tranquilizer dart. Then they use some Mission Impossible glasses to mimic the signal and send in Ward to finish Amador's mission.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that neither one is a surgeon, Fitzsimmons remove Amador's implant so the failsafe inside can't kill her.

Things go awry for Ward when Amador's orders come in.

Instead of seducing him, Ward knocks out the guard, then completes the mission, which was to look at something. On his way out of the building, an alarm goes off, but he handles the guards pretty easily. Coulson tracks down Amador's handler, but when he tries to stop him, the guy's eye explodes. He was a redundant safety, and the real bad guy is still out there.

The implant is safely removed, Amador is arrested by SHIELD agents, and Coulson promises she'll get a fair trial. For the first time in years, she goes to sleep without anyone watching her.

What I Liked
-Amador hides the diamonds in phony golf balls that dissolve when she pours water on them. That's kinda neat.
-Skye calls Coulson AC because it's cooler. Slater agrees.

What I Hated
-Some people took pictures with their phones, but mainly, everyone ignores the guys in the red masks. In this case, they were transporting diamonds, but in general, they would've been terrorists or bank robbers. If I see a bunch of guys in similar outfits get on a subway and they're not a sports team, I'm getting off and waiting for the next train. But maybe that's just me.
-There are aliens from other dimensions, super soldiers of various types, and a giant green rage monster, but everyone thinks ESP is ridiculous. I'm guessing mutants don't exist in this chunk of the Marvel universe because Fox still has the rights to the X-Men. It still makes no sense that no one would even consider it, though.
-Fitzsimmons are still ridiculous nerds. No real nerd, no matter how nerdy would care about visiting a town near the birthplace of a Nobel prize-winning physicist. That's just stupid.
-Amador and Coulson share a very touching, emotional conversation. Except we just met her, and the dialogue was terrible, so I don't care.
-More crap about Coulson being a zombie or a robot or something. It's really not all that interesting a mystery.
-Someone paid $30 million to get access to a room filled with strange, possibly alien writing, and SHIELD isn't sending in 100 guys to subdue and interrogate everyone? Why the hell not?
-They don't have a medic onboard. They've needed minor medical attention before, but this is the first time where it's been really obvious that they need a surgeon on the team. Ron Glass played a doctor in the pilot; they should bring him back.

Final Thoughts
Directed by Roxann Dawson. I wondered what she'd been up to lately. Not very hard, but I wondered.

This was not a good episode. After the previous one where they did some minor fancy science stuff and created a supervillain, I was hopeful. Then this week they just became bad NCIS again. Or actually, I suppose it's kind of a cross between NCIS and Fringe or maybe The X-Files. Of course, it's not as good as any of those shows. Regardless, why even bother having the Marvel licence if they're not going to use it?

This episode also really showed off how bad some of the acting is. They should probably kill off half the characters and find better actors to replace them.

The show in general hasn't really given me any reason to watch it thus far. The plots are dull, the action is poor, and the characters aren't very compelling. It's still early, but they're mainly ridiculous caricatures. I also don't care about the long-running plots. Skye isn't an interesting character, so I don't care what shadowy business she's up to, and the frequent allusions to the fact that Coulson's a clone or whatever are more annoying than mysterious. Yes, he's somehow different after Loki stabbed him. BFD.

I'm still going to watch a few more episodes, but after the next one, I'm not sure I'll review any more unless the show gets a lot better.