After taking a week off, Agent Coulson and his team return in a brand new installment of Marvel’s ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ on ABC. In the episode titled ‘FZZT’, the team finds a trail of floating dead bodies as a result of an unknown and elusive killer. But along the way of the mysterious mission, they, too, end up in the line of fire.
I wish that I could say that the show came back from their break with a strong episode, but I really can’t. There were loads of strong moments, but as a whole, the episode was sort of lacking. At this point, the failure to build up each character individually early on in the series is starting to take it’s toll. Certainly the big moments of the episode were big, but I found myself not caring about all of them because I didn’t care about the characters enough.
Another disappointing thing is that there wasn’t much fallout from Skye’s betrayal in ‘Girl In The Flower Dress’. It was all definitely touched on, but it seemed fairly formulaic and secondary in this episode whereas it was a huge deal in the previous one. In fact, I was under the impression that it would play a part in the story moving forward, but it seems like it’s just swept under the rug and all is forgotten right away.
Despite a few problems, there was some good character development in this week’s show. We get to see a side of Agent Ward that we haven’t seen before and Coulson learns some valuable lessons thanks to Agent May. As for FitzSimmons, they are being better differentiated at this point and I appreciate that they don’t do too much of that overlapping dialogue thing anymore, which is totally a good thing since it got a little old. We even see Fitz try to awkwardly flirt in a fairly funny scene, although looking back on the episode as a whole, I’m not quite sure why they did it.
Finally, the threat in the episode should be addressed. First of all, I love that they brought in Titus Welliver to reprise his role as Agent Blake from the Marvel One-Shot ‘Item 47’. People who enjoy the connectivity within the Marvel Cinematic Universe will realize that his appearance was sort of foreshadowing the discovery of the enemy and I was definitely surprised that I didn’t make the connection sooner. However, once the discovery was made, I was a little disappointed. It felt a little anticlimactic. I was bummed out at that point, but then I remembered that the show was an hour long instead of a half hour and it all eventually worked itself out.
Overall, I enjoyed the character stuff best of all in this episode, but the story didn’t really stick with me. Now I want to learn more about May and why she was in that desk job. I also have a new theory about Coulson’s resurrection that would be too spoilery to include, but I’ll definitely keep watching to find out if I’m right. Actually, let’s be honest, I’d probably keep watching anyway because of the upcoming crossover episode with ‘Thor: The Dark World’ and the possibility of Dr. Franklin Hall making an appearance as Graviton. Regardless, this episode was just a building block to get to something bigger. Hopefully the bigger picture won’t be as disappointing as some of it’s unimpressive components.
Final Score:
‘Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ starring Brett Dalton, Ming-Na Wen, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge, Chloe Bennet, and Clark Gregg airs on Tuesdays at 8:00pm on ABC.
