Sam motherfucking Jackson. Yes, the man himself made his Nick Fury appearance already on the latest episode “0-8-4”. Aside from this little appearance the episode again was yet again filled with references from the other entries in the universe. Those tidbits were wonderful and fascinating, but i don’t know if it was enough to make me love this episode.
There was still a lot of character building that was going on in this episodes. Despite all those additional character moments, I still don’t feel like I really know any of them. There is the duo of FitzSimmons felt like even more of a prop. Aside from a brief moment at the end of the episode I didn’t understand half of the words that came out of their mouths. Skye still feels very much like a blank slate despite however much time is spent tying to flesh her out. At least with her, we know that there is something under the surface and she is deceiving them. My only hope is that they really utilize her betrayal to introduce an intriguing group that is bigger than the people behind the caterpillar technology from last week.
Speaking of Skye, the odd relationship between her and Ward is very clear. I would have expected Ward to be a bit more guarded and not fall so quickly for a girl he deemed as untrustworthy earlier in the episode. Ward is behaving like a bumbling love struck special agent and I don’t buy it. On the other hand, Skye is clearly playing dumb and manipulating those around her. These are highly trained agents and should realize it.
My other major qualm with the episode was the scoring. I know that Agents of Shield is a Disney property, but that doesn’t mean it should sound like a Disney ride. There were moments that made it feel like it belonged in the pre-show of something in Hollywood Studios. What made it worse was the fact that the scoring was over the action. it made all the action feel cartoon-ish and took away from the peril that the characters were actually in. ye, we knew they would get out of it, but taking away the severity doesn’t allow us to connect to the intensity that the characters are feeling. With characters that already feel distant we don’t need anything else separating us from them.
On the good end, Melinda Mae is a wonderful character and slowly learning more about her badassery is enjoyable. Unfortunately, only a half hour later, the majority of the episode has been forgotten.
Did you enjoy this episode?
So, I pondered... 
I think this episode was stronger than the pilot, but I agree that we’re still learning much about the characters and that will still take a little time. The action scenes were good. I didn’t pay that much attention to the music to be honest, so it didn’t distract me from the action. The show is definitely showing a lot of promise and I’m intrigued to see how Skye will act in future episodes. The only weak link maybe is the Fitz / Simmons charaters. So far they’ve been kind of annoying but I hope they’ll prove their worth in the future. The effects were amazing, especially when they blew the doors out on the plane.
The production quality on this show is very solid. The only thing I noticed was when Skye opened the raft, it actually had a rip in it near the bottom and didn’t seem to be moving. The show knows how to do action very well. I’m not surprised with a Whedon behind the scenes.
The music was a weird moment for me. I generally don’t pay attention to the music in TV shows, but I couldn’t pay attention to anything else. I’ve probably been in too many ride pre-shows, but it was the only thing I could think of. Not a deal breaker though.
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