Agents of SHIELD: Episode 4 – Eye Spy

Last Week on Agents of SHIELD…

The team succeeds in former asset Dr. Hall from killing a large population of people through the use of a new element. Skye’s loyalties are put to the test while she uses her training, courtesy of Dr. Ward, to good use in a tight spot, saving herself from a billionaire expatriate whose bound to be trouble for our SHIELD team in the future. So is Dr. Hall, as well, as a stinger reveals his hand protruding from the field of Gravitanium.

This Week…

None of last week’s plot threads are addressed (not that I expected them to) as we follow a former protégé of Coulson, Akela Amadour, enacts a bizarre diamond heist on a train under mysterious circumstances. Coulson picks this up and puts the team to work in the hopes of getting to the bottom of this in the hopes he can prove her innocence.

The opening sequence of this episode suggests something fairly fascinating that the episode at large ultimately doesn’t live up to. A woman, Akela, tracks a group of red-mask wearing men in suits, each holding identical suitcases handcuffed to their wrists. She follows them onto a train, kills the lights and the next thing we know, one of the men is on the floor, his hand severed and his briefcase missing.

“Eye Spy” serves the adage about this series so far that the better episodes have had more to do with Agent Coulson than anyone else on the team at this point, four episodes in. The episode does a good job of integrating the whole team into the plot, the same with “0-8-4,” but large the whole thing has a lot more to do with Coulson’s desire to come to Akela’s aid than anything else.

In the meantime, the episode offers a lot of stop and go type events that ultimately offer up no real conclusion beyond Coulson getting some closure with his old protégé, which offered some fairly interesting drama to be fair. I’m still waiting for the episode that will really unlock this series’ full potential.

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