I would be the first person to admit that this show isn't flawless, the beginning was pretty rocky especially the first three episodes which pretty much served to establish the show's premise but really failed to do anything else both character and story-wise. If I were to rate all of the show's individual episodes so far this is how it would go: Pilot - 7/10, 0-8-4 - 5/10, The Asset - 6/10, Eye-Spy - 8/10, Girl In The Flower Dress - 8/10, FZZT - 9/10, The Hub - 6/10.
Based on these ratings we can conclude that the series is fluctuating in quality, it's not bad by any means but most of the time it's just plain average but it seems to be finding its groove very slowly. This was a pretty great episode, like FZZT, it develops characters, this time's Ward's turn to get a character study and while the character stuff this episode is not as good in FZZT, the episode does make up for it by having a really good story and action, not to mention the fact that the comedy is much more refined, subtle and naturalistic than in the earlier stuff, it does feel like something real people would say or do.
The story this week involves the search for a super strength granting staff of Asgardian origin that was broken into three pieces by its original wielder and scattered across the globe to prevent its powers from being misused. Our baddies of the week are a Norse neo-paganist hate group whose followers rose in numbers after Thor and the Norse gods were revealed to be real and now seek the staff to... actually they don't really give a reason other than to blow things up, but hey who wouldn't want super strength. As it turns out the staff also has the side-effect of making the people exposed to it super raging by giving them flashbacks to the most traumatic moments of their lives, and Grant "dubious family history" Ward is exposed to it meaning that we now get to see a small piece of his scary childhood.
Character-wise it's nice to see that the show isn't hammering the reset button like other worse sci-fi often does. That the writers don't think that it's audience is so stupid they can't remember what happened last week. This is evident by Simmons' sudden lack of confidence after the events of FZZT in which she was infected by the brain busting alien virus, even asking Fitz if there are any traces of Chitauri energy when examining one of the resting places for the staff's pieces. It was a small moment but it's much appreciated it shows that the characters are changing as opposed to staying the way they are... and why do I suddenly have Star Trek: Voyager flashbacks? Ward's past is revealed a little bit and we see why he is so overprotective of the team, because he was powerless to stop his older brother from tossing their younger one into a well, it was also amusing to see young Ward being overweight, it just hammers in the point of how much he had to change. Much like FZZT chances are this episode will change Ward's character even if it's just a little bit like Simmons'. You might say this show is not moving fast enough but we're only 8 episodes in, you can't expect them to dump all of our characters' back-stories all at once so early not just in the season but in the show. Still the plot is slowly thickening, Centipede is shaping up to be the big bad organisation of the season, Graviton is bound to show up eventually, Skye's parents could be baddies as well, we don't know yet and it will be worth while to stick to the show and find out.
Overall the episode is very good, but there are two faults that keep me from giving it perfect scores, 1) We should have seen more of Ward's flashbacks if only for about a minute more, 2) the villains a unbelievably bland, their motives are non-existent, as it stands they just wanted to blow sh*t up. The ending is great though, it's action packed and it wraps itself nicely with a few character moments. Much like FZZT this one comes highly recommended. 9/10.
Based on these ratings we can conclude that the series is fluctuating in quality, it's not bad by any means but most of the time it's just plain average but it seems to be finding its groove very slowly. This was a pretty great episode, like FZZT, it develops characters, this time's Ward's turn to get a character study and while the character stuff this episode is not as good in FZZT, the episode does make up for it by having a really good story and action, not to mention the fact that the comedy is much more refined, subtle and naturalistic than in the earlier stuff, it does feel like something real people would say or do.
The story this week involves the search for a super strength granting staff of Asgardian origin that was broken into three pieces by its original wielder and scattered across the globe to prevent its powers from being misused. Our baddies of the week are a Norse neo-paganist hate group whose followers rose in numbers after Thor and the Norse gods were revealed to be real and now seek the staff to... actually they don't really give a reason other than to blow things up, but hey who wouldn't want super strength. As it turns out the staff also has the side-effect of making the people exposed to it super raging by giving them flashbacks to the most traumatic moments of their lives, and Grant "dubious family history" Ward is exposed to it meaning that we now get to see a small piece of his scary childhood.
Character-wise it's nice to see that the show isn't hammering the reset button like other worse sci-fi often does. That the writers don't think that it's audience is so stupid they can't remember what happened last week. This is evident by Simmons' sudden lack of confidence after the events of FZZT in which she was infected by the brain busting alien virus, even asking Fitz if there are any traces of Chitauri energy when examining one of the resting places for the staff's pieces. It was a small moment but it's much appreciated it shows that the characters are changing as opposed to staying the way they are... and why do I suddenly have Star Trek: Voyager flashbacks? Ward's past is revealed a little bit and we see why he is so overprotective of the team, because he was powerless to stop his older brother from tossing their younger one into a well, it was also amusing to see young Ward being overweight, it just hammers in the point of how much he had to change. Much like FZZT chances are this episode will change Ward's character even if it's just a little bit like Simmons'. You might say this show is not moving fast enough but we're only 8 episodes in, you can't expect them to dump all of our characters' back-stories all at once so early not just in the season but in the show. Still the plot is slowly thickening, Centipede is shaping up to be the big bad organisation of the season, Graviton is bound to show up eventually, Skye's parents could be baddies as well, we don't know yet and it will be worth while to stick to the show and find out.
Overall the episode is very good, but there are two faults that keep me from giving it perfect scores, 1) We should have seen more of Ward's flashbacks if only for about a minute more, 2) the villains a unbelievably bland, their motives are non-existent, as it stands they just wanted to blow sh*t up. The ending is great though, it's action packed and it wraps itself nicely with a few character moments. Much like FZZT this one comes highly recommended. 9/10.
