Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ‘Eye Spy’

As this week’s episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ‘Eye Spy’ opens up, we are in Sweden.  There is a small army of weirdoes in red masks with briefcases attached to their wrists walking the streets and boarding a train.  But then some lady beats them down and steals one of their briefcases but leaving all the rest.  The S.H.I.E.L.D. crew gets wind of it and discovers that the same lady is stealing lots of diamonds and doing it in a way that almost makes her seem psychic.  But is she?

As it turns out, she’s an ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent that went missing under mysterious circumstances and the crazy psychic powers are little more than a very high-tech eyeball that she’s been fitted with.  Who did it, no one seems to know, but they have been controlling her for years, making her do little jobs for their own nefarious purposes.  But Coulson is dedicated to rescuing her from her electronic captor and brings the team along for the ride.

So while the brains figure out a way to get the eyeball out before it explodes, Grant has to go in and pretend to be the girl on the job by using some tech devices the crew hooked up.  In the meanwhile, Coulson tracks where the eyeball communications are coming from and sets out to nab the baddie.

This week we get a little glimpse into Coulson’s past, which was nice.  Clark Gregg’s acting also seems to be improving a bit, though that could just be an illusion.  As is often the case with sci-fi television series, it takes a while for the actors to warm to the roles.  Hopefully, that’s what I’m seeing here.

The goofy humor is also, thankfully, being steadily downplayed.  The witticisms are getting cleverer and the blatant slapstick shows up less and less.  Again, this is pretty much Joss Whedon’s usual pattern, and while I suspect we’ll see more goofy episodes in the future, they will be designed with the express purpose of being goofy, rather than expressing a running theme throughout the entire series.

All-in-all, a decent episode.  I do find myself wishing that they would either bring in some seriously scary villains or have an episode or two that focuses almost solely on character development, but that doesn’t seem to be the aim of the show just yet.  For a sneak peek at next week’s episode, ‘Girl in the Flower Dress’, check this site out.

Photo Credits -

Eye Spy courtesy of bigshinyrobot.com