Window of Opportunity

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. started off its sixth season with an episode in no hurry to dispel audience confusion. The second episode continued very much in this mold.

The team is on the trail of the strange new threat that looks like Agent Coulson. Meanwhile, Fitz is trapped aboard an alien space ship, trying to hide as a member of its engineering team. But when his cover is blown, he scrambles to save his own life without sacrificing his sense of right and wrong.

Ever so slowly, the series is giving us more information about what's going on this season. But it's still finishing the outside border of the jigsaw puzzle. The threat is from a marauding group of alien baddies who leave a trail of destroyed planets in their wake. But are they causing that destruction or staying just a step ahead of it? In their search for precious (to them) resources, are they fighting to survive, or involved in some profit-seeking adventure? I feel like I need to understand who these people even are before I can begin to engage in why their leader looks like Coulson. So far, the show isn't offering many answers.

But at least it isn't stingy with the fun visuals. The "portable hole" technology that connected the aliens' HQ/big rig with the inside of a vault was fun both as the heist began and as it turned into a cross-location fight with May later in the episode. There were other simple thrills too -- visual gags like the rig's cloaking technology, and tantalizing morsels of character development as the personalities of the people on Sarge's team were slowly penciled in.

I feel like I should have felt more engaged in the Fitz plot line this week -- it does, after all, revolve around a character I know, one I'm very happy to see not dead. And yet the underpinnings of the story here make it a little hard to get into. Time travel being what it is, this version of Fitz is almost completely ignorant of the events of season five -- events that advanced and changed his character a great deal. His notion of destiny has been reset, his marriage to Simmons has been undone, and he's regressed in working through his guilt over the Framework and the end of season four. That's a lot to undo, and seeing him "do" it again isn't especially compelling. In short, I feel like he needs to be found by the rest of the team sooner rather than later. The longer he's isolated, the more he's just repeating previous emotional beats.

I suppose I did find this second episode a touch more engaging than the premiere. But I'm still not really on board with this new season of the show just yet. I give the episode a C+. Here's hoping they find their groove again.