The main drawcards of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot were a charismatic lead performance from Clark Gregg and some appealing Joss Whedon banter. The sophomore episode pulls back considerably on both of these elements to its detriment, choosing instead to focus on a “the team pulls together” action-heavy storyline. The quality of the banter is a step down from last week (I didn’t laugh once), Gregg was confined to a storyline that felt like an excerpt from an NCIS episode and the action once again emphasised the show’s comparatively low budget. A number of shots reminded me of Xena, Warrior Princess, which isn’t a good thing in 2013.
The entirety of “0–8–4” felt unoriginal. This could’ve been okay, as “bickering colleagues overcome their mistrust of one another to defeat a shared enemy” is a story that works plenty well … with sufficient chemistry evident amongst the actors, which wasn’t the case here, and separating Gregg from the rest of the cast didn’t help. The episode’s attempts to jazz things up (references to Tesseract technology, an opening shot of someone hurtling out of a very-CGI-looking-plane, an entertaining Samuel L. Jackson cameo) don’t disguise that this is a pretty mediocre piece of television.
ccpopculture 
It’s a shame to hear that!
It’s early days yet – I’m certainly not ruling out the show becoming genuinely good-to-great in the future. I think they may have rushed by including this kind of storyline before they’ve really had a chance to flesh out their supporting cast.
Have you been watching at all?
No, I did mean to but the negative reviews that I’m reading for episode two have put me off a little.
This series has a lot of problems. Mainly its characters, hate the two scientists and care very little for the others. Coulson is fun but he’;s best when playing off other well created characters. Like at the end with Fury, which is the best part of the series so far 😦
I watch new series for the first 3 episodes and i’ll decide to keep watching after next weeks so it better be a marked improvement because I am not impressed.
I struggle to see anything I really like and this type of show should be right up my alley 😦
Fights scenes are lackluster and dull. This episode has been done a thousand times by a thousand tv series 😦
The Worst thing about this tv series is that its painfully obvious that its a tv series. I want to be fooled into the marvel universe not watch boring actors on a set 😦
Yeah, I know what you mean – I’d agree with everything you’ve said here. I think I like what the show is going for, but its problems stem from underwhelming characters (and I think much of the blame for this lies with the actors, but the writers should shoulder some responsibility) and an unnecessary focus on action in a series without the budget to pull off what they want to achieve.
I’ll give it a few more episodes; if the cast can work out some genuine chemistry it could be a good show!
I don’t see the characters working at all so far so either radical change, kill a few of them off or/and add some decent actors to the group.
Come on Whedon kill them off!
Actually he only kills off characters you like so I think all the characters are probably immortal as it stands 😀