Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been demonstrating a gentle incline over the last four episodes, progressing step-by-step from “okay” to “good.” Unfortunately, “Girl in the Flower Dress” warrants an underwhelming shrug of one’s shoulders. The early scenes are promising, with Renshu Tseng (later known as “Scorch”) and Raina (the girl in the flower dress) demonstrating more chemistry than most of the core cast. 
But it doesn’t take long before the episode devolves into more uninspired action; last week’s “point-of-view” gimmick was clever, but here intelligence is replaced with fiery special effects.
Equally disappointing was the Rising Tide plot. Aside from clear highlight Coulson, Skye shows the best potential for an interesting character, so it was disappointing to see her Rising Tide links reduced to a smug criticism of the hypocrisy of Wikileaks-esque activism and her potential double agent status left at an uninspired adoption reveal. It did provide a slim excuse for Chloe Bennett to demonstrate how good she looks in her underwear; this kind of blatant fan-service suggests a series worried about keeping its audience. There were a couple redeeming moments – “Ah crap. They gave him a name.” – but equally we were inflicted to truly terrible Fitz-Simmons dialogue. Not encouraging.
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Agreed.
I will also say I don’t think Skye’s prospects as a double agent are yet settled. She gave up on her boyfriend and clearly has some positive regard for SHIELD, but that doesn’t mean she’s not continuing to play Coulson with parts the truth, but never all of it.
But I find the double agent prospect sort of meh. I’d rather they resolve it one way or the other.
Yeah possibly. It’s just so vanilla and uninteresting, as you say. I assume there’s some big twist waiting the wings (because why else would Coulson recruit her and keep her on when he seems to know a great deal about this?). I was originally hoping that it might reveal some questionable aspects of S.H.I.E.L.D. that Rising Tide had turned up, but it looks like the show’s more than happy for our heroes to just be straight-up good guys and Rising Tide to fall somewhere between inept villains and hypocritical hackers.
Completely agreed. I have one, maybe two more episodes in me. If it doesn’t go somewhere fast, I’m done. 😉
“Ah crap. They gave him a name.” best part but the episodes are still weak and un original 😦
Yeah, they need more than a funny line or two to make a good episode.
Certainly do.
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