Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 2, Episode 1 Review

Agents of SHIELD opened its second season last Friday and...that was a bit of a shaky start.
I watched the episode the first time with family (most of whose conversations lasted longer than the adequate ad-break time), so I ended up missing certain crucial elements, but felt the episode to be a weak entry from the show.
When I watched the second time, I liked it a lot more, and was actually able to hear the dialogue!
After a quick recap on last season (sneakily editing out Samuel L Jackson's brilliant final scene putting Coulson in charge of SHIELD and Coulson's writing on the wall), we open in 1945 where Agent Peggy Carter (from Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel One Shots: Agent Carter and the new Marvel's Agent Carter TV show, set to air next year) and some Howling Commandos (who, would you believe it, had some dialogue and almost get personalities!) as they take over a Hydra base. Plot hole though - wasn't the Agent Carter short set a year after WWII or something? Was she working with the Commandos even before then? Its probably a nit-pick anyway.
It becomes clear that one of the objects they recover from the Hydra base - an Obelisk - is a weapon in the wrong hands and is revealed to be the very first 0-8-4! Nice little continuity there Marvel.
The Obelisk seems to be the all-powerful weapon for Hydra to get their grubby mitts on this season, akin to the Tesseract from the films, and with the evil Red John suspect from The Mentalist after it (being a Hydra agent and all that), Coulson and co must get it first.
However, they do have to deal with a bloated, unfocused episode beforehand.
After such a strong focus on these few characters last season, why not add in another four?! We have Lucy Lawless' character (can't remember her name), her driver (can't remember his name either), an annoying British character (about as clichéd in personality as you can get) and a guy called Mack that Triplett's friends with. Despite barely appearing or speaking, if Triplett likes Mack, I will. Lucy Lawless and her driver get killed off at the end of the episode, sadly leaving the more annoying clichéd Brit alive (Wash death for him please, Mr Whedon). They really shouldn't have been in the episode. They add nothing and therefore their deaths mean nothing. Perhaps then we could have focused on our character's evolution from Season 1 and Mack.
We do have a brief nod to the writing from last season, with Skye investigating it. Its nice to see that Skye and May have got a new bond (not that it gets much attention) and Skye being trained by May makes sense.
Coulson has a couple of good moments - "I'll have you so deep in horse manure son you'll need a snorkel" being a highlight.
Poor old Fitz though seems to be suffering from his brain damage at the end of last season. The moment you realize he's not talking to Simmons, but to an imaginary Simmons is heartbreaking! For such a lovable character to be in such a state is a tragic way to begin the series. Hopefully he'll get better. Hopefully.
Then we have our other characters, who as good as they are, felt very underused and for the most part the overall focus of the episode seemed to be on starting a lot up. Grant Ward returns for a short but pivetal scene, although still feels underused. Brett Dalton's performance though was spot-on.
Of course amongst all this we have a new Super Villain - the Absorbing Man - who absorbs materials and can turn his skin into them. For such a cheesy and ludicrous concept, he ends up being incredibly menacing, so perhaps its best we call him the Crusher.
The episode seemed to be about coming out of the shadows, and taking a bit risk to get...a Quinjet? Yep, let's get a small invisible plane and a device of mass destruction while the Government and a super villain are after you. Its a big risk, and despite two deaths, it goes as well as it could. Now to wait for it to all go horribly wrong...
The episodes' lack of focus was its main problem at the end of the day, and despite some good one-off moments and excellent production values throughout, the increase in new characters isn't helping the already established ones with their arcs. But where is Simmons? How is that Hydra Agent still alive? All with be revealed...in 21 episodes time probably. 7/10