Review 440: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Season 2)

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Season 2 greatly improves on it's first. Amping up the stakes, evolving the established character and introducing new ones.

In the wake of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s devastating infiltration by Hydra, Director Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and what remains of his team struggle to rebuild the organisation and restore its legitimacy – all while facing global threats, ruthless villains and their own private demons.

Forced to go off the grid and operate in the shadows, Coulson and Agents May (Ming-NaWen), Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) and Skye (Chloe Bennet) race to unlock the secrets of a bizarre alien artifact that could change their lives forever. Now Skye must grapple with a shocking destiny, divided loyalties and the earth-shattering ramifications of her inhumanity.

Along the way, Lance Hunter (Nick Blood), Agent Bobbi Morse (Adrianne Palicki) and Agent Alphonso “Mack” Mackenzie (Henry Simmons) join the team, but can they be trusted?

In terms of narrative and plot Season 2 is already a huge improvement over the first. It makes use of the status quo that was established thanks to the Captain America: The Winter Soldier tie-in and runs with it. Instantly as the Season kicks off, the monumental nature of rebuilding the organisation is made clear when you realise everyone including the U.S. military and government wants to arrest them.
S.H.I.E.L.D. for all intense and purposes is illegal. Coulson and his team have very few resources. Everything they're doing is fighting Hydra and find out who's Hydra and who isn't amongst their friends.

In order to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D., they're gonna need some old friends to prove themselves, some new friends/fresh recruits and they're going to have to do it in a way that's very back alley, old school.

On the subject of new friends, since Coulson is trying to rebuild S.H.I.E.L.D., he's going to need people that he can trust. Hunter, Morse & Mack seem like just the right people for the job.
Their interactions with the returning cast are just as believable as they are entertaining to watch.

Compared to the first season where Coulson was sold as the lead, in Season 2, he's pretty much fallen into the much improved ensemble. 

Clark Gregg continues to shine as Agent Coulson, now that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been disbanded following Hydra's infiltration, we get to see him take on bigger responsibilities and slip into being a more authoritative figure with him being the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Certain events after the winter finale change Skye as a character forever and Chloe Bennet really sinks her teeth  She starts to develop powers rapidly
With this discovery, there are inveitably consequences and especially in her relationships with everyone around her, specifically Coulson.

For the first half of the season, Fitz suffers from some severe brain trauma due to the injuries he sustained at the end of Season 1 and that has a pretty profound effect on him as a character moving forward as experiences psychological struggles with his mind and heart, having professed his love for Jemma and trying to not let his injury get him down and do the best that he can.
De Caestecker & Henstridge's chemistry help solidify the relationship between the characters more than the freshman season as time and again they're taken out of their comfort zone.

Mack is very much one of those characters who has a tough outside but a soft inside i.e. he's someone with a very soft heart and he wants to make a difference, so that's why he wants to be part of the team. Usually Mack is a guy whose opposed to violence - he doesn't like it at all. But when pushed it's "by any means necessary." When it comes down to that and business has to get done, there's another side of him that gets it done.

Who is Ward without someone telling him what to do? He can follow orders really well. He can do and make tough choices and even sometimes do unpleasant things in the name of something that he feels he believes in. But even Ward doesn't know the answer to that question at the start of the season. 

I'd say the one flaw in the main cast is that Antoine "Trip" Triplett (B. J. Britt) doesn't get a lot of development and gets very few chances to shine. The others defiantly prove their worth over the course of the season but this guy just seems like a background character than anything else. I get why he was there as the teams specialist but I didn't really understand why he was there in terms of narrative or arc - and by the mid-season finale he comes across as an unfulfilled character.

In the first 10 episodes of the season, Coulson and his team come to conflict with the new head of Hydra, Daniel Whitehall (Reed Diamond). Whitehall is usually dedicated as clam, relaxed, polite, well spoken and even charming at times, making the moments when he reveals his true colours as an immoral torture technician stand out greatly and make him legitimately frightening.
He also has a highly interesting backstory that may or may not involve a personal connection to Red Skull.

In the second half of the season, Coulson & his team come into conflict with a rival S.H.I.E.L.D. faction led by Robert Gonzales (Edward James Olmos). Gonzales is very much presented as a foil to Coulson and to a lesser extent Nick Fury: The situations that Gonzales has come across and the situations that Coulson has come across have changed their ability to work with the same understanding. Coulson is working like Fury and under that understanding whereas Gonzales, on the other hand, doesn't work under Fury's understanding.  Fortunatly, both of their philosophys are the same. They are S.H.I.E.L.D. They are not anything but S.H.I.E.L.D. people. It's just that their S.H.I.E.L.D., the one that they originally put forth, was very, very transparent. And the S.H.I.E.L.D. that materialized under Fury-and now Coulson-is much more secretive.

However, Gonzales proves to be quite hypocritical and short-sighted; he blames Nick Fury and Project Insight entirely for the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. conveniently forgetting that HYDRA's infiltration was what caused it in the first place. He also has to gall to say that S.H.I.E.L.D. should not stand divided, yet he refuses to cooperate with Coulson.

Exec. Producer Jeffrey Bell has likened the season to a 22 hour movie that moves like a train. Because there's S.H.I.E.L.D. 2.0, then Hydra, then the Inhumans, and Ward, all these different threads.

 So we’ve got S.H.I.E.L.D. 2.0, and we’ve got Hydra, and we’ve got Inhumans, and we’ve got Ward, and we’ve got all those different threads.

Kyle MacLachlan

Dichen Lachman 

Unfortunately that conflict is cut short by a tie-in for Avengers: Age of Ultron.