So how's that new season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. going?

Glad you asked.

Much like last season, the first couple episodes took off at a breakneck pace. I'm not sure why they're doing that again, maybe they just think they have too much narrative to cover or something. But whatevs, it's a good thing I have the dvr set, 'cause I have to go back and review sometimes to see what I've missed.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is now the little engine that could and Hydra is the big dog with endless resources and such. The team has added a few new characters, sadly the highly anticipated (by me at least) addition of Lucy Lawless ended in the first episode as her character got killed off. sheesh

Added to the good guys are a mercenary named Lance Hunter played by Nick Blood (yeah, that's what I thought too) and a sort of techy guy "Mac" MacKenzie played by Henry Simmons, who ends up befriending Fitz in a big brother kind of way.

Fitz is brain damaged from the cliffhanger peril he and Simmons were in at the end of season one. So he talks to a mirage of Simmons, can't complete a sentence and is struggling to be a functioning part of the team. Simmons has gone off to work undercover at Hydra and Fitz thinks she's abandoned him, adding to his smothering despair.

Oh yeah, in my port mortem on last season, I said it didn't make any sense to me to develop a character like Ward and then kill him off. Well they didn't. He's in some secure holding cell where Coulson is using Skye to extract info from him about Hydra. Ward seems, on the surface, to be reformed after his capture and failed suicide attempts, but underneath, he appears to be focused on delivering Skye to her father, who we still don't know exactly who/what her father is.

They've continued the trend of upping the action quotient that started towards the end of last season. This week we had a nice fight between a lingerie-clad Agent May and an imposter of herself wearing a low cut/high slit cocktail dress. Yummy. Must see tv. heh

Also in the harder edged department, May is mentoring Skye in an attempt to make her a more functional field agent. Skye wears a heart monitor on her wrist to ensure she's remaining calm, even when acting as a sniper and killing a mutant threatening the team.

There's been some humor as well. My favorite was when Skye was trying to be dismissive of Hunter and she called him "trainspotting." Hunter gives her this look and remarks that he's not Scottish. heh They could use a bit more snark like that imho.

The regrettable Patton Oswalt is still around and there's a general named Talbot chasing the team. Adrian Pasdar, as General Talbot, looks like he's channeling Sam Elliot as General Ross from 2003's Hulk movie. Not bad, but a bit over the top, again imho.

All in all, it's still a good show. It's going to suffer from not being blockbuster movie-ish, but it's some nice small ball. I'd like to see the occasional cameo from the movies -- I've seen where Jeremy Renner has said he'd be okay with it. And with the introduction of his comic book girlfriend (Barbara Morse aka Mockingbird) portrayed by Adrianne Palicki in next week's episode, we might get that.

So I'm good with this so far :-)