I've only re-watched the first half of the season so far, so episodes 11 onward are prelim rankings. But for reference, here are Season Two rankings:

Those of us who grew up on MST3K have a few chestnuts that we can bust out for nearly any show/movie. One of my personal favorites for re-purposing, usually ironically, is "this scene works because we *care* about the characters!" [From Episode 3-1, _Cave Dwellers_, for the record.] "S.O.S." is a season finale and…

_Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D._ thrives on what the political kids today might call gotcha moments. This episode has a few of them leading up to the big one at the end. When the gotcha moments are kind of the whole point of the thing, there are two important considerations for a show-runner: one is to make the surprising…

So the original team's back together. "The Dirty Half Dozen" of course goes out of its way to shed light on all that. There are reunions applenty, and reintegrating Mac and Bobbi into the fold actually does more to restore the new status quo than working together with Ward does - the review suggests that the current…

Big things afoot this week. Credit to the show for going ahead and actually playing out all the schisms and changes set up in the episodes leading up to - particularly the scattering of the main cast, which always takes awhile to sort out when shows do it. We tease having moments in which our various heroes could…

Is _Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D._ more interested in who Coulson is, or what he is? The show started by attempting to use both as hooks us on both - hey, it's that fun side character from the movies, and also why is he alive when he used to be dead? Generally speaking, it makes sense that the character stuff would…