Enjoyed it. They did a lot in this first episode. I was all in last season and all in this season.
The Fitz stuff was a little sad once you saw what the deal was.

I almost want to DVR the season and binge watch.

Loved the season premiere. Absorbing Man was def cool!

Good premiere, and I feel like they did a great job keeping up the momentum. I was afraid after the Winter Soldier stuff settled in this would get boring, but it looks like they set up some great plot points for the season. I thought I would hate Ward coming back, but he seems so fucked up in that cell that i'm curious where they take him. Absorbing Man was great, and I thought the effects were really well done. Loved the opening with Atwell, and I like setting up that artifact as the macguffin to hunt for. The chatter about Patton Oswalt's character being twins or something weird was nice to hear brought up as well. And finally, the stuff with Fitz and Simmons totally surprised me and was unexpected.

I could do without the Coulson voice overs trying to artificially add weight to their cause though. And Lawless' character being one and done would be disappointing to me. I thought they were going to go somewhere with that hand of hers.

Yeah really entertaining first episode. Much better than last season's Pilot episode.

The opening sequence with Agent Carter was very cool. I hope they bring another one to help segue to the Agent Carter series next year.

The special effects on the Absorbing Man were really cool. Surprised that Lucy Lawless only lasted 1 episode.

I think it should be fun with SHIELD being an underground rogue operation while they are being hunted by Talbot. It sets up some really fun story potential.

I also was surprised that Simmons was a hallucination.

Might be interesting if he were to go through some kind of mindwipe that erased his involvement with Hydra from his memory. It would, more or less, leave him completely innocent of any crimes he committed, but his colleagues would still resent him and not fully trust him and he wouldn't understand why. And, of course, there's always the possibility his memories would return, and he would deal with the knowledge of what he did...

There was a story similar to this on Babylon 5, though that was a one-and-done and not a recurring character.

Good episode. I wonder if somehow, thanks to the obelisk, we haven't seen the last of Lucy Lawless?

I also wonder if we'll get to catch up with the real Simmons at some point. I hope so.

The Incredible Hulk did have a new origin.

Ang Lee's Hulk went with the classic gamma radiation origin. The Incredible Hulk used the origin taken from the Ultimate universe where Banner was trying to recreate the super soldier formula and it backfired.

Ratings took a massive tumble

^^ That article is comparing the season premiere to the series premiere from a year ago. I don't think that is really a fair comparison. The series premiere was going in with a lot of hype and of course had some inflated numbers. The ratings dropped after it, but did stabilize.

TVBYTHENUMBERS hasn't released the fast overnight numbers yet. I think we're realistically looking around 5-7M viewers and in the high 1's.

With Hulu and DVR, I don't even understand how ratings work anymore.

I didn't watch it last night. But I DVR'd it and will catch it sometime this week.

I saw an article saying that Live overnights are being looked at as highly inaccurate. The networks are starting to look more into Live + 3 now, which means people who are watching within 3 days.

http://www.spoilertv.com/2014/09/rat...r-2014_24.html

5.5M viewers and 1.9. Around what I expected. Again these are just preliminary and are highly inaccurate.

I bailed on this show last year - and followed this thread and read that it got much better.

So I decided to watch the first episode of the season:

- Impressed with the special effects and quality
- Glad that there are some 'super powers'
- Love the much darker feel, and more mature feeling (and less like Heros)
- Loved the flash backs - felt like a scene from a marvel movie

Highly innaccurate? LMAO. Sure, it might adjust up a .1 or .2...but cmon. A spade is a spade.

It was slowly getting better before, but Cap 2 basically forced changes to the show.

I did the same, as far as bailing, but now I might jump in. When I heard about Crusher Creel, it piqued my interest.

Maybe not. If I recall correctly, in CA2, Cap was shown as having level 6 security clearance. In the pilot, Coulson revealed himself alive to Ward with the line "welcome to level 7." How that explains Coulson walking around SHIELD bases unnoticed, I'm not sure. Maybe Fury did a really good job making sure only the right people knew.

I enjoyed the premiere. The visuals and effects were stronger. The story was promising. The only thing I wish they would focus on now is the music. It feels so cheap.

I was really saddened by the Fitz-Simmons reveal. I doubt Lawless' character is truly dead. The point of the flashback was to set up the artifact contains the power to cheat death.

I still wonder about Coulson, and whether he's an LMD...

I've seen the Whedon family kill off characters I've loved, but this might've been one of the more heartbreaking reveals yet.

Since this is "classified" as a Whedon show, this show has nowhere to go but up in its second season based upon the trajectory of Buffy, Angel, and Dollhouse. The season premiere was leaps and bounds better than most of what was aired last season.

That Simmons reveal was brutal. I hope Fitz comes back soon. I enjoyed their pairing, and thought it was one of the best things last year.

Positives:
1. Coulson is now the Director and respected by all around him
2. Threads from last year are still being worked (Ward, Coulson "Wall" Symbols, Team is still on the run...)
3. More than 3/4 months have passed, I am guessing one year, they have eluded capture through one "Winter"
4. Absorbing Man was AWESOME, great CGI. Nice to see a "Super" in the mix
5. HYDRA still out there
6. Fritz was sad and cool at the same time
7. Flash Backs connected to the Future

Bad or Just not as good:
1. Guest star dies
2. Not sure how I feel about the changes in Sky, much darker. Used to be the heart and soul of the team.
3. The Army/Airforce guys were VERY bad shots
4. Some bad edits in the show

I like that Damien Carp from Franklin and Bash is a high up Hydra operative.

Opening was straight up awesome. We had better get some howling commando action in the Peggy Carter show or I will be pissed. Overall, a very solid premiere.

He'll always be Kellerman to me.

yeah - they went to the storm trooper school of shooting. loved how sky took out 2 guys behind cover with 2 quick shots from a hand gun - but they could not hit her with automatic weapons, behind cover, and she was standing up in the middle of a hallway.

Nooo! Why, why, why?

This was a great season debut for SHIELD except one thing- Skye's terrible new hairstyle. It's possibly the worst hair disaster on network television since they chopped Felicity's hair off.

They gave May a new look as well. That was much more successful, softening her looks.

They must have changed VFX houses, the Absorbing Man's cgi looked pretty good for television. Much better than anything we saw last year. This was a fun episode seeing Dum Dum Dugan in the flashback. If this had been the pilot episode, SHIELD would have held on to a much bigger portion of the pilot's audience. I think many people have written the show off, just when it has become a very good show.

I'm not a huge fan of Ward sticking around. If he's not dead by November, ABC is forcing him to remain on the show as male eye candy.