Coulson and his team are now wanted fugitives with limited resources - but that's not stopping them from keeping the world safe from powerful and unseen threats everywhere. However, with new members they hardly know, will S.H.I.E.L.D. ever be trusted again?

I make no bones about the fact that the first season of "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." did not do much for me. It under-delivered on the promise of integration with the Marvel Cinematic Universe for too long, and made viewers slog through a "weird occurrence of the week" style show that didn't have a clearly outlined villain. Thankfully all of that turned around when Hydra reared its head, but part of me really worried that it was too late to turn this boat around.

I'm happy to report that the second season hits the ground running and feels like what the show should have been in the first place. Most of my major issues with season one have already been addressed: the big one being that S.H.I.E.L.D. was always too darn powerful. Focusing on the small team didn't dilute the fact that this was a massive state of the art organization, and it felt like they were bullies when they were taking down "fire guy" or some college student who made the weather dominator. With S.H.I.E.L.D. as we knew it now dismantled, this puts the team in the underdog situation that makes them instantly easier to root for. They don't have unlimited resources anymore, plus they have to actually operate in the shadows (something they talked about but never seemed to do in the first season.) One an individual basis, the team works better as well. Coulson is being much better utilized. It never felt right that he was in this weird sort of middle management role of running a team but usually not being the on the ground leader. Now he's the director of what is left of the organization, and it just feels right. His inscrutable line delivery is perfectly suited for being the guy with more information than anybody else. May is still awesome and kicks plenty of butt, while Tripp is an infinitely more fun point man than Ward ever was. The show even pulls off the seemingly impossible task of making Fitz and Simmons interesting and dynamic. Sky is still just kind of there, but as before she's not dragging anybody down and she gets the job done.

Newcomers are doing great work as well. Lucy Lawless is in top form, as she always is. And the retention of Patton Oswalt was such a relief, his appearance in season one was one of the highlights and to have him back is a ceaseless joy. By the end of the episode we're also given a clear, distinct and understandable villain, which is something the first season lacked for way too long. We don't know much about him yet, but we already know his connections and the mystery about him generates interest instead of yawns (the first season really overplayed the mystery of the "clairvoyant," and this time they seem to understand that if nothing else we need a face.) While it's a great start, and it maintains the momentum that the last few episodes of the previous season built up, there are a few points that have me worried. The big one is Ward. Just on principle is drives me nuts that they didn't kill him off last season. Firstly, he was never that interesting. Probably in an attempt to have his betrayal be believable, we never really got close enough to him to really care much about the guy. And then his betrayal was so fundamental, paired with the fact that he attempted to kill Fitz and Simmons, that really he should have been killed. I don't buy the "he's not ALL that bad" angle they seemed to be trying to give him at the end of last season. He's beyond redemption and I have no interest in his return to the team in any capacity. That said, if he's going to be around, locked up in a cage is a good place to put him. Except you know that sooner or later they're going to need his help and he'll be let out and then it'll just bog down everything. They're also continuing to tease out the mystery of Sky, which I never really got very invested in last time around. I'm morbidly curious, but it doesn't really matter much to me.

These however are fairly minor stumbling points, especially when compared to how rough the first season was. I just hope that the show can maintain its current quality and not dip back into the traps that made the first season such a slog for so long.

Duration: 4 Discs HD DVD-9 Plastic Bag Packing Ver. ( 22 Complete Series )