Around the Water Cooler: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – “Girl in the Flower Dress″ (spoilers!)

Spoilers abound in this commentary on the latest episode of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”, now available to watch on the official website.

• Finally, we have an story arc for the first season! In retrospect, they were setting it up from the start with Skye’s weird traitor aura leading us into wanting her to finally blurt out the reason why she wanted to infiltrate S.H.I.E.L.D. It will be interesting to see what the exact deal with her parents are and why the organization would have been involved with them.
• In a friend’s Facebook thread about the series, a different friend posited that she would have liked Skye more if the actress playing the character were younger. For this story arc, I can totally see that working if they’d gotten an actress who really looked like she was a young teenager. However, this story about the ex-lover/hacktivist would have been a little extra creepy.
• Agent Melinda May continues to be more awesome, and the fact that she used to have more than a passing familiarity with Agent Phil Coulson makes me like her even more. I also wonder if she was using the “Let’s go practice” gambit to try and assess whether or not he was really Coulson.
• Does the fact that Chan (no, I refuse to call him “Scorch”) has pyrokinetic abilities open the door for mutant powers in this ‘verse? I certainly hope it does. And that maybe they get to go to Chicago and pick up my favorite teen hacker/sprite/ghost-walker—oh, shit… is my Marvel fangirl showing?
• I am still holding out for a character-focused story for Simmons. She and Fitz looked more inept than usual in this episode.
• I also have to wonder how far in advance this script was written in order to get the Edward Snowden reference in. And I also personally know several people who do consider him to be a privacy hero as well.
• Am I the only one getting shades of the Malcolm Reynolds/Zoe relationship from May and Coulson?

Despite being spoiled for this episode in a minor way, I was very, very pleased with it. This bodes well for the rest of the season; it can only get better from here. Okay, maybe it can get worse again, but I now have hopes!