Television: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., "The Writing on the Wall"

I'm kind of tired of Ward's one-note character. He went from having a smidgen of depth (and really, just a smidge) to being utterly flat once he became "evil." Like, I think they're trying to make the character complex with the whole Garrett back story, but as he is now, he's monotonous. A plot device more than a person.

Meanwhile, the main story of the night revolved around figuring out what all those carvings Coulson has been making really mean. Geez, they've been going on about that for long enough, so it was about time they got somewhere with it. As previously predicted, it was tied to S.H.I.E.L.D. members who have had that alien blood or whatever transfused into them—basically, agents who have been brought back to life (á la "Tahiti"). They seem to then go on to be plagued by these images, the ones Coulson has been carving. One woman painted them over and over again as a form of modern art. Another guy—a welder—created a three-dimensional version. He, of all the survivors, was the most balanced, possibly because he'd gotten it out of his system in the "right" way: three-dimensionally. It was never meant to be a flat image.

Anyway, the hoopla was over one of these survivor agents (who'd tattooed the image across his chest) going around to others and killing them in attempts to get them to remember and give up whatever they knew about the "map" (as Skye had called it). Possibly the most cliché opener ever: the guy coming over to the woman's apartment while sinister music plays. Yech. It would have been more interesting if she'd been the aggressor. Still clich&eacute, but . . .

Sufficient to say, once Coulson and the bad guy (whose name I didn't even bother to learn) converge on the welder, there's a fight and then the 3D model is found and we can finally move on with this particular plot. Thank God.

The question is now: "What is it?" or maybe "Where is it?" If it's a map, what's it a map for or to? I'm wondering if it's connected to Skye in some way.

And Ward is still off being evil, promising Whitehall that he can get Coulson for him, and probably planning to do something bad to his brother the senator. Whatever.

Overall, a necessary episode that they tried to make interesting, but it was really only middling.