Agents of SHIELD Episode 4.01: "The Ghost"

SYNOPSIS
While hunting down a group of gun runners, Daisy "Quake" Johnson runs afoul of a mysterious flaming Dodge Charger, whose driver murders most of the mercenaries, leaving one critically injured and the other in the back of his car as he speeds away on flaming tires.  Daisy tracks down the survivor to a local hospital, and before he dies he tells her that "when the Rider burns you, he burns your soul...and it will never heal".

Agents of SHIELD Coulson and Mack are given information on Daisy's whereabouts by their former teammate Melinda May, who gives them a head start in front of the task force that will looking to kill Quake, assuming she is responsible for the rash of murders in Los Angeles.  Quake begins her search for the car, while the driver tortures the kidnapped mercenary for information on their cargo, a mysterious box in the back of a semi-truck.  Coulson and Mack find the truck with two dead men inside, the men having killed one another, unware that the young man working for the salvage yard helping take care of the truck is the one with the flaming car.  He returns to the mercenary, tells him the box wasn't there, and runs him down with his car.

While Mack and Coulson follow clues to the box's whereabouts, a warehouse where criminals are meeting to take possession of the box, Daisy follows her own investigation of the "Ghost Rider" to a salvage yard, where she meets Robbie Reyes.  Mack and Coulson watch as the criminals open the box, unleashing a ghostly woman that causes the men to attack one another.  May and her team arrive to take out the criminals, take possession of the box, and return Coulson and Mack to SHIELD HQ.  At the scrap yard, Daisy realizes that Robbie is the murderer she's searching for and the two begin to fight.  Robbie transforms into the Ghost Rider and traps Daisy under wreckage, when she asks him to kill her, saying "I deserve it".  Instead, the Ghost Rider gets into his car and leaves her alive.  Meanwhile, en route to SHIELD, May realizes that she has become possessed by the ghostly woman from the box.

Oh, also, lots of other SHIELD stuff I couldn't care less about happened.  TO BE CONTINUED...!

REVIEW
Ah, Agents of SHIELD, here I was hoping I would never have to watch you again.  But here I am, not only watching but actually writing a review for you!  I remember the by-gone days of 2013 when I attempted to watch your first season and gave up due to your lackluster plots, unengaging characters, and strict refusal to show anything actually related to the Marvel Universe.

Things sure have changed, haven't they?  I certainly wouldn't have thought that Ghost Rider would be making his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut on an ABC television show, and I definitely wouldn't have pegged Robbie Reyes to be the Rider they decided to go with.  Neither of those are complaints, other than the fact that I had to sit through Agents of SHIELD again when I really didn't want to, because the character of Ghost Rider was adapted pretty darn well in this first episode.  Granted, a lot of fans are potentially going to write this off as "Not My Ghost Rider" since it's not Johnny Blaze (or even Danny Ketch, for that matter), and that's a shame.

Robbie Reyes is a character that's perfect for television adaptation, mainly because his story is so simple and streamlined while still connected to the larger mythos of Ghost Rider.  SHIELD has done right by the character, and in fact may have made him more interesting than he was when he debuted in the comic because he's shrouded in so much fucking MYSTERY that he's immediately engaging.  Gabriel Luna, who I had never heard of prior to this but will damn well remember now, plays an excellent Reyes, though one who seems to skew a bit older than the teenager from the comics.  His delivery of his lines during the fight with Quake were perfect to show the self-loathing mixed with perceived righteousness that the character's personality forms throughout the episode.  Really great stuff, and as an adaptation of the Reyes Ghost Rider, I'm sold.  The character even LOOKS great, which I thought would be impossible on a network television budget, but there it is: a fantastic flaming skull sitting atop a comic-accurate outfit.  I couldn't ask for more.

Or, well, yeah...I could definitely ask for more, because the rest of the episode stars the Agents of SHIELD, who are about as interesting as burnt toast.  I certainly can blame myself for this, since I haven't kept up with the series after bailing 12 episodes into Season One, but they could have at least made the plots surrounding these characters something that would keep your attention.  Instead, I found myself drifting off into daydreams and near-sleep whenever a character other than Daisy or Robbie were on screen.  I did like Melinda May during the first season, so I have hopes that her Ghost Box storyline will go somewhere interesting.

Overall, I'm still not impressed with Agents of SHIELD as a whole, it's dreadfully stiff and difficult to stay interested in.  I AM impressed with the introduction of Ghost Rider, however, and that's what will keep me coming back for new episodes.  Here's hoping the rest of the show around Robbie improves.

Grade: B-