If there’s two things I learned from watching “The Asset”, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s third episode, it’s that:

• One: You can make an element out of anything if you add an “-onium” at the end of it.
• Two: Skye and Ward have a lot of issues.

“The Asset” brings S.H.I.E.L.D. back into the spy genre with an hour of literally gravity-defying action, while giving us a look into the morals and hidden secrets of the Agents themselves. However, action aside, the show is already falling back on themes from the pilot. It’s going from unique to formulaic, and there’s a lot of problems that come with that.

When a S.H.I.E.L.D. convoy carrying physicist Franklin Hall (Ian Hart) is ambushed by gravity-controlling kidnappers, the Agents are tasked with recovering him and infiltrating the island of Ian Quinn (David Conrad), Hall’s former business partner with a hatred for any kind of “big brother” law enforcement. While Ward (Brett Dalton) is trying to groom Skye (Chloe Bennett) into a field agent, the Fitz/Simmons duo (Iain de Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge) find out that the kidnappers used an element known as Gravitonium to kidnap Hall. As Coulson (Clark Gregg) prepares a rescue mission, Skye grapples with whether or not she really wants to work for S.H.I.E.L.D., and Hall debates whether or not the completion of his life’s work is worth a partnership with the man who stole everything from him.

This episode cemented the formula that the show is bound to follow for the rest of the season. There’s a superpowered menace the team has to take down. The Agents go and fight off that menace. The writers take any chance they get to go, “Hey, in case you forgot, we’re a spinoff of The Avengers! Go watch that!” The ending changes the status quo slightly but not enough to make a huge difference, while leaving some kind of plotline hanging for the future.

Ward and Skye grow closer as a teacher-student pair. May (Ming-Na Wen) spends the episode complaining about how she didn’t sign up for field work (though, to be fair, her tune changes by the end of the episode). Fitz and Simmons give exposition on the threat of the week and are repeatedly told to explain things “in English”. Coulson makes witty one-liners. Somewhere in there, we have character development.

Nothing’s wrong with any of these things, but the pilot and especially “4-0-8” gave the impression that things would be different each week, that it would feel like a weekly mini-Marvel movie instead of a TV show. This week’s slip into repetitiveness pretty much threw that idea out the window.

This episode really makes it feel like the show was aired out of order. “The Asset” would match up more thematically with the pilot as a follow up to the episode which had Skye debating on her place in S.H.I.E.L.D., and the villain of the week mentioning again how the agency brought an alien invasion to Earth.

The episode’s theme for the week can be summed up as “tough calls.” The field Agents have to make difficult decisions to ensure the best possible outcome in their mission, and it is left ambiguous-especially at the end of the episode-whether or not those calls did actually work out for the best.

Dalton and Bennett are the highlight of this episode. The writers did a good job in keeping their banter to a minimum this episode, choosing instead to highlight the similarities between Skye and Ward. Both have had to deal with growing up fast due to the lack of strong parental figures in their lives, and there’s constant talk of their “moments,” defining times in their lives that made them stronger through pain and tragedy. These two really shine with their subdued, quiet scenes.

Despite what I said earlier, Gregg is more than just his one-liners this episode. He shows his dramatic chops about halfway into the episode. When things start to go south, you can see tinges of desperation and fear on his face as well as in his dialogue, giving Gregg a chance to be more than just the stoic hero.

De Caestecker and Henstridge are entertaining as usual, with them being officially taking on the job of mission control for the team. De Caestecker’s acting in particular gives Fitz more depth than the “science guy” role the writers stuck him with, with one of his later scenes-him trying to explain why Skye was so easily able to get Quinn’s trust-being the funniest of the whole episode.

Wen is still just in the background, offering occasional advice to the cast and assisting de Caestecker and Henstridge at mission control. However, by episode’s end, she decides to go back into field work, which hopefully should give her a bit more characterization in the future.

Conrad plays a very good villain this episode. He plays Quinn like an actual person instead of a cartoony bad guy. He’s like a counterpoint to Bennet’s Skye-a charming, charismatic individual with a distaste for regulations and rules. However, when Quinn’s plans start to falter and his calm, collected persona starts to crumble, he gets a lot more threatening. He goes from offering Skye a job to putting hand at her throat and a gun to her head in the span of a few seconds. You can see Conrad’s face go from cordial and kind to conniving and sinister very clearly, and it is a terrifying transition.

Hart is unmemorable up until the last act, and I think that really works in his favor. Hall is seen very few times in the first portion of the show, and he’s very quickly seduced by the chance to work with Gravitonium despite his past with Quinn. Hart seems utterly and completely harmless for most of the show. By the end of the episode, however, he proves to be just as threatening as Quinn, if not more, and his scenes with Gregg are the most dramatic of the series so far.

“The Asset” gets a B. This episode didn’t really live up to the previous one, but it’s still an interesting look into the psyches of the Agents and their growing bond.