So if the S.H.I.E.L.D. pilot was all about assembling the team and the second episode about teaching said team how to play nice together, Episode 3, "The Asset," is really the first business as usual outing in the show’s young history, with Coulson’s squad tackling a straightforward mission-of-the-week case as a (mostly) functioning unit. It’s more or less like what The Avengers sequel will probably be like since they took care of the assembling/infighting stuff in the first movie. Only, you know, with more money and better actors.
This case of the week involves the kidnapping of a S.H.I.E.L.D.-affiliated scientist by the name of Dr. Franklin Hall -- not to be confused with the hawkish Carter Hall, who flies the friendly skies for Marvel’s Distinguished Competition -- retrieved from a disguised Mack Truck in a pretty great cold open that features lots of gravity-defying car flipping. Hall is than transported to the exotic European locale of Malta, where he comes face-to-face with former pal, Ian Quinn, a Rand Paul-meets-Steve Jobs entrepreneur with a taste for creating cutting edge technology and a firm belief in limited (or, better yet, no) government oversight.
Hall is none too pleased to see his old "friend," due to the fact that Quinn basically built his empire on Franklin’s work, but his interest is piqued when Ian reveals he’s finally harnessed an element that they had spent their collaboration looking for: Gravitonium, which apparently hails from the James Cameron Periodic Table of Elements. According to the crack Fitz/Simmons double act o’ exposition, this particular bit of phlebotinum "distorts gravity fields within itself creating an undulating amorphous shape," that solidifies when it meets an electric current and results in explosions that "change the rules of gravity." Got all that? No? Don’t worry, here’s the important part: stuff goes boom, down becomes up.
Our heroes’ mission, which they have no real choice but to accept: infiltrate Quinn’s compound (acting independently as S.H.I.E.L.D. apparently isn’t welcome in Malta) and rescue Hall, whom Fitz/Simmons hold in very high regard. The plan they hit upon requires Skye to do her best Sydney Bristow impression -- complete with the cleavage-baring outfit -- and invite herself to a big Quinn-hosted party and distracting the host by pretending to be a Rising Tide follower as opposed to a S.H.I.E.L.D. operative. (Though after last week’s text message, it’s still an open question whether that’s her correct job description anyway.) For a brief moment, she appears to go off book, blowing her cover and contemplating switching over to Quinn’s team, but that impulse quickly passes and she opts to run away instead. Clearly, her Sydney Bristow impression needs a lot of work. In everything but the wardrobe department.
Meanwhile, Ward and Coulson sneak onto the grounds and split up, with Ward coming to Skye’s rescue and Coulson confronting Hall, who has decided he doesn’t want to leave Malta without seeing the lovely beaches up close and personal -- by using Quinn’s Gravitanium device to sink the dude’s house and lab in the ocean, thus sparing the world the havoc it might wreak. Hall wreaks a little havoc himself, setting off an explosion that knocks Coulson to the floor ceiling and, in general, talking like the kind of mad scientist who, it turns out, would set his own kidnapping in motion. Coulson’s having none of it, though, opting to shoot out the window floor, causing Hall to plunge directly into the whirling, crackling Stargate-looking contraption below, from which he’ll probably emerge as Graviton just in time for sweeps. Or a lot sooner if the ratings don’t get a Gravitanium-assisted bounce.
On the personal front, Ward and Skye continue their chemistry-free foreplay by indulging in a little game of "getting to know you" in between punching bag sessions (He used to get beat up by his brother! She was an unwanted foster kid! They fight crime! No really, they do…); Fitz inadvertently reveals his favorite two things about Skye; Simmons continues her search for a personality; Melinda finally gets tired of having to stay on the plane all the time (and only having one facial expression) and volunteers for field duty; and Coulson talks a lot about being "rusty," which has nothing to do with the fact that he’s almost certainly a robot AT ALL.