Picking up from last week's episode, T.R.A.C.K.S. saw Coulson's team going undercover on a trans-European train in an attempt to follow an expensive piece of Cybertech kit back to its purchaser: Ian Quinn (David Conrad).
Of course, the mission went pear-shaped - as they were betrayed - and what unfolded turned out to be one of the best episodes of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. to date.
As well as the show's first - but hopefully not last - obligatory Stan Lee cameo, T.R.A.C.K.S. (written by Lauren LeFranc Rafe Judkins, and directed by Paul Edwards) took a clever, Rashomon-like approach for the core of the episode, recounting the same series of events from different perspectives as viewed by the sub-units of Coulson's team.
This drip-fed the audience key bits of information, helping us gradually build up a complete picture of what had occurred on the train, how the team were exposed and what happened afterwards.
This inventive format helped get over one of my bugbears of the show, in that there are often too many protagonists on screen at the same time to allow all a chance to shine.
This week everyone had an opportunity to be a bad-ass and even Skye, for once, was behaving like a 'proper' S.H.I.E.L.D. agent - and got herself shot for her troubles.
T.R.A.C.K.S. still managed to slip in some typical moments of Marvel humour along the way, even if matters did turn quite dark towards the finale, with the highlight being Ward and Coulson's clumsy attempts to get the the holographic imaging table to work.
In an episode bubbling with so much goodness, we can't overlook the return of Mike Peterson (J. August Richards) and his transformation into Deathlok, an honest-to-goodness supervillain (or anti-hero?) doing dastardly deeds at the behest of the mysterious, and unseen, Clairvoyant.
If T.R.A.C.K.S. is evidence of Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. finally finding its sea legs, then let's hope there are more episodes to come of this calibre.
Next Week (beware spoilers if you haven't seen this week's episode):
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