Deep Emotions - AoS: "0-8-4"

Here we go:

Episode 2 - "0-8-4"

Coulson's Office

I get that he's a history buff. He respects the past, and as an agent he respects S.H.I.E.L.D.'s past. The knickknacks in his office were a great example of that. But of all the things there, not one of them was recognizable. Like...

• an SSR logo t-shirt?
• a photo from Camp Lehigh?
• a copy of either "The Machinery of War" or "Heroes of the Western Front" (books Steve had in the barracks)?
• the flag from Camp Lehigh?
• a copy of Captain America Comics #1?
• a plaque commemorating the end of the SSR...and/or the beginning of S.H.I.E.L.D.?

That's just wrong.

 The 0-8-4

I've talked about this in the past. "An artifact of unknown origin" to me means "something we haven't seen before". Well, we have seen this thing before. Not this particular item, but it's described within ten minutes as being "a German-designed machine dating back to World War II that's powered by gamma-radiation emitting Tesseract energy". 

That doesn't sound "unknown" to me.

This episode didn't need to connect to the movies. Coulson does that. It needed a connection to the books. A different 0-8-4 would have done that. Another missed opportunity.

Camilla Reyes

Who is she? I understand that she's there to establish (at least some of) Coulson's past - which was done very well by the way - but does Camilla exist in the books? Let me check...

Nope. Not at all.

I admit that I haven't read many comics since 1995, and there were not a lot of female S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (or former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents for that matter) that could have been used for this purpose back in the day, but there have been some since. Why not use one of them?

(sigh...)

 The 0-8-4

I'm going back to it because something else bugs me. 

How did the device, which later in the episode does nothing more than blast a hole into the side of the plane, get itself buried under 500 year old rock and embedded in 1500 year old ruins? 

I guess it could have transported there through use of the Space Gem (which the Tesseract is revealed to be in Avengers: Age of Ultron - a year and a half later), but we've never seen the Space Gem Tesseract transport anything - yet. I bet we'll see Red Skull in Infinity War (most likely near the end of Part I) as proof of the Space Gem's Tesseract's power...along with all the soldiers zapped in Captain America: The First Avenger.

How did Coulson get untied?

I didn't see a knife or piece of glass. Did "Sleepy" do it from across the room? Did he break his wrist?

I don't get it...

Walkie-Talkies

Considering the tech table Fitz-Simmons use, and the "boom-stick" Ward uses, why's everyone using clunky, hand-held, 1987-era methods of communication in a hot zone?

Especially since Coulson didn't need one when "killing the fish tank".

Just sayin'...