Bort and Adam are right.
It's not so much that this show is terrible, but it's not good, either. It is very by-the-numbers. The Marvel Universe is rich with content that should be explored and the potential is being wasted.
That being said, I finally watched the last two episodes and thought that they were improvements. We are seeing the introduction of an anti-SHIELD and maybe more than one.
The thing I noticed most was that the actors seem to be settling into their characters. I actually found Ward to be tolerable and thought they also had a good look for him, with his black suit. Best Quality May also continues to improve, though her stoicism is getting kinda tiresome.
I can't shake the feeling that the powers responsible for Akela is actually SHIELD. Or perhaps even SWORD. I'm hoping that all this build-up of "yay! establishment!" is only to turn it on its head, when it's revealed that SHIELD ain't exactly white hats all the time. The just now released trailer of Captain America 2 kinda backs that up. So, I can totally see Agents of SHIELD building towards that movie.
Project Centipede is a horrible name. They need to just drop the pretense and declare themselves HYDRA! (If a head is cut off, two more will take its place!). I know that they jumped on the Extremis/Gamma Radiation/Super-Soldier Serum bandwagon, so we have to keep seeing that...ugh. Still, if you set that aside, it totally makes sense that someone will want to control and/or create more supers.
All in all, the last two episodes have staved off deletion from my DVR schedule.