I'm a little late but I wanted to post my thoughts anyway. :o)
I thought this was an okay ep. I wasn't blown away by it and for some reason it didn't really grab me. It was tense, but not INtense, if that makes sense. I think Shockwave was a tough ep to follow, even after the hiatus, since that ep was pretty much the definition of intense.
For me, Grounded didn't get tense until the last ten minutes or so. I guess there wasn't enough of a sense of urgency for me because there seemed to be so few people around. I mean, it was mostly just the one SRU unit when I would expect an airport to be swarming with police and security when a plane's been hijacked. I know this was probably a budgetary issue, but for me it kind of made the ep a little less exciting than it could've been.
Not a lot of Spike in it, but Greg was amazing and I was glad Jules was there to help and support him. Also, I adored the scene at the end with Sam, Raf and Ed. Loved how they immediately took Raf under their wing and made sure that he knew they'd be there for him. Pushed all my TEAM! buttons ;o) I was disappointed though that
the hug wasn't it the ep! I felt like they cut to the end credits a few seconds too early or something.
I know this ep was aired out of order, but I really missed a bit of continuity here regarding Spike's dad. Hopefully there'll be some kind of acknowledgement of his dad's death in next week's ep, which was originally meant to air after Shockwave. At the very least I hope one of the team'll ask Spike about it or that Spike'll be a little less cheerful than useful, but I'm not holding my breath. I guess we'll just have to wait and see!