Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S1E05 "Girl in the Flower Dress"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: S01E05: "Girl in the Flower Dress"




First, I apologize for the lateness of this review. My DVR ate the second half of "Girl in the Flower Dress" so I had to break it into a thousand pieces, throw them out the window, and then light them on fire. And then I had to watch the rest of the episode online. But I did, so now let's chat about it!


With each passing week, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is becoming a more fully developed series. We're learning more about our team (or we're learning more about Skye), and each new episode, while still procedural in nature, has been stronger than those that preceded it. This week's case was also directly connected to two of the series' ongoing story arcs—Extremis and the secret life of Skye—which automatically makes "Girl in the Flower Dress" a winner in my book.

Let's tackle Skye first, because she's S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most accessible character. For weeks we've been wondering what Skye's true motives are. We've been wondering where her true allegiances lie since the second episode of the series, when she signed on as a consultant to the team. Is she with S.H.I.E.L.D. or the Rising Tide? In "Girl in the Flower Dress," we discovered that the answer is neither. Skye's only allegiance is to herself and to her van. And depending on the situation, S.H.I.E.L.D. is a distant third. Everything she's done, including joining Rising Tide and then joining S.H.I.E.L.D., has been to find out who she is and who her parents are.




We already knew that Skye essentially raised herself, that she grew up in the system, but we never knew why. And as it turns out, neither did she. Everything she knows about her parents can be traced back to a single S.H.I.E.L.D. document that looks like the list I received from my high school guidance counselor after I told her my hopes and dreams. Everything was blacked out or redacted, so Skye became a hacker and eventually joined the team with the hope that she'd one day be able to find out more information about her own past. Seems legit, no? I'd want to know who my birth parents were, especially if they were somehow involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. Were they good guys? Bad guys? Carnies? Is she a test tube baby conceived as part of a S.H.I.E.L.D. experiment? It's still unclear whether Skye has actually had the chance to really dive into the search, especially because she's not a full agent and probably has little to no clearance at the moment. But it doesn't look like she's going to get the opportunity any time soon, either.


Agent Coulson—feeling less betrayed than he was when he first discovered that Skye had been lying to him and that she had her own agenda for joining the team—told her that she might actually be better off living in the dark (obviously this statement was as much about Skye as it was Coulson's own past). There's a reason people say ignorance is bliss, and it's that sometimes ignorance really is better than knowing the truth. In the end, Skye was allowed to remain a member of the team (I guess?), but with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s version of a shock collar; she now has to wear a bracelet that probably zaps her and/or severely injures her if she tries to do anything involving electronics. But hey, at least it's fashionable, right?




We also met Skye's mentor and part-time lover, Miles Lydon, in "Girl in the Flower Dress." But he wasn't who Skye thought he was and she gave him the official boot by episode's end. For all of his talk about freedom of information, he was still willing to accept a $1M paycheck in exchange for some information, which was not cool in Skye's book. Especially since the information he sold was about Chan Ho Yin, a man from Hong Kong with pyro-kinetic abilities, and who was directly related to a S.H.I.E.L.D. case. And that's how the case of the week tied both Skye's arc and the Extremis arc together.


Lydon sold the information to a Centipede research lab in Hong Kong believing it really was an ecological research lab, so in his defense, he really didn't know what would happen. (But in defense of good ol' fashioned common sense: What the hell would an eco-lab want with S.H.I.E.L.D. information? Lydon might be computer smart, but he doesn't really seem smart smart. Just saying). Lydon had no idea that Shannon Lucio would return as Doctor Debbie from the pilot and inject Chan—who was given the name Scorch (LOL) by the mysterious girl in the flower dress (who, as we later learned, was named Raina)—with the Extremis serum.




As Debbie had expected, the blood platelets in Chan's blood that kept him from being burned by the fire he could create, also acted as a stabilizer for the Extremis. Naturally, she ordered him drained of blood so they could stabilize the serum for their army of toy soldiers. S.H.I.E.L.D. was eventually able to intervene, but Chan had had a taste of the power that the serum gave him and injected himself with more. A kerfuffle ensued and Coulson and May were forced to make the hard call of injecting him twice more, which eventually caused the reaction we've come to recognize with Extremis: combustion. R.I.P. Scorch, we hardly even had the chance to laugh at your catchphrase, "You just got scorched!"


While Skye's arc wasn't exactly a mind blowing reveal, it was definitely a new piece to the Skye puzzle and character development is never a bad thing. I really thought her Rising Tide/S.H.I.E.L.D. allegiance would end up being a major plot point towards the end of the season, and I suppose it still could come in to play, but now that we know her true motives, it looks like the search for her parents will become Skye's larger arc instead, which is kind of boring in my very important opinion. Her relationship with Agent Handsome has also now been strained, because he feels betrayed by her actions (and because he refused to sit in on her meeting with Coulson, he doesn't know the truth about her real objectives).

As for the Extremis arc and what it means going forward: with Chan's blood, the Big Bad can now move forward with their army of super soldiers. We still don't know much more than that, which is okay. This is a season-long story and we're only five episodes in. I'm just glad we're starting to move towards some semblance of serialized storytelling, tying in cases of the week with the overarching stories of the season. Keep it up, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.; you're doing all right.




DECLASSIFIED CASE FILES



– Fight scenes, guys. Work on them. Go watch some episodes of Arrow if you need some inspiration. They could be (and should be) so, so, so much better.


– What's Stage 3? And is there really someone who's clairvoyant now? After being told last week that there's no evidence of anyone having that ability? Interesting.

– Is Scorch really dead? We didn't see a body!

– Steve Rogers/Captain America shout-out!

– Shannon Lucio died in two shows last night (S.H.I.E.L.D. and Supernatural). Tough luck.

– Bye Austin Nichols, please come back soon because your laid-back scruffyness is the perfect antithesis to Agent Handsome's cold, hard Blue Steel!


– Does Fitz have a crush on Skye? He was really hurt that Skye hadn't said anything about her relationship with Miles. And it seemed to be more than just a friendly hurt.

– Fitz and Simmons didn't have much to do this week, so I still don't have much to say about them. Please give them more to do than just act as comic relief, show. I enjoy them, but so far they're still just two characters we met in the pilot.

– Handsome: "Make it a double." May: "Is there any other kind?" (May is the best.)

– "Now you're making fun of my van!?" Do NOT insult Skye's van, y'all.

– "So we're good, right?"

– May: "His file say anything about him being homicidal?" Coulson: "Just that he was kind of a tool."

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S1E04 "Eye Spy"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E04: "Eye Spy"

My opinions of TV episodes don't usually change over time, at least not as quickly as overnight, and my snap judgement immediately after watching "Eye Spy" was that I really liked it. And as I thought more about it while writing my review, I think I talked myself into liking it even more. "Eye Spy" continued the momentum built by "The Asset," and in a way, it was a darker, more adult outing for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The series' previous episodes were fine in that they acted as second and third versions of the pilot, allowing new viewers to step in without much difficult, but "Eye Spy" felt less like we were being re-introduced to the characters and what it is that S.H.I.E.L.D. does, and more like the latest installment of a more developed series.

We also got the chance to dive into the well of Agent Coulson's history, which is at least part of the reason the episode worked so well. It's important to remember that Coulson is still basically a mystery, even to fans of the Marvel films. Clark Gregg once said he only appeared in the first Iron Man film as a favor to Jon Favreau, and now the character is leading an entire TV show. We still don't know much about who Coulson actually is, let alone what really happened after the Battle of New York, and "Eye Spy" gave us a peek in to his past.


The mission this week was one that Coulson picked up on his own, without orders from S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ. Right away that should've triggered warning bells. And his insistence that the team complete their task without help from HQ was another red flag. They were tracking a master thief, believing that maybe the person was an unregistered gifted—Skye threw out the idea that their target had telekinetic powers or ESP, but Agent May told her there was no evidence of anyone with those powers existing. As it it turned out, the thief was actually a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who had been trained by Coulson himself.





Believing Akela Amador had been killed in action several years ago, Coulson obviously felt responsible for what had happened to her. She'd been held prisoner for years and then implanted with a robotic eyeball that not only allowed her to see through several spectrums but acted as a camera for her handler and whoever else was controlling her. When Coulson learned that she was alive and being held prisoner in her own body (haha what's free will?), his guilt ratcheted straight up. He was adamant about helping her. Is it ridiculous to think that Coulson has formed this new super squad in an attempt to right his past failures as a leader? Akela had been sent on mission after mission, forced to commit crimes and to carry out the work of an unseen master who would activate the kill switch located in her robotic eye if she disobeyed. It was kill or be killed for Akela. And that's a really shitty way to live, to be honest.


Akela's predicament was later "solved" after Skye hijacked her camera feed, allowing Akela to spend some quality time recounting what happened to her all those years to a guilt-ridden Coulson. While they were playing story hour, Agent Handsome completed Akela's latest mission wearing a pair of special eyeglasses that reported back to her handler as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He received all of the orders sent to Akela, including one that directed him to seduce a security guard. Agent Handsome attempted to bromance the guard, and holy crap is he bad at making friends.


Agent Handsome's people skills really are the equivalent of poop + knives—or a porcupine, if you prefer it that way. And it's obvious his inability to play well with others, or even hang out with others in a way that's not strictly "I'm in charge of you, do what I say" will be his season-long arc. It's also obvious that his relationship with Skye is supposed to be the thing that changes him. The two actors work just fine together—especially in this episode, where they were actually partners instead of being thrown together for future romance's sake—but after awhile it's going to start to feel old if it's constantly Handsome and Skye against the world, even if he is her superior officer.





The only way this team will ever feel like a team and act like a team is if these characters interact with every member of the team. So far, the pairings have been Skye and Ward, Fitz and Simmons, May and Coulson, and Skye and Coulson. These aren't bad match-ups, especially not while the show finds its legs, but eventually I'd like to see Skye and Simmons or May and Ward work together and get to know one another.


Skye and Coulson's relationship is probably the strongest of the series so far, and that's great because every series needs a constant. She looks up to him and trusts him because he offered her a family with S.H.I.E.L.D., something she hasn't had in a very long time. Which is why I'm really interested to see how her continued affiliation with the Rising Tide will affect her as the weeks go by. Will she become conflicted? Will she drop the Rising Tide like hot trash? This has the potential to be a great personal arc for Skye, and I don't believe, despite what next week's episode previews suggest, that Coulson will find out about her parallel dealings with the group, otherwise that would be a complete waste of a complicated personal story for the character.





As for the brainiac twins, I don't know that we'll ever really see much of Fitz and Simmons splitting up on missions. But I'd really like the writers to give them something more to do than save the day by performing standard robotic eyeball removal surgery and complaining about being hungry while doing surveillance (though I laughed at that entire scene, because they would think nothing of calling Agent Handsome to ask about using the restroom and grabbing a bite). The closing scene of "Eye Spy," in which Fitz and Handsome were playing cards, was fun once you realized Skye was helping Fitz cheat, but it was also fun because it was a pairing we haven't really had a chance to explore. I just want everyone to be friends, is that too much to ask?


Anyway, like I said at the start, this episode was a welcome change for the series. The characters worked well together, the sampling of Coulson's backstory helped bring us up to speed a bit on who he really is, and the episode at least toyed with the idea of reaching for something deeper. If S.H.I.E.L.D. can continue to build on the momentum it's created with "The Asset" and "Eye Spy," I think the series stands a chance of becoming what we want it to be. It might not be the high-stakes series fans hoped for, but I don't know that that was ever going to be the case. And I don't necessarily subscribe to the notion that the team needs to be fighting a global threat every week to be successful. Right now it's very plot-heavy, but given time, S.H.I.E.L.D. will add more character drama, I'm sure of it. And if it can balance those two things, that full-season pickup will turn out to be a very smart idea.




DECLASSIFIED CASE FILES




– While I enjoyed the hell out of this episode based on what happened on the surface, I wish it had dealt more with the idea of free will. Akela couldn't even go to sleep without permission from her handler. This is the kind of stuff that could make Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. a worthy series and a successor to Joss Whedon's other work. Dollhouse was all about free will and being human, Buffy was one giant metaphor for high school being hell. Firefly was basically just the best thing in the 'verse. If Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. can tap into stories that tackle larger, more character-driven stories and spark debates about larger issues, it'll definitely raise the bar in terms of quality.

– Akela's handler had been a former MI6 agent, who was also being controlled by someone else. When Coulson approached him, his kill switch was engaged. Who is the mysterious master here? Who is calling the shots? Is this a new Big Bad or the same one we've been dealing with? I like the way the series is playing up potential longterm threats, but sometimes I have no patience and I want answers, stat.

– "What did they do to him?" Akela asked May with regard to Coulson. If she could tell something was off about him after not being in his presence for any number of years, why can't May? Coulson and May clearly have a history of some sort. I suspect this will lead to a lot of May staring at Coulson in the background, watching him and attempting to see what Akela saw in a matter of hours.

– "You're a robot, can you do that?" Ouch, someone get Handsome an ice pack for that burn, plz.

– "Bang?"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "The Asset"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E03: "The Asset"

If I had to rank the first three episodes of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in order from best to not best, I'd rank them like this: 1. "Pilot," 2. "The Asset," and 3. "0-8-4." While I enjoyed the result of "0-8-4" and the way the team worked together to solve their crisis, this week's episode felt more like the show was really finding its groove. The characters are all settling into their respective roles, and if you're not on board with the show by now, you're probably never going to be.

With each passing week we're getting to know more about our team of agents (and Skye), and its nice to see that the show isn't forsaking the quieter character moments for the action and vice versa. The mission this week was to rescue Dr. Franklin Hall, an asset who'd been kidnapped. He was being held at Ian Quinn's mansion in Malta though, which meant S.H.I.E.L.D. was unable to go in with guns and gadgets blazin'. International law is kind of a pain in the ass sometimes, no?

Too bad for Quinn, because Skye isn't an official agent yet (though she's training with Agent Handsome as her superior officer), and was able to hack backdoor channels or something (I don't even know if those words are in the right order, also what's a computer?) to score an invite to the swanky shareholders party for Quinn Worldwide. This means she was the perfect person to infiltrate the party and make it possible for Agents Coulson and Handsome to get past the laser security wall (if only we had tiny monkeys!).





When she was compromised it looked as if Skye's true colors as a member of the Rising Tide were showing. She told Quinn the truth about S.H.I.E.L.D. listening in, how they'd offered her a job (something he'd also done moments before he found her snooping around his office), and how she was sent to gain access to his office. In the end, it was telling the truth that allowed Skye access to a nearby wireless connection for Fitz to take down the laser wall surrounding the compound for Coulson and Handsome, but this probably won't be the last time we see Skye go off on her own and have to talk her way in to or out of situations.

She's a smart girl who knows how to play people, which is a result of growing up in foster care and having been forced to raise herself, but she's still in an agent-in-training. Before reading the episode description for "The Asset," you'd never know the asset in question wasn't Skye at all, but she proved once again that she's a great addition to the team. She has committed herself to her training with Agent Handsome and is beginning to open up.

"Hoping for something and losing it," she said, "hurts more than never hoping for anything." And Skye really wants this it seems. It's possible that she's also playing Agent Handsome, and therefore playing us, but she looked and sounded sincere in that moment and we don't actually have a reason to not trust her right now. Handsome had played story hour with her earlier in order to get her to see the importance of her training and what it means to be an agent, and while I'm not really buying their instantaneous bond, nor do I care if they eventually wind up in a relationship (because that seems to be what all their scenes indicate), I don't think we should just assume that Skye is either S.H.I.E.L.D. or Rising Tide. Right now I think she actually wants to be both, but we'll probably have to wait to see how and when her allegiance is tested (I'm guessing mid-season or the end of the season).







Back to the asset, though. Dr. Hall was a mentor to Fitz and Simmons, and the roommate and bestie of Ian Quinn in college. Together they had designed a theoretical machine powered by a theoretical substance called gravatonium. Quinn continued to look for that substance on his path to world domination or something and he found it. According to FitzSimmons—in language even a high school drop out like Skye can understand—the substance distorts the gravity fields within it. Then some other science-y stuff happens and basically it creates rooms that look like they belong in Inception!

Quinn needed Hall to run point on this operation because he wasn't smart enough, I guess. But Hall recognized the danger of the situation and his bright idea to deal with it was to just level Quinn's compound, taking the machine, the gravatonium, and everyone inside the place with it as it sank to the bottom of the ocean. Seems good to me! Except Coulson wasn't really having it. There was a nice little moment in which Hall told Coulson that we have to live with the choices we make, but sometimes we have to die with them too. I will definitely not be subscribing to that life philosophy, but looks like Hall will, because in his last attempt to stop the machine, Coulson shot a hole in a window and Hall fell right into the gravatonium (remember the Inception-ized room!). And that, ladies and gentleman, is how villains are born. Dr. Frank Hall has for all intents and purposes become Graviton, but he's currently locked away in a super secret S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, unbeknownst, of course, to everyone since he's hanging out in the gravitonium right now.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. SE1E2 "0-8-4"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. opened big last week, but the real test of its staying power came tonight with Episode 2. How many people returned for "0-8-4"? Was the episode a success? Did you care about the story and the characters? Did it make you laugh? Did you enjoy the action-y moments? 

Based on a lot of the reviews and feedback I read about the premiere, I think there were a lot of misconceptions about what Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to be. A lot of people, myself included, loved it. But some people thought the show was going to be similar to The Avengers movie and feature superheroes, and so they were disappointed when they found out they're weren't any superheroes. Others were confused when the series wasn't as "adult" as they'd have liked it to be—which is not an unreasonable complaint—but being based in a world that originated in a comic book and airing at 8pm kind of hinted that would be the case. And still others watched last week's premiere and came away upset that the series was about a group of people with special powers, similar to the premise of Heroes. I've had a week to think about what Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is and what I want it to be, and I came up with three criteria. "0-8-4" met all three, so I was happy with the second outing. (However, I don't know what that third group of people was thinking, because this series is nothinglike Heroes.)

So, what are those three criteria? Well, to be successful, this series needs to be accessible, it needs to flesh out its characters and develop its world, and it needs to find the right balance of heart, humor, and action. I think "0-8-4" did just fine in accomplishing those goals.

Being accessible means that until it establishes itself as its own series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. cannot be heavily serialized. Fans (and potential fans) must be able to enter this world without needing an encyclopedia of Marvel facts, or a flowchart to keep things straight. And I truthfully feel that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s writers have done the best they can in that regard. Is it easier to understand the lingo if you've seen any of the movies or read the comics? Of course. But just as Skye was starting to learn S.H.I.E.L.D.'s lingo this week, you will too, eventually.

If you've seen the Marvel films of if you've read the comics, then you picked up on Agent Coulson's reference to Thor's hammer, and you understand what Hydra is, and why Tesseract-fueled anythings are no good. But you don't need to have understood those references to know that Hydra=bad and that the 0-8-4 (an object of unknown origin) the team found tonight would have been disastrous in the wrong hands. Those things were explained via exposition from the characters like they would be on any other series with heavy mythology. Plus, guys, with the amount of crap on the internet these days, and especially with the amount of Marvel knowledge you can find out there, if you don't understand something and it's really bothering you, just Google it. It'll take you more time to complain about not understanding it than it would to find the answer.

So the series needs to be accessible. It needs to follow a formula in which Coulson's specialized S.H.I.E.L.D. team travels somewhere (like Peru, as was the case in this week's episode) and assesses and contains any and all threats (like the Tesseract-fueled technology they found, and then Camilla Reyes and her team when they decided they wanted to use the 0-8-4 for their own personal gain), and then maybe everyone shares a beer afterward like any other team of co-workers toasting the end of a long work day. And also, you know, not dying.

Many of the comments I read about the premiere discussed being worried that the show was going to be boring if it followed the same procedure week after week—and that's not a completely ridiculous fear—but I think many viewers are forgetting that a great number of successful shows currently on TV are procedurals. Hell, NCIS is in its, what, eleventh season? It's the most watched show on television and it's a procedural. It's gotta be doing something right. In the post-Breaking Bad world, we tend to think that in order to be good, a series has to be heavily serialized, but that's not the case at all. Yes, of course there needs to be some sort of serialization happening; the characters need to grow and evolve and larger story arcs must take place in order to move the story forward, but being a procedural is not a death sentence. And I think many Joss Whedon fans are forgetting that each of his former series began as procedurals themselves, and they had a hell of a lot of overarching stories and character development over the course of their runs. Lots of those fans are probably also forgetting that exactly zero of his shows were born as fully formed success stories. 

The second thing this series needs to accomplish to be successful is to make its characters more human. We need to get to know who Skye is, and why Agent Handsome is so methodical and machine-like. We need to get to know Fitz and Simmons as people beyond their super brains that make the rest of us look bad. And we definitely need to get the dirt that is Melinda May's classified file. "0-8-4" made some big strides on that front. We started to see Skye—who's basically the audience stand-in—attempt to find her place as a consultant/member of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team. In fact, we got to see everyone begin to settle into their roles as members of this team tonight—this was only their second mission together—and although I get the feeling Fitz and Simmons have been working together—or have at least known each other—for quite awhile now, everyone worked together to defeat Reyes and her men and no one died, so that's got to be a good start, right? 

While first impressions are important, they're not everything, and tonight I felt like I got to know more about who Skye was and her philosophy on life and why she makes the choices she makes. She likes social media and how technology is bringing people all over the world who've never met together, and to hear her talk about 100 people each having or being 1 percent of the solution, made a lot of sense. And Agent Handsome even used that logic to help rally the troops when they needed to find a way to take back the plane, so already we see what an asset she can be. Skye also helped Agent Handsome bring down some of his own walls during their conversation on the plane, so we got to know a tiny sliver about what makes him tick, though I'm concerned about his character's development more than I am anyone else's. He's got the difficult job of being the straight man on a team of quirky weirdos, which may or may not lend itself to easy character development. While we still don't actually know much about these people—or whether or not we can even trust them—we're starting to learn more about them, and that's what's important.

Lastly, and just as important to the success of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the previous two requirements, this series needs to find the right balance of the heart, the humor, and the action. Some people thought the premiere was too quippy, while I myself found it perfectly adequate on the quippy scale. We all have differing opinions, but I think tonight's episode scaled back on the humor and still managed to do just fine. 

As for the heart, there was no big meaning of life speech this week, but there was a moment when the team quit their bickering and worked together to solve the Reyes problem. Papa Coulson appreciated their efforts and didn't once lose his cool about the fact his team blew a hole in the side of his newly renovated airplane (though surprise guest star Samuel L. Jackson was pisssssssed!). And the action? Yeah, I think they managed to get enough in to satisfy the fanboys and girls. The shootout in Peru, the fight sequences on the plane, and then everything that went down after the massive hole-in-the-plane thing was plenty of action for one episode. And just for the record? The green screen on this series is about a million-bajillion times better than Once Upon a Time, so thanks for all that cash Marvel, the world is grateful.

Whether you liked or loved or hated the premiere, I do think this was a strong second outing for a series that's got every single eye in the world trained on it, just waiting for it to slip up or make a mistake. Tonight's episode was more focused than the premiere, too. It didn't have to be showy so much as it had to really set the pace and tone for the rest of the series, and I think it did a good job in that regard.