Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E17: "Turn, Turn, Turn"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E17: "Turn, Turn, Turn"

WARNING: This review contains spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. If you've seen the S.H.I.E.L.D. episode, you already know what happened in the movie, but still: You've been warned.


There are two schools of thought regarding humanity. One believes that humans are good by nature, the other subscribes to the notion that humans are inherently evil. I'm generally pretty cynical when it comes to my fellow human beings, which is why my brain does this funny thing whenever I start to really like a TV character. It starts coming up with a list of reasons why that person is secretly a jerk or why they're going to die soon. That's why I've been wondering for weeks when the other shoe was going to drop regarding Bill Paxton's Agent Garrett. I liked him far too much. He was far too cool to be a good guy. I could hear this little voice whispering in my ear last week, telling me he probably wasn't all he appeared to be. When coupled with the knowledge that the Clairvoyant was an agent within S.H.I.E.L.D., my brain started going down the list of possible suspects.


Knowing that the Clairvoyant had to be someone we'd met already, I instantly ruled out Agent May because it was far too obvious she wasn't reporting to the Clairvoyant, and was a Fury plant whose job was to keep an eye on Coulson. Agent Hand (R.I.P.) was obviously a red herring, and a character I'm going to miss dearly. Titus Welliver's Agent Blake was out of commission after last week, otherwise I'd have seriously considered him; there's something about Welliver that just screams, "I MIGHT NOT BE TRUSTWORTHY!" I think it might be his face. And those times he played characters who weren't trustworthy. Anyway, continuing on down the list, I knew Agent Sitwell was shady—and his role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier proved I was right—but he's always had the air of a lousy lackey, not of a man in charge. I doubt he even had control of the radio station in his car. That left only Agents Garrett and Tripplett. We hardly knew Triplett, and he was too young to fit the profile I'd created in my mind (I've been watching a lot of Hannibal lately), which meant that, by process of elimination and my own distrusting nature, Agent Garrett was the only viable option.





Garrett being the Clairvoyant actually makes a lot of sense. His character was instantly likable, and looking back, it's clear that S.H.I.E.L.D. made an extra effort to make him appear that way. His cool, take-no-prisoners attitude purposefully threw us off the scent. The character also just fits the profile of the Clairvoyant. He has a history with Coulson, which would explain his interest in Coulson. He was "old guard" enough that he'd have not only the security clearance, but also the power to amass and influence followers. And he's been around long enough that he'd have been fully enveloped by the Hydra mentality. I suppose then, that if I was able to smell the traitorous stank on Garrett that I should have been able to follow it to Agent Ward—yes, I've finally decided he's interesting enough to be upgraded to his real name, although I make no promises about maintaining that. Agent Handsome still has a nice ring to it.

Someone threw out the idea that Ward was a traitor in the comments last week, and I can't remember who it was, but if it was you: Nice work! I remember seeing that comment and thinking, "Huh, that's an interesting theory!" And then I went about my day eating gummi bears or whatever. I didn't give it much thought at the time, and I suppose that's exactly what the writers had intended. From the beginning, they built Ward up to be a hero. He was prickly and didn't work well with others, but he jumped out of the plane to save Simmons. He went in the field with Fitz and came out with a bromance. He trained Skye as her superior officer (and he kissed her tonight, which I'll get to later). And he went so far as to carry on a sexual relationship with May. Ward managed to insert himself (heh) in to everyone's lives in a way that made you not only trust him, but like him, or at least like that he was on your side and not your enemy's.





Producers Jeph Loeb and Jeff Bell did a post-mortem interview with TV Guide about tonight's episode, and in it they confirmed they knew from the beginning this was going to be Ward's path. I stand by my previous criticisms of his character and Dalton's cardboard performance, though, because A) they're already out there on the internet, and B) looking at this in retrospect doesn't change the fact Ward really deserved that Agent Handsome nickname for most of the series. Loeb and Bell admitted Dalton didn't know right from the beginning that Ward would be revealed as a traitor, and I don't know when Dalton got the memo, but it doesn't change the fact the character—even if he's a skilled liar and manipulator—was about as boring as white paper for awhile. I think the writers would argue they purposefully kept Ward from fully developing as a character for awhile, because he was a big fat liar who lies, but I'm just too much of a cynic to believe that they'd had that mapped out, too.

Instead of kicking ourselves for missing what was apparently right in front of us all along, our time would be better spent looking at how something like this—Garrett, Ward, Hydra—could happen. If you didn't see Captain America: The Winter Soldier prior to this episode, you were probably a bit OMGWTFBBQ at the reveal that Hydra not only exists, but that it's been thriving in S.H.I.E.L.D. for the last 70 years. It's a curious battle about right and wrong, because, and I'll try to be brief here, Hydra truthfully thought they were doing the right thing by eliminating would-be criminals before they had the chance to commit those crimes. They were pulling a Minority Report, but as Cap pointed out, they weren't ruling in the name of freedom, they were ruling with fear. It's easy to see how people would be swayed toward Hydra's way of thinking, though, and it's even easier to see how someone like Ward—someone with a horrible family life, someone who needed a father figure—would be susceptible to what Garrett was spinning when he was under his command.



Is Ward really a "bad guy" though? He definitely shot three people in what appeared to be an attempt to save Garrett, but the final scene in which Garrett's talking and Ward zones out is an interesting development. Could it mean he's no longer listening to the bullsh*t Garrett's feeding him? Some might wonder if he's playing Garrett, and while I think that's always a possibility, I think it's going to be less about good versus bad as it will be Coulson versus Garrett. I could be wrong—I'm wrong a lot—but I have a feeling this will be a rich storyline for Dalton, and we're going to see a side of Ward we maybe haven't seen before. Just as we had to question whether Bucky Barnes was actually evil in Captain America and not just a weapon used by the enemy, I think we might eventually find ourselves in a similar situation with Ward. He was led to believe certain things by a man he looked up to for a long time. Has his time on Coulson's team changed him? Did he really have feelings for Skye?

It appears we now know why Ward really shot Brad Dourif's character last week, and it wasn't because Nash threatened Skye—although, I kind of wish it was, because that at least makes it more interesting than what it was, which was to just make Coulson believe the Clairvoyant was dead. I'm not one for shipping, especially on this show (unless we're talking Ward and his stubble from next week's promos, because that should stay forever), but part of me hopes he wasn't lying about his feelings for her. That being said, if it's those feelings that somehow pull him back to the good side, I will vomit all over that development, because this ain't The Vampire Diaries (I kid! Sort of). But I think those feelings can be an asset to the story if used properly.



I talked a lot about how feelings make us human last week, and how it was those supposed feelings Ward acted on last week that made his character more interesting. Even though we have to look back at everything Ward's said and done with a different lens now, I stand by that statement, too. If his feelings for Skye are real, that's more interesting than if he was playing her. And I don't subscribe to the notion that just because someone is revealed to be working for the opposing team that everything they've ever done or said up to that point is a lie. I'm sure some of it was, but all of it? Nah, that would be hella boring. And right now, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is anything but boring. My only question is this: When will the rest of the team find out about Ward's apparent double-cross? Because as far as they know, nothing is wrong.




DECLASSIFIED CASE FILES






– The next person who makes Fitz cry is getting my foot up their a$. Also, Fitz shot someone! Go Fitz! Team Fitz!

– May confirmed what we all already knew, which is that she loves Coulson was placed on the team to monitor Coulson and report back. But what we didn't know was that she basically assembled the team by telling Director Fury what kind of team Coulson would need, which pushed him in the direction of Fitz, Simmons, and Ward. Sneaky!

– As far as the characters know, Fury is still dead. But as we know, that was a fake-out and Samuel L. Jackson will be appearing in the season finale. What do you think that means?

– Has S.H.I.E.L.D. always used suggested hashtags and I've just been blocking them out until now?

– Ward still has the hard drive with all the plane's files, right? Skye handed it to him, but I don't recall him giving it back. I'm sure that won't turn into anything!

– "But I'm getting better at it." (The look on Simmons' face when she said was kind of chilling.)

– How effing cool was that Hydra logo at the end where the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo used to be?

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: S01E16 "End of the Beginning"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: S01E16 "End of the Beginning"

The aptly titled "End of the Beginning" was the first of seven episodes left in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. freshman season, but more importantly it was the first of seven episodes IN A ROW. We can argue all day about the annoying scheduling of the series this season, but there was method to ABC's madness, and I have a sneaking suspicion it was because they wanted and needed Captain America: The Winter Soldier to hit theaters between this episode and next week's, which I suspect will be heavily impacted by the film's events. "End of the Beginning" finally began delivering on all of the promises the series made up until this point. It featured someone with "superpowers" in Deathlok's reappearance and subsequent weaponization, which is exactly what fans have been waiting for. There was also the birth of a real villain after Skye's research helped Coulson discover that the Clairvoyant probably wasn't psychic, but rather a high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent with access to everyone's psychological evaluations. And most importantly, the episode featured a fractured team turning on one another, which always raises the stakes and makes for good drama.

There's probably not a fan out there who believes Agent May is working for the Clairvoyant, but with the tension turned up to 11 and the discovery of her encrypted secure phone line, it makes sense that Coulson and Fitz were quick to jump to that conclusion. As I mentioned before, it's more likely that she's reporting to someone like Director Fury and was placed on Coulson's team specifically to monitor him, but the sudden distrust amongst the team and May's refusal to explain what exactly she's been doing makes for not only great drama, but the kind of exciting drama this series desperately needed.




Who is the Clairvoyant, though? If it wasn't Brad Dourif's Thomas Nash (excellent casting, by the way) and Skye's correct in that it's a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, that means Handsome killed the wrong man for chivalrous but stupid reasons. But who is the man behind the curtain? The show seems to be suggesting it's not a man at all, but Saffron Burrows' Agent Hand. The episode ended with her order to kill Coulson and his team upon arrival at the Hub. She's definitely up to no good, but I don't feel comfortable jumping right from obviously evil to Clairvoyant. There are still six episodes remaining this season, and she'll probably throw a wrench in to the remaining episodes, but to reveal her as the Big Bad at this point feels like a red herring.

Awhile ago I posited the idea that S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't trustworthy, that Coulson would be turning against the organization he's blindly served in the past, and it's looking more and more like I was right. There are big problems within the ranks of S.H.I.E.L.D., and it would not surprise me if Hand's betrayal and whatever occurs next week as a result of Captain America, will be what ultimately results in Coulson completely giving S.H.I.E.L.D. the finger. He's always played by the rules and toed the company line, but now that he suspects he's fighting a villain with security clearance and not psychic powers, he's going to need to keep his team close. Unfortunately, his team is fracturing before his eyes. May has been spying on him, Handsome disobeyed orders by killing the person he thought to be the Clairvoyant (thus leading Coulson to suspect him of working against the team), and Simmons' loyalty has already come in to question in the aftermath of the miracle cure that saved Skye's life. I feel good saying the team will reunite and hugs will be exchanged but there's a lot that has to happen before that's possible.




Simmons is currently separated from the rest of the team because she opted to remain at the Hub with the hope of running further analyses on Skye's blood despite Coulson's orders not to. Her inner battle between doing what's right for her team versus doing what's right as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. is about to come into question, too. At the Hub, she's in the hands of Coulson's enemy, which hopefully means we're about to see Simmons really come into her own as an agent. When the series began, she and Fitz were both very innocent having never spent time in the field. Over the course of the season, they've both proven to be assets to the team, and I sincerely hope that's where we are headed next week.

As for Handsome, I think this week's developments have made me more Team Handsome than I've ever been before. There were several reasons why I gave Ward the nickname Agent Handsome when I first began reviewing Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on a weekly basis. First and foremost, I saw Brett Dalton's face. It's a really beautiful face. It was more than that, though; When Handsome was introduced, he didn't play well with others, he was closed off, and his character was the least developed and most stiff of Coulson's team. To put it another way, Handsome didn't really have much going on other than the fact that he was handsome. It was because he needed the most work that I've been harder on him than the rest of the team. He still needs a lot of work—S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't built in a day—but ever since Skye was shot in "T.R.A.C.K.S.", he's felt like a different character. Maybe it's because his anger in the aftermath felt genuine and wasn't the act of an Asgardian Beserker staff or pent up family resentment. Maybe it's because he reacted as a human being and not as an agent first. "End of the Beginning" was another instance in which Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. saw a way to bring Handsome's humanity and anger together and it worked.




Unfortunately, it also backfired for the team. Handsome's obvious feelings for Skye, who is now an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., managed to elevate his character from prickly robot to real man, but shooting Nash for threatening Sky was rash and impulsive and stupid. Yes, it proved Handsome was human, but it also made him appear untrustworthy and erratic to his team. Before Agent Hand's trickery, he was supposed to go before a S.H.I.E.L.D. review board for his actions, and he doesn't even regret that he let his anger get the best of him. Handsome spent so many years repressing his feelings, that they appear to be spilling over the flood gates now. He's going to need to reign them in and find a happy medium before he can be an asset to his team.

"End of the Beginning" was the really fun, action-packed episode that I've been waiting for. All of the puzzle pieces are beginning to come together to setup the rest of the season, and I don't know about you guys, but I'd like to sleep until next Tuesday's episode, because it looks like it's only going to get better.



NOTE: Because Captain America won't be released in the U.S. until Friday, please try to refrain from discussing the events of the film in the comments if you've already seen it. Even though you're not giving away specific plot points, even mentioning it might ruin it for some of the American fans. Thanks, guys!





DECLASSIFIED CASE FILES



– I'm ready for Deathlok to be a real villain and not just a weapon controlled by the Clairvoyant.


– More Bill Paxton forever, okay, show? Cool.

– Is it just me or is Agent Sitwell shady?

– "Strange is such a subjective term."

– "You wear your heart on your sleeve. And your face."

– "You don't believe in the Clairvoyant, but you believe in astrology?"

– "Well don't you seem awfully chipper to pack up and leave me by my lonesome!"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E15: "Yes Men"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E15: "Yes Men"

It's wrong to make assumptions, but I really have to assume that someone at Marvel is keeping track—preferably with something that looks similar to Carrie Mathison's wall of crazy on Homeland—of all the ways in which Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Marvel films feed into one another. In "Yes Men," Lady Sif told Coulson (Phillip, Son of Coul) that she was sent to Earth with orders from Odin to capture Lorelei and return her to Asgard. As of the end of Thor: The Dark World, Loki—believed to be dead—is masquerading as Odin. This brings up the question of continuity, and the argument here is that Loki, as Odin, would probably make this order to keep up appearances, but at the same time, it's still just an assumption, just as it's still just an assumption that someone somewhere is keeping track of these references in order to have the stories remain in sync.


Similarly, we have to wonder if Director Fury—whom Coulson has been looking for since the discovery of the Guest House and its blue humanoid inhabitant—is off-grid because it plays in to the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the next Marvel film and one in which S.H.I.E.L.D. will play a large role. The film hits theaters in the United States on April 4, meaning there are several episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. still to air after its release. These are important things to keep in mind, but they also have nothing—at least not directly—to do with the actual events of "Yes Men," so let's discuss!




As we saw in "T.A.H.I.T.I.," Lorelei (Elena Satine), a Marvel villain with the ability to seduce and persuade any man to do her bidding either through the use of her voice, or her voice in conjunction with her touch, had arrived on Earth. As we learned this week, Lorelei desired an army of men to conquer the world, which prompted Lady Sif's (Jaimie Alexander) arrival on Earth. One would think that if Lorelei's powers only worked on men, then S.H.I.E.L.D. would send a team of women to fight her, but heyyyy look there goes reality right out the window! Because there was no time to clone May, Handsome and Coulson were also sent on the mission and Handsome ended up under her spell because he was too slow to pull the trigger on his ICER (formerly known as the night-night gun).

I could argue that the subsequent trip to Las Vegas and Caesar's Palace (because Lorelei requested a palace, obviously) was unnecessary, but dammit if this little bit of nonsense didn't actually lead to some insight into who Handsome is and what goes on behind that pretty face. I'm not saying that I wanted to watch a mini-episode about May's feelings regarding her sexual escapes with Handsome during what was essentially a crossover with Thor, but I also can't ignore that Handsome and May are both being fleshed out a bit by this detour. A blind man could see that May was not okay with how everything went down, with the fact that Handsome had feelings for a member of the team that wasn't her. She may be a beautiful warrior with a heart made of ice, and she may have told Handsome that there was never a risk with her, but that didn't mean she didn't feel something for him. It just means she represses those feelings—no doubt because of her past—and puts her job first.



As unfortunate as this is for May, it's also what makes her so good at said job. Emotions are often said to cloud a person's judgement, and in a series in which the characters are constantly put in life-or-death situations (even if the stakes don't always feel real), emotions are believed to be a weakness. Which is why it actually surprises me that Handsome is exhibiting some. Despite my previous misgivings about the May and Handsome relationship, their sexual escapades made sense given how similar the two characters are. Handsome, for all intents and purposes, is a stiff robot of a soldier who always followed orders and never questioned the code. His time spent in the presence of the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team has changed that and it's also helped him to learn how to play with others.

Handsome felt the need to apologize to May for Lorelei dropping this bomb on her, (but he never apologized for pulling the trigger on her during their fight), but if May was not the person Handsome had feelings for, it's pretty obvious that the person Lorelei was referring to was Skye. You don't even need to do a process of elimination here; It obviously wasn't Fitz or Coulson, and Handsome hasn't spent enough time with Simmons to warrant even a crush. I'd still prefer to keep shipping of all kind off the Bus because it risks putting the actual stories—like the secrets of Coulson and Skye's magical healing potion, and their secret mission to discover the truth about where it came from—on the back burner. But I cannot also ignore the fact that emotional relationships between characters can lead to more development of said characters.





This "revelation" (we can't really call it that because let's be honest, we all saw this coming since the pilot) also paints Handsome's anger from the previous two episodes in a new light. It makes sense why he was so upset about Skye's shooting. He blamed himself, he blamed Coulson, he blamed Mike Peterson/Deathlok for standing by and doing nothing to stop it. So although this random crossover involving Sif and Lorelei stands alone and subsequently put a momentary stop to Coulson's search for what really happened to him and what could now also be happening to Skye, it also helped paint Handsome and May and their relationship in a new light. It also dropped the bomb that May is spying on Coulson, knows what happened to him, and she's just a big fat lying liar who lies!


The tag that revealed May's espionage honestly made my jaw drop. Although we don't know who May was talking to, if we assume (there I go again) that it was Fury, it would make sense. He went through great lengths to cover up the Guest House and what took place there—remember, it wasn't a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility—so naturally he wouldn't let Coulson go off on his own without a monitor. He'd plant someone with intimiate knowledge of Coulson and of what happened to him in order to keep an eye on him, to make sure he doesn't go off-grid himself. This is one of those times where you bang your head on your desk and ask God if you even deserve to have eyeballs because it's so obvious in hindsight. It remains to be seen how this will affect the remainder of the season and the rest of the team. Will May remain dedicated to the job or will she eventually also stop abiding by the code? Will Fitz? Will Simmons? She grew a backbone this week in her confrontation regarding sending the magical miracle cure to S.H.I.E.L.D. for further testing, and it's tough to tell if she feels so adamantly about this because she's a scientist, or because she's a scientist for S.H.I.E.L.D. and wants to follow protocol.





For a stand-alone episode involving two beautiful Asgardian women fighting each other, "Yes Men" is actually a very important episode. Lorelei's powers are useless when she no longer has the power to speak, and this episode spoke volumes about the wonders and dangers of communication. Handsome was more honest with Lorelei than he ever has been with himself or his teammates. Coulson and Skye are keeping the knowledge of the alien-origin of their cure a secret while they do their own research, choosing to not communicate any of this to the rest of the team. Simmons might very well go against Coulson's orders and secretly send Skye's blood off for analysis anyway. Silent and strong May has been been communicating with someone (Was it Fury? Was it someone else?) about Coulson. And Fitz, well, okay, we just learned that Fitz has a weakness for pretty ladies, though we knew that already. I doubt Lorelei even had to try very hard.

"Yes Men" also set the stage for what we all knew was coming: Coulson completely breaking away from S.H.I.E.L.D. and its code. I will once again make assumptions and say this will probably be the main storyline for the rest of the season. And I hope it plays into where S.H.I.E.L.D. is at in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. As an episode, "Yes Men" had action, it had drama, and it had a bit of introspection on the parts of several characters. I really liked "Yes Men" and everything it had to offer. I'm actually a little peeved ABC is airing a Marvel's special next week instead of a new episode, because I want to know what happens next.


DECLASSIFIED CASE FILES




– "Fitz, you have a couple of hours to fix this Asgardian piece of jewelry with whatever we have on this plane. You are essentially MacGyver. Good luck!" That's basically how that went down, right? I half-expected Fitz to come back with paperclips and gum as a solution. Fitz is brilliant, but come on, show. That's just silly.


– Skye's reaction to being injected with an alien substance was completely in character, and I actually like that she was basically like, "Yo, I'm alive, right? I'd call this a win."

– Lorelei mentioned the rage of a Berserker inside Handsome. Look, continuity! (I still wish this was explored more.)

– Sif was going to tell Thor that Coulson was alive, but Coulson asked her to keep it quiet because he wants to tell Thor himself. I see what you're doing S.H.I.E.L.D. and it makes sense; The Avengers can't know Coulson is alive, because then it might be harder to explain why Robert Downey Jr. won't stop by the show as Tony Stark. But it's still a little frustrating for fans at this point.

– Ben Franklin was called a woman in this episode. That's rude. Also, Ben Franklin was never president. I guess it makes sense a guy named Rooster would not know this, but it's a personal pet peeve of mine. Go back to fourth grade social studies, bro!

– "I'm not saying you were weak..." Poor Fitz, he really is weak when it comes to beautiful women. The discussion about men having a weakness has a point though.

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E14: "T.A.H.I.T.I."

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E14: "T.A.H.I.T.I."

I won't waste any time beating around the bush: "T.A.H.I.T.I." was not the return episode I was hoping for. It's not that it was bad—I enjoyed it and I think it was far better than some of the series' earlier episodes—but looking at it from a critical perspective, there were some flaws. I could blame the show's ill-timed month-long hiatus after a really wonderful episode like "T.R.A.C.K.S." for building up ridiculous expectations that the series could never live up to, but it's probably more accurate to say that my complaints about "T.A.H.I.T.I." go deeper than that. The episode didn't work the way it should have, because despite all of the characters proclaiming otherwise, this team of agents is not yet a family.

The idea of an unconventional family unit is a staple of Joss Whedon shows, andS.H.I.E.L.D. has often tried to sell Coulson's team as being a weird and wacky family in a way that doesn't quite fit everything we know about the group at this point in time. If S.H.I.E.L.D. was in Season 3, I think the sentiment would have made sense. But Simmons said it herself: They've only been working together as a team for a few months now. I've known people for years and don't like them enough to call them family. I don't even care enough to send them Christmas cards (I don't send Christmas cards). Sure, my friends and I don't work for a super-secret organization and haven't faced any life-or-death situations together (except for that time with the fireworks), but the point is: How can S.H.I.E.L.D. really be considered a family after only a few months on the job?





Coulson has known May for a very long time, and Fitz and Simmons feel like they grew up together, so there are some instances where the series' longer-term relationships give off the appearance of a deep familial bond. But at the moment, those relationships don't include Skye. I'm not quite so heartless to say that the team wouldn't or shouldn't react to Skye's failing health in a desperate way—they're human, after all—but statements like Coulson's "We're her family" ring false on account this so-called "family" having only known each other for a few months.


Fitz's reaction to Simmons' apparent death in "F.Z.Z.T." was a perfect example of how this sort of situation can lead to a great emotional arc and become a story that really resonates with the audience. But I can't say the same for what happened with Skye—a character that many fans of the series have taken issue with—as she lay dying in a hospital bed aboard the Bus while the rest of the team attempted to track down the surgeons and the medications used to bring Coulson back to life.

Of course, "T.A.H.I.T.I." was not about saving Skye—it was about discovering yet another piece of the complicated Coulson puzzle. Ian Quinn admitted that he shot Skye because the Clairvoyant told him to, and we all know the Clairvoyant only wants to know what happened to Coulson. This development severely undermines the Skye Is Going to Die situation, because it's not even about her. Once it became clear that Skye was simply a pawn in this really screwed-up game of I Spy, we had to look at the entire situation in a new light. If the team saved Skye, they would potentially be giving their unseen omniscient enemy exactly what it wanted. If they didn't save Skye in an effort to keep their enemy at bay, well then they'd all be a bunch of assholes, right?





Coulson and Skye share a bond that borders on a father/daughter relationship (although that's still a stretch at this point), and he feels responsible for her, which makes his reaction to Skye's predicament—and the role he indirectly played in putting her there—completely within reason. Fitz's guilt over letting Skye go off on her own to search for Quinn in "T.R.A.C.K.S." also fits the story, even as Simmons correctly pointed out that there's not much to be done once Skye sets her mind to something. Oddly enough, it was almost as if Fitz's guilt gave him a certain confidence at the Guest House that we haven't seen in awhile, and I'd like to keep it around. When he walked out of the elevator like he didn't care what would happen to him (even if he rightfully assumed that nothing would happen until they made it through the bulletproof glass), it made me respect him a little more. Even Simmons' reaction to Skye's situation was acceptable, because she's the one with the medical training, and she'll ultimately blame herself if Skye dies.


As for the rest of the team, I buy that Handsome is angry, but that's also his default setting. I was hoping we'd get more out of this than Handsome begging for a fight and throwing mean-girl stares at Coulson's back. S.H.I.E.L.D. had an opportunity to give his character some shading, but instead, it just rehashed everything we already knew about him. May's reaction was perhaps the most out of character; the woman has never shown more emotion than a toothpick, and yet she went to town on Quinn's face for putting Skye in that life-threatening situation. Puh-leeeze. All of these reactions were perfectly normal responses to knowing that a member of the team as dying in the next room, but we need more time for S.H.I.E.L.D. to really coalesce as a family before "We're her family" is anything more than a platitude.





Even though it may not sound like it, I did enjoy "T.A.H.I.T.I."—just not as much as I thought I would. And now that I've got my bitching out of the way, let's quickly run through the rest of what happened this week and all the questions that've arisen as a result. Coulson, Handsome, and Fitz, alongside Bill Paxton's Agent John Garrett, were able to find the medication used to save Coulson and administer it to Skye, thus saving her life. No one actually thought Skye would die, right? Unfortunately, saving her life life came at a price. Who and what was the alien in the tube at the Guest House? Was he Kree? Was he a member of the Blue Man Group? And what effect, if any, will this have on Skye, who we already knew was an 0-8-4? Will it unlock some dormant part of her biology? Will it give her powers as a result? More importantly, what has it done to Coulson, if anything? I'm very excited to see where this goes, but I can't stop thinking about the mysterious blue-skinned humanoid in the Guest House. The G.H. couldn't have stood for Guest House at that point, right? And BTW just WTF does T.A.H.I.T.I. stand for? Because I'm so over typing it at this point that if it's going to become a real thing, I need to know right now. Knowing it's a real acronym and not just a randomly selected destination to implant in Coulson's memory makes me slightly less stabby at having to write it out, but still.


It's unclear whether S.H.I.E.L.D. had always intended to take this route with Skye, or if the writers have simply come to understand that many viewers aren't happy with a comic book series that doesn't include anyone with superhuman powers, but even thepossibility of introducing such powers, and the introduction of more alien lifeforms, will never be a bad thing. And now that Lorelei has arrived on Earth, and knowing that Lady Sif will appear in next week's episode, I think we might actually be looking at a series that's far more exciting than the one we previously knew.





DECLASSIFIED CASE FILES




– Everyone kept saying how Skye was an integral member of the team every time a computer-hacking issue arose, but they eventually found a workaround every time, which ultimately undercuts the Skye Is an Important Member of This Team mentality that everyone seems to have. I don't subscribe to the notion that S.H.I.E.L.D. needs to write her off, but the show certainly isn't doing itself any favors in that regard.

– Thoughts on Bill Paxton? I love Bill Paxton. I'm very happy he'll be around for several episodes this season. But can we trust Bill Paxton?

– Coulson wasn't treated by S.H.I.E.L.D., which is very interesting. Who were those guys, if not S.H.I.E.L.D.? And all of this talk about Director Fury means he has to appear again, right?

– I personally really enjoyed the scene in which Fitz and Simmons were going through all those documents. But it looked kind of tiring. I can go through a lot of documents on my computer and sit on my ass. They had to do full body movements and stuff. OMG I am tired just thinking about it.

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E13: "T.R.A.C.K.S."

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E13: "T.R.A.C.K.S."

Ask and ye shall receive, I guess. Early on Tuesday I wrote about three things Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. needed to work on in order to become worthy of our love and attention. In this week's "T.R.A.C.K.S.," the series attempted to rectify most, if not all, of those complaints at once. It continued building on the overarching plot by focusing on the search for the Clairvoyant and Ian Quinn, who returned as the series' resident asshole in "Seeds," while attempting to further develop characters like Skye and Agent Handsome. But most importantly, it absolutely raised the stakes.

Hoping it would lead them to Quinn, the gang took on another increasingly personal mission and hopped on a train to try to recover a piece of technology made by Cybertek that was en route to him in Italy. This was a perfect opportunity for S.H.I.E.L.D. to pair up characters we don't often get to see together, like Coulson and Simmons as father and daughter, and Fitz and Skye as a young couple. May and Handsome's cover identities basically involved May being a quiet, cold woman in a relationship with Handsome, who was left carrying the bags (literally). Gee, I hope they didn't have to stretch their acting abilities too far for that one.





The pairing of Simmons and Coulson provided some great comedy, because as we know, Simmons is terrible at playing things by ear, so she prepared for her role by creating an entire backstory for her character that included a dead mother, leftover resentment of her American father for choosing his work and his prostitutes over their family, and a family vacation to Thailand. As she explained to Coulson, while she's not great at improvisation ("The Hub"), she excels at preparation. Perhaps even funnier than Simmons' outrageous backstory were Coulson's excellent reaction shots to the over-the-top stories being spun by her. Almost as good were Skye and Fitz, who were pretending to be a young American couple in love celebrating nearly a month-long relationship by traveling Europe. Knowing that Fitz harbors a crush on Skye made his reaction to her role playing quite enjoyable, but also a bit sad. If they were to ever become a real couple, it's clear Skye would emasculate Fitz on a daily basis without even realizing she was doing it.


Unfortunately for the team, but fortunately for viewers, things did not go as smoothly as they'd planned. Cybertek knew they were on the train and with everyone separated in different compartments (or on top of the train, if you're May), it was easy to use that against them. Once communications broke down and the gang was offline, the episode kicked in to high gear by experimenting with framing. Instead of following a linear progression of time involving the characters, "T.R.A.C.K.S." jumped around to switch perspectives in order to showcase what happened to each of the characters after things started going downhill.




This style of storytelling can sometimes be frustrating, but the use of it here actually worked well to raise the stakes. It put the viewer in the shoes of the characters each time. One of the series' biggest issues is that very few of the team's mission feel all that problematic or dangerous. And when viewers aren't worried about the characters and their safety, it actively keeps them from fully immersing themselves in the story. Not knowing what happened to Simmons, May, Skye, and Fitz after Coulson and Handsome jumped from the train raised the tension, and actually made me grateful for the train setting, because it trapped the characters in a confined space. Nothing gets the anxiety up quite like being trapped. But while Coulson and Handsome were in a trance caused by a dendrotoxin similar to what the gang used in their own Night-Night Gun, May was being captured and tortured, Simmons was in search of Skye and Fitz, and everything was falling apart.


But of course, none of that could top the last 15 minutes of "T.R.A.C.K.S." in which Mike Peterson officially became the cyborg Deathlok with his new mechanical leg, or when Quinn shot Skye twice in the stomach because he's a villain and that's what villains do. For a moment it looked as if the series was ratcheting up the tension by actually killing off a main character, but then it clicked that Skye was an 0-8-4 and maybe that meant she'd be okay. It only took about two seconds to realize how big of a mistake it would be to reveal anything that big about Skye so soon after dropping the bombshell of her own origin story in "Seeds." Choosing to have Coulson find her and Simmons put her in the hyperbaric chamber was a better, more emotional ending to the episode.




It's nice to see that Skye is still dealing with the reveal of how she came to be in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s care as a child, but it absolutely would have been the wrong call to suddenly give her some sort of magic healing powers as an instantaneous do-over in the first episode after the reveal. This new development will hopefully lead to a more emotional, more personal team when the series returns in March, and for the first time, I'm really, really excited to see what's going to happen, because I honestly don't know. Handsome's reaction, in particular, is something I'm very interested in, because he's clearly very upset over what happened to Skye, and he's not blaming himself (though, I think he is just a little bit), but Coulson for letting her go in to the field at all.


It's no secret Agent Handsome has been my least favorite character since the show premiered. He earned his nickname because of his flat personality and handsome face, but this week he started to feel like an actual person for the first time. The series tried to flesh him out by hinting at his backstory in "The Well," but there are other ways to develop characters other than simply giving them a backstory, and this week the writers did just that. From his confusion as to how the holotable worked to busting in the mansion with double guns blazing like he's a Chris Argent-wannabe, he finally seems to be gaining a personality. Even his relationship with May—which we all know I really disliked in the beginning—is helping to make him a more likable character (even if its mostly in reaction to how Coulson's taking the news and the fact Handsome can't refer to it as sex). Handsome certainly still has a long way to go before I'm sending him any Christmas cards, but the series is at least making an effort to round him out and make him less of a good-looking cardboard cutout with the emotional range of a teaspoon. As long as the series continues down this path of character development and serialized plot, I think this second half of the season is going to be great.




DECLASSIFIED CASE FILES




– Simmons basically threw herself on a grenade for Fitz and Skye this week. Of course, it wasn't a real grenade—it was laced with the same dendrotoxin that was previously used to knock out Handsome and Coulson—but I'd say she definitely earned the title of Episode MVP for her over-the-top backstory and her selflessness and quick thinking to save Skye. Team Simmons.

– Handsome and Coulson's inability to work the holotable might actually be one of my favorite moments from the series to date. Taking characters out of their comfort zone and asking them to do something that seems easy but actually isn't tends to result in good humor.

– Stan Lee's cameo: What did you guys think? It was cool to see him, but maybe he should limit his speaking roles, yeah?

– The series won't be back until March because no one wants to compete with the Olympics. As a strict Summer Olympics person, this really bums me out. Who even cares about the ice luge?

– "I used to watch a lot of American TV growing up. Some of it's quite good. Lots of nice teeth."

– "You are the least supportive pretend girlfriend I've ever had!"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E12 "Seeds"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E11: "The Magical Place"

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E11: "The Magical Place"

It's more than fair to say that Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn't always lived up to expectations. It promised fans a small-screen adventure filled with action and mystery as seen through the eyes of a whip-smart relative outsider acting as the audience stand-in. It posed several important questions, and it had big dreams, but so far, it's largely failed to deliver any answers or achieve its ambitions. There have been adventures around the globe, and there have been fisticuffs in nearly every episode, but the series has faltered where it counts: the meaningful overarching story.

Thankfully, now that we've reached the halfway point of the first season, the series is at least attempting to address some of the big question marks that've been looming over it like rainclouds, and "The Magical Place" was the first episode in quite awhile that really felt like a series Joss Whedon would want to be a part of.

In the pilot, we were taken under Agent Coulson's wing and granted access to S.H.I.E.L.D. that we've never had before, and that was all fine and dandy. There were cool spy gadgets, and the aforementioned "exotic" locales, but something was always missing. I've discussed before the series' problem with its stakes never feeling all that real, but that isn't its only problem. The series lacks a villain. There've been hints and references, and single-episode baddies, but until this week, there hadn't been a true villain in the comic book sense of the word. And even viewers with only a basic knowledge of the medium know that in comics, there are heroes and there are villains and the stories are then built around them.

The ongoing Centipede storyline is, for all intents and purposes, this season's Big Bad. But it has suffered for two reasons. First, it's been the focus of less than a handful of episodes. With little to no screen time, it's still largely a mystery. That in itself is annoying, but not necessarily the worst thing that could happen to the series. The real problem plaguing S.H.I.E.L.D. is that Centipede is faceless. It's hard to hate something, or fight against something, when you don't even know who or what it is that you're up against. To make matters worse, every time we've been introduced to someone involved in the Centipede operation to create super soldiers, they've dispatched within an episode or two.





Shannon Lucio played the doctor who gave J. August Richards' Mike Peterson the Extremis serum in the pilot. She appeared briefly in "The Girl in the Flower Dress" but was killed by episode's end. Raina, that episode's titular floral-apparel fanatic, has been the face most associated with Centipede, but now she too has been dealt with (at least for the time being). She was taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody after Skye and the rest of the team rescued Coulson in this week's episode. Po, the man they'd sprung from jail only a few episodes ago, was dispatched by the Clairvoyant for being a violent asshole midway through "The Magical Place." Creating characters and then killing them off or relegating them to the sidelines makes it difficult for viewers to stay invested in the story. It makes it equally hard for fans to direct their emotions toward the right characters. It's clear now that the Clairvoyant, whoever he/she is, is the one calling the shots here, but the character remains an enigma. It's frustrating that this is where we've ended up, but that's how mysteries work, I guess.


Anyway, after four paragraphs of complaints, please allow me to attempt to explain why it is I do believe, despite its problems, that there's still hope for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Thanks to Raina and her brain machine, we have the answer to at least one of the series' mysteries. Coulson's resurrection is no longer a secret. Or at least not as much of a secret as it was prior to this week's episode. He didn't die for eight seconds, or even 40 seconds. He died for days. Director Fury brought in several doctors to operate on and revive Coulson following the Battle of New York. Ron Glass, whose character Dr. Streiten appeared in the pilot alongside Cobie Smulders' Agent Maria Hill, was brought in on the seventh operation, but he wasn't operating on Coulson's heart, he was operating on Coulson's brain. They rewired it (in a pretty cool, if also kind of gross, scene) and gave him new memories (the Tahiti visions we've been seeing this whole time), so he wouldn't remember the fact that he had lost the will to live and begged for them to let him die.





It's still not clear how Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. brought Coulson back, but we can at least eliminate the idea that he's a Life Model Decoy now, right? Just kidding, this isn't my first rodeo. I know better than to believe everything I'm told up front, because nothing is ever as it seems in worlds like this one. How do we know this isn't just a fail-safe? How do we know this isn't just the first layer of security to prevent Coulson (or anyone else, like, say, the Clairvoyant) from discovering the real truth? Before I get too deep into conspiracy theories, because we could be here all day, Dr. Streiten did at least appear to be sincere when he apologized for the part he'd played in Coulson's "resurrection," but let's just agree to not trust anyone right now and move on, because we've got bigger fish to fry.


Learning the truth about what happened to Coulson was only part of the story. There are always consequences to discovering the truth, which has been a recurring theme throughout the first 11 episodes of S.H.I.E.L.D.. From Skye's search for her parents to Coulson's search for the truth, there's always the notion that what we discover might not be any better than what we've always known or imagined. That's definitely true in Coulson's case, but now we must face the fallout from this discovery. Which brings me to my next point about what's been missing from the series until now: the rage against the machine theme.





Most of Whedon's work follows the less fortunate, the outsiders, the ragtag team of misfits fighting the good fight even if they're on their own. It's a trend that flows from Buffy to Angel to Firefly and beyond. Large corporations or governmental bodies have always been the enemy of Whedon's protagonists, but that hasn't been the case here. Part of the reason Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn't felt like a typical Whedon production, aside from the fact that it really isn't, is that Coulson and most of his team blindly believe in the S.H.I.E.L.D. system. They don't question it. They accept it when they're told they can't do something or enter somewhere because they don't have clearance. They follow orders. The only person questioning the system in the series' first ten episodes was Skye, and that makes sense given that she's not a real agent. She's a hacker, an outsider, and as Agent Hand pointed out: She's still just a consultant, even if she has been training.


But what Hand didn't realize (but May did) is that's exactly what S.H.I.E.L.D. needs in order to get shit done. Hand's intel on where Coulson was being held was wrong, but Skye followed her natural instincts, impersonated Agent May, kidnapped guest-star Rob Huebel, and discovered the truth. But it isn't enough for only Skye to be bucking the flawed system, because the show will never evolve if that remains the case. Skye's character, in addition to being the audience proxy, is also there to shine a light on all of the system's flaws and change the team's way of thinking. And you have to admit, she's been doing an okay job. It was fun when the rest of the team aided Skye's escape, and it's refreshing now to see Coulson also questioning his trust in S.H.I.E.L.D. They brought him back to life when all he wanted was to die, and then they implanted fake memories in his brain to cover it up. This begs a lot of questions, like the one posed by Agent Hand: Why does Coulson matter so much? Obviously S.H.I.E.L.D. invested a lot of time and resources in bringing him back to life, but why? Needing him for a TV series is beside the point, there has to be something bigger, and I hope we find out before the season ends just what that was.





Despite how this review might come off, "The Magical Place" was actually a pretty good episode. Clark Gregg was outstanding, and the hour moved the plot forward, even if it was just a little bit. We might not have learned anything about Coulson that we didn't already know, but Coulson did, and that's what really matters. We've got momentum on both his timeline and the Centipede storyline (also, Mike survived the explosion in "The Bridge" and has been upgraded with a fancy new killer eyeball). If the series continues down this path of distrusting S.H.I.E.L.D. and letting the characters show emotion—even if it's Fitz's anger—then the series can only get better. Now that we're moving into the second half of the season, I have a feeling the series is headed for a much more serialized format, and that will also help sustain it.





DECLASSIFIED CASE FILES



– When I was downloading photos from ABC's press site before the episode, I was like, "WTF why does Skye look like she raided May's wardrobe?" Well now we know why. It was kind of funny to see her impersonation.

– There were recognizable guest-stars all over the place this week. Saffron Burrows returned (with a better American accent?) as Agent Victoria Hand, Firefly's Ron Glass was back as Dr. Streiten, Rob Huebel (Childrens Hospital) played Lloyd Rathman, Aiden Turner (All My Children) played Vanchat, and Felisha Terrell (Teen Wolf) played Emily Deville, who clearly has never owned a Roomba in her life.

– I doubt we'll be seeing more of Mike Peterson every week. He'll disappear until later in the season when he'll obviously return as a reluctant enemy in need of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s assistance. But I'm excited to see it. J. August Richards is always a good time.

– Just WTF is up with Raina? I mean, for real, guys. So she'd had her brain tampered with, too? I just don't like it when the enemy finds common ground with our protagonists, because it's too easy of a trope. But it did lead to Coulson distrusting S.H.I.E.L.D. and discovering the truth (even if he didn't tell Raina what he saw) so maybe I can get over it this once.

– "Bet there aren't any flower dresses where she's going." ZING! Good one, Simmons. (J/K Simmons continues to be one of my favorite characters of the season, especially when paired with Fitz: "Amen to that, sister!")

– Did you like "The Magical Place"?