Piece of the Puzzle: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2 E4 - A Hen in the Wolf House

In which I review the latest episode of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

It's no small wonder why Hydra wants the Obelisk, which they were first able to recover in Shadows.  With nothing more than tissue samples from its petrified victims, they were able to weaponize it to mixed results.  With the artifact itself, they could potentially do far worse than that: creating an extinction-level event to kill all non-Hydra operatives worldwide.  When undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is put on the project, her cover within Hydra is blown, resulting in a hasty extraction.  Meanwhile, a desperate Reina comes to Coulson for Skye, whose father desperately wants her back in his custody.

Skye's father - the man that she has dedicated her entire life to learning more about, who was revealed to still be alive at the end of the last season - has been just as desperately trying to find her since the day that she was taken from him.  Coupled with the implicit revelation that Skye is in fact an alien - at least part Kree, given that she did not succumb to Agents Garret's and Coulson's fugue states after taking the Kree-based serum GH-325 - A Hen in the Wolf House ultimately raises more questions about her origin than it answers.  And despite my recent frustrations with Gotham's recently reset plot, I'm 100% fine with this.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has proven over its two seasons that it is more capable of developing, uncovering and ultimately deepening the mysteries surrounding its cast and setting.  These recent developments intensify, rather than frustrate, my appreciation for the show, taking the plot into interesting and uncharted directions.  Skye's father exudes a barely contained menace and an inherent desire to be with his daughter (who he has seen refer to him as a monster) that seems bound to explode in the very near future.  Coupled with the crossover potential with Guardians of the Galaxy, which included Kree among its major demographics, and the possibility of a small-screen adaptation of the Secret Invasion story line, the series has boundless potential with its new key players and plot points.

The reinsurgence of Simmons into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s main base of operations - and her strained reunion with Fitz - was impeccably handled.  Although she was doing incredibly well each week as a double agent inside of Hydra, and her physical absence was off-set by Fitz's hallucinated interactions with her, she is back where her character has the best potential to develop.  Here, her floundered relationship with Fitz can take off or stagnate as it will, with ample dramatic possibilities for the show to explore either way.  Fitz may darken or lighten as a character as a direct result, which again is in the best interest of the series' well-formed characters.

The final highlight of the episode was the introduction of fan favorite and Lance Hunter's she-devil of an ex-wife Bobbi Morse: codename Mockingbird, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.  When her cover within Hydra was not enough to gain access to the organization's high-priority projects, Simmons was brought in to work her way up through their scientific division.  In her short time on screen, Morse has proven to be a superior physical threat, a charismatic agent and an incredibly entertaining character.  Her future interactions with Hunter on the team - especially given how fervently he's gone off about her in previous episodes - are bound to be a highlight of the season.

The complications brought up in this episode as both substantive to the series as a whole as well as incessently entertaining to watch.  They're bound to have long-lasting implications for not just Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but the MCU as a whole (even if it takes a while to migrate to the big screen).  Overall, I give the episode a solid 8 out of 10.

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Piece of the Puzzle: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2 E4 - Face My Enemy

In which I review the latest episode of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Since Coulson's last Fugue state, a painting has been discovered in a burned down church that bears the same symbols that Coulson has been obsessively carving at an increasingly frequent rate: some kind of text written in the same, unknown alien language.  The plan is simple: infiltrate the charity ball where it's being held, steal it, then decipher it.  Brigadier General Talbot's presence at the party complicates matters however, especially when it turns out to be a Hydra agent in disguise.  But when Agent May is similarly replaced by a Hydra agent, can Director Coulson discover the deception before it's too late?

Agent May vs Agent May.  Fight!

It's easy to forget after seeing "The Cavalry" punch, kick and generally smash her way to victory for going on two seasons that Agent May is more than just a fighter; she's a covert agent who specializes in under-cover missions.  Face My Enemy reminds us of that fact by showing her under cover for the first time in the series.  Watching her tango, laugh and monopolize a conversation with sophisticated ease is even more unnerving than Ward's defection to Hydra.  That's not to say that she was unconvincing in the role.  In fact, her transformation into a chittering, bubbly socialite was perfect.  It is simply so blatantly out of character for her that it's impossible not to respect her even more as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The plot of the episode was well enough: nothing particularly good nor memorable, but nothing that didn't work on its own.  May's scenes were certainly highlights of the episode, from her schooled grace at the party and her climactic fight with her doppelganger.  Fitz's decision to try to bond with the rest of the team, despite his recent mental deficiencies, was a powerful step forward for his character.  Everything else, though, pretty stock for an action TV series: the heist, the sabotaged plane nearly exploding, Coulson's last-minute deduction that he was with an impostor rather than the real May - nothing that we haven't seen countless times before.

It's becoming increasingly obvious with every episode just how far the balance of power is tipped into Hydra's favor.  While Coulson's team barely has the resources to get by, Hydra's global intelligence network has been largely unaffected after the battle over the Triskelion.  They have perfected camouflage so absolutely that they can convincingly transform a waify, white woman into a solidly built asian one and the only thing that gives her away is that she likes coffee and talks too much.  They can even brainwash high-value assets into betraying their every core value and work for Nazis.

Face My Enemy proves that there is plenty of room left to explore the agents of Coulson's new S.H.I.E.L.D. if even a relatively blank slate like May can headline an entire episode with such entertaining ease.  Even if the episode fails to be a particularly memorable one, it is none-the-less a perfectly necessary one: progressing the overarching narrative forward and meaningfully developing its characters.  I continue to love the direction that Fitz is being taken and Simmons is just as convincing of a character whether she's a hallucination or a double agent.  Overall, I give the episode a 7 out of 10.

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Piece of the Puzzle: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2 E3 - Making Friends and Influencing People

In which I review the most recent episode of Marvel's Agens of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agent Simmons has been busy since leaving Clouson's team: working her way up through Hydra's ranks as a double-agent an gathering what intelligence she can from inside their organization.  Since S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most recent encounter with them, Hydra has set their sights on bringing Donnie Gill - the ice-powered dropout from S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy last seen in Seeds - who has resurfaced in Casablanca.  But when Hydra orders Simmons to bring Gill into the fold, she risks losing her cover as well as her life when S.H.I.E.L.D. attempts to intervene.

Hail Hydra.

 After teasing Simmons' defection for the first two episodes, Making Friends and Influencing People delivers everything that Shadows and Heavy Is the Head promised.  While I never believed that Simmons' move to Hydra was earnest, I did believe that it was done without Coulson's (nor the rest of the team's) knowledge of her deception and because she needed to tap into Hydra's considerable scientific resources in an attempt to hasten Fitz's recovery.  The actual reasons for it - that Coulson needed a double agent within Hydra specifically because of their considerable scientific resources - was far better than my over-complicated predictions

Simmons was without a doubt the perfect character to throw into this scenario, specifically because her inability to convincingly lie has been addressed throughout the series' first season.  The Hub showed a normally eloquent Simmons hopelessly bumbling through Agent Sitwell's questions about why she's in a particular hallway accessing a particular wall panel.  Her obvious lies drew his suspicion and, panicking, she shot him with an Icer.  She is by far the least likely spy that Coulson could have implanted into Hydra, and yet her intelligence, personability and dedication to her true cause makes her deception work and her role in it convincing.

Agent Simmons shoots Agent Sitwell in The Hub.

A second highlight of this episode was Fitz discovering that Agent Ward was being kept prisoner in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new base: right underneath his feet.  Fitz defended Ward long after everyone else had resigned themselves to his allegiance to Hydra.  He had to be a triple agent working for S.H.I.E.L.D. or have a retinal bomb like in Eye Spy or something.  He believed in him up until Ward threw him and Simmons into the ocean, resulting in the brain damage that Fitz has struggled with all season.

His reaction to finally confronting the man that he had thought was his friend - the man who shattered his confidence and destroyed his capacity to contribute to the team - is utterly devastating.  His decision to take the oxygen out of Ward's cell - to show him what he had to endure because of him - as he rattles off what happens to the human body when deprived of oxygen is easily the darkest direction that the character was ever taken in.  His inability to go through with it, though, proves to be his greatest personal triumph: one worthy of an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

"You need to accept the truth, Fitz.  He doesn't care about us or about anything."

More than anything else, Making Friend and Influencing People proves how to write female characters well, something that I recently complained about Gotham being incapable of doing.  It's not about making them over-the-top warrior women, reformed lesbians nor former (possibly current) junkies.  It's about making them people: convincingly human, whose presence and actions matter.  It's not enough to just give them some screen time and a back story.

With Making Friends and Influencing People, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. continues to prove why they are without a doubt the best comic-inspired show on television.  And yes, it's even better than Arrow.  Fitz and Simmons turn out to be equally engaging apart from one another as they have proven to be together and Ward's interrogation are fast becoming my favorite part of the new season.  I give the episode a solid 8.5 out of 10.

We may have just found out.

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Piece of the Puzzle: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2 E2 - Heavy Is the Head

In which I review the latest episode of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

After last week's pyrrhic victory against Hydra, a broken S.H.I.E.L.D. continues to track down "Crusher" Creel, who successfully stole the Obelisk - a mysterious artifact capable of transforming organic tissue into stone.  But with agents Hartley and Idaho dead and the questionably-loyal Agent Hunter captured by Brigadier General Talbot, S.H.I.E.L.D. is running out of options.  When Coulson is contacted by Reina - the former head of Project Centipede - he sees a chance to neutralize Creel and secure the Obelisk from enemy control.

Heavy Is the Head concludes the events of Shadows so completely that the two should have been merged into a two-hour season premiere.  Combined, they compose a far more complete view into Coulson's new S.H.I.E.L.D. and its component members than either alone can provide.  Coulson is not simply bearing the burdens of his responsibilities as Director, but has been regularly slipping into the same fugue state that we saw him in at the end of Season 1 - carving the same circuit-like symbols into the walls that John Garrett was after taking the drug GH-325.  Its apparently increasing frequency raises the question of whether or not Coulson is beginning to succumb to Garret's psychosis, while its impossible cohesion with Garret's designs suggest that it is something altogether more profound.

It appears as if Agent Fitz is not as completely oblivious to his delusions of Agent Simmons as Shadows seemed to suggest.  When fellow technician Alfonso Mackenzie failed to acknowledge the hallucinated Simmons' presence, Fitz deflected his ignorance rather than confronted it.  When asked about how he felt about her leaving, he looked directly at his hallucination while answering Mack's question.  He is not ignorant of his hallucinations, but chooses to believe in them rather than facing the truth of Simmons' absence.  And after the end-of-episode preview for Making Friends and Influencing People, I can only imagine what confronting the real Simmons - and the circumstances surrounding her defection - will do to the increasingly unstable Fitz.

Perhaps the most interesting development of the episode occurs once Reina acquires the Obelisk.  Despite knowing what it has done to every single person who has ever touched it - including the seemingly immune Creel - she grasps it with her bare hands.  Rather than petrifying her, it turned on, calling to mind her question to the "enlightened" Garrett: "what will I become?"  And, given her now suspect physiology as well as her association with Skye's allegedly monstrous parents, I can't help but ask "what will Skye become?"

Like its preceding episode, Heavy Is the Head promise second season that's far superior the show's first.  It continues to broaden the scope of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s missions, plumb the depths of its mysteries and expand the conflicts of its growing cast of characters.  Overall, I give this episode an 8/10 and eagerly look forward to next week's installment.

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Piece of the Puzzle: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2 E1 - Shadows

A preface - This segment is not devoted completely to each week's new Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode. This is a general series that will actually appear a few times most weeks.  In it, I will review the latest episode of any series that I am following.  Right now it's just goin to be Gotham (starting with this week's Unreality article) and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  In October, Arrow, Flash and Constantine will be added to the roster.  January will add Agent Carter, and so on and so on as new shows and seasons roll out.  Needless to say, this should keep me out of trouble for a while.

Despite its four-month hiatus, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. began its second season with the same frenetic energy that its last season ended with.  Labelled a terrorist organization, driven underground by the U.S. government, forced to rely on mercenaries of questionable loyalties and ultimately unsure of who to trust, S.H.I.E.L.D. is on the verge of collapse.  Director Coulson can't even rely on Fitz anymore, who suffered brain damage after Ward jettisoned him and Simmons into the ocean.  When Hydra resurfaces to steal a devastating weapon from military custody, Coulson's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have no choice but to stop them.

"Shadows" proves that season 2 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is just as interested in exploring the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the aftermath of Captain America: The Winter Soldier as season 1 was.  Now fugatives from the government, former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents - untrusted by Coulson and desperate to survive - have turned to selling classified intelligence to the highest bidder.  After Garret's death and Skye's rejection, Ward has become suicidal an desperate to redeem himself: refusing to be interrogated by anybody except for Skye.  His intelligence reveals a thriving Hydra network spanning the entire globe: saving their strength as the world instead goes after S.H.I.E.L.D.

Coming into the new season, my biggest concern was what direction they were going to take with Agent Fitz.  We knew that he had suffered a prolonged period without oxygen and had suffered at least some degree of brain damage because of it.  Until now, we had know knowledge of what state his body and mind were in.  Whether he was in a coma or walking around as good as ever (or somewhere inbetween), there was no indication.

The truth is more heartbreaking and tragic than anything that I could have imagined.  Although back, he is obviously damaged.  He is no longer the animated youn agent that was desperate to show Simmons what he really felt for her.  He's no longer the genius that he used to be.  He can't remember everything that he used to, nor explain his line of reasoning.  He can no longer remember the words for things that he used to be able to rattle off like the Doctor speaking techno-babble.  Feeling useless and unwanted, he has grown quiet, brooding and erratic: only able to take solace with Simmons.

The truth is, however, that Simmons is gone.  Fearing that her presence was holding back his recovery, she felt that the best thing for him was to leave.  Incapable of coming to terms with her departure, and coupled with his extensive brain damage, he began manifesting her as a comforting hallucination: something that the rest of the team knows nothing about.

If "Shadows" is any indication to the rest of the season, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has finally found its footing as a series.  Under Agent May's direction, the new Skye is now a full-fledged badass: ranked somewhere between Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley.  Antoine Triplett, with his easy smiles and off-the-cuff charisma, easily fills the hole on the team that was left by Agent Ward's defection.  Coulson's new position as Director suits him well, allowing to run his agency through his sole discretion, removing the awkward "this is okay for now, but you can't break the rules forever" framework that defined his previous attempts to do what he felt was right.  The stilted, episodic pacing of the first season has been replaced by a much more organic one, where narrative arcs are staggered so that nothing ever begins or resolves at the same time.

This is the best episode Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to date.  Everything about it - from its twists to its newly-expanded cast - is absolutely perfect.  Marvel had the courage to take Fitz's injuries to their logical extreme and the finesse to make it the best new development of the series.  "Crusher" Creel (aka, Absorbing Man) is an awesome on-the-ground villain whose used imaginatively and well throughout the entire episode.  Anybody who gave up on the show last season should seriously reconsider giving it a second chance in this one.  Overall, I give the episode a 10/10.