Agents of SHIELD, Season 3, Episode 2: Purpose in the Machine
Well, that was quick! I was expecting more buildup, more angst, more mystery, more 'let's see how much we can break Fitz's mental state', more oblique foreshadowing. Granted having the team rescue Simmons within two episodes into the season is a bit odd since Simmons being eaten by the monolith was the big out-there cliffhanger at the end of season two... but seeing how underwhelming the Fitz-Simmons plot that ran for the first half of season two ended up being, I did like the sudden twist and bone that Joss Whedon and the other creators of this show threw at us, since I honestly believed that this will end in a depressing note with either Fitz returning after that "so close yet so far" moment with Simmons, or with both Fitz and Simmons stuck in, uh, hell-planet.
But no, this episode focuses on them just trying to get Simmons back, recruiting Elliot Randolph -- better known as the Asgardian stranded on Earth, who has been MIA since season one -- in trying to figure this Kree Monolith shit out. And we actually get some payoff instead of just having things be obliquely be about alien symbols and alien blood and whatnot, which is definitely something that feels good. It's still sorta depressing since, y'know, Simmons seems to be pretty traumatized from her ordeal, but I think Fitz will take a damaged Simmons compared to a dead Simmons.
Elliot Randolph is absolutely on point, snarking along and basically every word out of his mouth is comedy gold. And that's in-between just casually going 'I've been here three thousand years ago' or lifting prison bars and blaming it on Coulson. And we do get a whole lot of nice smaller character moments for Skye, Mack, Bobbi and Andrew, who's set up shop in the new SHIELD base. It's nice, and none of them are really essential, but it does build character and I do like how the story just lets these characters breathe a little. Some people in the net pointed out that this episode felt so fuzzily different because, well, it is. We still have a main objective and a main plot (investigate the Kree portal to the hell planet thing) and rescuing Simmons is definitely engaging, but it doesn't involve the big Hydra plot nor does it involve a big drawn-out fight in the end. And while I truly appreciate fight scenes, sometimes an episode can work absolutely fine without them. This is one of those episodes.
Fitz, however, steals the show moreso than Randolph ever could, and all the build-up to him just refusing to give up from getting Simmons back... we've got some backstory about how people from the past have already been experimenting with the Kree Monolith and trying to understand where the portal goes, but all of it honestly pales in the face of Fitz's absolutely beautiful performance throughout this episode. From his single-minded obsession, to his desperate screams, to that look of utter despair near the end when he realizes his friends are reeling him in when he's just a hand's length away from Simmons, and the sheer look of bliss at the end... I honestly thought it was going to be a standard bait-and-switch, where Fitz and Simmons are just a couple of seconds away from being reunited, but the writers need to drag things out and push Simmons' rescue, to, like, the mid-season (and the viewers can probably see just what Simmons was running away from last episode) but am definitely glad that she got rescued here.
I thought the episode went on a bit too long trying to explain the pseudo-science goobledeygonk about the gothic Kree monolith portal resonator thing, and I honestly tuned the entire thing out, but hey. Also, Skye (Daisy, whatever) gets to show off more of her powers, and more importantly, far more finer control over what frequency she chooses to emit. Which is cool.
We've got a couple B-plots running along, too, the ones I'm most happy about involving the two core members of the team we didn't see last episode -- Ward and May. Grant Ward is rebuilding a new Hydra, weeding off the older, fatter generation of Hydra in favour of newer like-minded fanatics. We get a bait-and-switch as this scary black dude seems to be Ward's second in command as he mucks around crazily with that dude's car, before the rich kid that Ward 'kidnapped' ended up beating the black dude presumably to death. From the sheer fun of Ward unleashing a swarm of rats to get rid of bikini babes, to Ward showboating and kung-fu-ing an entire boat's worth of people (with a hilarious 'eh, I've got a gun' when someone actually manages to land a hit on him)... to the darker undertones of him breaking down the rich boy, revealed to be Werner von Strucker, son of Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. i do like Werner from what little we saw of him, and I do certainly hope he can be far more entertaining than the underwhelming Wolfgang von Strucker from Age of Ultron.
Ward is definitely channeling his mentor John Garrett here, though, being nonchalant and matter-of-fact, playing up that dark mentor angle while eating nachos or whatever. And by the end of this episode Werner seems to be on board with Ward's Hydra, stalking May's ex-husband Andrew.
May, meanwhile, apparently broke up with Andrew in the interim, and is actually just taking time off playing golf with her father, who busted his hip. And just like May herself and her mother, MayPapa is an absolute badass, easily reading her daughter and talking about spy shit casually. Also, talking about little May figure skating, which is all sorts of adorable. By the end of this episode, though, Hunter, in his little crusade against Ward, manages to recruit May (in no small part thanks to MayPapa) to infiltrate Hydra and bring Ward down from the inside.
Overall the May stuff doesn't really do much other than showing some character stuff and the sheer absurdity of May in a normal life, and the Ward stuff truly felt like a distraction until the revelation that he's just fucking around trying to brainwash Werner von Strucker.
From a more geeky standpoint, Skye/Daisy is still not referred to by her comicbook superhero codename, Quake. Despite Mack having a good opportunity to use it as a nickname, he opts to call her 'Tremors' again because, eh, Mack's an idiot. We also get the term 'Secret Warriors' name-dropped by Skye when she and Mack are discussing their nonexistent superhuman team. I don't think we get any explanation to what the death hell planet really is, though, again, I'm not that well-informed about Marvel comics.
It's overall a pretty solid episode. Other than the strong performances put in by Fitz and Randolph, there's nothing that's absolutely spectacular, certainly... though there's always the rather trope-defying twist of rescuing Simmons this early, which is definitely not a bad thing.
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