Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episode 6: A Fractured House
So, the episode opens with Whitehall's Hydra agents masquerading as SHIELD (I'm going to refer to SHIELD with that spelling because typing S.H.I.E.L.D. all the time is time consuming) and attacking a U.N. meeting headed by Glenn Talbot and killing a bunch of dudes with these cool Splinter Bombs that can disintegrate people into dust. It's pretty cool. I also do like how Talbot isn't completely dumb and he goes 'this might not be the work of SHIELD specifically', so it's nice that he isn't a two-dimensional evil army dude and actually has a functional brain. The person he's reporting to is revealed to be Senator Christian Ward, abusive brother of Grant Ward, who wants to make this global SHIELD-hunting police force which would be bad, and most of this episode is Coulson trying to get Senator Ward to disband said force, whilst trying to stop the Hydra hunting party that's going around disintegrating people.
There's this funny moment where half of the team keeps asking Coulson if the people who attacked the U.N. wasn't really them, but I thought that went a bit too long. May, Mockingbird (I'm so calling her that instead of her real name) and Hunter goes off to stop the Hydra hunting party led by Marcus Scarlotti, where they meet this Japanese dude who invented the Splinter Bombs named Toshiro Mori, and Mockingbird sort of uses her feminine wiles to get with the dude. All the while there's a bunch of bickering between Mockingbird and Hunter that we could really have pared down somewhat. Simmons finally confronts Fitz, but they end up just arguing and Simmons is in tears and they have a moment which I'll talk about in length later on.
Coulson meanwhile confronts Senator Ward, whereas Skye confronts Grant Ward, and we get a little nice juxtaposed back-and-forth as both Wards tell the SHIELD agent they're talking to about how unreliable the other Ward is, and while we know Grant Ward is a psychopathic piece of human filth, there's this moment where Grant Ward looks so unbelievably scared of his brother and we're left to think whether this is him showing his true self to Skye, or if it's just him being a good actor. And I do like how Skye ended up to be just playing Ward to milk out the last of the information about her father, and how SHIELD has made a deal to hand Ward over to Senator Ward to execute, something which fits all their agendas. It's something that's uncharacteristically cold of Coulson, but I absolutely love it -- I'm interested to see what Ward does, really, but I'm also on the same token quite happy to see Coulson lay the verbal smackdown on him.
We get a bunch of Fitz-Simmons moment as Simmons fails to deal with the brain-damaged Fitz and everything, and the two of them, plus Mack, find out that the Beckers family, who's like a leader of Belgium, is Hydra-affiliated. We get to see Scarlotti and Beckers killing the few SHIELD agents that were taking refuge there, before Team May head in and fight them and naturally win after a couple of cool fight scenes. There's a nice moment when Talbot's team comes in and takes the Hydra people away and shakes hand with May, while Senator Ward gives a speech differentiating Hydra and SHIELD, which is nice -- I don't mind a shaky relationship, just don't go around going on and on a freaking revolving door about it.
All this while, the scene alternates with Ward being transferred out of SHIELD, and since the idiots used regular handcuffs on him instead of sedating him or whatever, Ward breaks free and kills the non-SHIELD soldiers. And then we get a stinger scene showing some dude who I initially thought was Skye's Father tattooing those crazy markings on his body.
Marcus Scarlotti is the villain of the week, and he's, as Wikipedia tells me, the identity of the first Whiplash, or Blacklash -- the Whiplash we got in the Iron Man movie has more in common with a different villain, the Crimson Dynamo. Anyway, Blacklash is a cool dude. He's been hyped up as having nearly killed Hawkeye (hee hee, dude can't catch a break) and he does pull out this awesome chain-dagger thing during the fight with May, and his entire team is equipped with these Splinter Bombs that have this pretty cool disintegration effects.
We get a couple more Hydra people, the Japanese Toshiro Mori who quickly gets murdered by Mockingbird and Hunter after providing them with a little information, and the twist that the head of Belgium, Julien Beckers, is a Hydra agent. Pretty fun stuff.
Also, as if Daniel Whitehall and Skye's Father aren't quite enough villains for season two, we get introduced to Christian Ward, older brother of Grant Ward, who seems to be this really awesome slimy politician who tries to bury his brother under everything. It's still unclear just what Christian Ward's agendas are other than he seems to be a massive douchebag like his brother, likely to be as psychotic as Grant Ward is, and wants his brother dead for some reason. Right now I'm banking on both Christian and Grant on being complete and utter douchebags and neither of them were really lying. I do really like the scene where the two talk to Coulson and Skye on different locations, how they each pretend so hard to appeal from the bottom of their heart and pretending to be afraid of the other. Quite curious on what's gone on between the two of them that got them at each other's throats, and curious at what the Wards will do to each other.
Grant Ward himself is a really interesting villain too. He keeps trying to talk to Skye and get her to love him, and all that jazz. Also he finally breaks free, so we get Ward for a season two villain? I do hate Ward as a person, but I admit he's an interesting villain as this really competent killing machine that's lost without an actual head, but has found love on one of our heroes. And for anyone who thinks Ward can make a redemption, I absolutely love the furious dressing down that Coulson gives the stupid fucker when he goes 'surely my information counts for something'. Ward nearly killed Simmons and Fitz, chucking them out of the plane and successfully caused brain damage to one, killed Victoria Hand and whichever Koenig died (the latter being pretty gruesome), killed a bunch of other SHIELD dudes, and did a shit-ton of other terrible things under John Garrett. He's pretty much burned down all his bridges and I absolutely love it.
See that, Uchiha Sasuke? This is the treatment you should've gotten.
Also on a side note Simmons notes that he keeps getting up like clockwork on 5 AM every morning. Not sure if I need to look too much into that line or not.
We get Skye being more of an awesome bluffer to Ward who reveals that the villagers in Hunan Province are Hydra agents, and her father flew into a rage after finding out Skye's mother died. I'm inclined to assume that Coulson's interruption early in this episode is actually scripted so that Skye's "no one is watching" thing later on to milk information out of Ward would be believable.
Also she's put the alien markings thing on the backburner. Annoying.
Coulson gets an absolutely awesome dress-down on Ward, and he's got that nice little swaggering moment just strutting into Christian Ward's office and doing that stuff with 'oh, your phone's off, I've made sure the guards won't come, and hey I made funny alterations to your script'. He's still a bit flat of a character compared to the others, but this issue certainly made him look awesome. That short shot of him looking at Ward's psych evaluation, and the fact that one of the earliest scenes was Coulson accepting Ward into the team... nice callback there.
I also like how it would've been so easy to turn Glenn Talbot into a two-dimensional army man who hates SHIELD like J.J. Jameson style and will turn a blind eye to all common sense. I like how Talbot advocates for SHIELD to be brought down in the U.N. meeting, but has his head straight enough to not immediately point fingers even after he's attacked, and seems to have developed a grudging respect for Coulson's SHIELD in the end. Liking Talbot a fair bit now.
May, Hunter and Mockingbird are basically the strike team. May's been pushed a bit into the background by all these new characters, though there seems to be implication that May is formerly married. She's just snarking all over the place like May does, so at least she's got that going on for her. Hunter's still a flat annoying British fellow who does his 'welp I'm leaving but not really' bit near the end, and he keeps fighting with Mockingbird which I thought was funny, but at least the three of them together give some absolutely awesome fight scenes. May versus Blacklash, and Mockingbird/Hunter's double team against the guards... I particularly like how Mockingbird jumps through that disintegrating Hydra dude to whack the other Hydra over the head.
I like Hunter's little bouts of jealousy over Mockingbird getting kissy-kissy with Toshiro, and that scene where they are arguing and shoot Toshiro together as he's getting up like some cartoon was pretty hilarious. I still think Hunter is eating up way too much screentime than he deserves, though at least he's funny.
Mockingbird's costume looks cool though! And she's a pretty good fighter as well. I do like her a fair bit.
Simmons, having returned from her short-lived Hydra infiltration (which ended up being pretty dumb pacing-wise) ends up trying to work with Fitz, who is all frizzed out. Fitz is screaming on why Simmons can't accent that he's different, how he feels that Simmons have given up on him... whereas Simmons thought that her presence made Fitz worse and damaged him even further. It's a bit of a stupid reason to leave him behind, though, Simmons... we get a few moments where Mack tells Simmons about how she needs to accept who Fitz is now and not what he used to be before all this, and Mack seems to be getting along pretty well with Fitz. I really do hope there's more to it than just the two of them being very juvenile about it and Simmons just throwing a good-natured tantrum, and that they do get back together all smiles and everything.
Man, poor Fitz. Also poor Simmons... by leaving, Fitz goes all cuckoo and his condition gets worse (I think he was talking to Imaginary!Simmons at one point, except we're not seeing this from his point of view?) but by staying, she can't help but pre-empt Fitz and he gets worse because of the pressure and everything. Man, poor guys.
Also on a lighter note, despite what Fitz keeps telling to himself -- and what the audience was expecting -- Simmons doesn't eat up Mack like an eye candy. Guess she isn't into all muscular black men. Fitz, on the other hand... that shot of Mack just walking towards Fitz is a bit hinting, and Fitz is sort of checking him out with his own hallucination. I hope the show doesn't go there though, because I really like Fitz and Simmons together. Mack can stay, though, he's a nice friend to Fitz.
Simmons' line of "I'll kill you" to Ward as he's still trying so hard to flirt with Skye? That was perfect. Lest we forget, Ward is the sole reason why Fitz is brain-damaged right now and why their relationship is in tatters.
Poor Triplett only has a tiny role just showing up in the background and having a single line, and I don't think Koenig even shows up. It's a bit of a sign that the cast is getting a wee bit too crowded, and I for one think that we probably need to focus more on the original team a bit more since there's a shit-ton about them that still can be explored. I think, in particular, Simmons and Fitz could stand to use a fair bit more screen time... though I wouldn't mind more Mockingbird either. Just less Hunter or Mack.
Also we get this Agent Walters lady who gets killed off by Blacklash in Netherlands. Lady's defiant to the end, at least.
There's a vague reference to Whitehall and Skye's Father's plans for the Diviner in that Toshiro really wants to work on that, but no further elaboration is made other than the cryptic partial backstory Ward provides about Skye's Father.
What else... we get a nice little Red Skull reference, and I do like how Talbot doesn't treat the U.N. or the viewers like idiots and outright refers to the Chitauri as 'the Chitauri' instead of 'the aliens' or 'the extraterrestrials' like a lot of movies do. And he outright calls out the Avengers by name! That made me smile. Always nice to hear the actual proper comic-book names being used.
Overall, though it's a bit of a jumpy episode which doesn't really gel well. Team May just jumps all over the world sightseeing like it's a Transformers movie, and there really isn't time to make the sense of danger really feel palpable until the end when we realize that despite May's victory six other agents ended up being executed. The Simmons and Fitz bit is dragged on along for the sake of drama, and so is the Skye-Grant thing. We get a couple of great fight scenes and a nice little development on the Ward side of things, but really? Is that what we really need to be focusing on right now instead of Hydra of Skye's father? Also, all the aforementioned focus on Hunter/Bobbi's ex-married status... it's funny but do we really need all that at the expense of Skye or Fitz-Simmons or Hydra?
So far it's interesting, but it's just going back around on a fair amount of plot lines. The whole Simmons drama bit has been turned around and around and there are plot twists just for the sake of having plot twists, and the whole 'oh the government hates SHIELD except not really they seem to be amicable except not really there's this evil Ward Brother Senator' rotating door thing between public opinion of SHIELD that is starting to get exhausting, and the 'I'll let you work on the alien writing, now I'll reveal reasons, but now we'll put it away'... Definitely jerky with the plot threads between episodes, and there's definitely too many characters introduced with the writers not doing anything much with them.
I still have a lot of interest, though right now the show's just building up too many questions without giving us with enough satisfying answers, while the episodes themselves are a bit choppy; great scenes that aren't strung together well. The focus at the moment seems to be on the Ward Clan which is interesting enough for the moment, who knows where the spotlight will jerk towards in the next episode?
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