Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episode 8: The Things We Bury
Well, a lot of things happen in this episode. A lot of things. A good chunk of it is backstory -- Grant Ward, Daniel Whitehall and Skye's Father mainly, but also a bit of Mockingbird and Hunter. And a lot of these plot threads intersect each other. So, um, yeah, let's break down this episode.
Let's start with Grant (who I'll be calling that for the moment because of the multiple Wards in this episode). Two episodes ago sees him escaping the bunch of soldiers sent to escort him to execution, and he wastes close to no time in hunting down his brother Christian, which is good. If this was dragged on for any longer it'd kind of exhausting.
Grant just tears through Christian's security and drags him to where the old well where Christian apparently forced Grant to push their third brother, Thomas, down. And throughout this ride I do like how Christian is practically begging for Grant to come to his senses and Grant is all like 'stop using your wife to garner sympathy. Stop pretending to do this to facilitate my escape. Stop tying to play innocent. I know all your tricks' and stuff like that. And I really do love how it's not made really clear up until the end if Christian is even guilty at all and is a great manipulator like Grant claims... or if those are just claims by Grant. It's delicious.
We then get a pretty nice little insane interrogation where more of the same happens which really works at showing just how crazy Grant is and how great of an actor Christian is. Grant forces Christian to dig up the well and later threatens to shove Christian down the well before he finally admits that, yes, he actually did force Grant to do it. I mean, we can already sort of guess since the Ward clan is filled up with fucked up people.
Anyway, Christian thankfully is forthcoming about the details. Their mother were abusive to both Grant and Christian, and Thomas was the only one that she dotes on, and Christian absolutely hates that but was too pussy to do anything about it, so he forced Grant to be the one to do it. It's pretty fucked-up, and after the confession Grant seems to have the fire leave him and basically just gives Christian a hug and goes all 'that's what I want to hear'...
Except, you know, this is Grant Ward we're talking about, who made a career of being a double agent. So of course, while he's all hugs and smiles with Christian earlier, the end of the episode reveals that he finished what he started back before he was thrown into juvie, except he actually succeeded in burning Christian and their parents to death. It's pretty awesome how this is told to the audience after the fact, making it come as a bit of a surprise. Alas, Christian. You're a jerk, but you're leaving behind a wife... no, wait, you were cheating on her. Never mind.
Grant uses the confession, which he apparently records, to frame Christian for a murder-suicide and completely fuck up his reputation. And I do like how a couple of things are left ambiguous, like... did Grant really want to hear the answer from Christian? Is he really struggling with the answer on whether Christian did make him do it or if it's really just something he imagined? Or is he just being a cold-blooded weapon who's doing all that to torture Christian mentally and to mechanically extract a confession? Fun stuff.
Also, that's not all he does, because as this was revealed to us, he's apparently reached out to Daniel Whitehall and rejoins Hydra... except, you know, Grant Ward is a wild card.
On first glance, it seems he's joining Hydra and trying to bring it down from the inside, because we know he's killed a bunch of Hydra troops and delivered Bakshi to SHIELD. Maybe he's getting into Hydra just to get close to Skye's father. But it could've easily been the other way around. He delivers Bakshi to SHIELD to garner their favour since Bakshi is expendable, and he's rejoined with his true masters at Hydra and is going to try and worm information out of SHIELD. Considering what we know of Grant Ward, it could easily be either one... or both. Somehow.
The other big thing about this episode is the reveal of Daniel Whitehall's backstory and how he's looking the same age as he did during World War II. We see him do some experiments on the Obelisk by forcing the Chinese people from the village to touch it... somehow in a facility in Austria (I'm sure I missed a detail or two somewhere) and encounters someone who I assume is Skye's Mother. But news of Red Skull's apparent death reaches him and he's all sad and stuff.
We then get to see Whitehall after his arrest at the hands of Peggy Carter way back in episode 1, who shows up for a couple of scenes in the flashbacks, partly to promote that new Agent Carter show that's supposed to hit the networks sometime soon. Simmons also extremely unsubtly drops some 'omigod I love Agent Carter' lines which really feels like some really in-your-face advertisement. But I digress. Anyway, Whitehall, or known as Werner Reinhardt at that time, tries to bargain his way out of being locked up by promising advancements and all that, but Carter's not having any of that. Carter has seen first-hand what Whitehall/Reinhardt can do, and vows to lock him up and bury him forever. Which is kind of cold, but Reinhardt is kind of a monster, so.
Of course, as we know, that doesn't happen. 44 years later, in 1989, a certain fellow named Pierce arranges for Reinhardt's release on the grounds of budget cuts. Except, you know... Alexander Pierce? That brought a nice smile to my face. It also neatly ties in with the mention in Winter Soldier about Pierce apparently recruiting Hydra scientists. We get a nice little montage where Reinhardt's surroundings change as he ages, and apparently Hydra has discovered... Skye's mother. Again. And Skye's mother has not aged at all through the 44 years. And near the end of the episode we see just what Reinhardt does to her, as we are treated to another horrifying montage as she is dissected. Literally. We get a few gory shots of pretty bloody and relatively realistic open-body shots. Having seen corpses myself I've grown a bit immune to such sights, but the fact that they actually do show skin being ripped out and organs being pulled out is rather horrifyingly surprising. They really are flipping the censor off, aren't they?
Anyway, whatever Reinhardt gained from Skye's Mother, he managed to devise some... magic comic book sci-fi ray that restores his youth, and adapts the identity Daniel Whitehall and loses his funky German aksent in the process. That's the backstory, but the episode is well-crafted enough so that we really wonder, alongside the cast, and gets revelations gradually. It's pretty well done in my opinion.
And then comes the twist near the end that Hydra apparently have the worst cleaning service ever, because when Reinhardt tells his people to dispose of the butchered body of Skye's mother, they just bag her up in a garbage bag, with her head and shoulders still visible, and just dump it in some random jungle for vengeful husbands to find. All this trouble could've been avoided if they burnt the body or did something less moronic than dumping it in the jungle. But hey.
Reinhardt/Whitehall himself gets a few moments of characterization this time around. He's pretty much a FOR SCIENCE guy, basically being entirely uninterested in the Doctor (I'm going to refer to Skye's Father by this alias because it's less awkward to type) and his explanations about 'folklore', though considering he basically regained youth by vivisecting an alien I'm surprised he dismisses the idea of the Diviner being a key. He's extremely giddy when he realizes that Skye's mother is all youthful and stuff, just like a little kid being allowed to dissect a frog for the first time.
We also get a couple of backstory for the Diviner/Obelisk thanks to Reinhardt. Apparently it was brought down by blue-coloured angels coming down from the heavens. So it almost certainly has some relationship with whatever species that the Blue GH Alien was from... though 'angels from the heavens' is almost verbatim the line that Star-Lord's mother describes his alien father's arrival, and Star-Lord is also a half-alien like Skye... coincidence? I don't think so. Especially since between Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy, we've established that aliens have showed up on Earth before.
Reinhardt has also found out some information that these visitors had come to conquer humankind... which the Doctor hurriedly corrects him as it being a mistranslation since the visitors had come to end mankind, other than several chosen ones. Which is an interesting notion, because, again, characters from Thor and Guardians have basically dissed Terra/Midgard as this backwater planet filled with inferior species.
And speaking of the Doctor, he's a pretty interesting character. He isn't afraid to ham things up and generally subvert dramatic moments by making a big pause and goes "really, really, cool." Or just off-handedly revealing that the Diviner contains something within it, and upon seeing Coulson's shocked look, just shrugs and says 'yeah, there is something in it'. Or when Coulson asks if the Diviner is as powerful as a Tesseract, and the Doctor answers straight-away "yes" in all seriousness... before chuckling and going on about how he doesn't even know what that is. So I don't think it's an Infinity Stone, at least. What we know is that the Doctor claims that if the Diviner is brought to this mysterious city by someone compatible, it'll cause something that is 'scientifically speaking, really really cool'.
I did like how the argument between the Doctor and Reinhardt/Whitehall early on was scripted, where the Doctor is just swaggering all around and Whitehall is likewise waving his ego around, dismissing his initial stories as folklore and stuff, and later not really convinced that the Doctor can find where this City is. The Doctor's a really fun, hammy character that feels a bit too much like Garrett in that regard, but hey.
We also get to see that he's a bit of a nihilist, although that might just be a claim to get Whitehall to believe him. As we learn at the end of this episode, he knows Whitehall is the one behind the murder of his wife, since he does that 'look the enemy in the eye' thing while looking at Whitehall. Is he in league with Grant Ward, is that what's going on? The dynamic between the three major villains here is pretty interesting.
The Doctor is later involved in ambushing Team Coulson at this satellite station thing (how did they know about SHIELD's operations?) and apparently arranged this super-elaborate gambit where the Hydra troops would mortally wound Triplett enough so that he gets to operate on Triplett and therefore can talk to Coulson without Coulson arresting him? Well, he does. And it's really a big, massive gambit that hinges on Coulson striking that particular satellite and facility instead of any other alternatives, on a member of Team Coulson to be unlucky enough to be shot in a fatal-but-saveable location, and on Team Coulson not bringing a medic with them.
Yeah, that was a massively stupid plot when you think about it for a second.
But anyway, the Doctor gets his conversation with Coulson, and as always gets pissed off when he calls Skye, y'know, Skye. The Doctor reveals some information to Coulson and is basically just showing that he's stringing everyone along, and basically just acts all cryptic and stuff. I did like their conversation, and how the Doctor is just using Triplett as a hostage and forces Coulson to choose between finishing Triplett's treatment or chasing after him. It's all good fun, and the Doctor seems to have a fair bit of story planned out for him.
Also it's horribly tragic, what his backstory is, and I'm not surprised that he went on a rampage and murdered every single Hydra agent in that facility other than Reinhardt. So how did Raina and Grant Ward get into contact with him? How was Skye born... is Skye's mother pregnant when all that went down, and Reinhardt not only pillaged her organs, but her unborn baby as well? Or something?
Skye's Mother also speaks in a heavily accented Chinese that mangles all the words she's supposed to be saying, but since she's, y'know, an alien who looks like a Chinese lady, that's actually excusable.
All that, and we've just finished dissecting the three villains and we haven't even started on the good guys! Anyway, again, SHIELD is once more divided into two parts. May, Simmons, Hunter, Mockingbird and Mack stay at base and deal with Bakshi and researching Whitehall, whereas Coulson, Fitz, Skye and Triplett go to Hawaii and Australia trying to hack into this super-awesome satellite. No idea why Skye can't just hack into everything like she always does, but I guess it adds... realism? I dunno, I've never hacked before.
Let's start with the 'home' team first. May literally doesn't do shit other than give orders and reveal that SHIELD's current base used to be an old SSR site where Agent Carter operates in, and a lot of those brick walls are hidden panels. Mack, likewise, doesn't do jack shit which is much appreciated. He tries to talk to Hunter, understandably disturbed about what Coulson did last episode, but doesn't get anywhere. So he's the only doubting Thomas in the entire team? That's his role? Well, it's something, at least. He and Simmons are also not fighting in this episode and are actually relatively amicable, so there's that.
Simmons isn't angsting about Fitz again, which is nice -- save the drama when it's going to actually be explored. We get her lampshading about how Hydra could brainwash someone and they wouldn't notice at all... and then stops when she realizes what she just says. I just hope this all pays off, and either or both Bobbi and Simmons have some latent brainwashing inside them, otherwise the whole 'Simmons infiltrates Hydra and leaves Fitz behind for DRAMA' would be completely pointless. It's already inelegantly done as it is, after all. And, of course, she's -sigh- a big Agent Carter fangirl. She and Bobbi gets the most screentime out of the characters left at the base, but otherwise the show still suffers from character overload. This episode juggles everyone relatively well, but that hasn't been the case all the time.
Hunter gets sidelined as well, which is totally welcome, other than the conversations with Bobbi. And Bobbi is truly an awesome character. She's interrogating Bakshi, and is basically playing him along, trying to goad him and lets him think whether he's brainwashed with the whole Compliance thing or not. She's a great talker, and basically reads a shit-ton of stuff out of Bakshi like it's a Sherlock episode. This leads her to surmise a lot of things, basically a psych analyst, and come into a lot of conclusions not only about Bakshi, but also about Whitehall/Reinhardt as well. She's a master with words and kudos to the scriptwriters for making her pretty awesome.
But at the same time, there is one rather damning scene where she's pushing Bakshi with the folder that Hunter seems to spirit away from May and the others, and Bakshi tries to push back, citing all the 'dirty sins' that Bobbi had pulled while she was within Hydra, and she kind of... pushes back, maybe a little too hard, and Bakshi just... slams his head brutally against the table and crushes a cyanide pill hidden in his cheekbone. Well, that's progression from Hydra's old molar-cyanide-thing, at least.
We get a few Hail Hydras in the episode, which is always fun. HAIL HYDRA!
We get some nice moments on Bobbi's end, how she seems to hide some secrets, and Hunter calls her out on it, and we get an actually nice, quasi-serious argument about how Bobbi is a master liar and keeps lying about everything, making it absolutely hard to be in a relationship with her. Bobbi, of course, claims that her line is Hunter and she'd never lie to him, and at this point there's a pretty nice comparison drawn against Grant Ward, who's also a master spy and a consummate liar. Hunter tells Bobbi that he can't ever trust her... but he'll never stop trying to. Which is, granted, pretty smooth-talking, and the two end up stripping their tops and climbing into a vehicle presumably to rekindle their old marriage. It's actually a pretty nice development for these two, and I do like how they don't need to take up an entire episode to do it.
Meanwhile, Coulson makes a bit of a joke about how Fury could see five steps in front of the enemy despite being a one-eyed man, and then sends Skye and Triplett off on seemingly random errands delivering watches, buttons and ties in Hawaii... the button, apparently, would render Triplett sterile if he puts it in his pants which is a hilarious moment. And we get this speech from Triplett to Fits about how he trusts Coulson since he's the team's anchor (a nice contrast, again, to that bastard Mack) and it's always nice to see Triplett actually, y'know, existing after spending the last seven episodes basically in the background. Coulson's big plan apparently hinges on having the button and the watch delivered to two particular people who's going to shake hands and activate the EMP he's planted there, and deactivate the big satellite grid, giving them a window to hijack the satellite from a secondary facility in Australia.
Oh, and the tie is just a present from Audrey that Coulson wants to pick up from the dry-cleaning.
I thought the scene with Coulson handing out wacky errands is well done and absolutely hilarious, and then Coulson tells Fitz to practice installing some technobabble in under six minutes. We get a couple of scenes with Fitz just failing to do so with his one good hand, and it ends up being a bit filler-y. Thankfully, however, Triplett shows up with his speech, and Fitz later tells Coulson that he could do it in seven minutes... with his bad hand. Which is awesome that Fitz can finally contribute to the fieldwork even if it's something relatively tame and simple compared to his past duties and the practice-makes-perfect angle does let it sound credible.
Skye doesn't do much other than be mission control this time around, though she's apparently gotten herself to be the leader of SHIELD's computer hacker team. Triplett, like I mentioned before, fares much better, getting into a firefight and having that speech, though poor bastard sadly got himself shot in the chest and gets taken hostage while the Doctor operates on him.
Coulson and the Doctor get into a tense confrontation where things are revealed to SHIELD, and I'm going to assume that the Doctor knows where the city is (or will know, since it's unlikely that they won't piggyback Fitz's machine or whatever), and has told Whitehall, so it's going to be a race for the city for the foreseeable future. I'm also going to assume Fitz and Coulson tells Skye about their encounter with her less-than-sane father who wants Skye to be in the middle of all the chaos when they unleash the city, because a 'we'll keep this a secret because REASONS' plot has already been done before in this show. Several times.
I do like this episode. The flashbacks and the pieces of information regarding their backstories are pretty nicely woven together, and I do like how a lot of these villains -- Ward and the Doctor in particular -- have their own complex agendas which we aren't totally privy to at the moment. It answers a fair amount of questions and raises a lot more, we get to tie up Ward's little plot line with his crazy senator brother, and it's overall a pretty awesome episode to go with the last one. I mean, gee, answers!
I also do like how this episode is themed on second chances, with Ward getting a second chance in Hydra, the Doctor wanting a second chance to see his doctor, Fitz getting a second chance in the field, and Bobbi and Hunter getting a second chance at their relationship. There's also the subtle comparison between Coulson and the Doctor, how they're both chessmastering everyone present with crazy gambits and all that. It's a nice episode, and I like it.
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