Agents of SHIELD S2E9 Review: Buncha Cryptic Stuff

Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episode 9: Ye Who Enter Here

Well, we get some advancement of the plot, but as always there's a bit of a stuffy feel where there's too many characters and plotlines being included and none of them really go anywhere and there's no real distinct focus. We get a little bit of practically everything and that's pretty annoying. The show is just teasing on so much and not really giving much in terms of payoff and it's starting to feel dragged on.

The main plot slugs along as it picks up from last episode, and I think this side of the episode was handled relatively well. Coulson, Bobbi, Mack and Fitz-Simmons head off to hunt down the alien city without bringing Skye... and apparently the Doctor hasn't told Hydra just where the city is. We get some nice Coulson moments as he makes that conversation with Bobbi about just what he is fighting for, about how he's different than Nick Fury and I thought that was pretty well-done. So is the Fitz-Simmons conversation... both Bobbi and Mack have apparently gone on the shipping front and are suddenly shipping the two together and kind of forcing them to, y'know, talk. Of course, this is Agents of SHIELD so things can never really get a clean conclusion, so the drama is prolonged a fair bit more with Simmons being completely unsure about how she feels about Fitz, and Fitz wanting to drop out of the science department and work as a subordinate... but is letting Simmons kind of be his partner again and complete his sentences and whatnot.

Again, this all has been dragged on and I'm honestly a bit exhausted because they're just milking the shipping angle of the show as long as they can and it's honestly quite irritating.

Anyway, apparently Bobbi and Hunter has also gotten back together in a much more healthy manner than Fitz-Simmons, and Bobbi's at least attempting to get Simmons to open up to Fitz. Also, apparently Bobbi and Mack has some secret they're keeping from Hunter. Do the two even know each other before this? Apparently they do. Also, I find that I don't really give much of a fuck about any secrets between these two.

Bobbi and Simmons' scene was great, though, at least. Simmons looks like she genuinely is going to cry there. Poor girl.

Mack gets a fair amount of screentime, and finally for whatever reason he decides to drop the cold shoulder attitude towards Simmons and gets to work shipping Fitz and Simmons together again. Sure, do it right in the middle of the important mission. Mack goes down the hole in that San Juan fortress which can apparently short-circuit all electricity and transforms Mack into a raging, angry, berserking dude. Evil!Mack beats up Coulson and nearly drops Simmons down the hole, shrugs off several shots from the Icer and Bobbi needed to taser him with her batons to take him out... and of course he falls down the hole. Apparently to his death. Well, that's one character taken out, so there's that.

Granted, to his credit Fitz drew an actual gun on Mack and is ready to drop him, but still, whatever the case, they didn't manage to reach Mack and he gets killed off.

I'm still a lot more curious about just what the hell is going on and this... this is just not really satisfying. It'll probably be a lot better if I watch like the entire season in a sitting.

On the other side of the spectrum, Raina is apparently being targeted by Hydra agents led by Agent 33, and they apparently want her alive. We see two Koenigs help her out and hide her under an invisible umbrella cloak thing, and apparently that was where the Koenigs have been all these while. There's a running gag about everyone asking how many Koenigs there are, which is at least fun.

Skye, May, Hunter and Triplett go off to extract Raina, and Skye gets into fisticuffs with Agent 33, who is still wearing that damaged May mask for whatever reason other than to be creepy. And we just get little fights here and there. We get to see Skye actually give 33 a run for her money and their fight was pretty nice. And then Raina gets all cryptic and going on and on about what the Diviner does and, y'know, doing vague Raina things that still continue to be annoying yet relevant to the big mystery. We also get a cryptic dream early on with Skye seeing a baby being abandoned by Coulson and May, her parental figures, which I'm going to assume is her flashbacking to the past. It's another mystery to add to the heap I suppose.

The big thing that Raina confirms is that the blue skinned aliens are the Kree, last seen in Guardians of the Galaxy. Well, considering the few Kree we've seen do anything in Guardians have been either ultra-racist genocidal fanatics or jackasses who doesn't care about their race's fanatics, well, it's not really that big of a surprise. Also the fact that both she and Skye are human, but Raina is a bit crazy and she's all a wild card and everything and, well, I just don't really care all that much about her either.

May and Trip and the Koenigs get some fun scenes, with May bitching about Agent 33 still wearing her face, Triplett getting confused about the Koenigs... and I like these fun scenes a lot more than all of Raina's cryptic bullshit that won't go anywhere until the mid-season finale and/or the season finale. Or Skye's vague dreams. Or Fitz-Simmons' tsun-tsun act which was heartbreaking for like the first episode but is just being dragged on and on with 'what is Simmons' real reason for infiltrating Hydra' being a supposed mystery which... which I don't really care anymore since they kept hinting and hinting and not giving anything back.

Oh and Ward shows up just to gallivant around and just take Raina (and Skye) back, whatever side he is on. Of course Skye goes with him instead of being smart and, oh, I dunno, shooting Ward in the head? Shooting Raina in the head? Skye just seems too passive and too willing to go on with Ward's demands. It's rather obvious that it's just to prolong this whole jumbled-up plot on for as long as it could. Whatever the case, Whitehall isn't pleased with Ward's streak of independence, so I'm sure Ward just has his love-driven agendas or something. I dunno. Oh, and Whitehall tells his forces to blow up the bus. Guess who's going to survive next episode? It's not much of a cliffhanger, really. Could've left it with the Mack falling down a hole and Ward kidnapping Skye and be done, but this is just pretty m'eh.

It's a bit of a tiring episode and after nine episodes of dangling little bits and bites of information and not really doing anything... and it's not even a filler episode as of such since the plot is being moved forwards, but it's moving at such a slow pace, and the focus is all over the place and it's just generally a stopgap until, big Revelations(tm) are done which will no doubt lead to more questions. There are certainly a fair amount of fun scenes -- Skye's fight with 33, Simmons and Bobbi, Coulson's speech, the Koenigs just having fun, Fitz and Simmons... but really, it's just a rather haphazard episode just to give a cliffhanger to the next episode.