Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episode 13: One of Us
There's a rather big X-Men vibe coming off from the whole Inhumans plot that Agents of SHIELD is running, though that's not a bad thing. And it's only coming off in vibes and not an actual ripoff, which is nice. There's the whole discrimination and arguments about containing powers versus freedom, an inherent racism against anyone who even has powers, the secret organization teaching Inhumans to control their powers, a brotherhood of angry oppressed Inhumans who are racist toward normal people... stuff like that.
Comparisons aside, though, this episode is kind of a nice one that I think is one of the better episodes SHIELD has had for quite some time. While I wasn't quite sure about Cal's inclusion, this episode does build up on Skye's transformation some more after the past two episodes. I thought that Cal's attempt to build his own little army of misfits from people that SHIELD has 'contained' was an interesting concept, but the strong story in this episode is Skye learning about herself and her little consultation moment with a psychologist. That was easily the strongest part of the episode, Skye and Gardner's conversations -- we get some acknowledgement that Skye is trying to run away from her problems by shutting them in, and she can't do that now that her internal nightmares are literally going to shake the world. She can't just push them away, but she really needs to face them. It's just a temporary fix and she's going to learn to control them.
As we see at the end of this episode, her internalizing her problems has caused them to manifest by her quake powers causing a shit-ton of hairline fractures from her clavicle down to her hands, so Simmons crafted these sweet Quake-gauntlets for her.
Melinda May gets pushed into a larger spotlight role, which is nice. She did get some screentime teaching Skye to be calm and all that, and the fact that she calls in her ex-husband (we didn't know she had one, says half the cast and the entire audience) is pretty great. Her role as badass high-ranked fighter has been kind of eaten up by Bobbi lately and it's nice to give her some screentime of her own without compromising Bobbi's.
Cal's story is less interesting. We do get to see him gather these colourful characters -- a super-smart fellow with no moral compass, this super-strong brainless guy, crazy woman with razor fingernails and this dude with a creepy ass mouth that can cause catatonia to anyone who hears him scream. Out of all four, apparently only Michael Angar is an actual Marvel villain and the others either only borrow their names from the comics or original throwaway characters. On the surface Cal gathering a group of people 'oppressed' by SHIELD and the possible future conflict of Skye choosing between her biological father and SHIELD is quite interesting. However, it's kind of handled rather choppily, with the conflict of hating SHIELD within Skye... not really being there. Skye's big problem is learning to get a grip with her emotions and her powers, and really it's the other people in SHIELD that are super jumpy. I also thought that Cal going around recruiting random people took away too much screentime from all the more interesting stuff involving the main characters.
It does help to humanize some of the people SHIELD has arrested, but really none of them are developed that much beyond being one-trick ponies. Angar the Screamer does have a nasty-looking visual effect when he activates his powers, and Karla does get some pity moments for just wanting to forget about SHIELD and just stop them from taking any more... but they're just such a bunch of nobodies that it's hard to sympathize or really care for any of them.
I do like the theme that SHIELD sometimes goes too far in 'containing' threats -- Gardner certainly thinks SHIELD hasn't changed from when he left it, and we did get to see some brutality when Coulson and May took down their targets -- but the message is kind of skewed since these bastards are, y'know, kind of monsters. And while Cal's big hammy acting is always fun to watch, I think this time around he's just kind of a disappointment. I expected something more... epic, even if Cal's little revenge scheme was meant to be just filler material.
May's scenes in this episode were really nice, though. I do like how May still has emotions despite trying to be a supercompetent agent all of the time, and the fact that May's internalization tactic hurts Skye is a possible hint to May herself running away from her problems and feelings -- she does seem to actually enjoy Gardner's company and is visibly crestfallen when she learns that he's found someone else. I do like how we're kind of dealing with May's own repression tactics in the background when the main focus is on Skye doing the same thing. "He listens for a living and she doesn't speak." is a great observation from Fitz-Simmons. We get some acknowledgement that May is Skye's mommy-figure which is always nice.
Simmons has a girl-talk with Bobbi about how secrets can destroy a relationship -- Simmons considers Fitz falsifying results to be a big betrayal because 'science was sacred' between them. It's a nice little mirror to Bobbi's own relationship with Hunter, both of them kind of fucked up by keeping secrets, but Bobbi-Hunter isn't the only relationship that Fitz and Simmons echo. I do like how despite everything that's going on between them, Fitz and Simmons aren't above gossiping about May and Gardner and lampshading that despite everything that went between them, they still like each other and stuff. I do like how they're both progressing as their own characters, whilst not being all cold war and throwing hissy fits and stuff. Simmons is developing more powerful Icers and stuff, and while she still really likes Skye her racism against metahumans is still very much present. She even goes as to divide the 'Gifted' metahumans into two sub-types: 'Enhanced', which is normal humans who receive powers like Deathlok and Angar, and a second one who has their powers from birth. Y'know, 'Inhumans'.
I do like that despite there being friction between them -- Simmons abandoning Fitz and Fitz lying to Simmons -- they do manage to bond over gossiping May and I think Simmons kind of realizes that she kind of did fuck Fitz over. Fitz was going all 'we're even now' in either this episode or the previous one, and I do like the post-fight relationship they have. Simmons is kind of angry and confused, but she isn't above making jokes with Fitz and Skye on separate occasions. Certainly a lot nicer than the badly-paced clusterfuck we had for them after the whole Simmons-is-Hydra-but-not-really stuff earlier this season. It's not quite the same Fitz-Simmons dynamic as the first season, but it's something similar and I do quite like that.
We get Bobbi, Mack and Hunter doing their own thing while all this Inhuman stuff is going on, with Mack stuffing Hunter in a random safehouse, and the end of the episode reveals that Bobbi and Mack are working for the 'Real SHIELD'. It's nice to have these new guys actually play a role beyond kind of being suspiciously-similar-but-slightly-different replacements to season one main characters like May, Ward and Triplett while decreasing their screentime. I'm still rather ambivalent about all three of them, but I am interested to see where their plotline goes. Ten to one that Maria Hill is running the "Real SHIELD'.
Also, Gordon the Eyeless Man suddenly shows up and teleports Cal out of the conflict before Team Coulson takes out the rest of Cal's little group, before bringing him to the Inhumans' hideout. Gordon brutally shoots Cal down, telling him that he's just a freak science experiment and not an Inhuman, something that's finally made clear by Cal -- he gained his Hulk-esque powers by experimentation and not actual Inhuman powers, which is why he was so afraid to touch the Diviner back then. He isn't an Inhuman, he just knows a lot about it. Gordon sends Cal to meet with the other Inhumans and he's rather disturbed by the thought, so I'm interested in that.
Overall a pretty great episode in my opinion. A bit choppy on the Cal side, but the Skye scenes really make up for it. Dr Gardner is a really fun character, and we get some nice progression on the Simmons front and the whole "Real SHIELD" and Inhumans society thing is really interesting as well.
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