Agents of SHIELD S2E17 Review: The Origin of May

Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episode 17: Melinda

I’ve made it clear in my capsule review that I really liked this episode. Agents of SHIELD has been widely criticized because of its way-too-many plot threads and poor handling of them… and it’s definitely not an unfounded criticism. But as I mentioned before, sometimes all the plot threads just come along together nicely and creates a pretty focused episode like this one. Now whether this quality will stick for future episodes is a different matter entirely, but for now it’s a great episode.

Episode 17 puts the spotlight back on Melinda May, who I’ve been complaining about being left out of the spotlight throughout season two. And not only does it deliver a pretty awesome backstory about May, it also somehow ties in to the current situation regarding the Inhumans (and Skye’s little situation with her mother) as well as the whole Real SHIELD internal civil war. Plus May’s loyalties and her being angry that Coulson left her out of the loop regarding this mysterious Theta Protocol. Now whether Theta Protocol is going to be explained well is not this episode’s fault, but for the moment it’s just this wonderful little episode telling the story of May both in the past and present. All these plot threads clicking together and working together like a smooth machine? A rare sight in TV shows overburdened with multiple plot lines, and especially in Agents of SHIELD itself.

For an episode that’s for the most part just talking and flashbacks, it sure works in dividing the characters even further, developing bonds between characters and just… telling stories about these characters. We get to see Skye bond with her mother, and the revelation and the little emotional scene worked really well. Not that this emotional moment sacrifices progress, of course – we see Skye training to control her powers, first by causing an avalanche at a hopefully unpopulated mountain, and later finer control by trying to vibrate those wine glasses.

And I do like just how much Jiaying wants to hug Skye and go ‘I’m your mommy’ but tries to hold back right up until the moment when she can’t hold back any longer. Jiaying just breaking down and apologizing for moving on and not trying harder to find her daughter? Man, this episode really loves tugging at our heartstrings. Skye’s ranting about family problems is also well done, as is the final scene when Jiaying finally convinces Skye to have one dinner with Cal. And that look on Cal’s face when he tells Skye this whole story about her birth – and it’s a nice moment since Skye and Jiaying are playing along with it even though Skye already heard the story before. Cal, despite all his dickery and villainy before, really wants to desperately have his family back and you can’t really help but feel some sympathy for him.

Of course Gordon being a gigantic douchebag to the poor fellow helps to give him some sympathy.  

But overall, all the scenes with Skye do hit all the right emotional buttons and kudos to the show for that. I’m really into Skye’s character now after being iffy about her being the Mary Sue of the team for a good part of season one, but so far she’s been really good.

Also it’s kind of great to tie in the whole ‘Skye’s family has a dinner’ thing with Raina. She’s been ranting throughout this episode and the previous about seeing dreams about her being tormented while Skye gets to have a dinner with her family. Gordon makes it clear that her physical transformation is not her Inhuman ability – one Inhuman only gets one, which ties into the flashback, incidentally – and by the end of this episode, Lincoln realizes that Raina’s power is to see into the future… a clairvoyant, if you will, which is fucking ironic considering the events of the first season.

Of course, though, the main focus of this episode is May and not Skye. Though it ties in really well with Jiaying not being able to reveal that Skye is her daughter considering a mother-daughter Inhuman team has caused a gigantic incident… an incident that, as it turns out, involves May and her obtaining the ‘Cavalry’ nickname. And the whole Cavalry incident has been teased all throughout the first season as this big badass thing that May did, and now that we see it in clarity it’s brutal. There’s also a stark contrast between May at the beginning of the flashback and at the end, where she’s just this cheerful married woman in the beginning. She’s planning on having a baby with her loving husband, she’s borrowing walkmen from other agents, laughing and generally being, well, not a robot. It’s a nice, stark contrast to the May of the present who, well, is a robot. I also like how Bahrain was mentioned a couple episodes ago by May’s husband and the previous episode by Gonzalez, showing that this episode is at least planned for a while.

Anyway, while on the hunt for this metahuman called Eva Belyakov (who was established early on to have super-strength, cluing in to the fact that the whole mental madness thing isn’t her fault). Coulson and May’s attempts to defuse the metahuman situation, of course, went south as Eva Belyakov apparently recruits a small army of local thugs and takes several people – including an agent and a little girl – hostage. A small SHIELD army that went in also basically disappears like a goddamn horror show, and May, of course, has to go in alone without backup thanks to red tape.

And after May broke into the facility that ate all the other agents, she quickly discovers that they’ve been mind-controlled or zombiefied or what-have-you, going all ‘we want your rage’ or some shit like that. It’s a bit surreal, and May fighting Eva Belyakov with her super strength and her chandelier flail… only to discover that it’s the little girl, Katya Belyakov, who is the real threat, able to brainwash and leech emotions off anyone she touches. And Katya? Poor Katya apparently went through the Terrigenesis mist before she was ready, and basically lost her mind. She alternates between being pretty fucking scary and just being confused, and she was the one responsible for killing all the ‘hostiles’ simply at a whim. Kudos to the child actress who played Katya, you really worked on looking fucking terrifying. The moments leading up to May mercykilling Katya is tense and emotionally charged, and the scenes of May just crying after being forced to kill Katya and everyone else misinterpreting the fact that May just rescued all the SHIELD agents present by killing all the threats? Man, that’s tragic. And we see her basically transformed into a paper-stamping shell that we see her in early in Agents of SHIELD’s pilot. May, why you make all the feels?

There are some little nice nods to things we know previously in the story. May really hates her hand being touched after the events of Bahrain (even by her own husband), which caused Coulson to know Agent 33 was not May back when she first impersonated her. May wanting a child before might also explain why she’s so protective of Skye.

Also like the little continuity nod of Coulson introducing himself as part of the Strategic Homeland blah blah thing because this happened before the first Iron Man movie. And Coulson describing the Avengers Initiative as ‘gathering Earth’s mightiest, to see if they can be heroes’.

It’s pretty damned effective storytelling, and makes it relatively clear that while they might not have recognized the Inhumans, they’ve been around since always. Who knows, maybe some of the unexplained metahumans – Scorch or Blackout or whoever else didn’t get a backstory – are Inhumans as well?

In the present day, Simmons reveals her plan to May and is kind of disappointed that May has betrayed their little Team Coulson by bringing it to Bobbi… because May herself has grown suspicious of Coulson keeping a secret from her. Namely, this mysterious Theta Protocol (which we heard about a jack total of once when Coulson told one of the Koenigs about it), which is draining a shit-ton of resources and has been going for quite some time. And, well, being kept a secret from May. No doubt Coulson isn’t, y’know, evil, but it’s going to be interesting to see just why Coulson kept this a secret from his trusted confidant and just how this will unfold in regards to May. She seems to be of the point of view of ‘uncover it, see Coulson’s reasoning’ though she does seem relatively pissed that Coulson left her out of the loop. It does make Real SHIELD somewhat more sympathetic because Coulson was really hiding that big of a secret, though it still doesn’t excuse Gonzalez’s behaviour.

Fitz, meanwhile, manages to contact Hunter and Coulson by the end of the episode, wanting to hang out with them and give them the Toolbox and stuff, with Hunter promising some hijinks by telling Fitz to escape with the aid of some hand dryers or whatever.

But overall the May stuff was great, the Skye stuff was great, all plotlines linking together was great… this may be my favourite Agents of SHIELD episode for a long, long time.