Agents of SHIELD, Season 2, Episode 19: The Dirty Half Dozen
Bit of a shorter review this time around because, well, I've kind of caught up with SHIELD's finale -- great stuff, even if some parts of the plot feels needlessly convoluted just to get from point A to point B. I'll talk about episode 19 first, though. See, this episode has to build up to Age of Ultron since the movie apparently takes place in between this episode and the next... but there is absolutely no mention made of SHIELD in Age of Ultron, and when the Helicarrier showed up in Age of Ultron, Nick Fury and Maria Hill were the ones behind it, not Coulson or Gonzales or whoever. While that's understandable since you can't expect moviegoers to be keeping up with every single TV show pumped up by Marvel, the show needs to take up the slack to explain what the hell's going on with our SHIELD characters while all this is going on. It's not quite as elegantly done as the first season's Winter Soldier era episodes where we deal with all the fallout of an international organization falling apart because there's another organization inside of it, but it's still quite good.
Coulson surrenders and after a good, nice talk with Gonzales, manages to convince both SHIELDs to put aside their differences and go and beat up Hydra, this time around being led by dr. List, who moviegoers will remember as Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker's second-in-command who got one-shotted by Iron Man. List has a significantly more sizable role in Agents of SHIELD, having showed up several times before as Strucker's intermediary, and he does serve as a fun little 'boss' here even if it's obvious that he won't get taken out. List does manage to hurt Deathlok and Lincoln quite a bit with torture and experimentation and whatnot, and kind of effectively brings the rather overpowered Deathlok out of play from any Inhuman hijinks in the future.
We get mentions of even more experiments in a base some distance away -- of course, can't use the Age of Ultron set -- and more allusions to the Twins volunteering for experiments with a certain something, but the main focus of this episode is still SHIELD coming in to rescue Deathlok and Lincoln. And I do like how despite all this supposedly building up to Age of Ultron, the focus of the episode is still on the two SHIELDs and the whole Inhuman deal, which is really how crossovers should be handled. The whole List gathering metahumans thing, the whole Theta Protocol thing, they're significant parts of the plot, yes, but they're not the main thing.
Skye gets to use her Quake powers, which is awesome. She shows that she's no slouch without her powers in a pretty awesome action sequence, but when push comes to shove she can just point at the people who pisses her off and BOOM quake wave. (That experssion on Ward's face is priceless) Also the results of controlling her power certainly shows, because not only can she use her powers to fling people around, she also uses it as an impromptu pacemaker to restart Lincoln's heart.
A good chunk of the episode has Coulson and May disagree about the whole 'hiding Theta Protocol' thing, and May's quite a bit more pissed off that Coulson is meeting with her ex-husband... which is a bit annoying because May should really be above petty things like that. And they do clash a bit when Coulson reveals that he has a mission-within-a-mission when he starts hacking into Hydra computers while supposedly on a rescue mission. Of course, Coulson's endgame is apparently locating Loki's Scepter, effectively turning this whole Coulson-has-an-agenda arc to be a gigantic prequel to kickstart the plot of Age of Ultron, which is awesome. Not quite that big of a distraction because the whole Coulson-keeping-secrets thing will certainly factor into future episodes, but it's still a great tie-in. Apparently Coulson has been working with Nick Fury and Maria Hill all this time -- which is a nice foreshadowing to anyone who haven't seen the movie yet.
Coulson does have a point about May though -- she did keep secrets regarding Coulson's resurrection a secret from him, and they're in a bloody spy organization. Some secrets are per the course.
Theta Protocol is pretty definitely the Helicarrier that showed up out of nowhere in Age of Ultron, which kind of makes sense. I also do like the little cameo of Coulson reporting in to Maria Hill and telling her to bring in the Avengers, which is a nice little wham line. The little touch of Raina getting a vision of Ultron's assault on the world is pretty awesome. And having watched episode 20, I must say that beyond the minimal information required to know about the movie, the plot still moves pretty well.
Ward's little return is a bit iffy, I must admit. Still not quite sold just why he needs to be around so much other than the fact that he use to be part of the main cast and this episode's title needs to gather the original six main characters together. It is a bit hilarious to see practically everyone telling Ward to fuck off and die, although Ward's subsequent 'I'm never wrong' rebuttal is kind of annoying. He ends up escaping in all the chaos when the Hydra base was bombed, but calls Coulson to say that he's leaving Agent 33 in their care because SHIELD will be a healthier environment for 33 to recover.
It's all sweet and shit, but we know just how great an actor Grant Ward is -- I equally don't buy the whole 'I'm sorry I ruined this dynamic we have' bullshit. So I'm sure Agent 33 has some agenda up her sleeve.
Also, Bakshi turns out to just be improvising really well, even if it kind of costed Deathlok a fair chunk of his parts and Lincoln kind of died. Bakshi's still under Ward's control, enough for him to protect Ward from Simmons who's hellbent on killing Ward. Of course Bakshi ended up dying with that disintegration bomb, poor fucker, and this leads to Ward being all 'I'm disappointed in you'.
Simmons is... kind of unlikable, isn't she? Sure, she's not being all prissy and passive-agressive to Fitz and they're actually getting along quite well now (and Fitz randomly is back to normal now how?) but suddenly deciding to go off and lob a disintegration bomb at Ward, well, that's a bit much, isn't it? I don't particularly hate Simmons as much when she's in her ultra-passive-agressive mode, but her characterization has been all over the place ever since she returned from her double agent thing.
Fitz gets an adorable moment where he tries so hard to brag about killing Ward in front of Simmons. Little did he know Simmons is thinking on a far darker path beyond just punching Ward really hard in the face...
Gonzales is still playing the 'good-aligned villain' role rather well, I must say. I do like the little compromises he makes with Coulson, how he's angling for a win-win solution for Real SHIELD whilst not being overlty harmful and putting the whole 'take down Hydra' mission as the main priority as opposed to undermining Coulson's authority. Of course, he totally got played when Coulson opens the Toolbox only to reveal that Fury's going to come back for it, but he's still fun nonetheless. We still have no idea what the mysterious cargo abroad the Illiad is that made Gonzales decide to play ball with Coulson, but I bet it's something Inhuman-related that'll play into the finale. Or just a generic doomsday weapon.
Deathlok doesn't really get to do much, really, beyond being the likable character in distress. Again, he's taken out of the picture because they don't have spare cyborg legs and eyes lying around, so he will be out of the picture for the forseeable future which is a nice way to write out a guest star from the finale. Both Lincoln and Deathlok really look like they're going to do a superhero team-up to get out of the Hydra base, but no, they get knocked out with gas and nearly damn well killed.
Raina is all being mysterious and shit, talking about her visions, and has apparently managed to convince Gordon to listen to her. She's more of a plot device than a character, though she's starting to move from 'crazy manipulative bitch with vague intentions' to... well, basically the same thing, but thornier. She wants to take over Jiaying's leadership! That won't end well, I bet. Cal of all people (who is growing to be more and more likable now that he's acting as Devil's Advocate to the Inhumans) points out how stupid it is to trust a known deceiver like Raina and how not everything she ways may be real visions.
Speaking of Cal and Jiaying, they've kind of bonded over Skye pretty quickly, which is a bit odd because last episode Jiaying was all for dumping Cal off in the middle of nowhere. Cal's just happy to have a voice on the table, though, and he is quite charming when he's not being psychopathically obsessed with his daughter. Cal does let it slip that Skye is Jiaying's daughter, though, so that might cause friction for Jiaying's leadership over the Inhumans which might be an interesting angle to pursue.
Don't think that the likes of Lincoln, Gordon, Bobbi, Hunter and Mack actually did much this episode honestly beyond being their usual selves. Hunter and Mack kind of made up over the whole kidnapping thing, though Hunter is still pissed off at Bobbi. And 33 is more a plot device at the moment than developing as a character beyond 'really likes Ward'.
The Bus got blown up! That was sad. Why you got to do that to the Bus?
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