Welcome back, True Believers! Last week, the Agents took on the otherworldly threats originating from Asgard, Thor’s HQ. This week, in an episode titled “Repairs”, the team tackles a threat that could potentially be supernatural (surprising that this one wasn’t aired before Halloween). Danger, intrigue, and romance are sure to be found in this episode that promises to delve further into Agent Melinda May’s backstory. Hit the jump for our recap of tonight's episode of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
We start out our episode with a girl in a panic creating some apparent telekinetic tomfoolery out of her control, as well as a revelation that Agent May and Ward, who are getting ready for a distress call from Coulson, spent the night together. In a lot of shows, we tend to follow a fairly standard “opposites attract” guideline when it comes to romances between the characters, so it’s nice to see two characters who would have the most in common find each other, if even for just a night as May does her best sprint of shame out of the room.
Coulson takes a minute to debrief Skye on the mission and even gets a chance to outshine the wonder twins, Fitz and Simmons. The business side of the team (Coulson, May, and Ward, with Skye in the background) proceed to capture the believed rogue telekinetic, Hannah Hutchens, as an angry mob surrounds her and she freaks out, Carrie-style. Meanwhile, Fitz and Simmons decide the best thing they should do is prank Skye as she is the “freshman” of their team….I really hate Fitz and Simmons. They’re so tiresome at this point and about 90 percent of their jokes fall flat. They’re essentially a condensed version of what’s wrong with the show, as they continue to offer this strange juvenile side of things that no one was really asking for in the first place.
What follows is the team bringing back Ms. Hutchens to “the bus” and proceeding to be haunted by a man, Tobias Ford, who is phasing in and out of sight. It was a nice little twist to see that Hannah wasn’t actually telekinetic, but was rather being tormented by an unruly “spirit”. Hannah reminded me of Marvel’s usual mutant fare, with cursing her “powers” and believing that God had abandoned her. It’s a shame that Marvel doesn’t have the rights to use mutants in their movie/television universe as the X-Men’s world is great for this kind of thing.
The plane crashes due to ghostly interference and the team scrambles to figure out what to do, but Fitz is locked in the closet! I was half expecting him to fall into a big bucket of syrup with a “Waahhh Waahhh” blaring in the background. From here, Skye and Hannah chew the fat with regards to religion, which gives an interesting window into Skye’s backstory growing up in an orphanage. In the bottom decks, Ward has a neat sequence where fights the “ghost” who is teleporting in and out of reality...and this results in both Fitz and Simmons being locked in a closet *sigh*.
I really liked the villain that was used this week, in backstory, abilities, and all around level of creepiness. I feel that some of the episodes we’ve seen so far have tended to skew a tad too much on the light/family friendly side and so it was a nice change of pace to see one that was a tad on the dark side. Tobias also allowed to show off some great scenes from Agent May in terms of straight up action, and a neat scene where both May and Tobias were “disappearing” in front of one another (Tobias with his powers and May with S.H.I.E.L.D.-Fu). May talking down Tobias after it was revealed that he caused the accident initially was a nice scene in showing off more facets of “The Cavalry’s” character.
Overall, another strong showing from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as it seems that it's slowly developing some sea legs. I feel that Fitz and Simmons are turning out to be far more distracting and annoying than the rest of the cast, which is interacting well with one another and becoming more fleshed out as characters. We’ll see if the show can keep the momentum going in future episodes.
Grade: B
Agents of M.I.S.C.E.L.L.A.N.E.A.
- “I bet when they see S.H.I.E.L.D. trucks rolling in, they freak out.”
Yes, if only there were some way that they could stealthily track targets. Oh well, after the S.H.I.E.L.D. symbols have been placed on all the sides of the the trucks, they can get to work on tattooing it on each of their foreheads.
-”I’ll lose the tie. If she is telekinetic, I don’t want to have a noose around my neck.”
-”Go back to your stupid...S.H.I.E.L.D....Hogwarts or whatever.”
-”Do we really believe that a woman can have a telekinetic abilities?”
Nearly every episode has been the team recounting that the Avengers happened at one point or another. The big event where Gods fought aliens and a giant green man punched a space worm. This is the thing that causes them to be skeptical?
-”You can catch a lot more bees with honey than with napalm!”
-”Fact is, a bullet will take you out of whatever world you’re in.”
-”That isn’t a word in our language.”
“She used her British-ness against us.”