Through the murky fog of my head’s flagging CPU a running
joke in one of my old favourite podcasts (it may have been The Black Dog
or The Weekly Planet) came back to me, the moniker Agents of SHED. Clearly
the banality of AoS garnered a reputation early on. This ongoing dismissal of
the show had a big effect on my perception of it and I do see an awful lot of
truth in the evident genericism of Mutant Enemy’s unloved child. But.
Its quite fun.
Threat of the Week
Gravitonium and Frank – the world’s foremost expert in…
Gravitonium.
Issue of the Week
Skye’s loyalty.
Plot
The episode begins with a truck-jacking. An undercover
SHIELD agent is transporting an important asset – Dr Frank – who is kidnapped
by mysterious forces.
Meanwhile, on the Bus, Skye turns up late for her secret
agent muscle training with Ward. He is now acting as her Supervising Officer
and their relationship is developing nicely with contrasts between the two
being highlighted throughout the episode. Ward, chastising Skye for her lack of
dedication informs her that every agent has a moment when they make the choice
to dedicate themselves to the cause. Skye responds that strength and
physicality doesn’t come as easily to everyone as it does for Ward and he
informs her that his ‘moment’ came as a child when he learned to fight to
defend his younger brother from the elder – that nothing comes to him easily. Skye’s
own childhood was similarly traumatic, as she was failed by the foster system.
We learn that Frank has not been captured but ‘liberated’ by
Quinn – a self-made, super rich, super villain-coded type who has brought Frank
to his tax-free villa in Malta to finish his research into Gravitonium out of
the reach of international powers including SHIELD.
Fitz and Simmons have a personal investment in liberating
Frank from Quinn’s clutches as he served as a mentor to them during training. Sympathetic
to their loyalty, Skye utilises an invitation to a party in Quinn’s villa
through her Rising Tide connections and hacking capabilities. Doing her best
Bond impression, Skye infiltrates the compound in plain sight with a plan to
shut down a surrounding force field to allow Ward and Coulson to enter and
liberate Dr Frank.
Skye ingratiates herself quickly with Quinn who suggests he
is interested in hiring her because of her hacking abilities. She manages to
get herself into Quinn’s private office by truthfully revealing to her that
SHIELD is listening into their conversation. Despite flirting with the audience
and the team’s expectations Skye doesn’t leave the governmental organisation
SHIELD for the private and libertarian interests of Quinn, comparing the
supposed authoritarianism of SHIELD to the authoritarianism of a loving and
protecting Big Brother, like Ward.
Meanwhile, Dr Frank reveals that he planned to be captured
all along so he could complete his Gravitonium research. He offers a garbled
rendition of the trolley problem in order to justify the deadly dangers of the research,
but Coulson isn’t buying it and kills Frank to stop his experiment from
exploding.
At the end of the episode Skye has been shaken by the danger
of her experiences in the compound and commits to her muscle training with Ward,
she has had her ‘moment’. Mae approaches Coulson to state that she is ready to
enter the field again, if nothing else, to keep Coulson safe.
Gravitonium
Beyond Skye and Ward’s characterisations and relationship
being coloured in, there’s not a huge amount going on here. The Bondian
aesthetics are quite fun for a television budget, and the gravity shifting
around in the episode’s final act did add some fun to proceedings but there’s
nothing much of depth.
I enjoyed the opening scene which introduces us to a dirty
and overweight trucker rambling on the phone about a prior meeting he’d had in
which the other parties lacked personal hygiene and manners. The quick bait and
switch in our perceptions of him, resulting in the revelation that he is an
Agent of SHIELD, was a nice little writing flex. Unfortunately, this smart-arsery
doesn’t extend to the rest of the script with villains, MacGuffin and central
themes of the episode all lazily wafting around each other as opposed to ever
really binding together in a cohesive braid.
It felt odd that Fitz and Simmons were written to be the characters
with a personal investment in the safety of Dr Frank but they are again kept on
the sidelines of the action with Coulson relaying the emotional connection via
earpiece – a cybernetic IM system for the secret agents’ secret world. Gotta
keep him relevant, he’s top billed you know. I suppose FS need a place to start
as characters, keeping them on the bench so their first centric episodes will
be more satisfying by contrast, but I like them, and I want them more involved.
Skye and Ward’s back and forth remains fun. Through their
relationship I’m enjoying learning more about them and understanding their
dynamic. Skye’s backstory here reveals the desire she has to belong to a family
which informs her sympathies for people-centred movements, and her failure by
the hands of the foster system explain her initial distrust of governmental organisations.
Ward on the other hand is far more of an authoritarian, believing that the
right person, holding all of the power can make the best calls for the most
people. Hope no one from HYDRA has his number. Through these two, I think the
meatiest thematic threads are revealing themselves.
Skye’s ‘temptation’ by Quinn, the consummate libertarian, springs
from their agreed perception of freedom of information but Skye, somewhere
along the way has been won over by the familial unit of SHIELD special forces
and by the end of the episode she’s advocating for a more compassionate form of
authoritarianism – illustrated by her willingness to practice self defence
while enacting pacifism.
The gravity shoogling about is just window dressing. Guess
the writers saw Inception.
Final Thoughts
Agents of SHIELD is still rather paint-by-numbers but it’s’
got a bit more going on than I appreciated the first time. For an episode three
of a new series, it’s really not bad. At this point the characters are still
being established, we’re still in act one and the really juicy stuff about
serialised storytelling; the subversions, the changing loyalties, the character
centric episodes, won’t be coming until later. I’m just taking it on faith they
will.
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