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Five Thoughts on Agents of SHIELD’s “A Fractured House” [Review]

By | October 29th, 2014
Posted in Reviews | 7 Comments

BREAKING NEWS! SHIELD has stormed a UN conference and killed a whole bunch of people! It is definitely not a set-up by Hydra, because we know that SHIELD — a former peace keeping agency — was really just a front for a megalomaniac super-bad organization! The hunt is on: bring me the head of SHIELD!

As a note, some spoilers are alluded to from last night’s episode, and there is a lot less writing about Mockingbird than last week (though she’s still the best).

1. Whiplash 2.0

It took me a while to figure out who Marcus Scarlotti was (because I didn’t Google it or read any episode preview material), but man, when that moment comes and it finally clicks into place? I let out an audible “damn.” That said, it’s a bit odd that there are now two iterations of Whiplash in the MCU, but hey, who’s counting? (Besides me. Shut up.)

Still, one of the things that struck me last night is how heavy this season has been with actually legitimate and choreographed action. It’s not that there wasn’t any in the first season; there was, though nothing quite like this. But with Ming-Na Wen fighting Ming-Na Wen in a scene straight out of The Raid a couple weeks ago and now Everyone’s Favorite Adrianne Palicki tearing it up as well as Mockingbird (and damn, what a fucking fight scene last night! Who knew Tryra Collette could kick so much ass!), I have to say that I’m really impressed with the ways that this show has transformed itself to be enteratining.

And it makes sense, right? Last season we hemmed and hawed about supervillains showing up but only being defeated by shining a light on them like a boring version of Ghostbusters. Now that SHIELD and SHIELD are both heavily grounded, the show picks characters and villains and situations that allow this aspect to excel — and while we still get Marvel villains like Whiplash popping up with blades on chains, you can still have Melinda May do what she does best, with help from Bobbi Morse. I approve!

2. The Brothers Ward

So, Christian is “back,” so to say, and it leads to one of the best parts of last night’s episode — the mirrored sequence of both Ward brothers lying to someone who wants to believe in them. This was rather exceptional of the show, something I don’t think it has ever done so well, because it casts doubt in a way we’ve never seen. There have certainly been mysterious aspects to the show we can’t properly account for all the time or explain, but for a show that has only recently become above average this was exceptional.

Plus, depending how big of a role Christian will play, this effectively changes everything. There’s this great podcast running right now called “Serial” (seriously, check it out) which concerns a murder case, and at the very beginning the host says: “Somebody is lying.” The problem, and what makes this so podcast so compelling, is it is nearly impossible to figure out who it is. That’s what the show is doing very well right now; both Ward brothers are untrustworthy — one is a ladder-climbing politician, and the other is a murdering psychopath who just broke out of jail — but in the end, with two people that the show identifies as discernibly bad, who will you stand with?

3. The New/Old Marvel Universe

One of the biggest complaints lobbed at the last season was how it didn’t integrate itself with the Marvel U, and that was something I feel like they’ve fixed in the current season. You get sly references all the time as well as actual comic book characters re-purposed for the show, and in this episode we already talked about the original Whiplash getting to show up in a new, fun and fairly surprising way.

So with that in mind, it does keep surprising me how often SHIELD doesn’t use comic book characters in the show. Tashiro Mori, Julien and Vincent Beckers, Agent Walters — all of these characters ostensibly could’ve been *someone* but weren’t, and that strikes me as odd. The Marvel Universe is so rich and wide with characters to pull from, both relevant (Mockingbird) and obscure (Lance Hunter), so if we can have mentions of the Red Skull, why not find a scientist that has actually worked with the character to include as well? This might seem pedantic, but I don’t want to see the show backslide into this isolated shell it hid under for its first season.

Continued below

Your mileage may vary on whether Christian Ward counts or not. Either way, happy birthday, real-life artist and friend of the site Christian Ward! Marvel made you a senator!

4. The Evolution of Skye

If memory serves, the general consensus on Skye last season was that she was a fairly unpopular character amongst critics. Sort of a walking trope in a few regards with the super power of being able to hang out in a dirty fan but always leaving it with shining, fabulous hair, Skye has really evolved in this current season to the point where she’s perhaps one of the most enduring characters — specifically because she is the only character that actively feels. A lot of the spy game stuff prevalent in the show seems to want the characters to not express or feel, but Skye gets to do all of that and kudos to Chloe Bennet for making it work.

The reason why I bring it up here, though, is Skye straight-up does an impression of the Black Widow in this episode, and it’s wonderful. Her interrogation scene with Ward is ripped straight out of the Avengers film where Natasha confronts Loki, with the added bonus of some definite history between the two of them to make the tension and eventual turn-around more palpable. I’m actually surprised how much I care about their relationship at this point, if only because I really want her to take him down.

5. The Biggest Problem SHIELD Now Faces

OK, so at the end of the episode the big resolution is that SHIELD is once again in the country’s good graces. Coulson and Senator Ward use each other, and out of this comes peace at last. So what is left for SHIELD to overcome, besides Hydra teaming up with some homicidal maniac?

Well, its cast, pretty much. One of the things I really noticed last night is that the cast of this show is becoming fairly unwieldy, to the point that I forget certain characters are part of the gang until the show finds a specific use for them — and that could be a five second appearance to say “hey” (like Agent Triplett) or when somebody needs a friend for an episode (like Mack). With Mockingbird joining the team and Lance supposedly leaving (I doubt it, but I didn’t see him in the next episode preview), our core cast has grown to an extent that it feels like the show can’t manage.

And that’s too bad, because the show’s balance this season has been great. Obviously who appears and how long comes down to contracts and who is a full time cast member and all that jazz, but I’d love to see some of the newer faces become more prominent outside of a few specific appearances an episode. It feels weird we haven’t seen Koenig 2.0 (Patton Oswalt) in a while, especially when people keep mentioning him, you know?


//TAGS | Marvel's Agents of SHIELD

Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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