Last week’s return of SHIELD was greeted, at least from me, by a large, loud groan. I can’t imagine I’m alone in that, either. After a steady increase in quality (a slow burn, if you will), the “point” that SHIELD wanted to get to dragged the show back down into the boring dirt and mud that mired the show’s initial days.
So with a brand new episode that’s off the “Here’s the episode you have to watch!” mantra ostensibly, does the show’s quality pick back up?
The short answer is: yeah, sure.
Let’s discuss more why below, with spoilers unfortunately.
1. “Superpowers”
This episode gives us Donald Gill — or, as tropes would have you, “Donnie” the impressionable but smart student manipulated by the wicked ambition of another. Comic fans will know Gill as the supervillain Blizzard, a D-Lister at best and someone who fits right alongside Graviton as “uber low tier Marvel villains being mined for the show rather than a recognizable name.”
Of course, what it gives us is our second supervillain. The show is devoid of characters that seem like they’ll have any sort of recurrence to menace the heroes outside of just, y’know, other people. Jerks, sure, but nothing inherently special about them other than lots of money and resources. By the end of the episode, Donald has found himself able to make ice all on his own, and we now have two characters with superpowers born out of science who are assumedly going to come back and menace the team later.
I see this as a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it makes for pretty boring television to have multiple supervillain origins rather than have the team actually face a threat. Am I alone in that? The SHIELD team right now basically function to move around the villain until they implode, with the exception of the Thor tie-in episode where they actually did some damage. Here they just sort of … arrive; solve the mystery and get there too late. So what good are they?
On the other hand, SHIELD is clearly more interested in playing the long con. Obviously, even. And I guess, if it pays off later, it may not be a bad thing. We may be looking back on episodes like this in later seasons and going, “Oh, ok! Now I get it!” I mean, Ian Quinn was back, and that had some kind of a pay-off here, right?
You can tell SHIELD wants to get it’s shit together. It’s kind of doing it. We’re probably not going to notice any real improvement until season two at this rate, though.
2. Welcome to SHIELD Academy
OK, speaking of things that SHIELD does inherently wrong, lets point out the one thing that they finally got right: actual immersion in the greater Marvel Universe.
This episode featured some rapid-fire references thrown at the watcher pretty quickly, but they were there: Hydra, AIM, Bucky Barnes — stuff that actually connects this show to the greater Marvel Universe. The show seems so afraid to really immerse itself in Marvel lore, but by taking us to the Academy and really showing off bits of the bigger SHIELD picture, it’s a pretty firm reminder of the type of show you’re watching.
That’s what I want to see.
But, like, a whole lot more of that. Every episode should be dripping with Marvel references to the point that I’m groaning about them over-doing it, not under-doing it.
3. Skye’s Story
This episode gave us a bit more about Skye’s history, and I have to say that I’m actually a bit intrigued. Skye started in this weird place for myself and a lot of viewers, I think, where she was supposed to be this super cool hacker living out of a van but she still has money for a classy wardrobe and killer mani/pedi’s; it seemed like the show wanted a kick-ass female character to pin the show to aside from Coulson but they fell too far down the stereotypical TV heroine well.
Now that we learn more about Skye, I think her character is becoming a lot more intriguing. She’s actually becoming much more dimensional and giving Chloe Bennet a lot more to do. The ability to actually show a range throughout the episode does wonders for her, and look at who she has since become — she’s not just some quirky enigma, but rather a character who is obviously putting up a tough front in-between quiet moments where she can let loose and explore her feelings. Screw this “strong female character” nonsense; Skye is just becoming an actual person portrayed on screen, and that’s much better.
Continued belowOh, and she might have death powers. That’s neat.
My only complaint would be that Skye’s biggest moment is kind of stolen by Coulson. I’m not sure if anyone else picked up on this, but the biggest thing about Skye that we learn in this episode is her ability to look on the bright side; Coulson says he breaks her world down, but then he delivers her feel-good quote with a whistle and smile… rather than let Skye say the quote to the viewing audience. That’s kind of a rip-off, right? I mean, I know we’re supposed to watch Coulson on his spiral downward or whatever and the writers wanted him to realize his faults, but even so.
4. So… Was This Episode Any Good?
Yes. Well, it was at least better than last week — though that’s not hard to do. The episode had a lot of good moments, it gave us some strong character arcs and I think that when the writers aren’t bogging themselves down with the over-arcing plot of the show that the viewing becomes much more enjoyable.
In fact, while the show is still largely uneven, when they take the focus away from Coulson it actually becomes a lot more entertaining — which is really weird, because at first Coulson was the only reason to watch! I think just about every character now is so much more interesting than Coulson that the show has done a complete turnaround for me, if only because — and I’m just speculating — we had too much of a good thing. Coulson was great in small doses, as a quick burst of inspiration or wit, but now that he’s a regular recurring element we can’t just have “that optimistic, witty guy who collects baseball cards of Captain America”; we have to have an actual person, and somehow making Coulson a person ruined it.
So the show still needs to figure out where it’s going to focus its energy, and that may always be a problem for it in Season One. A good show does exist here, one that would even matter to the greater Marvel Cinematic U, but the show spends so much time establishing and re-establishing itself that we get faulty pay-offs, anti-climactic endings and a bunch of seeds for later.
Which is super appropriate because the episode is called “Seeds.”
5. The Stinger
Not too much to say on this week’s Stinger, I’m afraid. I’d say if anything the reveal that Donald had superpowers should’ve been the stinger, but I guess that’d be a re-hash of the Graviton reveal.
Still, bringing back Quinn and making him a villain that matters is smart enough, as it shows us that the show isn’t just about one-off villains. There’s some structure here, even if it’s seemingly incomprehensible and otherwise frustrating to watch.
But, y’know, we still do. And Arrow is back tonight, so we have that to look forward to.
