
Last night Agents of SHIELD returned to me, and if you’re anything like me then you forgot about it until the last second right before you were getting ready for bed, so you stayed up late to write a column about it for your website.
If you’re not like me, though, you probably watched it normally. Either way, lets talk about the latest episode.
Rather unavoidably, spoilers are discussed.
1. The Big SHIELD Reunion Show
This episode pretty much featured every major character we’ve met throughout the run of the show, of course including the regular team. Every big Agent made a return: Garret, Triplett, Sitwell, Blake and Hand all joined the team for one big mission to finally find whoever is the Clairvoyant. Oh, and Deathlok, of course.
It was an interesting way to hit this particular episode, but certainly an understandable one. This was the “big” episode, certainly; the one that they’d been relentlessly teasing for those that stuck around through all the dull episodes. To make a big show of it all with special guest stars and characters was a smart move, if only because it helped remind everyone of SHIELD‘s particular spot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It certainly set the stakes high enough to raise tension throughout for the eventual reveal, to say the least.
So that was smart on behalf of the writing. But outside that?
2. Bit of a Mixed Bag
Tonight’s SHIELD was particularly interesting, purely from the perspective of a TV show watcher and not a fan of the show. (Or, well, whatever you want to call our watch of it.)
On the one hand, at many times this felt actually sort of like a Whedon show. It never reached full-on quirk or whatever we want to call the Patented Whedon Method of Cute Dialogue, but it had its moments. Certainly the interactions between Coulson and Garret were rather strong, and you could definitely feel the rhythm of the show. It was fairly well paced, there was a good deal of tension throughout and maybe I just like mysteries but I was certainly paying sharp attention to the last five minutes.
On the other hand, though, the show continues its regular band of faults, in that its just not very good television. Actually, this far in I’m not sure what the show’s problem is anymore in that regard — maybe they aren’t taking it seriously, or maybe they’re taking it too seriously. The show sort of walks both lines simultaneously, with some pretty bad acting from guests to otherwise phoned in interactions at other times. With an episode as important as this, it seems the show was pretty intent on giving and taking equally, and frankly I’m not sure if I liked or disliked the episode.
That’s a bad sign.
3. Lets Talk About Deathlok
One thing that was definitely done poorly was Deathlok’s big debut as a Big Bad supervillain. For all intents and purposes the design of the character is decent enough, and the reveal of the traditional Deathlok look via scanners was a nice touch. But, and I ask in all honesty, what was the point of this villain other than to run away?
Look: the last time we saw Deathlok in action, he showed up and took down a room full of people. This time, he spent the majority of the episode firing off his one rocket, staring at a character with angst and then running away. I can’t even remotely buy the idea that he was just leading the characters to the Clairvoyant, because certainly he could’ve stuck around to kick a little bit more of SHIELD’s ass, you know?
No, Deathlok ran away because the show has misused its budget big time, and he could only afford the one rocket. Staring wistfully at the other characters costs very little in comparison.
Which is a shame, because I really liked J. August Richards on Angel, and it’s a major bummer to think that his continued work in Whedon’s pantheon of actors is … well, this.
4. Thomas Nash
To not be such a Negative Nathan, though, I’ll say that I think that the Thomas Nash stuff was handled really well. In terms of a big reveal, this one was very well done. The pacing leading up to his reveal was great, as well as the misdirect that the show gave earlier when the team was split up. Certainly as soon as Nash’s name came up early in the episode you knew he was the one they were looking for, but in between Deathlok running away, the reveal of Nash in his chair was a well performed endeavor.
Continued belowI’ll even go so far as to say that I enjoyed his one and only scene in the show. There’s clearly more to Nash and who he was, as I’m sure we’ll learn thanks to the Big Bad reveal, but it was a nice little red herring for the viewers to find some sort of solace in the reveal before the (Agents of) SHIT really hit the fan.
Which brings me to,
5. The Big Bad
Right. That certainly makes a lot of sense in retrospect, doesn’t it?
I mean, Victoria Hand being a bad guy. Probably should’ve seen that one coming. Talk about writing on the wall no one really bothered to read. Hand’s role in the comic has been a complex one, and certainly she has at times been something akin to a hero (or, at least not a total villain), but she started off as the right hand of Norman Osborn. And with HAMMER getting a nod in the show earlier during this season, well, it’s on us for not just calling a spade a spade in this situation.
That said, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. Hand as the villain makes a lot of sense, but there’s some Winter Soldier tie-in stuff coming up (unless that clip from the film at the end of the episode “establishing continuity” is it) for the next episode and then we’re full of “Uprising” stuff. I don’t think anyone would ever accuse this show of trying to jam too much into itself (its glacially paced as is), but what threads are tied up and how they all get answered is definitely something I’m curious about as we enter into the final stretch of SHIELD.