Well, after a few weeks off the air and a nice set of excuses from the executive producers, Agents of SHIELD is back on the air! Coulson is missing, Victoria Hand is on the case and answers are given. Wait — answers?
As a note, spoilers are discussed. Rather unavoidably, I’m afraid.
1. The Magical Place
So, it turns out Tahiti isn’t so much of a magical place. Who didn’t see that coming, eh? Not to sound cynical or snarky or whatever — it was an incredibly telegraphed, and done so on purpose. And despite many theories as to what happened, it turns out the answer is pretty… simple. Probably a bit dull, even. The answer is SHIELD just brought him back to life. End of story; no LMDs, nothing related to Vision, no actual magic — just lots of science and medicine and robots tickling his brain.
The twist to it all is that Coulson fought back, that he didn’t want to come back to life. And that’s a bit sad, truth be told, because Coulson is ostensibly supposed to be the light that keeps it all together. Coulson is the heart, and he’s clearly very much a broken one.
That we’ve had so much time to get to know and like Clark Gregg’s character, this moment does come with a slight sting. I know many fans find the characters on this show hit or miss, but Coulson is pretty much the universal fan favorite. Now that we can finally do away with the extremely dull plot element of Coulson moping about not knowing what happened, at least now we have a justified reason to see the character start to be someone different, someone darker — and that alone should open up a few interesting areas to explore.
2. What Comes Next?
My biggest fear about the future of SHIELD is that even with a plan involved, that plan is just too familiar. Heck, the promo for next week’s episode kinda gives away the big plot twist for those paying attention, and as much as I don’t want to be cynical about it, the big reveal of this episode wasn’t exactly all that exciting either. Interesting, OK, but in the Marvel Universe of course they can just use plain old science to bring someone back to life. Couldn’t they at least try and jazz it up a little bit?
But the one thing I don’t want to see is for this show to tread ground that has already been explored on other Whedon shows. Angel already featured its lead hero going rogue for an entire season, to great results admittedly; and we’ve seen the hero rebel against her creator in Dollhouse. SHIELD has been doing a wonderful job at treading water, but it’s time for the show to really choose its own path and go off into unknown territory.
Coulson is poised to essentially become another anti-hero out to make an agency that did things to him pay. I’d sort of hate to see the show devolve into that. Give him an angry arc, sure, OK, but Coulson is supposed to be better and less petty than the rest of us. He inspired the god damn Avengers, for fucks sake.
3. Some Comments on the Episode Overall
I really, really, really want to like Agents of SHIELD.
Agents of SHIELD really, really, really doesn’t want to do anything to make me like it.
That’s wicked unfortunate.
I could probably go into it a bit more, but I think those three lines sum it up pretty perfectly. Within SHIELD, there is a great show. I really believe that. Maybe we have to wait until the second season to get it (like with Arrow), but the potential is there. And I’ve grown to like the characters quite a bit, and this episode was a good example of effective teamwork and the characters actually mattering to one another.
It’s just everything else that fails in the end. The story isn’t too entertaining to watch, the writing is OK at best, and SHIELD doesn’t stand out in any way it should. It’s supposed to be a Marvel television show, but the only thing Marvel-esque about it is the logo that appears in the beginning. SHIELD needs to straighten itself out, because as much as I enjoyed the back-end of the first half of season one, the mid-season finale and mid-season premiere both put the show back to a place where it has a big ol’ mountain to climb in order to regain my confidence in it.
Continued belowCome on, SHIELD. Just… come on.
4. The Biggest Missed Opportunity, In My Opinion
Let us pretend for a minute that I am a “writer,” OK? As such, when watching a show and listening to the characters speak, often times there are lines that bring up certain expectations, or opportunities for the story to use. One such example would be when Skye ran into the house where Coulson was in the Animus shouting “Please let me die.” Skye of course did not know he was in a dream, as he was just inside some strange device being held against his will. That machine could’ve been doing literally anything to him!
Perfect opportunity for Skye to misunderstand what was going on. Perfectly missed opportunity, anyway. Everyone already knew Centipede was the bad guy, but that was certainly a moment for the writers to give Skye a big moment, to really believe she was saving Coulson. And nothing. Ah well.
5. The Stinger
So, who else thought J. August Richards wouldn’t actually be dead after the last episode? No body, no death, that’s what I always say. Except for when I don’t, of course. And now he’s stuck being forced to be a bad guy!
It’s not all that exciting of a stinger compared to the rest of the episode, but I am glad to see that the character wasn’t just completely thrown away. As the only super-powered character on this show that we as an audience have any discernible connection to, I think there is still a lot that can be done with him. I’m interested to see what.
