First off, I have to admit that the title itself has put this on a loop in my brain:
Now, onto the actual show I’m reviewing in real life.
I don’t know WHAT it was about this episode, but I was mostly just cracking up. Not in a “I just can’t even take this seriously any more” kind of way (looking at you, Once Upon a Time…) but just in a completely emotionally-overwhelmed kind of way. Y’all got that, right? Okay, cool.
One of us… Review
We begin again with a recap of things you should remember before watching this episode – and I feel like we’ll be seeing a lot more of those as time goes on.
We then get to meet some new faces. Looks like our favorite doctor Cal is making a few housecalls, and he brought friends! He knocks on the door of a woman who has these very uncomfortable gloves permanently welded onto her hands, still fumbling while she tries to eat. He assures her they’re not from SHIELD, but did get her info from the Gifted Index and invites her to join forces with them to strike back at SHIELD. She agrees, they unlock her gloves, and reveal razor sharp knives on her fingernails.
Back on the bus, Coulson and Skye have a heart-to-heart. They will have to put her on the Gifted Index, but she does seem to be controlling her powers a lot better. As part of her evaluation for the Index, however, she needs a psych eval – which is not making Skye too happy. Luckily, May knows a guy, because he happens to be her ex-husband. Andrew takes a little convincing, but he agrees to help out, and Skye is thrilled to get a chance to learn more about “The Cavalry”.
Meanwhile, Mack calls Bobbi and informs her that he and the now-coscious-again Hunter are in the nearest safehouse. She tells him that she’ll call in whoever they’re working with, and tells him to feed Hunter or something. Hunter and Mack talk for a while – Mack trying to get Hunter on his side, Hunter trying to get Mack to shut up and stop playing games.
Cal and his team have also been keeping busy: their slasher chick takes out a security guard, their tech guy shorts the electrified fence, their muscle bends it open, and Cal gleefully waves at the camera as they sneak into a maximum security mental institution. Coulson and Bobbi respond while Andrew talks with May on the bus.
Unfortunately, the bus starts shaking violently – they rush in to see Skye, sleeping, having a bad dream. As it turns out the “conceal don’t feel” approach is just pushing her emotions off to the side and not helping the situation at all. Andrew has an impromptu session with her while the other people leave.
Coulson checks the security footage and sees Cal, and he and Bobbi head into the sub-basement where two mentally unstable Gifted were being held. They fight with prisoner number one – a very strong adversary they eventually take down. Unfortunately, prisoner number two is gone – and his vocal chords can cause, at best, immediate narcosis with a mere whisper. On the wall is a very ominous message – FIGHT ON.
Cal et al are enjoying a nice meal together at a diner. Notably, Edwina Scissor-Hands (not her name, but I was thinking that the whole episode) expresses a little bit of reluctance of engaging with SHIELD – it hasn’t gone so well for her in the past. Cal reminds them that SHIELD has taken a lot from them all and they need to strike back while SHIELD is weak. He also talks about “chemistry” he’s performed on himself with “inconsistent” results. They all drive in a Winnebago to the home of the “Fightin’ Outlaws” – Wisconsin.
Coulson and Bobbi discuss Hunter and why he left so suddenly. Bobby admits to having a relationship with him, and to calling it off, and that Hunter “fell back into old patterns” and disappeared, and Mack went out to look for him. All complete hooey, but Coulson buys it (or, at least, pretends to). It occurs to him what “Fight on” means as Bobbi gets a ping on their license plate – they’re taking the fight to Coulson’s hometown.
Specifically, Cal et al have gone to the high school where Coulson’s dad taught gym. They remove the muzzle on their new recruit and allow him to do his thing – but to “make it count”. Angar takes the field and screams, causing the cheerleaders and football players who were practicing all drop to the ground, unconscious. Every bird in the sky also follows suit, and it’s pretty creepy!
Coulson calls for back up, and May immediately starts up the plane and flies out there. Andrew at first thinks it’s Skye’s powers, but she assures him it’s not. He then gets mad at May for basically hijacking him without his consent. But, Coulson needs help, so May is not wasting any time. May and Andrew fight about whether or not Skye gets to go out there, but she breaks the tie because, basically, she means a lot to her dad, so she’s their best bargaining chip.
Show down on the football field that night. Coulson and Bobbi show up, and Cal calls Coulson onto the field or else he’ll kill all the kids. Coulson’s too good a guy for that to happen, so he walks out there, to be met by the muscle and the scream. Angar takes Coulson’s gun, and Cal comes onto the field with a mic. By this point, May arrives with a gun to Skye’s head threatening to kill her if Cal doesn’t surrender. Cal decides to strike instead, and gives the microphone to Angar, but before anything can happen, no-eyes-guy Gordon zaps in from nowhere, grabs Cal and disappears again. Leaderless, the others go down fairly quickly. Angar’s only power is his voice, so Coulson knocks him out fairly fast. May takes on the super strong steroids guy, Bobbi takes the girl with knife nails, and Skye tries to keep herself from making the ground shake too much. By the time the tech guy gets out of the announcer’s booth, Coulson meets him and takes him down as well as the tech that was in his suitcase. At this point, Skye blacks out from holding the quake in for too long.
She wakes up back on the bus with bruises all over her arms. Apparently, she was not holding in a quake, she was directing it inward. She caused herself multiple hairline fractures and burst a lot of blood vessels. Simmons made her special compression gloves that will only temporarily help the problem a little, but it is clear that a better fix needs to be found.
Andrew recommends that Skye leave SHIELD completely, but May insists it’s the only safe place for her.
Mack and Hunter finally arrive at a location to meet with the guy in charge (whom we do not, in fact, get to meet..dang it) and Mack reveals that he and Bobbi have been working for “The Real SHIELD”.
Cal wakes up in that room…somewhere…surrounded by shattered furniture. Gordon comes in and Cal questions why we was brought there, and why Skye wasn’t brought along too. Gordon simply says it’s because Cal was “making too much noise” and that Cal isn’t one of them but just a “science experiment”. Cal’s fate now rests in the hands of whoever is in charge there at…wherever it is.
Review
Oh, man, oh so much is happening in this show. Let’s break it down by groups.
So Skye is a metaphor for bottling up emotions. The more she keeps things inside, the more she’s hurting herself. Physically, emotionally, mentally. But mostly physically. I’m kind of a nerd, so I’m super interested in seeing how this all plays out.
Simmons seems to be a little more accepting of Gifted people now, although she’s kind of lump-categorizing them into “Enhanced” (people who used a serum or chemical or whatever) and “Others” (people with DNA that gives them powers). She’s a scientist, who likes neat little boxes, I guess, so I can’t blame her much.
I liked seeing her and Fitz talking again. It seemed like it was starting to drift closer to the relationship they had before. Agreeing on things, gossiping, etc. I’m hoping this is a trend that continues.
Finally the question is asked why Gordon didn’t grab Skye when he had the chance, although the question wasn’t answered. It isn’t clear yet what agenda he has, or the people he’s working with. It’s hard to even label who’s on the “good” side or “bad” side. It used to be that easy, now not so much.
The “Real SHIELD” worries me. Like, a lot. They haven’t revealed who’s in charge of it, so it could go a number of different ways. First off, the SHIELD we all know and love was set up at the end of the first season of Agents of SHIELD – Fury puts Coulson in charge. But both of them were widely assumed dead. So it does make a weird sort of sense that in absence of both of them, some loyal SHIELD agents would attempt to rebuild, independent of anything else happening. It also makes just as much sense that Ward would pretend to be a double-triple-infinite-crosser and his taking it on himself to rebuild “SHIELD” which is actually – whatever something else would be.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The preview for next week does, in fact, flash a view of Ward at us – with no dialogue or context, though. The episode title is also “Love in the time of Hydra”, so now I guess we have to deal with them again.
Also, those of us who Google stuff during commercial breaks may know that Cal, Daisy Johnson’s father, appears in the comics as “Mister Hyde”. Think halfway between the Hulk and literature. So the fact that Cal has admitted to doing chemistry on himself and that the results are inconsistent. Hearing this said in-episode, seeing the destruction around him, watching him smash a cup in his bare hands, I think we’re getting closer and closer to a new rage monster in this universe!
Well, agents, just a few more episodes until the next Avengers movie! And we all know what happens when movies premiere while Agents of SHIELD is on! We may not know exactly when or how or why, but something in the universe is about to change in a big way. With the Inhumans plotlines revealed, it kind of already has, but something new is coming out of this movie, I have a feeling. Now it’s just a waiting game to find out what…
Until next week, Agents!
Geek out!
