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| Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com |
It feels like Agents
of S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing a lot of juggling this season. There are about half a dozen different plots
running around this season, and they’re trying to do almost every single one of
them justice in each episode. Sometimes
it really seems to work; sometimes it feels like they’re trying to do too
much. This was one of those episodes
where it felt like there was maybe one too many plots being juggled. I liked all of the individual parts of the
episode, but I would have liked slightly more substance given to slightly less
plots.
In my opinion, the one
complaint you really can’t have about this episode is everything to do with
Lincoln. The visualization of his
powers, seeing him on the run, finding out more about his back story, and
seeing just how vulnerable all of this has made him all worked really
well. I loved the first scene of the
episode when he used his powers to zap the power lines and buy some breathing
room to get away from the A.T.C.U. His
response to finding the tracker Mack had placed on him was very much in
character. The bus scene was pretty
cool, especially when he electrified the whole bus to keep anyone from
following him. I think it was about that
moment when I realized that he has yet to actually kill anyone with his powers. He’s used his powers offensively in the past,
but he has not used his powers to hurt the A.T.C.U., even though that would
have bought him a more time, and he didn’t hurt the soldier on the bus.
Of course, that changes
when Lincoln calls his friend John to pick him up and John calls the A.T.C.U.
hotline to report him. They didn’t
really explain the relationship there, though it sounded like John talked
Lincoln down several times—“saved his life,” as he put it. I wish we’d gotten more there, but at the
same time I really thought that the two actors (particularly Lincoln) really
sold their relationship well: I definitely
bought that Lincoln didn’t want to hurt him and felt betrayed by him calling
the authorities, and I even bought the betrayal on John’s part in not knowing
who or what Lincoln is anymore.
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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
I wasn’t really sure
what happened with John after Lincoln shocked the baseball bat out of his
hands. My first thought was that John
was having a heart attack from the excitement, but it’s entirely possible that
the charge could have traveled through the metal bat into John’s body and
stopped his heart. Either way, I don’t
think it would be considered murder by the strictest definition since there was
no premeditation and no intentionality to it—Lincoln was attempting to defend
himself. That doesn’t do anything for
Lincoln’s guilt over killing him, but there you go. The fact that that trauma—combined with the
A.T.C.U. bearing down on him—caused him to finally call Daisy was very
believable. At that point he was really
out of options; she was his last hope.
Daisy for her part had
an interesting arc in this episode. For as
much as she claims that she wants to go after Lincoln herself because she’s
trying to put a team together and needs him, I think it was pretty clear that
there was more to it than that. When she
calls him, she’s trying to build trust and trying to undo the damage of
S.H.I.E.L.D. having planted a tracker on him.
You definitely get the sense that she’s walking a tightrope between her
responsibilities to S.H.I.E.L.D. and wanting to help Lincoln. The scene with Daisy and Lincoln together in
the under-construction apartment was very illuminating for both their
characters. For her part she wants to
help him not just because he’s an Inhuman or because he helped her, but because
she cares for him. I wasn’t exactly
surprised when she kissed him; it was kind of a long time coming. For his part, Lincoln was every bit as broken
as Daisy was when she first arrived in Afterlife, and even more because of the
aforementioned incident with John. I fully
expected him to agree to come in with S.H.I.E.L.D. as that was his only option
left, but what happened next was very unexpected.
I think this is the
first time in the series Coulson has done something which really turned him
into the bad guy. He’s done questionable
things in the past, but this goes much further than that. Coulson setting a meeting with Rosalind made sense
since Coulson disagreed so strongly with her methods. That he made the request by hacking a White
House satellite was a stylish move. And then
they met and it easily could have gone differently. I suppose someone had to make some cracks
about Coulson’s arm eventually, and Rosalind doing to was a good move by the
writers for setting the tone of the meeting, though Coulson didn’t exactly rise
to the bait. I was a little surprised by
Rosalind’s willingness to lay all her cards out on the table—needing Lincoln as
a “win” and knowing that Daisy’s an Inhuman working for S.H.I.E.L.D.—but considering
what they were, I guess that was the best time to play those cards. What was most surprising was Coulson’s
willingness to make a deal with the A.T.C.U. to hand Lincoln over to them in
exchange for them leaving Daisy alone. I
get that Coulson views Daisy as a daughter, but I think that having Lincoln on
their side (even if the A.T.C.U. outed Daisy as Inhuman) would have very much
been preferable to having Lincoln in A.T.C.U. custody, regardless of the
arrangement. Lincoln’ s reaction of
knocking the A.T.C.U. team out and running shouldn’t have been unexpected: they’d backed him into a corner, and everyone
he thought he could trust had betrayed him.
Now Lincoln is back in the wind, and I don’t think he’ll be calling
Daisy again anytime soon.
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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
Oh, and the A.T.C.U.
then tried to take Daisy in as a consolation prize. These people are really bad at their job,
considering that Daisy could take the building down without breaking a sweat
and deflects bullets on instinct. In
what scenario did Coulson see this arrangement working out to his benefit? Ultimately he had to make a deal to consult
with Rosalind in order to get Daisy and Mack out of the situation, but I wonder
if that wasn’t his endgame all along. He
even makes a good case for cooperating with the A.T.C.U.: they don’t know what they’re doing and he
does. But at this point I’m still
wondering if they can trust the A.T.C.U.
Goodness knows, I’m pretty sure Daisy’s trust in Coulson was damaged by
the whole thing. And if that was the
goal all along, why not cut to the chase and let Daisy and Mack bring in
Lincoln, which would give S.H.I.E.L.D. an edge?
It’s not like the A.T.C.U. would have been able to find them before they
escaped without Coulson’s help.
Along the same lines
of being betrayed by a supposed friend, Hunter and May put their plan to
infiltrate Hydra into motion. Hunter approaches
an old friend at the Hydra bar to see about arranging a meeting, and the two of
them get drunk together. I have to say, I
think the funniest part of their scenes was when May called them unintelligible
enough while sober and they put in subtitles for the following scene while they
were drunk. We also get some interesting
character development from Bobbi and Hunter as she calls to check up on him and
May calls him out for lying to her. It’s
pretty clear that their relationship is improving, even though he is lying to
her about how dangerous his plan is. It was
an interesting pairing to go from one divorced couple mending their
relationship which had been fractured by S.H.I.E.L.D. to another as Hunter
asked May about the circumstances of her and Andrew’s break-up. I wonder if at some point we will see her
going all over-protective on Andrew after something bad happens to him.
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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
Hunter manages to
arrange a meeting with Hydra if he can beat one guy in a fight… and that guy
turns out to be his buddy. Hunter is put-out
at first by the betrayal, and it’s interesting to see him trying to regroup,
though we don’t get a lot of regret or betrayal from him in the heat of the
fight. In the end, Hunter does what he
has to do and lays the guy out with brass knuckles (possibly killing him). At the same time, May takes on 3 guys in
another room and destroys all of them in about 10 seconds without even breaking
a sweat. At the end of the fight Hunter
is escorted into a room to meet with Kebo, Ward’s right-hand man.
I think this was the
plot I was the least invested in for this episode as it’s been a secondary plot
at best for the last 2 episodes and has not had quite enough connection to the
main plot either time. Both episodes it
was connected thematically, but there was very little overlap with the rest of
the plot beyond the phone calls from Bobbi.
I feel like I would be far more invested in Hunter and May if that were
the main plot of an episode with very little else going on. Hopefully we’ll get that in a couple of
episodes. For now, I think I would have
preferred for them to cut this subplot out for now (but save it for later) and
give us a little more of Lincoln on the run and Lincoln’s back story with John.
The other minor
subplot for the episode held my attention much better: Fitz and Simmons. Fitz is adorable in this episode escorting
Simmons around headquarters and showing her the lab. She is having trouble adjusting to being on
Earth after everything that happened to her, and Elizabeth Henstridge does a
very good job of portraying that. They are
creating an interesting parallel between Fitz’ recovery last year (with Simmons
unable to figure out how to help him) and Simmons’ recovery this year (with
Fitz having trouble figuring out how to help her). Of course, Fitz has something that Simmons
didn’t have: Bobbi. Bobbi’s suggestion that he needs to give her
something to look forward to and his renting out an entire restaurant for a
romantic dinner was sweet, even if she broke down before they tried the
wine. I really like how they are
handling the Simmons plot: they brought
her back from the planet really quickly, but it is still having a major impact. And at the end of the episode we find out
that for some reason Simmons “needs” to go back to that planet. The plot thickens…
Before I close, I’m
curious about the effect that her stay on that planet may have had on Simmons
physically. They talked at the beginning
of the episode about the negative effects—vitamin deficiencies and the
like. But they also said that the planet
had higher gravity than Earth—and we all know what that means in comics: super-strength! While Simmons was in the lab, the audio and
video went a little wild a couple of times, almost as though her senses were
being over-stimulated, which makes me think enhanced hearing (and possibly
vision). This could be reading too much
into things, but I think that they will sooner or later explore some positive
effects that her trip to the other side of the galaxy had on Simmons.
In summary, I really
enjoyed everything in this episode. I loved
the visuals of Lincoln using his powers and all of the development they gave
his character, particularly introducing John (though I think they could have
done more with it). Fitz and Simmons
finally going out to dinner together was clearly fan-service, but it was done
very well. Hunter fighting his friend
was an interesting scene, though their relationship really wasn’t established
very well in advance. In all, I enjoyed
just about everything, but I thought that they tried to do too much. Say what you will about the first season, but
it did not have nearly as many season-long plots to service in every episode. One reason I can see for the broadened scope of
the season is that the focus is on S.H.I.E.L.D. as a whole instead of just a
single team, and the organization has a lot going on. But I preferred they way they showed that
last year in “A Fractured House” (2x06) when the plot took a backseat to a
completely new crisis for an episode.
I’m still very much
interested in all of the different plots they are working into this season, and
it’s not like they make things impossible to follow. But I would be happy if they reduced the
number of plots in every episode by 1.
What did you think of this
episode? What do you think is going to
happen to Lincoln now that he thinks S.H.I.E.L.D. has betrayed him? Do you think S.H.I.E.L.D. can trust the
A.T.C.U.? Let me know in the comments!
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