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| Image Courtesy www.twitter.com/AgentsofShield |
Agents of
S.H.I.E.L.D. raises the stakes to an all-time high (even higher than last
year in “Turn, Turn, Turn” (1x17), if that’s even possible) in its most recent
episode, “The Frenemy of My Enemy” (2x18).
Coulson turned for help to the most unlikely source—Grant Ward. Skye took a trip down memory lane with dear
old dad… which did not end well for anyone involved. The two S.H.I.E.L.D.s have been on a
collision course ever since Coulson escaped from the Playground, and their
little game of “cat and mouse” is pretty much at an end—confrontation is
coming, and it won’t be sunshine and roses.
And funny enough, it’s all happening just in time for Agents of
S.H.I.E.L.D. to tie in with Avengers: Age of Ultron, which will hit
U.S. theaters next Friday. It is truly a
good time to be a Marvel fan!
The episode picks up
right where last week’s teaser left off:
Fitz is on his way to rendezvous with Coulson, Hunter, and
Deathlok. The scene with Fitz escaping
from his tail by running across the street, up the stairs, and into the cloaked
quinjet was a pretty good introduction to the episode. Sadly, I think the most humorous part of the
episode was when one of Fitz’ tails ran smack into the cloaked quinjet. From there the episode was pretty much all deathly
serious. Amazingly, this episode did a lot
for Fitz with very few scenes. This scene
showed him to be a capable agent—and was then put into perspective by the quick
scene of him strapping on his gun and fumbling to put it in the holster. Remember, Fitz is not a field agent; he’s
doing a lot of this stuff for the first time
The very next scene
saw the payoff of “Ethan,” the Inhuman introduced in the middle of the previous
episode as a non-transformed kid who was going to go backpacking for a few
days. In reality, he was captured by
Hydra (specifically by Liszt) shortly after Gordon dropped him off. He was experimented on for 37 hours before
finally dying. At this point it becomes
clear that not all is right in the Inhuman group. Somehow this kid was captured, and the last
one to see him alive was Gordon. We
learn later on that Hydra has developed technology which can find the locations
where Gordon teleports, but at the time I admit that I was suspicious that
either Gordon or Jiaying was somehow involved with Ethan’s capture. We have learned that both of them are
“wildcards” according to our understanding of the “sides” in this
conflict: they are fiercely loyal to the
Inhumans and extremely distrustful of outsiders—whether from S.H.I.E.L.D. or
from Hydra. In retrospect the idea that
either of them would be willing to send one of their own to death by torture is
ludicrous, but it says something about the writing of this series that we could
actually believe it.
Turning to the other
major plot, I find it fascinating that after all of the deception and betrayal
Mack and Bobbi are seriously considering that Coulson might be in the right—and
May is seriously considering that Coulson might be in the wrong. From Mack and Bobbi’s perspective, whatever
else might be going on, Coulson has been fighting Hydra from the beginning, and
they’ve actually been hindering that goal with their intervention. I wonder if by the end of the season we will
see them switch loyalties from Gonzales to Coulson—and in fact I suspect that
by the end of the season we will see the S.H.I.E.L.D. vs. S.H.I.E.L.D. conflict
resolved, one way or the other. At the
same time, we see May and Simmons being torn apart by their conflicting
loyalties to Coulson. May is no longer
interested in fighting for Coulson—she is only after the truth. I suspect that she hopes the truth will be
favorable to Coulson, but everything in this episode makes it clear that she
was hurt by his betrayal of her trust in hiding an entire operation from
her. Simmons on the other hand is still
loyal to Coulson—and to Skye (can we put “Genocidal Simmons” to rest yet?). That May betrayed her trust by letting Bobbi
in on her secret (that Fitz made off with the real Toolbox) hurt Simmons
deeply. In fact, I don’t think Simmons
trusts May anymore. It’s amazing how
well these last few episodes have torn the team apart. I only wonder how—or if—they are going to put
the team back together again when this is all over.
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| Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com |
The other team that is
not looking so great is Skye’s Inhumans.
Jiaying decided to send Cal away—and in a shocking turn of events Skye
doesn’t want her to. Skye’s reasoning
seems to be twofold: she’s afraid that
if he thinks they are abandoning him then he will start hurting people, and she
is actually starting to feel empathy for his desperate search for his
family. She did many illegal things
while trying to track her family down.
She was changed by the search.
And she didn’t have any memories of a happy family; Cal did. I really like just how much Cal’s character
has developed over the last two episodes.
Previously we had seen a lot of him as a mad sociopathic doctor. However, now we see bits and pieces of what
he must have been like before all of this happened—before his wife was
killed/nearly killed, before he had to put her back together, before his
daughter was taken and he went mad trying to put his family back together. He was a good man, volunteering for Doctors
Without Borders. He was a loving and
caring husband and father. Now that his
family is back together, he is actually happy—the most genuine (and not
terrifyingly so) happiness we’ve seen from him this entire season. When Skye asks to join him in Milwaukee, he
is ecstatic—and only more so when he gets to have his “daddy – daughter date”
with her. The whole scene is bittersweet
because we know that it can’t last. Skye
is at the same time curious about her father—and I think even a little happy to
have this nice moment with him after all their previous interactions were so
terrible—and buying time for S.H.I.E.L.D. to show up and take Cal into custody
so he won’t hurt anyone. Jiaying might
still have some feelings for Cal (very well hidden), but I think she is
terrified of what he has become. She is
too concerned for the safety and secrecy of the Inhumans to allow Cal to remain
with them. And I think the saddest part
is that Cal is completely oblivious to the fact that his family is not back
together. This makes him easily the most
fleshed-out (and tragic) villain we’ve gotten on this show—though Ward comes
close.
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| Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com |
I like how Ward was
introduced in this episode: he’s not
killing people or doing anything psychopathic—he’s picking up a potted plant
for the house. Then the gets the call
that his girl was captured by Coulson’s team (setting up a somewhat amusing
exchange between Deathlok and Agent 33/Kara about the mask and Mike’s “winning
personality”), and Ward feels that he has to come get her. When he and Coulson were sitting and
negotiating, it was pretty clear that neither of them were telling the full
truth. Coulson offered to let Ward go
free after wiping his memory with the T.A.H.I.T.I. machine—and unless he hasn’t
told us something, the T.AH.I.T.I. machine was destroyed in “T.A.H.I.T.I.”
(1x14) when the Guest House was blown up.
And as soon as Ward agreed, it was clear that he was playing his own game—which
begs the question, what is his game, and what were he and Kara going to do with
Bakshi before Coulson called? I wonder
if we will find out the answers to those questions before the end of the
season. That his endgame aligns well
enough with Coulson’s war against Hydra is very curious; I’m not sure whether
or not that bodes well. Of course, it
wouldn’t have been a Ward plan if there weren’t a couple of deviations from the
script, namely Bakshi offering Mike to Strucker as a peace offering (all as
part of his effort to get close to Strucker, of course). I really want to see how all of this is going
to play out.
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| Image Courtesy www.comicbook.com |
The final act of the
episode was absolutely insane. We
discover that Hydra can detect Gordon’s teleportation locations—explaining how
they were able to snatch up Ethan. Liszt’s Hydra team (with Bakshi and Deathlok
along for the ride) follows Gordon, Skye, and Cal to Milwaukee and manages to
track Skye and Cal to Cal’s old office building. While at Cal’s building we learn that his
original surname was “Johnson”—and Skye even tries out the name “Daisy Johnson”
for the first time (can you say “fan service”?)—and that Cal changed his
surname (to “Zabo,” perhaps?) after losing everything. And now we know how they have different last
names! Lincoln is also in Milwaukee
following Skye on Jiaying’s orders to make sure that she stays safe. Coulson follows Hydra to Milwaukee in the
quinjet and brings a team (he, Ward, 33/Kara, and Hunter) into the building to
find Skye. Skye calls May to bring in a
S.H.I.E.L.D. team to bring Cal in, May traces her call, and Bobbi and Mack go
to investigate. All of this sets up a
huge confrontation between Coulson and Hydra—but not all of it in this episode. Cal takes out a number of Hydra agents before
returning to Skye. Lincoln takes out one
Hydra agent before fighting Deathlok—and both of them get stunned and captured
by Hydra agents acting on Bakshi’s orders.
Gordon appears to take Skye back to Lai Shi, with Cal tagging along at
the last moment. May and Simmons hack
into Deathlok’s eye implant just in time to see Coulson working with Ward. Though there was quite a bit of action, I get
the sense that there is even more action on the horizon next episode. Is Bakshi acting under orders from Ward to
get inside Hydra by having Hydra stun and capture Deathlok and Lincoln, or did
he break free from his brainwashing and turn on Ward? Will Mike and Lincoln be okay? I suspect that we will get the answers to
those questions next week. Whether they
will be answered on Tuesday or Friday, however, is the better question.
The end teaser of the
episode of course sets up next week:
Coulson returns to Cal’s office after Hydra left and waits for Mack and
Bobbi to show up. He tells them to “take
me to your leader.” Next week we’re
going to see him and Gonzales have a confrontation, and they’re going to have
to agree to take on Hydra together. I
think at this point we can say for certain that Hydra is the tie-in between Agents
of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Avengers: Age of Ultron. And I can’t wait to see how it plays out next
week.
In all, I was very
happy with this episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It builds up the tension not only with Mike’s
and Lincoln’s capture by Hydra (setting up the Inhumans to work with
S.H.I.E.L.D. to rescue them), but also with the level of mistrust between the
members of Coulson’s original team.
However, even more than the tension-building and stage-setting, this
episode stands out for how well it builds up both Ward and Cal as sympathetic
“villains” who might be redeemed—or might not be. Who would have thought when we first met Cal
that he could become a redeemable villain?
I certainly didn’t see that coming!
So what did you think
of “The Frenemy of My Enemy”? What do
you think Ward’s plan is? How do you
think next week’s episode—and the Age of Ultron tie-in—will play
out? Let me know in the comments!
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