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| Image Courtesy www.marvel.com |
You know how I said
that the midseason finale was when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. really started
hitting its stride? Well, “The Magical
Place” (1x11) is when that really starts to pay dividends. Skye on her own doing what she does best for
most of the episode. Coulson finally
learning the answers he’s been seeking all season. The actors more comfortable with their
characters. We see big, bad S.H.I.E.L.D.
bringing all its resources to bear on Centipede, the main villain of the
season. And just when it looks like
things are all wrapped up, we get a twist ending that might not have been so
much of a twist. In all, I think this is
when S.H.I.E.L.D. started its streak of each episode (for the most part)
getting progressively better than the last.
Note: Retro-Reviews include potential spoilers for all of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. through season 2.
The episode picks up a
day and a half after the midseason finale ended, with Coulson still in
Centipede’s hands. S.H.I.E.L.D.
HQ—meaning Director Fury and Commander Hill—brought in Agent Victoria Hand to
coordinate the search effort. This
begins with Vanchat, a dealer who sells Chitauri metal. S.H.I.E.L.D. crashes a meet between Vanchat
and one of his buyers, with Ward and May taking out most of the bodyguards at
the meet. Vanchat escapes, but Fitz and
Simmons use the Dwarves to force him into the elevator, which Skye directs to
the roof, where an entire S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical team is waiting for him. S.H.I.E.L.D. takes Vanchat into custody to
interrogate him and get the names of his buyers.
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| Image Courtesy www.facebook.com/AgentsofShield |
Hand has taken command
of the Bus and brought in a large number of her own people to assist with the
manhunt. However, she decides to kick
Skye off the Bus because she perceives her as a distraction. When Ward defends Skye, May tells Hand that
Skye will not be any use to them on the plane.
Hand orders Skye’s restriction level increased and for her to be taken
into custody for debriefing. Before she
can be taken into custody, however, Ward, Fitz, and Simmons help her to evade
S.H.I.E.L.D. and set her loose with a sat phone. Skye attempts to track down Vanchat’s
financials online, using a corrupt business executive to work the computer for
her. The scene when Skye pretends to be
May, uses the S.H.I.E.L.D. warning shutting down Lloyd’s phone as her badge,
and takes out the two private security officers without breaking a sweat is definitely
her best yet, and one of her best in the first season, showing her
resourcefulness and new close-quarters combat abilities. Plus it’s funny.
On the Bus, Ward
“interrogates” Vanchat by casually having Fitz and Simmons open the
interrogation room’s roof and nearly letting Vanchat fly out. This gives S.H.I.E.L.D. the information it
needs to send STRIKE teams to raid his buyers all around the world. Meanwhile Fitz and Simmons develop a new
delivery system for the dendrotoxin they use in the Night-Night Gun, one
specially designed to inject the toxin into the soldiers’ Centipedes to knock
them out. The most interesting part of
the subplot with the team on the plane is when Ward goes to talk to May and
demands to know why she let Hand kick Skye off the plane. May responds that “All I did was tell Hand
the truth. Skye’s no use to us on this
plane… Not with all these agents
here. Over her shoulder, monitoring her
every move.” In other words, May knew
that Skye wouldn’t be able to work her best under the watchful eye of
S.H.I.E.L.D.; she needed to be on her own, away from S.H.I.E.L.D., to be able
to find Coulson. In just a couple lines,
May’s character—and specifically her relationship with Skye—changed
dramatically. Up until now it has
appeared as though May had little care for Skye and her unorthodox
methods. She didn’t think Skye was
devoted enough to the mission, the team and the organization. Now, however, it is clear that May
appreciates Skye and her abilities. With
this new perspective, May’s previous interactions with Skye appear as attempts
to push her to be better and more focused.
When Skye calls in for reinforcements after finding Coulson’s location,
May is the one who convinces Hand to let her and Ward take their team to
investigate Skye’s lead. I really like
how this develops May’s character beyond being strong, silent, not playing well
with others, and having a bad history. Now
we see that she does care about her team, and she also knows how best to use
them.
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The majority of the
episode is devoted to Coulson and Tahiti.
At the beginning of the episode, Mr. Po is using a brain wave machine to
stir up hidden memories, but Coulson is resisting it. When Coulson refuses to cooperate, Po has one
of his men hit Coulson repeatedly with a cattle prod to “encourage”
cooperation. However, the moment Raina
arrives, she argues with him and tells him that he needs to stop torturing Coulson
and instead use gentler means of persuasion.
While the two of them are arguing, the Clairvoyant himself calls Po and
chews him out before speaking to Raina.
As soon as Raina hands the phone back to him and he identifies himself,
the phone activates something that shocks Po and kills him, leaving Raina as
the Clairvoyant’s new contact. Raina
persuades Coulson to get on the machine because he wants the answers that it
can provide. Raina did not receive the
power of persuasion as part of her transformation; that is something she was
born with. Raina is able to tell Coulson
very private details: the cellist cried
for days after S.H.I.E.L.D. told her about Coulson’s death, they went to
dinners at the Richmond… how could Raina know these things? That is a question that haunts Coulson at the
end of the episode, and it is something that he continues to struggle with
until it is finally revealed later in the season in “End of the Beginning”
(1x16). However Raina learned her
information, it was enough to convince Coulson to get on the machine again, and
this time he allowed the machine to dredge up the memories from when he was
revived. Under the machine’s influence,
Coulson learned that his memory of Tahiti was actually implanted in a procedure
which rewrote entire portions of his brain.
Instead of a masseuse and a waiter, he sees 2 surgeons (1 of whom, Dr.
Streiten, was his friend before all of this) watching as a large machine sends
electrical pulses into his exposed brain.
This may have been one of the creepiest and most graphic scenes in this
entire series—and that includes the scene from the season 2 premiere when
Hunter cuts off Hartley’s arm in the back of a moving SUV.
At this point one of
the mysteries surrounding Coulson’s miraculous recovery has been solved: his Tahiti memories were implanted into his
brain to cover up his previous memories of being a miserable shell of himself
which lacked the will to live. However,
this does not explain how exactly Fury succeeded in bringing Coulson back from
the dead in the first place. What were
the first six procedures, if the memory machine was the seventh one? What power is there that could have the
ability to bring a dead body back to life?
This question would come to consume Coulson moving forward, and especially
in “T.A.H.I.T.I.” (1x14), when that very procedure would be called on again to
save Skye. Given that Coulson was killed
in The Avengers and his death was the glue that brought Captain America
and Iron Man together to fight Loki, I remember being a little disappointed
when they announced that Coulson was going to come back as the leader of Agents
of S.H.I.E.L.D. After all, if he
comes back to life, is his death still meaningful? At this point I think it is safe to say that
Coulson’s death was meaningful. It
brought the Avengers together to “Avenge” him in the movie. And then when he was brought back to life,
the question of how it happened grew to consume him in the first half
season. When the Tahiti mystery is
solved, the question turns from Tahiti to how he actually came back to life,
and that question drives him until “T.A.H.I.T.I.”, at which point the question
turns to who the blue alien was. We do
not get that mystery—or the related mystery surrounding the writing—solved
until “The Writing on the Wall” (2x07), but the writing leads us to the Kree
temple and the Diviner, and from there to the Inhumans. I think it would be safe to say that
Coulson’s resurrection is the thread that has connected together all of the
overarching season-long plots in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to this
point. I do not think we would have
found out about the Inhumans if Coulson had not been resurrected. We can talk about death starting to lose its
meaning when characters are brought back to life, and to a certain extent that
is a valid concern. However, I do not
think that Coulson’s resurrection makes his death meaningless; I think that his
resurrection gives it continued meaning.
The final scene of the
episode shows the sad truth about Mike Peterson: he did in fact survive the explosion; the
burnt remains that Hand’s team discovered were not his. Mike survived, and he was given an ocular
implant, placing him under Centipede’s control.
This sets up all of his future appearances, in which he is a “good agent
being forced to do bad things.” I really
like Mike and his character arc, especially since in the end he finds
redemption.
This was a very good
episode in how it expanded on several of the characters and moved the plot
forward. The action scenes weren’t mind-blowing,
but in my opinion the lack of heavy action allowed the story to take center
stage.
What did you think of
“The Magical Place”? When did you decide
that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had “righted the ship” (if you ever thought
it was off)?
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