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After the previous
episode took a detour to examine the effect of international politics (and
family) on Coulson’s S.H.I.E.L.D. team, this episode marks a return to the
major plot of the half-season as Coulson makes a major discovery, setting up
the mad dash in the final two episodes of the half-season. Along the way, the episode also answers some
burning questions about T.A.H.I.T.I. and starts to set up the minor plot thread
which grows and turns into the major conflict of the second half of the season. There are also some interesting looks into
Coulson’s character in this episode. Oh,
and Ward finally gets to do something more exciting that suffocate (aside from
the whole killing a bunch of F.B.I. guys at the end of the last episode, that
is… (uh… spoilers?)).
Reminder: Retro-Reviews contain potential spoilers for everything to-date.
The episode begins by
setting up the major conflict: the man
from the end of the previous episode goes home with a woman who thinks they
know each other. Though she doesn’t know
exactly how they are connected, he fills her in that they are connected by the
alien writing that he has tattooed all over his body. She herself has also been drawing the alien
markings on all her artwork.
Unfortunately (for her), his method of drawing is to do it in his own
flesh, and he carves it into her body as well, killing her in the process. This grisly murder comes to Coulson’s
attention when a hacker friend of Skye, Micro (Frank Castle’s assistant in the
comics—hello, Daredevil Easter egg!), sends her the news article. Coulson recognizes the woman as a former
S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and he and Skye investigate her apartment, where they find
that all her paintings include the alien writing. Checking through S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel
files, Skye learns that the woman was stationed at the Triskelion but had
presumably died of cancer 5 years prior (which would date the T.A.H.I.T.I.
experimentation to 2009, the year between Iron Man and The Incredible
Hulk, Iron Man 2, and Thor, about a year after Coulson and
Fury started working on the Avengers Initiative).
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| Image Courtesy www.sciencefiction.com |
All of this drives
Coulson to place himself in Raina’s Memory Machine to unlock the memories of
T.A.H.I.T.I. which had been buried when his memories were replaced. Skye and Simmons are both uneasy about using
the device—Mack is extremely displeased with everything he learns about Coulson
in this episode—but they allow Coulson to use the machine. He discovers that there were six initial test
subjects, and that the tests initially succeeded, but over time the patients
all began to exhibit dangerous symptoms:
hypergraphia, mania, gibberish, and catatonia were the most-shown. The doctor responsible for the tests
recommended wiping their memories and implanting false memories in an effort to
combat the genetic memories carried by the GH-325 serum (“genetic memories”? The Kree are weird.). In the end, Coulson is left to watch one of
the subjects undergo memory replacement and scream in agony the whole time.
Coulson does manage to
unlock the new names given to the six test subjects. One was found in the wreckage of the church
fire from “Face My Enemy” (2x04), another was the murder victim, and two more
were also killed within a few weeks of the episode. Only two remain, Hank Thompson and Sebastian
Derik, the latter of whom Coulson suspects of being the murderer. However, this whole ordeal leaves Coulson in
a frenzy, desperate to find the answer to what the alien writing means. He tricks Skye, locks her in the containment
room, and goes to Hank Thompson’s house himself. There he confronts Derik, and in the course
of their confrontation he realizes that the alien writing is not 2-dimensional,
but 3-dimensional. Thompson, a welder,
had subconsciously worked the alien writing into his son’s train set, and
seeing the train set and realizing what it meant gave both Coulson and Derik
closure for their alien writing compulsion.
Now Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D. have a blueprint of an alien city, putting
them a step ahead of Hydra, which is also trying to solve this alien mystery.
I liked how well this
episode gave closure to the question of what the alien writing is as well as to
the T.A.H.I.T.I. protocol. This has been
such a major issue ever since Garrett started carving the alien writing into a
glass door with a nail at the end of season 1, so it definitely felt like it
needed a major reveal. And at the same
time we also learn more about the experimentation which had been done to test
the various components of the T.A.H.I.T.I. protocol before Fury used it on
Coulson. Though they were only in the
episode for a very short time, both Thompson and Derik felt necessary for
different reasons. Derik offers us an
alternate take on Coulson and Garrett:
he is obsessed with unlocking the meaning of the alien writing, but
instead of carving on walls, he carves on bodies. He realizes that the writing is more than
just 2D, but he can’t make the final leap to it being 3D. Thompson, on the other hand (whose “real
name,” Cameron Klein, is actually a S.H.I.E.L.D. tech in the comics), is the
other side of this. As a welder accustomed
to working in three dimensions, he alone of all the test subjects is able to
understand the alien writing perfectly and construct it into a diagram. Of all the T.A.H.I.T.I. patients we met on
the series, he is clearly the most well-adjusted because he is the one who
pieced together that it was 3-dimensional.
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The other important
plot in this episode revolves around Ward and his efforts to escape from
S.H.I.E.L.D. At the end of the previous
episode, “A Fractured House” (2x06), Ward succeeded in escaping from F.B.I.
custody. Now, May is leading a team of
S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to reacquire him.
Unfortunately, he spots Trip at the bus terminal where he’s visiting one
of his “hot boxes.” Then he spots Bobbi
and ditches her on a bus to Dallas, switching buses at the last minute to go to
Boston, tailed by Hunter. Hunter follows
him to a bar which turns out to be a major Hydra hideout, as the bartender
knows him and he and Sunil Bakshi are able to talk openly about Hydra and
S.H.I.E.L.D. in front of him. Ward
offers to give Bakshi a face-to-face meeting with Coulson in exchange for
himself getting a face-to-face meeting with Whitehall. However, Ward arranges this by killing
Bakshi’s guards, tying him up, and leaving him in the storage closet for May’s
team to find when they storm the bar.
Following this little mission Ward changes his appearance before leaving
to go after his brother.
Ward has easily been
one of the most fascinating characters on the series ever since he revealed
himself as a Hydra mole in “Turn, Turn, Turn” (1x17). His loyalty to Garrett at the end of season 1
was unquestioning—and we now know that to be because Garrett believed in him
and gave him an opportunity when it looked like his life was essentially
over. His ability to infiltrate
Coulson’s team, gain their trust, and neutralize any potential threats (May and
Skye) was very impressive. In fact, he
may even be better than Romanoff at undercover work, considering that
practically his whole life was an undercover assignment for Hydra. However, the first part of this half-season
did not give him much to do beyond providing helpful pieces of exposition in
exchange for face-time with Skye. This
episode starts to amend that by letting Ward show off his spy skills. In rewatching the episode, I think it’s clear
that Ward knew full well that Hunter was following him to the bar, and that
Ward wanted him to do so just so S.H.I.E.L.D. would be in place to find Bakshi.
Now what is Ward
actually trying to do here? That’s the
biggest question we need to be asking.
From “A Fractured House,” it seems as though Ward wants to be a member
of Coulson’s team, even after everything that had happened between them. However, Coulson flat-out rejected his claim
of being a member of the team, instead electing to hand him over to his
(possibly abusive depending on which Ward brother you believe) brother, who
planned to put him on trial and most likely have him executed for treason in
order to get a boost in the upcoming election.
After this it would be easy for us to assume that Ward will return to
Hydra wholeheartedly since they at least won’t turn him over to Christian. And at the beginning of the episode this
seems to be his plan: he is trying to
get away from S.H.I.E.L.D. and make his way to a Hydra rallying point (meaning
the bar). At the bar, he even offers
Bakshi the extremely tempting opportunity to kill Coulson and eliminate
S.H.I.E.L.D. as a threat to Hydra’s ultimate victory. And then Ward turned around and captured
Bakshi to leave him as a present for S.H.I.E.L.D., giving them a new source for
information on Hydra. I think at this
point Ward’s goal is to prove himself to Coulson and Skye so that they will
trust him again and restore his place on the team. Yeah, good luck with that, guy…
Overall I like how
this episode sets things in motion for S.H.I.E.L.D.’s eventual discovery of the
hidden alien city, resolves the alien writing and T.A.H.I.T.I. plots, and sets
Ward loose on the world. There are a few
things I didn’t like so much (like Skye getting punk’d so badly by Coulson),
but overall I enjoyed the episode. Next
time around, we get more on the villains!
What was your favorite
part of this episode? Do you think that
Hank Thompson/Cameron Klein will make a reappearance at some point down the
road?
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