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Can you say
“villain-centric episode”? That is
essentially what “The Things We Bury” is:
an opportunity for us to learn about the villains and their motivations. And this episode does an adequate job of
that. We learn who Daniel Whitehall is
and how he came to be the man he is. We
learn more about Skye’s father, the enigmatic “Doctor,” and what is driving his
actions in this war between S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra. We even learn some more about the villain for
the second half of the season, though it’s not until near the end of the season
that she is revealed as such. And we get
a little more information on Ward—or do we?
You really can’t tell with that guy.
Regardless, everything in the episode ties in with the theme of “buried
secrets.”
The episode begins
near the end of World War II, with Hydra scientist Werner Reinhardt conducting
experiments with the Obelisk. Evidently
the Obelisk was discovered by Chinese villagers who dug it up (it was buried),
and Reinhardt is forcing each of them to touch it in turn, measuring the rate
at which they are changed to stone. This
all changes, however, when the guards force a woman’s face into contact with
the Obelisk and the Obelisk begins to glow.
Reinhardt realizes that there is something special about the woman and orders
that she be prepped for surgery. This
order is delayed, however, by news of Red Skull’s death and the Allies’
approach. I assume that this sets up the
scene at the beginning of “Shadows” (2x01) when Peggy Carter and the Howling
Commandos captured Reinhardt and the Obelisk and presumably freed the woman. From there the next flashback is to Reinhardt
in an interrogation room at the old S.S.R. prison called “The Rat,” where Peggy
Carter interrogates him. He tells her
the “story” of a legend about a star the fell from the sky and blue angels who
appeared bringing a gift for mankind… only he believes that the visitors
actually came to conquer the world—an assertion which Cal (in the present)
corrects: they came to “end” the world,
leaving a worthy few behind.
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Peggy refuses to make
any deals with Reinhardt, instead saying that she will lock him up, bury his
research, and make sure he’s forgotten about.
44 years pass by in a quick aging montage until Undersecretary Alexander
Pierce arranges for Reinhardt’s medical parole shortly after Hydra discovered
that same woman in a Chinese village.
Obviously this was arranged by Hydra (a fact made abundantly clear when
the man who came to free him whispered “Hail Hydra” in his ear when they were
alone—are you telling me the Rat doesn’t have cameras in the cells? Meh…).
Hydra smuggles Reinhardt to his same facility in Austria, where they
show him the elders from a certain Chinese village, one of whom he recognizes
as that same woman (whom we now know to be Jiaying). He says he’s going to experiment on her to
find out why she hasn’t aged, and we hear her screaming as she is dragged from
the room. The vivisection montage was
surprisingly graphic for a network TV series, even airing an hour later than it
did in the first season. I’m surprised
they got away with showing as much detail as they did. Once Reinhardt had taken as much from Jiaying
as he could, he injected into himself, de-aging himself by 44 years and
reinventing himself as Daniel Whitehall, and had her body disposed of (which
they did by just dumping it in the woods—you really thought that one through,
guys).
This leads into the
second villain’s story: The mysterious
“Doctor.” At the beginning of the
episode all we really know about him is that he is Skye’s father and blames
S.H.I.E.L.D. for taking her away from him—that’s why he went to work for
Whitehall. However, in this episode we
learn that he knows all about the alien city (just not its location) and that
he also knows a lot of the secrets behind the Obelisk. He knows that it is a key which will “divine”
who is worthy of entering the city and unlocking the power within. When Whitehall asks about his motivations,
Cal says that he wants revenge on S.H.I.E.L.D. for taking away everything from
him, after which he will be reunited with his family… “in the Afterlife” (note
the capitalization… whoa). When he comes
into contact with Coulson on his mission, however, Cal reveals that he does not
have any interest in working for Hydra; his sole interest is in bringing his
daughter to the city so she can learn about her history (and receive her
birthright). Instead of really hating
Coulson, he is motivated by the desire to avenge his wife (revealed in a major
twist to be Jiaying) and be reunited with his daughter. And finally at the end of the episode the
real kicker comes when Cal discovers Jiaying’s body in the woods and mourns
over her. The pairing of this flashback
with his line about “looking your enemy right in the eye” brings his full
motivation into sharp focus: he knows
what Whitehall did to his wife, and he has placed himself in the perfect
position to take revenge on him. I
really like what they did with Cal’s character all through this season: he was very much a villain from the get-go,
but starting in this episode he really becomes more sympathetic, to the point
where we almost want him to succeed (particularly with how he defines “success”
in the mid-season finale). In fact, at
the end of the season he’s as close to a hero as that character can ever be,
choosing to kill his evil wife in order to save their daughter.
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| Image Courtesy marvel.wikia.com |
The final villain in
this episode is of course Ward, who captures his brother Christian while he’s
on the way to the family cabin for a romantic getaway (with his mistress, the
cad). Ward takes Christian into the
woods and forces him to dig up the old well which their parents had
buried. This scene gives us some
interesting insight into both of these characters, though I’m not entirely sure
if we can believe any of it!
After all, Ward and Christian have both accused the other of being a
manipulative liar, and both of them are in professions where manipulation and
lying are considered virtues. So which
one of them really pushed Thomas into the well?
Did either of them tell the truth?
Christian’s “confession” was obviously coerced out of him, but that
doesn’t necessarily make it false. About
all we can say is that we really can’t trust either of these characters. Or rather we can’t trust Ward, especially
after he straight-up murdered his parents, framed his brother for it, and
torched their house! And now Ward has
joined Whitehall’s little cabal as his S.H.I.E.L.D. expert, joining Cal who is
serving as the Diviner expert. At this
point we know that these three will be trying to locate the alien city, though
each for entirely different reasons.
There are also two
interesting S.H.I.E.L.D.-centric stories going on in this episode. The first is Bobbi’s continued efforts to
interrogate Bakshi, which lead to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s discovery that Whitehall is
actually Werner Reinhardt (and our discovery that Simmons has a bit of
hero-worship going on for fellow-Brit Peggy Carter). This connects very well with Whitehall’s back
story, but it also gives us some interesting character moments between Bobbi
and Hunter. Hunter has been badmouthing
Bobbi all season and never quite seems to trust her, and now we know why. Their history together is really bad, but he
really does seem to love her. So even
though he believes he can never trust her, he still wants to. And that leads to the two of them having sex
in the S.H.I.E.L.D. van. On the one hand
I can see how their “hooking up” is part of their character development,
especially in light of the “Real S.H.I.E.L.D.” plot in the back half of the
season, but on the other hand it felt kind of gratuitous.
The other S.H.I.E.L.D.
story involved Coulson’s team going on a mission to “borrow” U.S. geological
satellites in order to use them to find the alien city. Coulson uses Skye and Trip to place the two
parts of an E.M.P. device into play where they will knock the U.S. Air Force
facility in Hawaii offline, giving S.H.I.E.L.D. an opportunity to install a
backdoor into the U.S.A.F. system at a secondary facility in Australia. There’s also a quick reference in there to
Audrey, who gave him the tie which he had Trip pick up from the dry
cleaners. You can read into that that
Coulson still cares for her, but it’s not much to go by.
Coulson then takes the
team to Australia, where he, Trip, and Fitz infiltrate the facility so Fitz can
install the backdoor transceiver. It’s
nice that they show Fitz practicing the installation a few times and struggling
with it. We knew he was most likely
going to do it, but that let us see the struggle—he’s still not up to full
strength because one of his hands is still not quite right. A Hydra team is there for them to fight off,
but only as a way for the Doctor to get close enough to Coulson to give him a
message. It seems a little convenient
that Hydra showed up there at the same time that S.H.I.E.L.D. did, but I suppose
it is possible that they had been staking that facility out because the Doctor
knew S.H.I.E.L.D. would need the satellite system to find the facility. This gives the Doctor a little more character
development as someone who is unstable and only working with Whitehall to get
close enough to kill him. He also cares
about Skye a lot, which may have been the only thing that prevented him from
killing Trip.
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| Image Courtesy www.lylesmoviefiles.com |
As far as
villain-centric episodes are concerned, this was pretty good. It introduced all the villains for the season
(including Jiaying, something we didn’t realize until “Scars,” 2x20) and
explored their motivations. There was
some decent action with the fight at the military facility, but it kept the
focus squarely on the characters. I
haven’t been commenting on the effects too much lately because the effects
largely seem to be stunts and practical effects and I haven’t seen anything
really bad. However, I do want to
comment on the age makeup they used for old Whitehall and young Cal. I really wasn’t convinced with the Whitehall
makeup; it looked like it was too much and too thick and he really couldn’t
move under it. Young Cal, by contrast,
was quite well done—helped along by the dark lighting, I think. Considering how well Marvel has been able to
age Hayley Atwell for Peggy Carter in Captain America: The Winter Soldier
and Ant-Man I’m surprised that Whitehall’s age makeup wasn’t more
convincing. However, I didn’t find
myself getting pulled out of the story too much by it, so I guess I can let it
go.
What did you think of
this episode? Do you like these
villain-centric episodes? Do you think
Marvel Studios needs to do that with a movie or two—focus exclusively on the
villains (a la Sinister Six, Masters of Evil, or Thunderbolts)?
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