Agents of SHIELD 1/6

There is so much that can be said about Marvel’s new show Agents of SHIELD. And so here I am to say all I can. This will be a series of blogs that spans six posts, assuming Wikipedia is correct in that there will be a total of 22 episodes. The format will simply be a synopses and review of four episodes at a time, so this will end up being posted about once a month (unless they keep making us wait two weeks between episodes like they are right now).  

Episode One (9.24.13): The pilot. Or, as I like to call it “Coulson Lives!” Yes, that is correct, Coulson survived his fight in The Avengers and lived to die another day. And now we get to sit back and watch as he develops… and scratch our heads and wonder how the hell he survived. The most cohesive explanation (thanks internet) seems to be that he faked his death as a form of motivation for The Avengers to get their shit done, and then was put into hiding (sent on a long vacation) until his next assignment – which he is currently fulfilling with SHIELD. In this first episode, we learn about the hacktivist group Rising Tide, and a key player in the group, Skye, who lives in her van. We also learn of Project Centipede, which takes humans with special abilities (like Mike Peterson in this episode who seemed to have incredible, hulk like strength – though he doesn’t turn green) and enhances those abilities to make them super human. We later learn that these human experiments being done by Project Centipede are exploding (literally, in a ball of fire) due to a glitch in their planning. The SHIELD team essentially abducts Skye for questioning after she tries to talk to Mike, and unsuccessfully tries to convince him to let her help him. Then, Mike abducts her. There’s a crazy scene where everybody is yelling and has guns, and everyone could die if just one thing goes wrong. Then the bad guys go down, Skye gets invited to join SHIELD and everyone lives happily ever after. WAIT! This isn’t Disney. That happily ever after shit doesn’t exist here. Nope, they get a call for an 0-8-4 and head on to their next task, while most disagree with Coulson about bringing Skye on board (literally, cuz they have a big ass plane that gets them around everywhere). And Lola, oh don’t get me started about Lola. She is beautiful. She’s Coulson’s car, but damn is she pretty.

**for more information on how I concluded Coulson’s ‘death’ check out: http://screenrant.com/agents-of-shield-tv-coulson-death-explained-spoilers/2/

Episode Two (10.1.13): 0-8-4. In this episode, the SHIELD team is sent to Peru to investigate an 0-8-4 (an object of unknown origin). Once they arrive, they find that it is actually a piece of Hydra technology that is powered by Tesseract energy. While in the area, they have to constantly be concerned by rebels. They eventually run into Coulson’s old ally Camilla Reyes, and her crew. They team together to obtain the Hydra technology, and fight off the rebels while rushing to seek refuge on the SHIELD plane. Once on board, and in the air, Reyes and her crew betray Coulson and try to take over, and take the Hydra technology for themselves to fight of the rebels in Peru. There is a big fight on board, the plane is brutally damaged, but the SHIELD team finally learns how to work together and utilize all of their individual skills. They win, of course. And then, scene swap: Skye gets a text from someone within Rising Tide, and she confirms her alliance to them! Jerk. And then, scene swap: Coulson is being yelled at for the damage to their plane, by none other than Nick Fury! Yes, at this moment I did, in fact, jump up out of my chair screaming (my neighbors on the third floor probably heard me) “Holy shit he’s back!!!!” Then I sat back down just in time to hear him tell Coulson that having Skye with them poses a great threat.

Episode Three (10.8.13): The Asset. Open on a truck driving down the road. All is normal. Or so it seems… until cars drive past and get blown into the air. Then the truck goes up, and comes back down, seemingly by magic. It comes to be that this truck is transporting Dr. Franklin Hall, and asset of SHIELD, who gets kidnapped by Hall’s former research partner Ian Quinn, and others with him. They are the ones that caused the cars and truck to float in the air, by a gravity device they invented. They use Dr. Hall to help them create a gravity device, called a gravitonium generator, which they plan to use to take over the world’s gravity. The SHIELD team needs to try to get into Quinn’s mansion to try to rescue Hall. Skye volunteers, and all of them are hesitant about this, until she hacks her way through getting an invitation to one of his parties. They set her up with some gadgets and gear that will allow her to help the others get onto the highly secured property. Skye ends up going into the mansion, and near Quinn’s office when she gets caught. She then tricks Hall into believing that she is really working for Rising Tide, even though SHIELD is talking in her ear. Once she gains his trust, she destroys the ear piece, and SHIELD is no longer connected to Skye. It seems that she really has betrayed them. Then, she does the right thing, manages to reset the system to allow Coulson and Ward onto the property to try to rescue Hall. And then in an interesting turn of events, Quinn turns on Skye, and tries to attack him. She finally, finally uses her physical training that she’s been getting from Ward and manages to disarm him. Then she jumps out of a window because she doesn’t have what it takes to pull the trigger. Downstairs, Hall and Coulson are in the midst of a battle, while the gravitonium generator is going all out of whack and causing the gravity in the area to go berserk. As usual, big fight ensues, and SHIELD wins … or so it seems. It turns out Dr Hall is working for the bad guys, and wasn’t truly kidnapped, because he didn’t have a problem with it. Coulson manages to get him sucked into the generator, which seems to shut it down and return the gravity situation back to normal. In the final scene however, the generator is being locked up, in a vault in SHIELD security. And then, a hand reaches out from the generator, but in the same silvery color (honestly, it reminded me of the Silver Surfer). And then the screen goes dark. We may never understand the gravity of this situation. Only time will tell which way things will be pulled. (yeah, that was a terrible pair of puns, forgive me?)

Episode Four (10.15.13): Eye Spy. Yeah, I’m just gonna put this out there… this episode was creepy as hell, but so freaking awesome. Imagine hundreds of men walking in suits, carrying a briefcase which is handcuffed to his hand, and wearing the same mask. Nobody knows who they are, where they’re going, or what the briefcase holds. Some of them board the subway, and then shit goes bad. The lights are knocked out by a girl on the train, and then when they come back on, all of the men are dead, one of them had his hand cut off, and his briefcase is missing. This is just one of numerous thefts that seem to be happening unplanned, and almost impossible to pull off, so SHIELD is brought in to investigate. They learn it is one of Coulson’s protégé Akela Amadour from long ago, seemingly turned to the dark side, all the while she had been presumed dead. Coulson doesn’t think she could turn on SHIELD but May thinks she is just being used as a weapon. May goes to investigate without telling anyone, and finds out she is being controlled by a device in her eye and if she doesn’t follow every command, she is killed. It is so bad, she even has to ask permission just to be able to go to sleep. There is a fight scene between Amadour and May, and Amadour ends up in SHIELD control while her feed is hijacked. Ward and Skye take over control of the feed, and Ward, wearing a pair of glasses that transmits all of the commands that Amadour would normally be receiving, runs through the tasks sent to Amadour. While this is happening, Fitz and Simmons are trying to do surgery to remove the eye from Amadour’s head so she will no longer have to be under their control. The highlight comedy moment of this episode was when Ward walks up to a guard office, and the resulting command is simply “Seduce Him”, proceeded by a commercial break. I absolutely lost it, finding it quite hilarious the idea of Ward seducing another man. Well, he beat the shit out of him instead. At one point during these missions, Ward makes the mistake of letting his reflection be shown in a piece of glass. It is at this point that Fitz and Simmons have to quickly cut the eye out of Amadour’s head and throw it in a bin where it promptly explodes, leaving her with one, robot-free eye. While all of this is going on Coulson is trying to find the individual transmitting the messages. When he finds the man, and reveals himself as SHIELD, the man dies at the hands of a device installed in his eye, with a fail-safe, just like the one in Amadour’s eye. Coulson promises Amadour a fair trial, and she is sent on her way. After this, the team has a little fun. Ward and Fitz are playing poker and Skye is in the other room, planning to use the glasses to help Fitz cheat. She then tells him in order to do this, she would also be seeing him naked. He gives up, and leaves the room. Skye of course uses the glasses anyway, to see Ward without clothes on. And so, they all live to see another day.

I know there is a lot of details left out of this, but I mean come on. It’s an hour long show. If I put in every single detail, I might as well just give you a link and tell you to watch the show yourself. As these episodes are aired almost every week, the next post related to Agents of SHIELD will be near the end of November. Overall, this show goes above and beyond being impressive and I cannot wait to see what is in store, and to see where Skye truly holds her alliance! (I might already know the answer to that, but I’m pretending I haven’t yet seen the fifth episode since that will be included in the second post in a few weeks).