Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The Asset and The Hard Call

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The ability to make decisions is one of the most sought-after qualities in any potential job employee. Those who call themselves ‘followers’ or confess that they are much better staying inside a box of rules and being ordered around are often rejected from the pool of applicants.

This most likely stems from a desire on the corporate level to train the next generation to take over the business once they retire.

They like people who are innovative, creative, intelligent, and assertive – people who will take initiative and show that they can make the tough decisions it takes to keep the company afloat. Also, when it all hits the fan, they want people that can hold their cool and think on their feet.

This seems like an odd requirement at times for a computer company and more the requirements for being a soldier – but if you have critical thinking skills, it is really all the same. Hope for the best, expect the worst, and be ready, because at any time you might be asked to make what is known as ‘the hard call.’

The ‘hard call’ is a phrase often used in television (though presumably it is used in the real world too, sometimes under different names – most notably the ‘no-win scenario’ of Star Trek).

Such is usually applied from a mentor towards his grasshopper, and often indicates a sort of ‘coming of age’ wherein someone who has been trained and taught suddenly comes up against a situation in which the outcome will not be favorable no matter what he does.

In the movie U-571, the executive officer Andrew Tyler (Matthew McConaughey) has to make the choice to send one of his friends to their possible death (the outcome not revealed here in case of spoilers). In the movie Surrogates, (incidentally by the same director as U-571, (Jonathan Mostow), Greer (Bruce Willis) has to decide whether or not to shut down the Surrogate Program.

These choices were life-altering and, ultimately, life-defining. We sometimes call the point at which these decisions happen the ‘point of no return’, but that is another discussion entirely. The ‘hard call’ is something no human ever wants to make, because no human ever likes to lose.

Thus, it is one of the most important story lines to be addressed in any coming of age story – which admittedly, ABC’s, ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ is – for Skye (Chloe Bennet), anyway.

Major spoilers for this episode, previous episodes, and some other shows and movies to follow!

The Asset:

This week’s exciting new episode, directed by Milan Cheylov, written by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, sets Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and his smart if little-tested team of agents on a rescue mission to save one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s own: Doctor Franklin Hall (Ian Hart). 

This mission is a somewhat emotional one. Two of Coulson’s agents: Leo Fitz (Iain de Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge), regard Hall with somewhat starstruck eyes and fond memories of his time as their professor.

For Skye, this mission becomes her first chance to really prove herself to the organization. For Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), this mission is a test of his trust and faith in Skye not only as a field agent, but as a field agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. named Melinda May (Ming-Na) who once again takes the sidelines as Coulson goes into the action, something she clearly does not like to do.

Coulson himself ultimately has the most difficult time of it, looking Hall in the eye and making the decision to kill him, (or so he thinks). All in all, there is a lot of emotion tied up here, though the show does choose to mainly focus on the action to show these people can do their jobs under pressure.

Most alarming this week is Skye. She is S.H.I.E.L.D’s wild card in more ways than one, a charmer full of sarcasm, wit, and intelligence. I am not personally convinced she has definitely chosen a side in all of this, even after her determined: “I want this,” at the end of the episode, (more episodes to come will convince me, I am sure).

Somewhat anarchist in her mindset, she eagerly steps out of bounds to play things her own way, regardless of what she has been told to do or what the plan is. Her unorthodox approaches to solving problems will no doubt cause a lot of difficulty for the team, not to mention leave a lot of messes behind.

Her choice to out herself as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent working undercover was a big blow, and it came back to bite her when the tables were turned. It was a large moment of character development for her, especially when she realized there was no way she was getting out of the place on her own without help.

And while her flippant attitude kept her confidence and cockiness up, she returned to S.H.I.E.L.D. clearly realizing that she is playing with the big boys. She got tastes of what it was like to make that ‘hard call’ through her mission, from hacking into the backdoor to earn herself an invite to outing herself as an undercover agent.

But it was getting a job offer that essentially would not only turn her against S.H.I.E.L.D. but open a lot of doors for Rising Tide that truly tested her.

Her choice there is the strongest support she has for actually becoming a S.H.I.E.L.D agent instead of continuing to work for Rising Tide.  If Coulson and Ward know or suspect Skye is an undercover agent working for Rising Tide inside S.H.I.E.L.D., they have only given small hints.

Coulson constantly acknowledges that Rising Tide is where she is from, not to mention pointing out that her job is to ignore protocol and find backdoor channels of getting around things. He also genuinely gives her openings to see what S.H.I.E.L.D. is and what it fights for.

Skye’s hatred of ‘the establishment’ is being worn away as she begins to notice that the big world out there might just be worse than those things she has come to hate.

Either way, Coulson is taking a chance on Skye, Ward is reluctantly playing along, and we do not really know if Skye is as ‘in’ as she thinks when she texted Rising Tide at the end of last week’s episode.

She has an intelligent, logical mind (stating that she is the only one who can go undercover because she is not yet an actual S.H.I.E.L.D. agent), but she is also beginning to feel for the group, (her first reason for going undercover is to save Hall because Fitz-Simmons loves him).

Skye might be pulling out of Rising Tide, and of course S.H.I.E.L.D.’s very name implies it is not exactly the easiest organization to infiltrate. There are a lot of options and we just have to wait and see what the writers do.

The tagline for this week was: “Every villain has an origin story.” The real question is, which one of them is the villain? There is Franklin Hall, a man who allowed himself to be kidnapped so he could destroy his life’s work, and Ian Quinn (David Conrad), a billionaire who has harnessed the power of gravity that Hall theorized would be possible?

Both of them were left up in the air, so to speak, and so either one could come back later on in this season. The tagline being what it is, however, indicates this could be a real villain that may stretch past the season, which is an exciting concept with the way it was done. The writers definitely knew how to get my attention (and hopefully many of yours)!

Expanding on the discussion of the ‘hard call’, we saw many characters this week go through that painful process. Perhaps most difficult of all was Franklin Hall’s choice. Pulling a Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), Hall used his knowledge of Quinn’s whereabouts to get into his laboratory and deliberately destroy the place, including the massive creation that was ultimately his idea.

Hall had been working on gravitonium since he was ‘barely old enough to drink’, but once he learned what Quinn planned to do with him, he chose to end his life in a massive tragedy that would possibly shut down the usage of the element forever. It was a blindingly awful choice, and showed Hall’s strength of character.

It turned him from a possible villain (for this episode, anyway), into an honorable and stunning character. Of course, if he manages to come back, we may not like him so much.

Perhaps second on the difficulty list would be Phil Coulson. He had to kill a friend. Really, that never gets easy. Hall’s ‘hard call’ had lasting repercussions that started before the actual catalyst had happened, and there is no doubt that Hall will remember Coulson as the one who ‘killed’ him. Hopefully, he recalls that Coulson was acting on Hall’s own wishes.

Speaking of Coulson, he shows once more his moxie in this week’s episode. In the films in which he has appeared, Coulson has stolen many hearts of Marvel fans. He seems sweet-natured and no-nonsense, but his tendencies to not ignore the elephant in the room, to be almost painfully forward, and to have – you know it – a somewhat adorable comeback every time he is challenged, have given him more development.

He has a past, he has confusion, (there is that rumor he is a clone, or a robot, or some kind of engineered being…), he has the hard ‘leader’ core, and somehow he manages to be completely endearing. Clark Gregg’s performance has made Phil Coulson into one of my favorite characters on TV since Gary Bell (Ryan Cartwright).

The direction and cinematography this week was particularly exciting for me. I have not seen an interior shot of a car (okay, a semi) being lifted up into the air since – well, the Avengers movie. It was somewhat breathtaking and actually made me gasp with delight when it happened.

The episode only improved, in my mind, when the gravity wells inside Hall’s device began to act up, throwing him and Coulson around the room. Gravity gives people a lot of room to play – we saw some of it in Stargate SG-1 in Ba’al’s (Cliff Simon) prison (easily some of the coolest stuff seen on that show by then) – and the camera angles were really fun to watch as Coulson and Hall faced off!

I am very excited to see where Joss Whedon and the writers of this series take us next. While at first somewhat skeptical about the premise, I can say that I have thoroughly enjoyed every episode ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ has played so far, and I think there is not only tremendous potential, but tremendous fun on the horizon.

The characters, I think, are quite diverse and finding themselves not only as a team, but as individuals. I am enthusiastic and eager to follow their personal and professional developments, and I invite all of you to come along!

See you next time!

Thanks to Kenn for final staging, audio video embedding and image selection, and thank you for visiting our dedicated Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. web site!

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Nayari09 (Pam)