Welcome back WormholeRiders dedicated to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.!
Episode info: “The Hub” – Dangerous secrets are being kept from Coulson’s team, and he works the system to save Ward and Fitz when they are sent on a Level 8 classified mission that may end in tragedy!
Guest starring are Saffron Burrows as Victoria Hand, Maximiliano Hernandez as Agent Sitwell, Ilia Volok as Vladimir, Alison White as Anya, Charles Halford as Agent Shaw and Vladimir Sizov as Siberian soldier #1, ”The Hub” was written by Rafe Judkins & Lauren LeFranc and directed by Bobby Roth..
The Hub:
The episode begins with Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), the prisoner of some bad guys. He puts up a brave James Bond type of front, chatting with his captors about traces of mould in the room. Enter the interrogator, who stops to examine his weapons of torture. Coulson does not seem concerned.
Just when we think things are looking grim for Coulson, he chats with his torturer like an old friend. It turns out this bad guy is actually a good guy. This is Agent Shaw who escapes with Coulson and with Melinda May’s (Ming Na Wen) and Grant Ward’s (Brett Dalton) assistance. Once safely aboard the Shield Aircraft (The Bus), Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge)uses her tech to remove some information that has been stored in a small capsule inside Shaws sinuses.
Coulson informs Shaw that they are headed to The Hub to drop him off and to report/get new orders. Once there, the whole place is impressively large and high tech looking. Skye’s (Chloe Bennet) role in this episode seems to be to play the common man…or woman. She asks questions of Coulson, Ward, Fitz (Iain De Caestecke) and Simmons so that we can learn more about the purpose of the Hub and the people who work there.
Agent Sitwell meets Coulson, May, and Ward and ushers them into the inner sanctum to have a chat with one of the upper echelon of agents, Victoria Hand. Skye’s bracelet stops her in her tracks from moving forward past the big glass doors that might as well be made out of iron, because she is not going in. Coulson almost seems to have a smirk on his face when he tells her she is not invited because she has been a bad girl.
Chechnya wants independence from Russia and Georgia and has created a super weapon called the Overkill Device, that can cause other people’s weapons to explode if they get too close.
Agent Hand explains that two agents will be required to go into the area where the weapon is being hidden to take it apart. At this point, I am thinking, what is to stop them from just building a new one?
While we are at it, the choice of Ward and Leo Fitz seems almost comical. Ward, we know will be straight laced and all business, where Fitz is more about creature comforts and behaving like a white collar employee.
This should be interesting. To start off, Fitz gets his cart of goodies (technology) caught between two of the many glass doors, making him look like a bit of a buffoon. This does not fill Ward with confidence in his new partner. I would be somewhat worried as well.
We learn that Jemma and Fitz have a very special relationship. She is terribly worried about him and even makes him his favorite sandwich. With just a bit more than a hint of trepidation, Ward and fitz head out. Skye is also worried about them, but Coulson assured her that the people who put these “ops” together are the best of the best.
In the Caucus Mountains, Fitz is busy chattering away to Ward. He seems not at all concerned about his current situation. Ward places a rock that is actually a signaling device on the ground outside a local bar. Ward asks to see an old friend, who seems to have fallen out of favour with the thugs inside. Things begin to look pretty bleak for the two agents until the power goes out. Fitz to the rescue. Wow, this is just a little convenient is it not?
Skye is like a dog with a bone. She has no intention of letting things go and not knowing what is going on. As she sees more people dressed up in preparation for a battle, heading out, she begins to think that Ward and Fitz may be in trouble. She recruits Jemma to assist her in her sneaky scheme.
Fitz, hanging upside down over a pit, works to get the power on. The woman in charge has begun calling him Mishka, which seems to mean “Little Bear” in Russian. You know you are fairly safe when the boss has a pet name for you. Within moments, he gets the power back on. Fitz is the hero with the Russians. They are now willing to take Ward and Fitz across the border.
It seems as if Ward has underestimated Fitz. He shorted the electrical box so that the power would go out and he would have to fix it for the Russians. It has gotten them across the border, he brags. It does not take long until some bad guys show up and shoot up the driver. Ward has to follow Fitz as he runs for the hills. If nothing else, Fitz has a great sense of self preservation.
While May does her Tai Chi, Coulson stops by to unload on her. He likes the way they do things on the plane, he tells her. He does not like keeping things from his team. Still, he admits, he needs to trust the system. Although she has not said a word, Coulson thanks her for her help. As he leaves, she just rolls her eyes.
Working together, Skye and Jemma manage to take down the security system that is blocking Skye from getting the information she needs about Ward and Fitz’s location. Armed with that information, and the added knowledge that there was no extraction plan for them, Skye takes her information to Coulson.
Ward and Fitz hunker down in a drainage pipe. To make it as hard for the guards and the dogs to track them as possible, Ward tosses Fitz’s sandwich into a puddle. He does not want to make it any easier for the dogs to find them. The dogs would have little trouble tracking them with or without a sandwich. The two of them should be moving as much as they can, since dogs are pretty good at tracking people. If they were not, the police and military would not use them as often as they do.
If you want to break into a heavily guarded secret facility, how would you do it? Would you cut through wire, parachute in, hijack a truck? If you are an Agent of Shield, you lie in the middle of a road with a road colored sleeping bag and wait for a truck to drive over you so you can sneak a ride into the secure area. The only problem with that is, you are very likely to get a tire print on your face.
Forgetting that small problem, let us ignore the likelihood that our two heroes should have become road porridge. They have managed to sneak inside the facility. They have discovered the Overkill weapon and Fitz does the magic he is capable of and takes the weapon apart. Naturally, they are discovered. Fitz has removed the vital component and can use it to destroy the bad guys weapons.
As they attempt to get away, Fitz and Ward discover that they are outnumbered by bad guys. No problem, the Shield team show up just in time in their high tech plane to take out the bad guys and save the good guys. We knew they would. We may not have known quite how they would pull it off, but we knew they would.
The things that were done right in this episode were the way that both Coulson and Skye proved that they would put themselves in harm’s way to look after their team. Coulson took responsibility for Skye’s behaviour, even though the second strike regarding her lack of team behaviour should have caused her to lose her job. At least in real life it would have. Coulson also found time to inform Skye about her parents. He did not give her all the information, but he gave her enough to satisfy her for now.
What did not work for me were the over the top gadgets that turned the show into somewhat of a caricature of itself. If you are going to invent high tech gadgets to help save the day, I think it would be better if those gadgets had some basis in real science, or, at least, did not seem completely foolish to use. The perfect example for me is the road coloured sleeping bag. It stretches credulity to assume that the two guys would not get run over and killed by the truck.
Thanks to Kenn for final staging, audio video embedding and additional image selection, and many thanks to you for visiting for stopping by the WormholeRiders News Agency dedicated Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. web site!
Please feel free to share this article with your friends, co-workers and or family. Feel free to leave your comments and we look forward to you visiting in the future.
Or as many of our readers and visitors often do, visit WHR on Twitter, WHR on Facebook or visit me on Twitter by clicking the text links or images avatars in this news story. I and Team WHR look forward to Seeing You on The Other Side!”
Regards,
Thank you.
ArcticGoddess1 (Patricia)