Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Face My Enemy and See What I’m Dealing With!

Hello and welcome back to Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.!

As always, there are spoilers ahead!

“I can’t believe I’m the only one seeing this right now.”

Leave it to Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) to not only summarize a situation perfectly in one sentence, but step right through the camera and summarize the feelings of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s some 4.3 million viewers. This fabulous show is beginning to settle in nicely to its stride for this season.

I was a little surprised that it eliminated most of its promotional material within the first three episodes of the season, first by taking out Isabelle Hartley (Lucy Lawless, who really did not get enough screen time), then turning the fascinating Carl Creel (Brian Patrick Wade) into stone, and then dropping the psychologically damaged Blizzard (Dylan Minnette) into the ocean, seemingly dead.

But the addition of Jemma Simmons’ (Elizabeth Henstridge) “new job”, the jaw-dropping but not entirely unexpected sight of Raina (Ruth Negga) being able to touch the device, and the entirely justified reaction of Leo Fitz (Iain de Caestecker) was amazing!

This proved repeatedly that he can rock this acting thing in seeing Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) behind bars has all pushed us forward on the roller coaster of this season!

The proof is that the writers are more mature and know a lot more about what they are doing.

This week’s episode definitely focused on relationships. Not the romantic kind, but the kind of team friendships and bonding moments that everyone – viewer and character alike – needs to solidify solutions to conflicts and motivations. First on the score was Phil and Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen).

Despite suffering a deep betrayal last season, it is evident that their war history has overcome previous conflicts. Melinda’s feelings for Phil are undeniable and a huge motivator as to why she continues to perform the job for him.

Melinda May is not quite as much the ice queen as many would believe and she has been opening up steadily even through this season. She is Phil’s confidant and as much his rock as he is hers.

She is also a remarkable and trustworthy soldier and serves as a rock for the viewers. Ming-Na’s impressive ability to handle great emotion with great subtlety is reminiscent of other great actors both of and before this time.

The Phil and Melinda relationship also forms one of the strongest ‘core mission’ teams of the show. They both know how the other works, they both have motivations to trust the other, and they both can play off of each other when the time is right.

Having the first half of this episode basically be about them was really fun, from watching their somewhat electrifying dance (while they checked out the room) to May’s comment: “We’re modern,” (which cracked me up), to the ease with which they go about their business. With the disintegration of many season one relationships still fresh in our memories, it was a comfort and a joy to see this one still coming out strong.

Of course, the talked-about scene in this episode will be that awesome catfight between May and May. While I certainly do not mind the plot device of twins fighting each other, it is an idea we have seen done several times over, usually to the confusion of the main character.

This was not the case, as Phil delivered his now-famous line, and then took off after another bad guy. While the impostor was physically impressive, she exhibited the same characteristics of any typical bad guy (especially in a ‘comic’ sense of the show): she talked too much and was too agreeable. She was an unfortunate dead giveaway from the start and while she almost brought down the Bus, she was out of her league. The fight was pretty fun to watch, but ultimately it felt more like your basic bad-guy fight with an attempt at humor thrown in.

The heart of the episode, I feel, was brought again by Iain de Caestecker. His abilities to convey what Fitz is going through despite the sudden loss of screen time brings me into the show every time he is on screen. Now that we know Jemma Simmons is in danger in her HYDRA cover, seeing her as Fitz’s hallucination make the drama for him much more real, and Iain builds on that, convincingly (and in my opinion realistically), reacting to everything around him. I got choked up when he walked away from the bonding moments going on.

Last season, Fitz felt he had something to prove after Ward saved Jemma. Now he has something else to prove – that he is capable of doing his job despite being heartbreakingly damaged. By the end of the episode, he is doing that, enough so that the rest of the team sees what he wants – and is more than willing to give it to him. Fitz is beginning to heal and move on, as we see with his dismissal of Jemma repeatedly through the show, and then his opening up with the beer, spilling out a short tale of woe (one sentence, but it was all he had to say), that showed he had something in common with the others when it came to ‘exes’.

When it comes to the others, they are coming together somewhat nicely. It still feels like the writers are not entirely sure what to do with Antoine Triplett (B.J. Britt), but Mac (Henry Simmons) is rapidly becoming a fan favorite with his compassion and solidarity.

I needed no time to warm to Lance Hunter (Nick Blood) – he is clearly the ‘bad boy with the heart of gold’, and Nick does a fine job of making him just downright fun in every episode he has been in so far. He is going to be one of my favorites before long, I can tell.

Skye (Chloe Bennet) is not nearly as whiny or rough as she was last season (though I am not a fan of her bangs, they hide her beautiful face and sometimes get in the way of her expressiveness), and the team as a whole seems to be fitting together quicker and possibly better than first season. I hope they find something more for Grant Ward than what they are doing to him – Brett Dalton has some wings to stretch!

On the whole this episode, while showing evidence that the team is coming together, felt a little like filler (though necessary filler). We needed to see the painting with the alien writing, we needed to see more effects of HYDRA’s brainwashing (because seriously, that is creepy), and we needed to give the team a moment to go: “Oh yeah, we are all becoming friends.” I am sure next week will be back to some action-packed moments.

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Nayari09 (Pam)