In this week’s episode of “Agents” the teamwork hi-jinks continue.
An S.H.I.E.L.D. agent (a physicist) was kidnapped by his former colleague, and
it is up to Coulson’s misfit team to rescue him. Only... the team is not that
misfit any more. In “0-8-4” (last week’s episode) the group had to work
together basically for the first time to defeat Peru’s commandos – they did it
by working as a team, if you do not get it. In this episode they are already
working as a team without too many problems. Skye is the newbie on the team and
Ward’s physical training is grueling (probably) so there is some tension but
nothing that remains unresolved before the episode ends; Coulson’s little problems
– reloading his gun, his wardrobe consists of identical black suits – are mostly
tension breakers and aren’t really relevant to the plot; and agent May decides
that she would rather be in the field than just pilot the agents’ plane. The
last part really came unexpectedly – May gave no indication of that during the
rest of the episode and revealed this to Coulson at the very end of this
episode – and honestly while it will be interesting to see how this will change
the team’s dynamic, we could have lived without it as well.
As for the team’s dynamic so far, it has worked. Skye used
her feminine willies and Rising Tide connections to be invited to the villain’s
party, and used to the technology given by team FitzSimmons to gain access for
Ward and Coulson to come inside as well and save the day. Simple, easy and it
works – except for the actual rescue part, but first...
It may sound strange – this is a show whose characters have
to deal with “Tesseract energies” and “gravitonium” (probably right next to Wakanda’s
“vibranium” on the periodic table) – but “Agents” may end up rather predictable
and mundane as far as a show goes. There is only so much you can do with the “secret
agents” plotline before your audience realizes that they have seen it before –
in a Bond movie, most likely – and will change the channels, causing the
ratings to plummet and the show to fail and fall. This is exactly what “Agents”
are in danger of at this point – “The Asset’s” (episode’s) Maltese settings are
straight out of a Bond film, and the agents’ behavior was clichéd, though the
actors’ acting was flawless. The only twist came at the end, when “The Asset” –
aka Dr. Franklin Hall revealed himself to be the mastermind behind his own kidnapping
in order to destroy gravitonium (element that reversed Earth’s gravitational
field) and his kidnapper and ex-colleague, Dr. Quinn...alongside the rest of
the island republic of Malta, whose laws prevent S.H.I.E.L.D. from launching a
mass rescue, Avengers-style. (If anyone is wondering, Malta is a real island
republic in the Mediterranean Sea, but the laws are made-up, alongside the rest
of S.H.I.E.L.D.-verse.)
Again, not unlike the pilot episode of the series, there are
strong overtones of a special agent reasoning with a terrorist. Not unlike the
pilot episode, the ‘terrorist’ gets up shot, only this time in the glass...
that separated Coulson and Hall during their final confrontation from the
gravitonium in the centrifuge-like device. Hall fell, dying for his beliefs,
right onto and into gravitonium, causing the device to abort the final
countdown, and, according to the episode’s final scene, bonding with it. So far
so good, if you ignore the fact that Hall did die for his beliefs – Quinn is a
money-grabbing bastard (who got away in the commotion, BTW) – and that
S.H.I.E.L.D. is worse. Skye, incidentally, believes that S.H.I.E.L.D. is a
better deal out of the two: good for her, for when the time comes this means
that she will work with her S.H.I.E.L.D. teammates and survive, rather than
work with her Rising Tide teammates and die, for Coulson can be that ruthless
if the fate of the world (or at least a country) is at stake. That said, Hall did die for his beliefs (sort of) and
that compels me to say that such people are a force to be reckoned with... but that
is real life. “Agents”, as evidenced by Malta’s laws concerning their agency, are
quite detached from it and can post whatever they want – as long as they do not
forget the ratings.
And it seems that they have forgotten them – or at least
their scriptwriters died. The pilot episode featured 12.12 million viewers, “0-8-4”
– only 8.6 (roughly one-quarter less) and “The Asset” – only 7.8 (roughly
one-third). At this rate “Agents” will not survive their first season: for
example Impossible Pictures’ show “Sinbad 2013” started with 1.9 million
viewers and finished with 0.87 million – roughly one half of the initial
viewers. The result? The show was cancelled after just one season, and their
decrease took 12 episodes and a much slower rate than what the “Agents” show so
far. Considering that I like the “Agents” it would be a pity if they were
cancelled after their first season as well.
So: great acting but a rather mundane and a predictable plot
– not a winning combination. Does anyone disagree?
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