Tuesday, 14 January 2014

S.H.I.E.L.D., Jan 14 - Seeds



In this episode of “Agents”, we got to visit Fitz & Simmons’ old alma mater, the Academy, where they became the young prodigies that they are now. Sadly, the circumstances could have been better, since someone in the Academy was messing with ice and the titular team has to figure out as to just who. They, or primarily – Fitz & Simmons – succeed: it is an outsider student Donnie with the help of another student, namely Seth.

Donnie is interesting, in a minor sort of way: odds are that he is going to become an anti-Fitz of some sort, since he had a chance to befriend Fitz, but instead tricked and used Fitz and generally didn’t try to re-establish friendly contact before getting shipped to the Sandbox after Seth died, their invention broke down, and he developed ice powers of some sort by the end of the episode – a reference to Mr. Freeze from DC comics, perhaps?

Fitz & Simmons, on the other hand, have also evolved little since the previous episode, where they were shown to be much more confident and independent thinkers than their counterparts working in agent Hand’s Hub. They do manage to figure out how to get to Donnie and Seth, but not in time, as the dastardly duo of students try to stop their impromptu weather machine, but fail: Seth dies and Donnie develops ice powers.

The main focus, conversely, belongs to Coulson, May and Skye – Ward was in this episode, but he actually was more of a background character for once, though he did suggest that Fitz tries to befriend Donnie, causing Skye and Simmons to suggest that he does have a heart. That is not a bad personal development either.

Speaking of personal and of May, she confessed to Coulson about her relationship (such as it is) with Ward. Coulson is quite even-tempered about it – in part because May and Ward are competent grownups and so should deal with this relationship if it goes south without too much ado. (Of course, considering that this would make a very poor story development one should not bet on this.)

But in part because we got a major plot development about Skye: she is a survivor from a tiny village that was rescued by an S.H.I.E.L.D. team...that got progressively killed off as time went by. That is why she was sent from one orphanage to another until she ended up living in a van. 

Now, normally, Coulson would probably keep this a secret from Skye, but after personal experiences in this area (i.e. his own secret that he learned the hard way in the previous episode) he told Skye the truth instead – and Skye accepted this. Rather than crawling into a van, or her personal room to cry, she has embraced it, and accepted S.H.I.E.L.D. to be her family and home. 

(This is wonderful news, but remember that Skye is an idealist at heart, and if S.H.I.E.L.D. somehow disappoints her, the fallout can be nasty.)

Also, Coulson is getting out of the funk that he was since the last episode. May be onto something in this episode.

So: Fitz & Simmons reconnect to their past with mixed results, Coulson starts to come to terms with his own situation, Skye finally learns the truth about her past, and May and Ward soldier on. Oh, and one last thing: the crooked businessman behind Seth and Donnie’s failed experiment, Ian Quinn, is in the cahoots with the Clairvoyant, as he tells it to agent Coulson in the last scene of this episode. The Centipede may be gone, but we just might have been introduced to its’ replacement in this episode.

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