And so, Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”
show returned with its second season, and right away the titular heroes are in
trouble!
No, the matter is not specifically with
Hydra – right now they got more immediate problems to worry about. Throughout
all of S1 the show drummed how teamwork was important to good guys if they were
to triumph, and starting with the very first episode of S2 this aspect of the
agents is in trouble.
The problems that are affecting their
teamwork are several. The elephant in the room, or at least the prisoner in the
dungeon, is Grant Ward, who betrayed the team in S1, or rather was set to
betray the team in S1 (which he did) by the late Garret. So far he has not
changed much on the inside, save that he switched from following Garret (who is
dead) to following Skye. That is not the right strategy – if Ward is to show
that he is truly repentant, he has to work (at least on a limited basis) with
the whole team, not just Skye. Otherwise, he is the same old Ward, albeit with
a beard and a muscle shirt. He is also depressed and suicidal, but that is
another problem altogether.
(BTW: the interactions between Ward and
Skye in this episode? That ship has clearly sunk for the next while, and Ward’s
new regretful attitude is so hammed up, that it is clearly annoying; the only
question is who has done the hamming – Ward, or Brett Dalton, who plays him?)
The same problem plagues Leo Fitz. After
barely surviving Ward’s attempt to kill off him and Jemma Simmons, Fitz had
survived, but went insane – he forgets words, and has long conversations with
his imaginary girlfriend – the same Simmons. That is right; Jemma did leave him
– and the team. The latter was implied, sort of, back in S1 – Jemma was not
very happy with Coulson or his team, but to ditch Leo like that is certainly
OOC for her, especially by the late S1 standards. True, this episode mentioned
S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new allies in London, England (London, Canada, is something of a
stretch), so maybe Simmons is hanging around her old neighborhood, but still –
the Fitzsimmons ship is also having problems; Fitz’s new, imaginary Simmons is
just one syndrome of it.
BTW: this is clearly influenced by BtVS
S10, where Xander is also having conversations with his own ex-girlfriend,
Anya/Anyanka. Still, Xander’s girlfriend is dead, while Simmons is alive (at
least officially), but that does not help either man.
And it also shows another leak in the
agents’ team – one of their members went to the dark side, the second – to the
crazy house (May and Coulson are starting to consider Fitz to be more of a
liability than an asset), and the third – just left. Not good.
Conversely, there are new members coming in
– in theory. In reality, the only new face(s) that appeared in this episode
among the good guys is agent Isabelle and her team, but they have their own
problems: they have not integrated with the core team of the agents, and
Isabelle seems to have some sort of an alpha female struggle going on with May.
Or rather – seemed. Typical of the
“Agents”, agent Isabelle died by the end of this episode; at least she does not
appear in the next week’s episode either. Xena’s fans are probably rather disappointed...
What X:WP have to do with it? Agent
Isabelle was played by Lucy Lawless, whose trademark role was X:WP. Quite a few
Xena fans were excited about her starring in “Agents” too. Instead, agent
Isabelle had only few lines, little to any action (though she did have a killer
bowie knife in the episode), and died by the end of “Shadows”. Very
disappointing, and it also unintentionally showed how Lucy Lawless
has...diminished, or gone to seed, since her Xena days...
On the other hand, agent Isabelle died
because of Hydra’s latest field agent – the Absorbing Man, the villain who can
absorb any sort of material and use it to augment his strength. Not the
smartest guy around, he usually faces-off with the Hulk, but Banner appears to
be lying low until the second Avengers movie arrives, so the Absorbing
Man has to do with Coulson and his team instead – and considering that so far
he had stolen the last 084 artifact (whose most obvious ability is to petrify
people who grab it with bare hands) and killed agent Isabelle and other members
of her team. Score another one for the bad guys.
Then again, it balances out the way S.H.I.E.L.D.
has fooled General Talbot and his people. Talbot, now, is no dummy, but against
Coulson? He is the Sheriff who has to deal with Robin Hood – he is just
against an opponent who is better than he is. Try as he might, he just cannot
win, and Coulson has let him go with mud in his eye, so to speak, and his
people had stolen Talbot’s plane with the cloaking device too. This makes
Talbot a fairly average member of the modern American administration, but one
got to give Whedon and others their due – unlike the crew behind “The Last Ship”
series they managed to keep contemporary politics, American and otherwise, out
of the show so far. Even the bosses of the Absorbing Man are more reminiscent
of the WWII Nazis than anyone more modern-
Speaking of these bosses, does it mean that
the late Garret was pulling everyone’s leg when he suggested that he was both
the Clairvoyant and the head of Hydra? Given what we’ve learned about him, it’s
a very good bet.
Getting back to Talbot – he is the only
bright spot on Coulson’s side so far. His team has missing members, has to deal
with superior enemies, and just does not have enough new members to compensate
for that. (In part that is because “Agents” the show tends to have people
appear in cameos, usually as agents, say a few lines, and disappear for good.
Maybe it has something to do with the budget of the show, who knows?..)
Otherwise, let us be fair. The second
season of “Agents” has started on a pessimistic note, so it is only reasonable
that things are going to get better for them from now on – somehow.
