And so it happened that the Absorbing Man was vanquished and
petrified, Raina got away with THE 0-8-4, and Robin Hood got the best of the Sherriff
– sorry, agent Coulson of the general Talbot, my bad.
Let us start with the basics. As the show usually does, the “Agents”
have delivered some very impressive acting performances, including the man
behind Carl Creel, the Absorbing Man. His interaction with Raina was very
masterfully done. So was the CGI effect of him going down and being locked in
the stone mode after Coulson hit him with the latest version of the disruptor,
BTW.
This brings us to the agents proper. If back in “Shadows”
they were having teamwork issues, now they appear to be largely resolved. In
part, let us be fair, this is because agents Idaho and Hartley are dead and
gone, but that what happens with most of the agents that did not form the core
half-a-dozen group back in S1. Agent Hunter, on the other hand, appears to have
joined this group, alongside agents Triplett, MacKenzie and the various
background extras that so far do not play any role in the series.
Agent MacKenzie’s (Mack’s) role is noticeable especially
because he had befriended agent Fitz. Ever since the end of S1, agent Fitz had
problems – no one liked him anymore, Ward tried to kill him and Simmons has
left him sometime between S1 and 2. The last part probably hurt him the most,
because he and Simmons were the ship FitzSimmons and without her he is just one
lonely Fitz.
Or maybe not. Due to the damage to his temporal lobe, Fitz’s
personality split into himself and an imaginary Simmons, and that is
disturbing, to be frank. Elizabeth Henstridge’s performance as the imaginary
Simmons can be very Buffy-esque at times, making one wonder which of the two
new aspects of Fitz’s personality – Fitz or not-Simmons is in charge of the
agent in question.
Yet despite this new complication (and the absence of the
actual Simmons, although – spoiler alert – she is coming back in the future episodes) and with Mack’s help, Fitz
was able to redesign the disruptor in the right way to bring down Creel, at
least for a while.
The other agents are progressing too. Skye is becoming an
increasingly competent field agent and has sort of adopted May as a surrogate
mother figure, something that May seems to reciprocate. Then again, with
Coulson having his own problems and growing distant from everyone, Hunter being
the newcomer in the team (and having shot May in the back he’s not going to be
trusted anytime soon), Ward and Simmons being gone, and Fitz...well, see above,
Skye may be all that May got left (and vice versa), so the two women have just
gravitated naturally towards each other, which is a good thing, for both of
them.
Coulson’s progress, on the other hand, is of a different
kind. Apparently, every two weeks or so he just has to etch out a certain
number of bizarre symbols and signs, similar to the ones depicted on the
Obelisk. The Obelisk in question tends to petrify people who touch it, unless
of course they are Raina or her new boss, aka Skye’s true father. (More on them
below.) Coulson’s problems have started at the end of S1, and so far we have no
idea what it is heading for.
The same can be said about Ward, but he is not in this
episode, which is good. Ward’s performance in “Shadows” was one of the weakest
in that episode, so he/Brett Dalton should practice on their acting skills for
the upcoming episodes to prevent such embarrassments. And naturally, he is not
going anywhere, not just because he is stuck in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s dungeon, but
also because of Skye. The ship SkyeWard has largely sunk, but not fully, not yet,
it looks like.
Finally, we got Raina. So far, she has become something of a
secret agent herself, running errands for Skye’s father (still nameless) and
apparently not working for the Hydra anymore, unless, of course, Skye’s
father is. But as she pointed out in this episode, Hydra just wants to rule the
world; the goals of Raina and her allies lie in another direction, and Obelisk
is the key for their plans. In other words, while Hydra tries to keep itself
neat and professional whenever it isn’t running death camps, Skye’s father
doesn’t: the end of S1 has shown his hand dripping in gore, and he had at least
one other minion besides Raina – a rather unprofessional-looking thug, a very
different individual from the traditional Hydra minions...
So: the agents are getting over their new obstacles, and
have even fooled general Talbot once more; and their enemies are growing in
number as well. This is very exciting indeed!
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