S.H.I.E.L.D. and JW - December 3

And so, the end of 2014 is shaping to be a really intense month. For me personally it involves some very serious family issues that I and the rest of my family will be solving for years to come – but that is not my point for now, let us speak about something else.

For one thing, the S2 of S.H.I.E.L.D. has really sped up its pace. Just like S1, it is supposed to have 22 episodes; but unlike S1, which generally sped up in later episodes, from “Yes Men” onwards, S2 has been fast-paced from the start, what with the special effects, new guest supervillains, and now aliens thrown into the mix. It also means that there is less character development; Grant appears to have killed his family off at last – Angelus would have been so proud – and is back in working for Hydra once more: so much for the morally grey area. But then again, Skye has broken up with him...so Grant is taking her to her father, the Doctor, who is also working for Hydra for the moment. Yes, this tenuous cooperation between Ward, the Doctor and Whitehall, among others, is supposed to show how selfishness never works-out in the end, but so far? It is not very obvious to the audience.

While Ward is off working for Hydra once more, Raina had to provide the back-story for the series, by introducing Skye – and the audience – to the Kree. So far they are only in the background, depicted vaguely as ‘blue angels’, but apparently they have created the Obelisk/Diviner as well as the underground city that Coulson planned to blow up...and it doesn’t work. Not just in the Marvel universe, where agent Mack was apparently taken over by some unknown force (frankly, this hidden city beneath San Juan sounds a lot like a Hellmouth, albeit a sci-fi one, with nuts and bolts), but also in the real world, especially the wide-angle shots of Coulson and Morse as they walked around the human city. Those shots were pointless and just aimed to eat-up screen time, while Skye and the others first rescued Raina and then were surrounded by Hydra’s planes. 

As for the hidden city itself, so far it is a different version of the Hellmouth – Whedon continues to work with the old favorites. So far this place has cost S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Mack, and as Whitehall and agent 33 plan to shoot the S.H.I.E.L.D. airplane out of the sky, the cost may just mount up.

Of course, agent 33 is another sticky point in S.H.I.E.L.D. plotline – she had been brainwashed by Hydra after all, shouldn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. try to recapture her and fix her mind? Apparently not, just as they did with Donnie Gill earlier in S2; S.H.I.E.L.D. may have the better people, but Hydra got the better technology.

And on another level, agent 33 is just a reason for Ming-Na Wen to act out a bit – as long as agent 33 resembles agent May with a horrific burn on her face (and a robotic voice, too), Ming-Na Wen can play her too. Fair enough. Patton Oswald, who plays agent Keonig, broke the mold in a different way: he plays several identical brothers at the same time.

All of this acting is quite fun to watch, but it gets old after a while; hopefully, the next episode of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be more factual and less CGI-intense.

And speaking of CGI, the film ‘Jurassic World’ has also released its’ trailer. Oh dear.

As far as films go, JW seems to have problems from the start; one of those problems are the featherless dinosaurs. JP3 had feathered raptors already – JW seems to have done away with feathers once more: on the velociraptors, on the ‘ostrich dinosaurs’ (probably Gallimimus), and etc – all of the film’s theropods appear to be featherless, making the dinofans not happy.

And neither does the oversized mosasaur. These prehistoric cousins of the monitor lizards were huge, 8-12 m on average, but JW monster is bigger yet...for the purely dramatic effect. That, and to cash in, subtly, on the SeaWorld scandals that involve killer whales: the scene where the mosasaur eats a shark is certainly reminiscent of dolphin and killer whale feedings in captivity...

Finally, the D-Rex. It is completely unnecessary. Back in the earlier films, the ‘basic’ T-Rex and Spinosaurus already did a more than appropriate job of nearly unstoppable giant monsters, with raptors being the smaller and smarter version. Now, we got a dinosaur of a Frankenstein monster running around...supposedly true to Crichton’s idea of a man-made creation gone wrong. Fair enough, but JW (and JP) dinosaurs already are man-made creations; you want natural dinosaurs, go outside and look at birds (pigeons, sparrows, gulls, starlings, etc) – there go your dinosaurs! The D-Rex is unnecessary elaboration on an already well-developed scheme.

And on top of it all, JW has a real-life scandal as well – there are rumors that the film has utilized paleoart of other people without, well, acknowledging this sort of thing. It is unknown exactly how much truth in this rumor, but speaking of truth? Dinomedia already has problems. Ever since Planet Dinosaur back in 2013, the TV dinosaurs were relatively lackluster and outdated; JW is their new big chance to shine...and the film does not appear to deliver, planning to show instead the same outdated featherless raptors, and overlarge mosasaurs and the D-Rex. It is just sad, that is what it is.

And so, while agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are racing against clock and Hydra to enter a hidden city, and JW is about to deliver yet another monster-dino film, I leave you for now.

S.H.I.E.L.D., Oct 14 - Faces

And so, the amazing funfest that is called “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” continues. No, seriously, this particular episode felt like a clear-cut break from the previous action, and had more of a spy-vs.-spy feel to it.

Let us start with the basics: what this episode had been about?

Teamwork. Throughout this episode, S.H.I.E.L.D. clashed with Hydra, and it was established, that while Hydra got the better technology, S.H.I.E.L.D. got the better people; staff; agents – call them whatever you want, but while Hydra sought to get ahead by using technology (including one that permitted its’ agents to copy the faces and voices of other people – hence the face in this episode’s title), S.H.I.E.L.D. negated their advantage by working together: the agents know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and they also know how to utilize those strengths and weaknesses of each other to overcome any emergency.

On one hand, this leads us to Fitz. In “Faces”, Fitz had finally overcome his new low level of self-esteem and returned to be one of the group, one of the guys, so to speak. His new friendship with agents Mackenzie and Hunter is a sign of that. Fitz is moving on and returning to his old levels of competence – maybe even more so, but he is also clearly moving past his feelings towards Simmons too: the seemingly unsinkable ship FitzSimmons has just sprung a new, major leak. 

Of course, since we still do not know Simmons’ side of the story (Fitz’s version from Foster’s house of Imaginary Friends does not count), we should not dismiss this boat just yet – in the next episodes it just may be patched up and returned into the hearts of fans in style, but still...

It should be noted, however, that while FitzSimmons boat is in the process of sinking, the boat SkyeWard has largely sunk – Ward didn’t appear in “Faces” either: the agents’ team is leaving him behind, largely as an information source about Hydra, which is sad, but nothing more than what Ward hadn’t earned by betraying his team back in S1, but that’s life, and the choices we make in it.

Conversely, the ship Philinda, which has not been in spotlight as much as the rest of ‘ships in the series, has shined in “Faces” loud and clear. The other side of the agents’ close and personal teamwork is that they know each other, even on a personal level, which was how Coulson was able to figure out that agent May had been substituted by a Hydra doppelganger instead. (The fact that it was the brainwashed agent 33 has not become known, however.) May and Coulson know each other, they know each other’s flaws and advantages, and that is why they are such a great team. That is also what Hydra is lacking in S2 (Ward and Garrett’s relationship in S1 was something else), and that is why they failed in this face-off of spy vs. spy, though general Talbot had been made a fool of, as usual. 

Finally, there was Ming-Na Wen. She has really shown-off her acting skills in Faces: as agent May, as agent May undercover, as agent May having a heart-to-heart talk with agent Coulson, and as agent 33 pretending to be May. That fight between May and 33 still disguised must have taken some fancy choreographing for sure. Of course, if agent 33 ever gets un-brainwashed, May will have some apologizing to do, but both she and Coulson can handle it.

The final component in “Faces” was Raina. She may’ve thought that she had left Hydra behind when she had left Garrett (incidentally, where’s Ian Quinn?), but Hydra begs to differ: Dr. Whitehall has put a bug on Raina and told her to get the Obelisk back to them, or else it’s death by long, prolonged even, torture. Odds are that Raina is not going to chew off the hand with Hydra bug on it with her bare teeth and send it to the good doctor by mail with a note saying ‘You want the Obelisk? How about I give you my finger – five them, actually?’ No, odds are that she will have to get Coulson and the others involved to rescue her own heiny – we will just have to wait and see. 

So: team S.H.I.E.L.D. is victorious once more, Fitz is an agent once more, Coulson and May are a couple officially, and Raina is in trouble with Hydra. All in all – a standard day for the agents.

S.H.I.E.L.D., Oct 7 - Friends

And so, once more S.H.I.E.L.D. had faced-off against Hydra. And now, since this is S2, and the peak of Hydra’s success had been in the second half of S1, S.H.I.E.L.D. is the one coming on top.

Where to start? This episode focused mainly on agent Simmons – at last she shook-off her static S1 appearance and began to look a good deal more unbound. This is ironic, because now she is working for Hydra – but as this episode reveals almost as quickly – she is a double agent of Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D. instead. Sort of like Ward was back in S1 for Hydra, only in Simmons’ case Coulson is keeping his personal attention on her when she is making her Hydra-based reports. The trick here is that these reports – or dead drops – can be done indirectly: for example, Simmons puts her reports into some sort of capsules – may even explosive capsules, for example – and Coulson, or some other S.H.I.E.L.D. agent picks them. However, since S.H.I.E.L.D. is still strapped for staff and equipment, this does not happen, and instead Simmons has to report to Coulson right beneath Hydra’s nose while Talbot out there, looking for them as well. Can we say – plot hole? Let us go on.

When one thinks about plot holes, one has to think about Grant Ward and his status. Coulson tells Fitz at the end of the episode that he cannot stand looking at Ward and only needs him as an information source on Hydra. Fair enough. Question: why can’t S.H.I.E.L.D. capture other Hydra agents and use them as counter-source, or alternative sources to Ward? Seriously, even if Ward fully cooperated with them, (which he seems to be doing) and did not push his own agenda, (which he is also doing), he may honestly not know some things or other, and so outsourcing is necessary. But that does not happen, and so far it looks as if Ward is the only Hydra prisoner of S.H.I.E.L.D.

To make matters worse, Ward is confused as Hell. He is genuinely sorry for what he had done to Fitz, and when Fitz goes to oxygen-starve him, what proves the most worrying – the highest priority – to Ward are the others, starting with Skye. This, of course, saved the team’s life when they tried to rescue Donnie Gill (and boy did that go south, and didn’t Donnie get the short end of the stick), but...

Maybe Ward is trying to redeem himself, but because it is doubtful that he knows right from wrong anymore, the direction in which he is going is anyone’s guess, and he is successfully – at least on some level – is messing with Skye’s head. Maybe he does not mean to, but he still does it. Friendship of a fool is equal to the friendship of an enemy, and if Ward is both, then S.H.I.E.L.D.’s reluctance to use other Hydra captives (or to get any in the first place) is foolish, simply foolish.

(Incidentally, why have not Ward tried to escape? He has been trained to do so, both by S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra, yes? Maybe he has his own agenda, in which case S.H.I.E.L.D. is even more in trouble.)

But if Ward’s situation is ambiguous, Donnie Gill has been shifted, period. His character did not develop at all, (though his powers did), Hydra had partially brainwashed him, and S.H.I.E.L.D. had shot him in the back in the character of Skye, as a part of her character development.

On topic of Skye. So far she has been something of a Melinda May junior, but now she is beginning to crack. She is not a seasoned soldier/warrior/killer yet, and between the fact that she actually had to shoot someone (Donnie) and Ward revelation at the end of the episode, she is beginning to crack.

(Incidentally, Ward is beginning to act rather like the male version of Raina, who is not with Hydra anymore, but with Skye’s father. Can it be that Ward is actually a triple agent, who is working for Skye’s father all along? The possibilities are staggering.)

However, if Skye is cracking mentally, Donnie has not just cracked, but also fell into water and didn’t drown – not only his body wasn’t recovered, but as he sinks you can see a protective layer of ice forming around him in the process. Between Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. Donnie is losing his humanity fast, and is not even given a chance to be saved. This sucks, especially for Donnie, and if any of the agents – in fact, if any people – will meet Donnie in the future, they will be iced.

This, incidentally, equalizes Donnie with Carl Creel from the previous episodes – they just go around killing people by turning them into inorganic materials: Creel into stone, Gill into ice. This sort of approach makes one wonder if they needed to use Donnie; couldn’t they have the Absorbing Man just run around for one more episode instead?..

Enough with the villains, let us talk about heroes. Fitz is beginning to realize that having an imaginary Simmons around does not help his cause, and he did not starve Ward from oxygen (yet), so he is still a good guy. His reward for not doing that and for helping the rest of the team with Donnie? A pep talk with Coulson. That is fine and dandy, but one of the more important topics in Fitz’s life – Simmons’ feelings for him – were very obviously avoided by Coulson, and Fitz, who isn’t that stupid or naive, not even now, just may have caught on that. This sort of strategy – bending the truth, telling white lies – has already backfired on S.H.I.E.L.D. in the past (take agent Victoria Hand from S1, for example) and it may backfire on S.H.I.E.L.D. again.

On the other hand, agent Mackenzie is trying to befriend Fitz, at least with some success, and Fitz still considers himself a part of the team, so everything may turn out all right on this front, just as Skye may yet turn out all right despite all of the pressure that is building up on her. Plus, May have actually smiled at Hunter, which is a milestone as well.

No, seriously, throughout the entire S1 agent May has never smiled, so the fact that she did now – and at agent Hunter too, btw – is a milestone of sorts; a good milestone. To put otherwise, not everything that has befallen the agents in this episode was bad, either...

To summarize: Simmons has entered the belly of the beast, whose number one agents (a doctor that doesn’t seem to age despite being about 100 years old and an evil Elvis wannabe) tend to brainwash suspicious members in a great homage to “The Clockwork Orange”; Fitz is continuing to get better and to lose his innocence; Ward and Skye continue to have mutual sexual attraction; and May have actually smiled. A mixed bag of news all around, no?

S.H.I.E.L.D., Sep 30 - Head

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!

S.H.I.E.L.D., Sep 23 - Shadows

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.