TV Retrospective: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 1 episodes 1-3 review

It’s finally time to take a look at the first season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 

Pilot

You know how I can’t stand this name, right? If it’s a pilot episode, you can still change the name, it can’t be that difficult.

So after the events of Marvel’s Avengers Assemble (the good movie, not the awful cartoon) the world knows about aliens.

So, we start with an explosion, and a black guy going in to try and save someone. His name is Mike Peterson. He’ll be a recurring character this season and is yet to show up in season 2. A woman records his actions with her phone. Her name is Skye, she’ll be the character that you’ll tolerate until the latter half of the season, where she becomes interesting.

Next, we have Grant Ward retrieving a package that now everyone knows about thanks to a hacking group called the rising tide. But he gets the better of them thanks to super-advanced tech and some martial arts.

Next up, we have Maria Hill, this will be the first of her 2 appearances on the show. She talks to ward who has found a Chitauri neural link. We hear the same talk about how the world’s changed since everyone knows about aliens now. Yeah, we heard this from Skye earlier, get to the point. So Coulson was killed by Loki in Avengers Assemble (I repeat, the good movie, not the awful cartoon) but he’s miraculously alive again now. This will be a running plotline for later on.

Coulson ended up not breathing for 8/40 seconds and ended up in Tahiti (it’s a magical place) and… This stuff’s all cr*p anyway, so… Forget I mentioned it. Coulson wants Ward on the team, but Ward is resistant, owing to his loner complex.

Mike is having a coffee, which is interesting since money’s tight at the moment, when Skye just sits next to him. She warns him about S.H.I.E.L.D. who might shut him away and shut him up. She’s exceptionally good with computers apparently.  And she almost quotes the spider-man line, also managing to somehow steal Mike’s drivers licence

We cut to Agent May who’s working a desk job. Sure… Why not? Anyway, she initially refuses to join the team (which in episode 17 will become very confusing) but Coulson convinces her in fact.

We cut to the bus, a huge ass airplane. And it’s time to introduce Fitz-Simmons. Engineering and Biochemistry

Skye is captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. for interrogation whilst Fitz-Simmons and May investigate the explosion. Mike’s finance troubles seem to be getting worse. Fitz uses flying scanning robots and finds a Chitauri components. How were these Chitauri components spread across the globe when the entire battle happened in New York? Hell if I know.

Mike threatens his boss, claiming that he’s the bad guy and damages a load of property. This convinces Skye to hand him over (I’m really trying to cut things down here, so I’ve missed out the interrogation, which was hilarious by the way) turns out the source of the explosion was extremis, introduced only a few months back in Iron Man 3. Fitz-Simmonds reports that the only way to stop Mike exploding like the guy who blew up the lab is to isolate him or put a bullet in his brain. Coulson wants them to find another way.

Mike and Ace kidnap skye and make her erase him from digital existence but Skye secretly gives the others an way to track them leading to action, finally. Fitz-Simmons develops a way to neutralise them, and Phil tries to talk him down, Ward takes the shot and Skye joins the team. Oh and Coulson’s car can fly. Ha

Wow, looking back they accomplish a hell of a lot in the first episode. Introducing a lot of main characters, all the running plot threads and none of it felt particularly superfluous. The biggest issue is the tonal whiplash between the darker and more comedic tones.

Rating 7/10

0-8-4

Given how long my review was for the first episode, I’m gonna skip a bit more in this one. Safe to say the team still has bumps to work out.

They find an ancient Aztec-style because… comic books.  Inside the temple is an alien thing with German craftsmanship. Military police attack because… comic books and it’s headed by Kamilla, who’s a friend of Coulson’s, I think. They want the device because it’s on Peruvian soil

Rebels attack for no reason in the middle of nowhere because… comic books. Ward removes the device and they have to evac. They win thanks to a device that does things because… comic books.

Yeah, you’re starting to see a pattern here. The device full of technobabble and is worse than a nuclear bomb, it contains a tesseract fuel cell. Fitz and Simmons work out that it’s a laser weapon, and the military attack, wanting the device for themselves

They take over the plane, capturing the other 5 agents and leaving them together! That was daft. Coulson is needed to rectify to flight plan, without S.H.I.E.L.D. shooting them out of the sky. May manages to escape, and they have a plan to take back the plane. Smash, whirl, cable, May, tie down, blow hole in plane, recapture pilot’s bay, recover thing, seal hole with erm… Life raft because… comic books

Time for Nick Fury cameo. And it’s all played for laughs so… The plane’s repaired ready for the next episodes. This entire episode served a purpose, we won’t find out what that purpose is until the very end.

This episode is quite silly frankly, but I think that’s what S.H.I.E.L.D. was going for. They say that S.H.I.E.L.D. is a front row seat to the craziest place on Earth. This episode certainly proved that, the problem is in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t accomplish very much.

Rating 7/10

The Asset

Man they have some messed up roads in America. So 2 cars guarding a big truck are taken out by forces unknown; all to get to a guy: Franklin Hall. They knew the route, so there must be a leak within S.H.I.E.L.D. They discover a small amount of a moving metal (because… comic books) is the leading cause of the destruction.

Thanks to some tracking down, they find the guy that sold the escape vehicle to the guys and find out he was paid in gold mined from a mine owned by Ian Quinn. Our pseudo-villain who’s one gigantic annoyance, and… is really just a patsy for our main villain, who won’t be showing his face for a while, so…

Ian speaks with Doctor Hall and… That’s really it for this scene. They’ve found his theoretical gravitonium element, and plan to use it for… purposes. S.H.I.E.L.D. can’t send in a strike force without breaking international law, but Skye managed to find a way for her to get in through the front door.

She gets in and mingles with the crowd, with a little help in her coms. Skye sets off on her own, but Quinn soon catches up to her. She… somehow prevents Quinn from killing her by telling him that S.H.I.E.L.D. is listening in.

Quinn tries to offer a choice to Skye, but eventually finds out about the hack and attack. Turns out Hall was the source of the leak, and wants to destroy the gravitonium, Quinn and himself with it.

So, Gravity goes crazy, Quinn escapes by Helicopter (so much for that plan) and Coulson is forced to make the shot that forces Hall into the gravitonium, ending the threat. The gravitonium is sealed in an unmarked vault, that no-one should know about

But the end result is interesting: May becomes more interested in combat, Skye commits to her training and opens her heart out a bit. As for the gravitonium, it’ll come into play later, sort of

It’s another solid episode, it’s just that when Arrow was reaching its greatest, this show was still finding its feet.

Rating 7/10

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