TV Retrospective: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 1 episodes 4-6 review

We're barely a week off the last one, but it's time once again to take a look at the next set of episodes of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD

Eye-Spy

So we begin with a lot of guys in red face masks (because that’s not conspicuous in the slightest) following different routes each carrying a briefcase. A woman follows them and notices how they’re handcuffed to the briefcase. She kills the light and… One of the guys is missing his hand. Lovely. The case contains some diamonds which she takes, leaving the briefcase behind.

Thanks to some investigation, they find that the thief was a former agent of SHIELD, Akela, who Coulson trained. He holds off a SHIELD manhunt for her because this is personal for him. So Akela tries to fence the diamonds to a guy who’s clearly a mug. They hide the diamonds in the golf balls, and in return she gets some sort of security clearance card.

Ward and Coulson find her hotel, whilst Skye and Fitz-Simmons manage to hack into her visual feed, right as she attacks their van. They discover that Akela has some sort of micro-camera planted in her eyes (for the record, Torchwood did it first) and soon discover she’s being controlled.

May confronts Akela but Coulson intervenes, bringing her to the base. Using Ward to mimic the feed (with some pretty funny results later on) through some actually quite clever observations they manage to narrow down who her handler actually is.

The mission Ward took the place of seems like a bunch of notes related to alien scribbles. Meanwhile Fitz and Simmons work on disconnecting the eye, just in time as Ward is caught out by a mirror. Coulson tracks down the handler but as soon as he confronts him, it’s revealed he too has an eye with a failsafe that kills him.

And the ending, what the heck?!

Another decent episode, and this set up actually does have some payoff in the near furture.

Rating 7.5/10

The Girl in the Flower Dress

It’s time to introduce our other villainess for the season. Her name is Raina, or the girl in the flower dress, or that b*tch in the flower dress, or flowers. She’ll be called a lot of different names this season.

We have our gifted pawn, a guy with pyrokinetic abilities who falls for Raina's charm, sort of. Oh and we open with more flirting, this time between Ward and Skye before the plot starts up again.

So, the rising tide leaked the location of our pyrokinetic pawn, so Skye is assigned to find out who the intel was leaked to. Raina offers to enhance his power, in exchange for running some tests. So, this pyrokinetic pawn is Scorch and doesn’t share an alter-ego with any of the Marvel Comics equivalents.

So, they find a hacker, a very well-known one, they confront him but he escapes using gridlock. Skye manages to catch up with him. She says that with her on the inside, his actions could’ve ruined everything for her, but after some seductive actions, she’s caught be May.

Coulson’s rightfully p*ssed off. And Skye admits that they have a history looking out for each other. They’re both cuffed and taken to the bus. Raina injects Scorch with her serum and his powers are increased, his confidence with it.

Ward reveals that our hacker sold the information to Raina of all people, of Centipede of all things. Man this guy is the biggest idiot on the planet. It seems the tests were to evaluate whether the platelets in Scorch’s pyrokinetic blood would stabilise the extremis formula. Step 2 is draining him of his blood platelets.

Without his blood platelets his hands burn when he uses his pyrokinesis. S.H.I.E.L.D. run a raid on the building where Scorch is being held, taking on the guards easily. Scorch takes a dose of extremis and begins attacking. Raina escapes, but Scorch kills the scientist we first saw in the first episode.

May injects Scorch with more extremis, causing a massive explosion which is thankfully redirected to the roof.  Our hacker departs with a S.H.I.E.L.D. bracelet and the money he made donated to the family of our sap.

Coulson demands to know what Skye wanted on the plane. Skye wants to find her family but could find next to nothing. Raina asks a guy in prison to check on the mysterious Clairvoyant.

It’s another solid episode, furthering our information about Skye and giving some focus to Coulson, but the problem is a lot of characters in the background are relegated in the process, at this early stage, a lot of character arcs still feel a little untouched.

Rating 7.5/10

FZZT

We start with… some camp kids getting scared? Erm… OK. And the captain dies floating in the air.

So, Coulson’s getting physical, Ward’s being pedantic and Fitz is flirting. They’re soon called into action but they’re stumped by what they see.

That scene with May ‘interrogating’ the boy scout was the jewel of hilarity. Apparently the guy was hit by power double the size of a lightning bolt, altering his biochemistry of the guy in the process. They detect an energy spike, signalling another fatality. May, Ward and Coulson go to investigate, but they’re too late.

Apparently they were all volunteers at the same fire-house, and people who were called to the Battle of New York. One of whom has a Chitauri helmet. They get another reading, this time from inside the fire-house. May discovers the weapon, a Chitauri helmet which could be home to an alien virus.

Coulson has a heart-to-heart with the victim, revealing that he’s having doubts about the cover story they give for him being dead. Fitz scans them and finds no trace of the virus within them. Coulson instructs Simmons to find a cure.

Simmons finds out that the virus can transmit via electo-static shock. Sadly she herself was shocked and has contracted the virus. They have 2 hours max before she dies, releasing a pulse that will blow the plane out of the sky. The plane can’t land for at least 3 hours, given their flight trajectory.

Coulson ignores the instructions to kill anyone who’s infected. Simmonds discovers that the Chitauri might be key to the anti-serum, so Fitz grabs the helmet without thought and brings it to the lab, locking himself in in the process.

They test the serum but it doesn’t appear to work. She asks for a moment alone with Fitz and proceeds to knock him out. Fitz discovers that rat survived, despite being briefly knocked out, but Simmons has jumped from the plane. Fitz prepares to jump after her, but Ward does it instead. Guys, this green screen effect is pretty bad…

Coulson berates the pair of them for something… And reconciliation all round. Coulson admits he ordered the physical tests himself, because he doesn’t feel quite right. May comforts him…

This is the episode that temporarily (until the Thor tie in) stopped me watching the series. Not because it was a bad episode but it was pretty much entirely filler. It did not advance any of the centipede plot threads and despite a lot of great character moments did not accelerate any real character development either.

Rating 6.5/10

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