TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3×07

Welcome back to my weekly review of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. everyone!  Sorry for the late post this week, some schooling responsibilities have had me distracted.

Wow!  Okay so I have said this numerous times, but I am astounded at how fast this show is resolving its storylines.  The reveal that Dr. Andrew Garner (Blair Underwood) is Lash was tackled head on this week and it started with a bit of backstory that was pretty neat.

One of the questions I definitely had was when did Garner come into contact with the Terrigen mist?  We found that out here as after Garner and May returned from their tropical vacation, Garner was granted access to Jiaying’s collection of ancient and current Inhuman texts, including a list of the identities and abilities of any Inhuman who sought sanctuary with Jiaying.  As a defense tactic, Jiaying placed the dust of a crumbled Terrigen crystal in order to ward off those who would see to do harm.  The hope in that tactic being that the trespassing party would harden, disitegrate, and die from the mist.  For Dr. Garner, that wasn’t the case.  Lash is the result.

After the flashback, we see May still trying to sort through the information that the Strucker kid conveyed to her; that when he went to kill Dr. Garner, he turned into a beast and defeated his attackers.  May is clearly in shock, but that doesn’t stop her from uncovering all of the facts and she springs into action immediately.

Meanwhile, Phil Coulson reveals to Daisy that he is meeting with the President and other notable worldly officials to discuss the continuing emergence of the Inhumans.  His hope is to convey the importance and absolute need for protection of these individuals, and to suggest S.H.I.E.L.D.’s methodology in doing so.  Rosalind Price is the one who set this meeting up for Coulson, and this action, among others, continues to prove the validity in this ‘partnership’ between the two parties.  In order for Coulson to prove to this secret committee though that Inhuman citizens are still in fact citizens and can be trained to hone their powers, they need a true representative that is not an active field agent such as Daisy.  So, Daisy suggests Joey Gutierrez, the construction guy who can deconstruct metal that they recovered and helped from the first episode.  Dr. Garner is assigned by Coulson to reevaluate him.  Gah!!

I’m really glad they brought Joey back, albeit briefly, in this episode.  Juan Pablo Raba was able to portray a very unique sense of tenderness in Joey that I think this show would do well to express further.  For now, we’re stuck with what we got, but I hope we see more of Joey for that reason.  His powers are also coming along really nicely; imagine if Joey put together a metal ball like that together, Lincoln electrifies it, and then Daisy catapults it into a group of enemy targets?  That would be a pretty powerful combo.  Then again I just proved how dangerous Inhumans can be.  Oh well.

Speaking of Lincoln, he returned this episode as well with his own discovery that Lash had planted himself in S.H.I.E.L.D.  I like the revolving door/escalator approach to this episode.  Bear with me on the metaphor.  We already know who Dr. Garner is now, but it was cool to see each grouping of characters involved in this episode come to the same conclusion in their own way.  It was revealing the same information, hence the revolving door, but it was adding some much needed tension and forward momentum in the conflict; the escalator.

By the time everyone was on the same page, I was literally on the edge of my comfy office chair at home.  The action scenes were pretty cool here, and I love how Mack keeps trying to help against Lash even though every time he ends up getting knocked out in some way; that is dedication.  This episode though it sounded to me that Lash broke his ribs so Mack might be out of commission for a little while; either that or I am imagining things.

The resolution to the Lash conflict felt a little bit underhanded to me.  Yes, it was great that May was at the center of everything, and it was very interesting that Andrew could still respond as himself when he is in Lash’s form.  But I was kind of hoping for some extended event to happen, like the beast of Lash would conflict with the mind of Andrew, but perhaps I’m misinterpreting the link that the two entities have.  Sure, Lincoln did mention that Lash will continually peel away at Andrew until he becomes Lash permanently, but for May to be able to force Lash to return to human form seems like that transformation isn’t as clear cut as Lincoln says it is.  With that, Andrew is being transferred to the care of the ATCU and their medically induced gel coma facility.

Now, here is where I’m really excited.  With Lash out of commission, is the villain focus going to be placed mainly on Ward now?  I hope so, because an excuse for more Ward is always a good idea in my book.  That tag scene in the end was also pretty intriguing.  Powers Boothe returned in this episode as Gideon Mallick, an ‘ally’ to Ward, but it also appears that Mallick has ties to the government in some way due to the conversation he had with Rosalind Price.  I don’t think Rosalind has any knowledge of Mallick’s affiliation with Ward, but if she does that will be a sad day as I’m really happy that she and Coulson finally got together.  Coulson deserves happiness and I think this relationship can give it to him.  Here’s to me having fingers crossed.

All this Lash excitement and I haven’t been able to talk about Fitz/Simmons in the last little while.  Their story was still placed on the back burner during this episode, but Fitz was able to witness some physical evidence of Simmons’ relationship with Will Daniels in the form of a photo from Simmons’ phone, the one she had with her on the alien planet.  Clearly he was frustrated from that revelation, and I don’t blame him, but the uncovering of the phone’s data also revealed two other key bits of information.  The first, a further ‘explanation’ of Simmons’ feelings towards Fitz when she described her hope to one day move to Scotland with him, possibly settle down.  My heart was melting guys, so cute!  The second piece of information had to do with the Pathfinder symbol on Will Daniels’ space suit.  Fitz compared it to a symbol found in the castle that they re-opened the obelisk in to get Jemma back.  Not sure what the correlation spells, but I am curious to see where it leads.  Hopefully we gets some answers soon because I’m dying to know!

Episode Rating: 8/10