Guess who this week’s episode of Agents of SHIELD is about, guys.
*Sigh* I never thought the time would come, but the wealth of superhero content is so expansive and broad to the point that Its exhausting me as a non-professional television consumer. Between The Flash and Arrow, Agent Carter, SHIELD (and Gotham or Constantine if you never gave up on them, I guess), this season of television has been a dream come true for comics fans: serialized stories of our beloved heroes and teams adapted weekly with love and care, with reference and crossover galore.
But as of this past weekend, Marvel launched its first foray into the world of Binge Watch-worthy content with Netflix’s Daredevil, and I knew it was going to be good, I just didn’t anticipate how good, and I still have yet to watch the last two episode. It was actually putting me in anguish on Tuesday night watching the Flash’s frankly most wasteful episode, and this episode of Agents of SHIELD. Not that they were respectively terrible, but it just doesn’t match the excellence of Daredevil hitting all the sweet spots you want in a comics based show. Both The Flash and the Daredevil series are being covered by my good friend Allyson here on the site, but for now, we got Agent May over here. */Close Sigh*
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Bahrain
This week we get a grand story thread that has been built up since the campiest days of season one: the mystery surrounding Agent May’s nickname “The Cavalry.” In complete honesty, I anticipated this coming sooner or later with the recent building of May’s character that simply wasn’t there before, especially in introducing her ex-husband, the handsome psychiatrist. I had hoped that this story would be the one to really bring me around to finally liking May as a character by squeezing empathy out of my bitter soul, but it didn’t really play out that way, although the flashback itself to seven years ago was enjoyably “Whedonesque.” May and Coulson back then were partners in the old SHIELD establishment, I presume not long before the uttering of the phrase “I Am Iron Man.” If you didn’t know the flashback story was going to conclude in tragedy, the hint is dropped immediately with note that she and her husband are going to try to make a baby for themselves. Uh oh, TV ain’t gonna let that happen.
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Coulson and May are brought to the mystified Bahrain, where a russian woman presumed to have powers is on the run, and Coulson looks to help her. A child is taken hostage, and their entire squadron missing into the building the woman is held up in. So May, SHIELD’s resident badass, goes in to solve the problem and save everyone until she’s forced to get her hands dirty.
The power in question May encountered was a strange, sharing of disturbed emotion, taking psychotic control of her colleagues and making them drop like flies, except the tragedy of the situation comes from a bait and switch: the mother, once killed, is discovered to be concealing her daughter as the one with the disturbed ability. Those Whedon’s really like writing encounters with all-powerful children, I gotta say.
So, the presumed success of Agent May that spread like wildfire through the ranks of SHIELD was a mistaken tragedy, and the forcing of her to shoot a little girl dead not only defines her cold, emotionless demeanor that we know, but, SURPRISE, makes her unable to continue her relationship, ergo have a baby, as well as giving a depth to a reason for her mistrust of anyone associated with powers. That’s all well and good, it seemed like the right time to tell her story in context of where the season was headed, but I would think after all this time that she was experienced and sensible enough to understand that, just as there are good and bad agents, there are good and bad people with powers. It all comes down to the morals of the individual. I dunno, food for thought, May. I’m just saying.
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Skye
On this episode’s Dojo sequence, Skye gets to cause avalanches and make glasses of water sing with her vibration based power. She also gets to have an semi-emotional moment when she realizes the woman training her is not only in charge of Afterlife, but is also her long lost mother, who conveniently explains the danger posed by early adopters of powers like Skye, because of the exact incident in Bahrain we’re being told at the exact same time. Yeesh, the show doesn’t kid when it claims that “it’s all connected.”
Additionally, It’s nice that she finally gets to meet her mother, but I’m confused as to why Skye is so quick to forgive Calvin for the crap he pulled her through just because it got her to meet her mother. To thank him for the events that transpired seems a bit convoluted to me, but maybe not so much in the grand scheme of the story as of late. My only (yeah right) question is, now that Skye knows who both of her parents are, AND is garnering control over her abilities, what exactly does she have left to do? Maybe its time to get her geared up like a badass and… shake things up. #Facepalm.
Guess we’ll see next time on the SHIELD Dojo.
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Next week, we’ll see what Coulson needs Ward for, and what exactly is in the box, which, I believe from discussions this week, could be planning “The Next Avengers.” Or the New Avengers. Young Avengers? Certainly not Dark Avengers, that may not really work too well.
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Episode 2.17 “Melinda” (6.5/10 = It’s not Daredevil)
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