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Agents of SHIELD Recap – S03E03 A Wanted (Inhu)man

Agents of SHIELD continues to spin multiple plates each episode, but all of the storylines are still interesting.  This time around, the ATCU outs Lincoln as an alien threat on TV, and Daisy and Mack try to go to the rescue.  Lincoln reaches out to his AA sponsor for help, and it seems to go okay until the guy turns on his TV.  Oops.  Lincoln gives him a little zap to knock him out…but it gives his buddy a heart attack.  He’s unable to save him, and it leaves our blandest Inhuman standing over a dead body when the ATCU and SHIELD arrive.  While this is happening, Coulson meets up with Rosalind, and after a humorous moment where Phil’s caught ogling…her car (get your mind out of the gutter), they get down to brass tacks – Rosalind has pictures of Daisy at the hospital too, but hasn’t released them yet.  This leads to some tense moments where Lincoln almost gets handed over to the ATCU, and when that fails, they nearly take off with Daisy.  In the end, Coulson trades away something potentially more valuable to Rosalind – his knowledge.  This morally gray dealing is a solid build-up to Civil War, and very reminiscent of the SHIELD from the comics.

The next spinning plate is the May and Hunter show.  Hunter’s got a buddy with an in to HYDRA, but Lance has to fight in a no-holds-barred fighting tournament.  All well and good until his opponent is revealed to be that buddy.  Hunter and ‘Spud’ beat each other to a bloody pulp, and Lance is about to lose until he slips on some brass knuckles and unloads on Spud.  In a parallel to Lincoln’s story, Spud ends up dead.  This apparently is enough to get Hunter an audience with Ward’s second in command.  And don’t worry about May, she got to beat the snot out of three guys who tried to corner her to assault her.

The final spinning plate is the Fitz/Simmons saga.  Simmons is back but is still jumpy as hell, every bright light and noise setting her on edge.  Six months on an alien planet being hunted will do that to you.  Fitz tries to get her back to work – after all, that helped him – but comes to realize after a chat with Mockingbird that maybe Simmons needs something different.  They go to a nice dinner, and bond over a good cry.  So it’s a surprise when Bobbi finds Simmons in the lab, poking and prodding the remnants of the monolith.  But Simmons doesn’t want to hear it’s inert – she WANTS to go back!

  • Obviously the big questions is, why does Simmons want to go back to the alien world?  Is someone else there?  Some other discovery?  An important artifact?  BRUCE BANNER?
  • Lincoln still being in the wind is a surprise too – I think most of us assumed he’d be the first ‘Secret Warrior’ recruited.
  • I definitely get an Abigail Brand vibe from Rosalind – I’m not sure if she’s available to the MCU since she was created in an X-comic but that’s who I think of when she’s on screen (or the comic version of Maria Hill).

Next week brings back Lash, and sees at least one more new Inhuman appearing.

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Agents of SHIELD Recap – S03E02 Purpose in the Machine

MARVEL'S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. - "Purpose in the Machine" - Fitz and the team enlist the aid of an Asgardian to unlock the secrets of the ancient monolith that swallowed Simmons, and Agent May is at a crossroads in her personal and professional life, on "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," TUESDAY, OCTOBER 6 (9:00-10:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network. (ABC/Kelsey McNeal) SPENCER TREAT CLARK

Episode 2, Purpose in the Machine kicks off right where the premiere left off, and keeps up the breakneck pace.  After an open that shows old English dudes sending some poor sap into a room…with our monolith.  Mostly so one of them can tell us “no one ever returns!”.  But we know our Simmons is still out there!  Back at SHIELD HQ, there’s some talk to get everyone up to date on the state of the Secret Warriors and team SHIELD itself which is to say numbers are down.  Amazing that these new Inhumans are all pretty freaked out.  Or dead.  That talk stops when they notice Fitz freaking out on the monolith.  They pull him away and slam the case shut just in time for the thing to go liquid again…reacting to Daisy.

We also see Ward rebuilding HYDRA, cutting away the weak and soft heads so stronger ones can take their places.  He hunts down a young man…who turns out to be Werner von Strucker!  I didn’t see that coming, and I’m interested to see what they do with it.  He gets placed in Dr. Garner’s Psych class by Ward.  Garner, for his part, is helping Daisy and Mack evaluate the Inhumans after May went to ground.  Garner gets Daisy to open up just a bit, about how she wants to build a home for her people.

Fitz discovers proof that the monolith is a portal through space, when it leaves behind alien sand after going liquid.  Coulson recruits “Professor Randolph”, the Asgardian the team encountered in Season one to help them open the portal.  Peter MacNicol is hilarious as the unassuming but powerful deserter, who studied portals like this as he’s afraid of getting snatched back through one.  He’s able to give the team a location where the monolith must’ve been, and they find a room designed to vibrate it open.  How convenient that they have a team member who can vibrate stuff when the machinery breaks, eh?  Daisy opens the portal, and Fitz dives through (of COURSE, did no one there see this coming, really??).  Simmons has thankfully headed towards the portal site thanks to a flare they shot through the first time, and Fitz spots her.  It gets intense as Fitz tries to reach her and hold her while they pull him back in.  The monolith shatters, we see Fitz under the shredded remains…and then Simmons!  I was shocked they got her back this early in the season, but it was a great moment.

The remaining plot (boy, they are spinning a lot of plates) involves the missing May joining Hunter on his mission to kill Ward.  Unremarkable except for the interplay between May and her dad, played by the always wonderful James Hong (Po’s dad in the Kung Fu Panda movies, pretty much everywhere else they need an older male Asian actor with humor chops).

The high entertainment value continued this week, but there are still plenty of questions left to answer despite Simmons’ return.

  • What planet was she on?  Hala?  It looked more like a moon to me, and her getting stranded there reminded me a bit of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes episode where the Avengers get stuck on Hala and are attacked by strange creatures.
  • Werner’s giant H belt buckle is just great.
  • As is the team noting the SHIELD logo being plastered on everything may have not been the best idea.  Heh.
  • In the comics, Strucker had other children, Andrea and Andreas the Fenris twins.  They had powers but I doubt they want to bring them in right now.  This episode seems to be bringing the team slowly back together, but they preview for next week seems to show a ‘betrayal’ as Daisy tries to help Lincoln, on the run after being outed as an ‘alien’ in last week’s episode.
  • With a manhunt episode and the return of the ATCU, I don’t see things slowing down.  On to Civil War!
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Review TV

Agents of SHIELD Recap – S03E01 Laws of Nature

I’ve got a bit of free time on my hands, so I am going to try and write more – and I thought I’d start recapping some of my favorite shows.  First up, Agents of SHIELD!

AoS season two dealt with the Inhumans, and the fact that Skye (now known by her real name, Daisy Johnson), was one of them.  It ended with Jemma Simmons sucked into a Kree monolith, Coulson with his arm chopped off, Ward looking to take over HYDRA, and May taking off.  And oh yeah, Terrigen seeping into the oceans, potentially setting off Terrigenesis in every potential Inhuman.

In fact, Season 3 kicks off with a scene of a normal dude fresh from his Terrigenesis – Joey (gotta be a version of The Melter, right?) is turning metal to liquid all over the place, but he doesn’t mean to.  He’s terrified, and it doesn’t help when a black-ops team rolls up.  Daisy, Mack, and Hunter show up to extract Joey however, and we get to see the full power of ‘Quake’.  Though she isn’t yet called that.  This show needs Cisco from the Flash to pop by to give everybody their names.  Coulson is on hand (ha!) to snap a picture of the leader of the opposing team so they can identify her.

This leads to two separate scenes that dovetail together nicely – Mack and Daisy are sent to get Lincoln back to help deal with Joey’s transition (they kind of stink at it), while Coulson and Hunter attempt to capture the shadowy lady in charge of the black ops team.  Coulson and Hunter get the tables turned on them, but it’s okay as Rosalind (as she is calling herself this time around) is talking, not shooting.  As they flirt/banter, both Coulson and Rosalind figure out the the other is NOT, in fact, the one killing Inhumans…and Lincoln, Daisy and Mack meet who is:Lash

This is Lash, a fairly recent addition to the comics.  I chose this panel specifically as I am fairly certain Lash’s motivations in the comics will match up with his AoS version – that all of the new Inhumans popping up are not worthy of Terrigenesis.  The three heroes barely escape Lash after Daisy cleverly uses her powers to drop him through the floor, while Coulson and Hunter engineer their escape when Rosalind is distracted.

There’s also a running story with Fitz, travelling the world looking for clues on getting Jemma back from the monolith.  He’s got little to lose, and risks his life to get a scroll from arms dealers, only for it to turn out to be less than helpful.  When he finally gets back to SHIELD, he breaks down, busting in to the sealed room where the monolith is, and has an epic freakout.  For a lot of other guys, it would come off as corny or over the top, but Iain De Caestecker as Fitz pulls it off.  The show ends with Simmons running from her life on what appears to be an alien moon.  She’s cut, and she smears mud on it quickly which seems to indicate an animal is chasing her?  And is she in orbit of Hala, perhaps?

It was a great start to the season, and I’m dying to get more on what is happening with Simmons.  And May.  And Ward.  And the “ATCU” (HAMMER?  SWORD?).

Random thoughts:

  • A shotgun-axe sounds like the lamest Final Fantasy weapon
  • Lincoln shares a last name with one of the names Coulson and the team found ‘Rosalind’ under – her real name, and her son is Lincoln?  Or a red herring?
  • The laws of nature getting broken came up a lot, and all I could think of was this:

Darren Cross 2

Now, I don’t think Cross survived his trip to the microverse, so it’s mostly just coincidental, but it was fun to ponder.  On to next week!