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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Among Us Hide...

“Welcome back, Agent Morse.”

Another hour of solid storytelling. And a twist.

What kept this episode at good but not great was Hunter. I usually love him for his quick wit but it was just not there this week. Maybe it’s that I miss him playing off Coulson and May. Mack was precious with his big brother frustration at Hunter, but there’s something off about the Hunter/Daisy dynamic that wasn’t there when it was Hunter/Skye. Daisy is just much more of a dramatic presence than Skye. In the first season, Skye was an adorkable little hacktivist. Now, Daisy is a consummate professional (dwarf stealing aside) with a serious savior complex and a mission to save Inhumanity. While it’s impossible to fault her humorless attitude, it makes for an awkward juxtaposition with Hunter. Also I couldn’t help but be annoyed with Hunter’s constant complaining about Dad grounding him Coulson benching him. What he did was stupid and reckless and would have cost Andrew his life if Andrew wasn’t also Sonic the Hedgehog.

Andrew and Lash are one and the same, which a bunch of fans had figured out or at least suspected. It’s how Lash had all the information about the Inhumans and explains why in the world anyone in their right mind would dump Melinda May. I’m definitely on board. Why have Blair Underwood on the show if you’re not going to use him? And I’m looking forward to an answer on why Lash doesn’t seem to want to kill Daisy. Is it a deliberate choice or does Andrew’s stepfatherly affection for her give him a subconscious desire to keep her alive?

Speaking of awesome guest stars, Constance Zimmer continues to impress me. She might be my favorite non-Lady Sif guest star the show’s had so far. She’s doing an awesome job keeping Rosalind’s intentions incredibly vague. She could totally be telling the truth about her husband and her keep the world safe goal, or it could all be lies. I have no idea at this point. I’m surprising myself by digging the Coulson/Rosalind mutual crush thing that’s going on. Far from wanting them to be together in the long haul, I’m know it will make for a much more dramatic turn when she betrays Coulson or he has to choose between Daisy and Rosalind.

As for the Daisy/Rosalind issue…wow. Remember when this show was just chasing alien McGuffins week after week? Now they’re taking a really complex moral question (‘what do we do with Inhumans?’) and are playing it for all it’s worth. Like Daisy, I was initially horrified at the idea of innocent people being imprisoned in orange Jell-O and stored like Christmas decorations. But then Rosalind explained her motivations and, God help me, I totally understood where she was coming from too. The newly empowered and completely unprepared Inhumans can be a danger to themselves and the public. It makes complete sense to want to keep them from inadvertently hurting anyone and the government doesn’t have the time, resources, or knowhow to help them. Whatever Daisy thinks, she doesn’t either. Afterlife put a single person through Terragenesis at a time with years in between. As much as she wants to make everything okay for her people, Daisy just can’t do this by herself. So who is right here? Who is wrong? Will Rosalind’s “cure” end up saving people like Joey who just want to go back to their normal lives or will it be genocide?

Bobbi hesitantly reentered the field this week after spending the hiatus recovering from her last encounter with Ward. I really liked how they handled this. Bobbi was shown at once to be anxious and reluctant to get back to work. People aren’t simple and Bobbi’s emotions in this case were totally believable and Adrianne Palicki did a great job playing it, even if the big poolside fight scene wasn’t up to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s usual level. I spotted a few continuity errors one shot of someone who was not Adrianne Palicki.

Fitz is working on opening the portal. I think. After impressing me with his willingness to help Jemma last week, here, he began to worry me. Hunter popped by the lab just long enough to give Fitz some really awful advice. Don’t do the right thing, he argued. Instead, be jealous and petty and obsessively possessive. Oh Fitz, don’t listen. Please don’t listen. I can’t tell whether the setback at the end of the episode was real or not. Was he just putting Jemma off or did the simulations actually fail? I’ll defend Fitz’s research of Will in this case, however. I won’t even go to a restaurant without looking at a menu online first. It makes sense for him to check out at the very least whether Will was a hallucination.

Intel and Assets

--Werner Von Strucker paid a visit to Gideon Malick this week, a man you’d be forgiven for not recognizing. He was one of the members of the World Security Council in The Avengers. You know, one of those guys who tried to nuke New York. Good times.

--It makes me smile when Mack calls Daisy “Tremors.”

--After her starring role last week, Jemma didn’t have much to do besides moonlight as Daisy’s girl Friday and bemoan with Andrew that people underestimated them because of their high intelligence (#humblebrag).

Coulson: “You can tell a lot about a woman from her books…Okay, I didn’t actually know that there were this many biographies of Margaret Thatcher.”

three out of four biographies of Margaret Thatcher
---
sunbunny, who is not Mark Greig

8 comments:

  1. Called it! Andrew is Lash. Lash's Andrew. Smug mode engaged.

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  2. I liked this episode, even though the whole being-betrayed-by-someone-they-trust thing is a ferris wheel that keeps spinning and spinning with this team. You know, for a spy agency, they just aren't good with sneaky detective work. Ward's betrayal actually made sense, but to have Andrew betray them as well? I thought at first that maybe the transformation to Sonic the Hedgehog on Steroids was involuntary, but that exchange that Andrew had with Daisy at the end was obviously meant to be menacing, right? I guess I just feel iffy about May's entire world being turned upside down after she just recuperated and got back on her feet from the last blow. By the way, in Hunter's defence, not that I'm saying what he did was the right thing, it's just that it was either let Andrew die or let a whole lot of innocent people die, and it wasn't like Ward's known for keeping his word. He would've probably killed Andrew either way. Hunter had this one shot, and he took it. He missed, which sucked, but his reaction was very in-character with the "action first, ask questions later" approach of his. He's always had anger issues and he always runs on half-baked whims.

    PARTING NOTES -

    I'm digging the whole Rosalind/Coulson thing while it lasts.

    OMG ANDREW IS LASH I AM SO SURPRISED. (said no one, ever.)

    You're right about Daisy being less fun than Skye, but at least Daisy's a badass feminist.

    Daisy and Mack are brotp.

    FITZ YOU BEAUTIFUL BALL OF SUNSHINE.

    I wish Jemma got more to do this episode, but at least she got to fangirl over Daisy. I love when she fangirls over Daisy.

    May and Bobbi kicking ass and taking names? SIGN ME THE EFF UP.

    I love how this show has a higher ratio of strong, powerful women compared to strong, powerful men.

    He's doing his research on Will. He should.

    REALLY, JEMMA? HE'S FREAKING GOING TO UNEARTH YOUR EX-BOYFRIEND BACK FROM THE PITS OF HELL EVEN THOUGH HE'S IN LOVE WITH YOU AND YOU DON'T EVEN GIVE HIM A KISS? ugh. Being a fitzsimmons shipper is torture.

    I still don't trust the ATCU. They're a government organization on television, right? Government organizations on television cannot be trusted.

    HYDRA would cover in fear if Wolfram & Hart came into the picture.

    DAISY CAN'T YOU SEE THE EVIL MANIPULATION IN ANDREW'S EYES OH FOR GOD'S SAKE THEY'RE ALL TERRIBLE SPIES.

    All in all, a good episode, and lovely review. :)

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  3. I just want to add that government organizations in real life cannot be trusted either. LOL. bye.

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  4. So... Lash and Andrew... are the same person?

    Do we suspect there may be some kind of connection between Lash and Andrew?

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  5. I’m not sure I’m on board with this. All the fun Glory/Ben jokes aside (and I can’t get enough of them), this whole Andrew/Lash situation is not clicking for me.

    First, let’s talk about Lash. I don’t read the comic books, and I know this show likes to change the origin story for the comic book characters they use (hi, SkDaisy), but with Lash not only they gave the character a new origin, they turned him into someone else’s alter-ego. Most of the Inhumans we’ve met so far are regular looking people, which seems like a waste of opportunity. I like the idea of Lash always being Lash, with no regular person to turn into. He’s always “the monster”, and that’s the character we would come to know deeper as the season went further.

    Things get worse when I think of Andrew. How many potential inhumans are out there? What are the odds that May’s lover would turn out to be an Inhuman? More specifically, what are the odds that he would turn out to be an inhuman-killing inhuman? Yes, Agents of SHIELD loves to build emotional connection between their heroes and villains, and that’s great, but this time it seems as if they are relying on that trick instead of earning it. I don’t like it. Maybe the coming episodes will prove me wrong, but as of now the situation is a little iffy.

    And then there’s Skye being “oh, why ins’t Coulson looking shocked?”. What was with that childish response? I mean, Coulson is a spy, Daisy knows that and she should know he’s not supposed to display his feelings wholeheartedly to someone that could eventually become an enemy. Couldn’t the writers find a way to tell the audience how Skye was responding to the situation without making her look immature?

    Also, apart from Skye, Mack and Hunter discovering what was going on at ATCU’s facility, their entire subplot was pointless. If you remembered Banks was with Rosalind on the train when Lash attacked the hospital, you knew there was no way he was Lash. So Banks was a pretty lousy red herring, and that hurt the episode.

    Then there’s Simmons. She’s expecting Fitz to do all the heavy lifting on bringing Will back? That’s odd. And it was disappointing how last week’s excellent episode was just used here as a source of building love triangle tension.

    It’s like the show has all the right ingredients, but fails to deliver them well on a consistent basis. It happened a lot in the second half of season two.

    But, you know, I’m a fan. I’m mostly always eager to watch the next episode, and they always pull great stuff (like Rosalind forcing inhumans into induced coma and locking them in cages because she believes that’s the best for them and for humanity until ATCU finds a cure) that makes me go “oh, ok, that was really good, I want to see where this goes”. So let’s see where this goes.

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  6. Great review!

    The Andrew/Lash thing doesn't make sense to me in terms of what we knew of Andrew's character before this. (LOL Camille) My husband suggested that maybe it's not really Andrew, so that would explain a lot. From a strategy standpoint, it makes sense to keep Daisy alive because she's the one bringing other inhumans in.

    I do not buy Rosalind's story at all! It might make sense if she were just doing it for out-of-control inhumans, but she's doing it to inhumans who have been living with it for a long time and have control over their abilities so they are not a danger to anyone. She can never make up for trying to take Daisy. I'm really hoping Coulson is just pretending to buy her story so he can continue digging. Otherwise I'm going to be very disappointed in him.

    I loved seeing Morse fight again. Although the electric shock would have affected her as well because she was still soaking wet and had a puddle of water connecting her to the pool.

    I love Fitz's new dwarf! I decided to call him Stealthy! http://www.douxreviews.com/2012/02/once-upon-time-715am.html

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  7. Andrew/Lash thing doesn't make sense for me either. Could there be two Sonics, Andrew and Lash? Guess not.

    You know, when this guy bragged about killing some men three times as big as Bobbi... That would be appropriate if he was talking to May, but Bobbi is just too big (not that this guy himself — I keep forgetting his name — was small).

    Speaking of May: the way she expresses all these emotions is just perfect. She looked so lost after talking with Strucker.

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  8. I am liking the complexity of all of these storylines, as you said so well in your excellent review, Sunbunny. What do we do with Inhumans who are hurting themselves and others -- not a simple answer to this question. I like that it is taking time for Bobbi to recover from some serious injuries.

    And who doesn't love a good Margaret Thatcher joke?

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