By: Rafe Judkins & Lauren LeFranc (story)
The Story: Ward and Fitz face the greatest trial of their lives: sleeping together.
The Review: One of the benefits (and downsides) of working on a piece of serial fiction is getting real-time reactions to your story. Yes, audiences can be fickle and arbitrary, and sometimes mass appeal is impossible if you really want to just tell the story you believe in. But if you’re going for mass appeal anyway, it strikes me as puzzling if you don’t seriously take into consideration what’s working with the audience and what’s not.
I like to double-check my reviews against the reviews of other critics around the web, and I’m relieved to find that my general criticisms of S.H.I.E.L.D. are pretty widely shared. What’s problematic is that these criticisms have been prevalent since early on in the show’s run and there has been little sign of change. I do understand that TV series are a bit like aircraft carriers in that they don’t have the maneuverability to course correct that quickly, but it’s disheartening to see the same defects persist episode after episode, this one included.
You can see that most clearly in the show’s handling of Skye, whose Whedon-esque one-liners (trying to worm classified intel out of Coulson, she bargains, “If I’m right, give me a signal by…not saying anything.”) have mostly ceased to redeem her irritating self-righteousness. She doesn’t seem to appreciate, despite a constant reminder on her wrist, that there are consequences for her wrongdoing. Instead of taking a hint (or seven) about her place in S.H.I.E.L.D. and the limited data thus available to her, she continues to dig. Since she has about as little goodwill with us as she does with the rest of the agency, this doesn’t make her admirable, just annoying.
Of course, if it weren’t for her rebel-without-a-cause act, then there wouldn’t be much of a contrast for Simmons to play against, right? As trite as it is for the sassy, jeans-wearing hacker girl to push her prim, proper, British-accented partner (who’s wearing a freaking tie underneath her cardigan, for heaven’s sake) into protocol-breaking hijinks, Elizabeth Henstridge does amp up her inherent Hermione-like cuteness to make the plotline entertaining.
Less cute and even more cliché is the practically blaring Fitz-Simmons shipping happening in the show. As I said last week, I would have appreciated the show at the very least delaying the romantic overtones for a while, but if anything, Judkins-LeFranc decide to go for the romance with even greater enthusiasm. I’m not opposed to the relationship in theory, but the obviousness is just a tiny bit nauseating. Fitz can’t stop babbling anecdotes of his and Simmons’ misadventures to Ward during their field mission, and Simmons, after making him a good-luck sandwich—yeah, I know—for the trip, looks ready to faint with worry while he’s away. The show should do us all a favor and let them have their kiss so we can all get on with our lives.
While the show’s at it, maybe it can give this ever drearier drama over Coulson’s return to the living a rest, too. S.H.I.E.L.D. may pride itself on secrecy, but given the way every single agent has been calling attention to the strange circumstances of Coulson’s resurrection, it’s pretty amazing that they manage to maintain anything resembling an intelligence hierarchy. By now, there’s been so much whispering, speculation, and anxiety over what happened to him that it’d be a bigger shock if he actually did recover in Tahiti.
But perhaps the show’s most critical problem is the lack of imagination when it comes to devising new scenarios for the team to tackle each week. While the various character combos have staved off dullness thus far, S.H.I.E.L.D. is quickly exhausting its possible team-ups. Fitz and Ward’s mission in a former Soviet Bloc nation has its enjoyable moments (Fitz charming the pants off some ersatz-Russians by restoring their ability to watch soccer, for example), but the mission itself is pure formula from top to bottom.
Conclusion: The show remains watchable, even diverting, but if it continues the way it has been, it will never be more than that.
Grade: C+
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – The “Overkill Device.” Really. Is “Overkill” in reference to what it does or the utter lameness of its name?