By: Monica Owusu-Breen (story)
The Story: Those pesky Asgardians really need to learn to clean up after themselves.
The Review: It says a lot about this episode that nearly all its promotional material emphasizes its tie-in to Thor: The Dark World. It’s sort of admirable that the showrunners are committed to weaving their world so tightly into the Marvel movie universe, but more than anything, these plugs expose the show’s desperation. With ratings slashed nigh in half since its premiere, it seems S.H.I.E.L.D. is hoping for protection behind its bigger, cooler, handsomer siblings.
I have little doubt the episode will succeed in drawing a larger audience than usual, but the show will have a hard time keeping them. It was a mistake for the writers to set the timing of the story during the aftermath of The Dark World and even more so to make the team part of the clean-up crew. All this does is highlight the fact that the Avengers are the ones shaking the world while S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing all the grunt work. In this case, Thor is Steve Jobs and our agents are the team of engineers trying to decide whether the next iPhone should have round or square corners.
This is my editor’s cap talking, but the writers should have taken the bolder, more expensive move and made the plot coincide with the events of The Dark World instead of subsequent to them. Beyond the greater excitement this route would produce, it would have made our agents integral to the Marvel universe rather than vestigial. It might also have saved the characters from name-dropping Thor so much, because I swear, I heard him mentioned a couple dozen times.
Yet bizarrely enough, the episode really has very little to do with The Dark World. Besides wading through some rubble in the cold open, nothing else in the plot connects to the film at all, which leads to yet another thoroughly formulaic viewing. All the usual problems are here, starting with our antagonists. S.H.I.E.L.D. has been shockingly deficient in the development of its villains, which can only signal doom for a comic-book adaptation. At no point does the episode succeed in making you view the Norse terrorist group at issue as anything other than an irritant—and a minor one at that, even for our team.
So other than hoping that the agents will dispose of this group as quickly as possible, you have little reason to invest in their mission, much less how they execute it. Here, the show also continues a losing streak of character underdevelopment, which just seems negligent when the very plot provides a prime opportunity to build up one (arguably two) of the least defined characters on the show. Despite Ward taking center focus and revealing glimpses into his traumatic past, the episode does little more than repeat the same rapid-cut scenes over and over while only slightly clarifying a part of Ward’s life we already knew about anyway.
To your even greater disgust, the episode defeats any sense of tension it hoped to generate by minimizing the effects of Asgardian weapon that was supposedly so dangerous. Other than a brief riot in Oslo, the villains do nothing else with the strength-bolstering artifact, and Ward himself, despite several prolonged contacts with it, proves so resilient and otherwise unharmed that you can’t possibly take any warnings about long-term effects seriously.* Even the revelation of an Asgardian in their midst does nothing to enliven the proceedings; if anything, he’s a laughable stand-in for Thor and something of an embarrassment to his ancient culture.
And for the love of Mike, enough with the incessant mentions to Coulson’s time in Tahiti, or getting stabbed, or anything even remotely related to it. That horse has been long beaten to death, buried, and pushing up daisies, and it only becomes less interesting every time you hear it again. I wanted to groan the moment Coulson mentioned it, and I actually did groan when he mentioned it again later. I’m embittered, obviously, but I would pay good money to make this plotline alone go away.
Conclusion: Aside from the Asgardian props, the premise is yet another manufactured product from the S.H.I.E.L.D. factory, including the usual design defects. Makes you wonder if the show’s even trying anymore.
Grade: C-
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – I don’t quite understand why it’s okay to subtitle people in Hong Kong speaking Chinese, but have people in Oslo speak in English with Norwegian accents.
– Huh. Don’t know how I feel about May agreeing with Skye about Thor being “dreamy.” I’ve come to view May as rather asexual, as if she couldn’t be bothered to get it on with anybody except perhaps a highly efficient robot designed for that very purpose.