Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E05 – Review

By: Brent Fletcher (story)

The Story: Skye’s association with S.H.I.E.L.D. goes down in flames.

The Review: Ever since we found out that Skye hadn’t completely severed her ties with the Rising Tide—quite the opposite, in fact—it’s been a foregone conclusion that connection would come into contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. eventually.  Before that, however, you expected the show would continue to develop the requisite bonds of trust between Skye and the rest of the team, if only to make the inevitable fallout that much bigger and more difficult to clean up.

So it’s with no small amount of unpleasant surprise that—spoiler alert—this episode expedites that confrontation considerably.  Having already made Skye do the double-agent maneuver on Ian Quinn in the third episode, perhaps the writers felt they couldn’t reduce her into a one-trick pony by making her do it again, two episodes later.  You can even argue, as A.V. Club’s David Sims does, that the early timing of Skye’s discovery just saves us the season-long slide towards treachery these things usually require.

But I’m afraid neither of these reasons will do.  Exposing Skye at this juncture just feels ridiculously premature for the story and for the audience.  For one thing, with only four episodes under its belt since it started, the show overestimates the bonds among the team to an almost laughable degree.  I say that because it’s almost amusing how Fitz, in reaction to the situation, protests disbelievingly, “We’ve been through so much together.”  As if they’re longtime war buddies and BFFs instead of relatively friendly coworkers.*

Given how underdeveloped the relationships between Skye and most of her teammates are, and given how fresh her connection to the Rising Tide still is, the feeling of betrayal among them is not only unconvincing, it is downright unbelievable.  With Coulson, you might—might—believe there’s a bond close enough to merit some outrage.  Mostly, though, you’re disappointed that he had actually fallen that hard for her reform act.  Here you thought, even hoped, he was playing her as well as she was playing him, and it turns out that the veteran agent was the naïve pigeon all along.  That only makes it all the dumber that he once again falls for one of her sob stories about her parents and goes as far as to offer his help on the matter.  After such an early, direct, and obvious act of backstabbing, even this residuum of trust is completely unearned, her voluntary acceptance of a monitoring bracelet notwithstanding.

I should say also that the circumstances of Skye’s discovery are probably the lamest you can possibly imagine.  Spoiler alert—basically, she found it impossible to keep her pants on after running into her Rising Tide boyfriend, a master-hacker with Ward-competitive cheekbones and just the right amount of bad-boy scruff to, evidently, make any lady forget herself.  I don’t know if Fletcher thought it’d be funny or what to turn what should have been a momentary rendezvous (as Skye herself initially says it would be) into the thing where she loses track of time via intercourse** and gets caught.***

And of course the guy would turn out to be a scumbag with only pretenses to ideals.  Even he looks like he can’t believe himself when he follows up a long speech about freedom of information with a near-drooling admission about how much money he received in exchange for the information he held.  That doesn’t bother me nearly as much, however, as the action-plot of the week: a Hong Kong street performer/pyrokinetic, who gets seduced into joining the dark side by nothing more than the allure of fame.  It seems that becoming an expendable science project and a lifetime of villainy is way easier than improving your lame magic tricks.

Conclusion: Though some small moments of interest remain, they are very small indeed, and growing smaller as the show continues to sell itself short with poorly motivated and developed turns in the plot.

Grade: C-

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: * I say this also having been completely unconvinced of the sudden rush towards sunset-watching camaraderie by the show’s second episode.

** Which was apparently spurred on by Skye calling him “dumbass”—which, as we all know, is the world’s most arousing word.

*** That alone should be a red flag that she is not cut out for field work of any kind, even if you can muster enough faith in humanity to trust in her again.

– And the award for Least Impressive Moment of Expert Spywork goes to Ward, for his obvious bit of corner-of-the-eye-contact on the street which immediately prompts their target to flee.  Real smooth.