Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E12 – Review

By: Monica Owusu-Breen & Jed Whedon (story)

While Buffy the Vampire Slayer was hardly the first to use the monster-of-the-week format for its episodes, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it popularized the format for a whole lineage of WB/CW shows: Angel, Charmed, Supernatural, and Smallville, to name a few.  Almost all the episodes that fell into this format followed a certain pattern: strange phenomenon appears; heroes investigate; the culprit turns out to be the socially stunted featured character.

There’s a reason why so many shows crutched and continue to crutch on this formula despite how recognizable it’s become to TV audiences; it just works, especially for any show that simultaneously plays on mystery, action, and drama, all with a supernatural twist.  It’d be unreasonable for S.H.I.E.L.D. not to make use of the format sometimes, especially since it seems naturally suited to the team’s mission statement.  For those reasons, while “Seeds” may be the most conventional of the show’s episodes thus far, it’s also the most watchable, something the show can potentially emulate in the future.

Smallville fans will find this episode’s cold open—a built-in pun, if there ever was one—particularly familiar as it sets up the core mystery in a very teen soap kind of way: a bunch of youths skirting the rules a bit by taking a nighttime dip in the school pool, only to suddenly find themselves surrounded by inexplicably frozen water.  From the very beginning, the list of suspects is small, so much so that guessing the culprit(s) is an inevitably simple task.  Owusu-Breen and Whedon perhaps realize the futility of masking the antagonist under these circumstances, so they concentrate on more fruitful pursuits.

The one that really pays off, and the one that the show really ought to repeat, is separating the grown-ups from the kids (relatively speaking) in the episode.  Too often, May and Coulson act as chaperones around their younger cohorts, so sending them off on their own personal mission allows them to be themselves in a way that they can’t when they have to call the shots and keep their teammates in line.  Alone together, they can exploit the intimacy and history between them that the others don’t share, and reach a level of emotional honesty we so rarely see on this show, whether it’s Coulson’s angst about his resurrection or May’s awkward admission that she and Ward “have been having sex.”*

Meanwhile, Ward, Skye, Fitz, and Simmons are placed in a setting which highlights the best of their individual personalities and their group dynamic.  Immersed among other young geniuses who idolize them, Fitz and Simmons are no longer the innocent, nerdy butts of everyone’s jokes, but mentors, with field experience worthy of awe from their purely academic mentees.  With this crowd, Ward is downgraded from alpha male to mere jock, but he, too, prospers without Coulson and May’s scrutiny to live up to.  It’s hard to imagine that he’d be as openly sympathetic to a gifted student’s loneliness if was trying to maintain his professional demeanor around senior agents.  For her part, Skye’s role as amused observer is perfectly utilized here, expressing fascination and enthusiasm with S.H.I.E.L.D. culture to which she’s still a foreigner.

This episode also marks the first in which the show manages to advance several different plotlines of varying terms at the same time.  The A-story is neatly set up, developed, and concluded, just as a monster-of-the-week should be, but it also goes the extra step of drawing on earlier continuity and weaving it a little tighter in the process.  While Ian Quinn is one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s least interesting villains, connecting him to the Clairvoyant gives him a new level of import, especially since Raina is now out of the picture.  This episode also gives us some leads on Skye’s backstory, which serves the dual purpose of finally shutting up her incessant demands for Coulson and May to investigate her past while also making her a much more compelling figure within the show’s mythos.

Structurally uninspired, but capably executed, this is an episode that might actually be worth rewatching.

Grade: B

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: * They “have been having” sex?  You mean they still are?  Well, gee, thanks for letting us know!

– Agent Weaver is played by Christine Adams, a great character actress whom I fell in love with when she played a dog trainer who becomes a romantic interest for Emerson Cod in Pushing Daisies.  A regal beauty with a sultry British accent, brimming with cool-jazz intelligence?  She is pretty much my dream woman come to life.

– “‘Bad seed’ isn’t a S.H.I.E.L.D. term, Ward.  It’s just a term.”  Sometimes, Skye, I actually do kind of adore you.