Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S01E21 – Review

By: Jeffrey Bell (story)

The Story: The team proves that motel living has only made them tougher.

The Review: I aired out my feelings about Ward pretty thoroughly last week, so I won’t go back into them now. I’ll only say again that it was always going to take something major for us to consider cutting him a little slack on this whole betrayal thing, and this episode definitely does not give us that. Bell makes a sincere attempt, but unfortunately he takes a misguided approach that only leaves you even more ambivalent about Ward’s character.

While Bell uses flashbacks to examine the Ward-Garrett relationship from their first contact in Ward’s juvie facility to Garrett jumpstarting Ward’s S.H.I.E.L.D. career, none of this really helps us to process Ward’s slavish devotion to Garrett. The older man promises the young Ward, “No one will ever screw with you again,” and fulfills that promise by abandoning the lad in a Hatchet scenario for five months, but on paper, this doesn’t sound like much of a bonding experience. What Bell needed to do was backtrack even further, to the point when Ward set his family home on fire (with his brother inside) or even before. We need to see how Ward’s home life was so toxic that Garrett’s physical and emotional abuse was preferable by comparison.

All of these flashbacks have only one purpose: to show how damaged Ward is and thereby open a path to redemption, a path he seems more and more likely to take. The problem is his redemption hinges on the same quality that drives his villainy: his supposed weakness of caring too much. There’s also the inherent contradiction in him mastering that weakness so as to dispose of Fitz and Simmons, two inarguably innocent souls, but letting it run free when it comes to maintaining the life of Garrett, an egomaniacal, completely self-interested jag with a personal bone to pick with S.H.I.E.L.D.

It turns out that much as has been suggested in recent episodes, Garrett’s affiliation with Hydra is one of convenience than conviction. [SPOILER ALERT.] Garrett was not only the first recipient of the Deathlok tech, his need for it arose from a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission gone awry in his early days. After falling to an IED, his calls for a medic were met with “excuses,” after which he lost his loyalty to his agency entirely. You could accept this as justification for his current actions if only the episode invested much more time in fleshing out that grisly incident. Instead of the “Nickel version” of the story as recounted by Garrett to Ward during a flashback, we should’ve gotten the “Dollar version” during an actual flashback to experience the trauma firsthand. At least we should see what these “excuses” were—you know, whether they were legit, like, “We’re under fire and going down,” or vengeance-worthy, like, “Sorry, dude, got the game on at five–go Clippers!”

But for these fundamental defects in the antagonists, this would’ve been one of the show’s best episodes so far. I always wanted to see the team do more traditional spy work in a low-tech scenario, so this episode, with the team working out of a hotel room, drawing out their analysis Pictionary-style on a poster pad, using gear from Triplett’s trunk of Howling Commando memorabilia, and sending Coulson and May to infiltrate a Hydra manufacturer in the guise of sweater-wearing nerds—well, this episode is practically a wrapped present to me with a big ol’ bow on top, and for that, I thank S.H.I.E.L.D.

You have to admit, unmoored from the giant S.H.I.E.L.D. safety net, the team is looser, bolder, more invested in what they’re doing than they’ve ever been. And more fun, too. Check Coulson and Trip geeking out over the Commando relics (“This is amazing,” Coulson murmurs, “almost as cool as—” “—the transistorized blast gun, he and Trip say together); or Coulson and May emulating as best they can Fitz’s brogue and Simmon’s hyper-bubbly delivery, respectively; or Coulson radioing Skye to “[g]et ready for a large file transfer” and seconds later throwing an entire filing cabinet through a shattered window from near the top of an office building.

It’s also worth mentioning that Raina, besides her usually enigmatic, flowery aura, is starting to become a useful dark horse for the show. Already nonplussed by Garrett turning out to be the Clairvoyant, she’s probably not thrilled to discover that his support for her research is mostly fueled by a desire to get his own second life. Her probable betrayal will be a big help to the beleaguered Coulson team, and she delivers exposition in that compellingly sullen manner like no one else.

Conclusion: You’ll wish for a better set of villains, but the heroes are very easy to love here.

Grade: B

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – When Garrett told Ward, “You want something to eat, you kill it,” was anyone else like me and immediately turn a dismayed eye on the dog?

– If Garrett’s this good at playing on Ward’s insecurities (“Stop blaming me for your own failure.”), he must be a boss when it comes to the young women with daddy issues.

– Much as I like that Coulson calls for a pizza delivery as “Pablo Jimenez,” I really wish he had done so as “Tony Rogers”—or, even better, “Steve Stark,” for that Stan Lee-esque alliteration.