Mockingbird Steps In to Step Up the Female Badass-ery on Agents of SHIELD: A Fractured House
As usual with my reviews, there will be spoilers ahead. Please stop now if you haven't watched this episode yet.
Agents of SHIELD continues to be good, not great, but still better than ever before. This week we saw Hydra lead an attack on the United Nations. The trouble is that they are impersonating SHIELD. So, all the nations of the world quickly jump on the hate train to put SHIELD down, led by Senator Christian Ward (Tim McKay), brother to former Agent turned Hydra, Grant Ward (Brett Dalton). Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to review last week's episode "A Hen in the Wolf House" for the début of Bobbi Morse aka Mockingbird (Adrianne Palicki). But nonetheless, I have been watching with excitement as Bobbi Morse has quickly become a leading character. At the same time, so has Lance Hunter (Nick Blood)... Lance is a decent character, but he just seems like the bad boy replacement for Ward. He is a bit two-dimensional, constantly playing up his role as the mercenary whose only allegiance is to money. Add in the obnoxious grudge match dynamic between Bobbi and Lance and I pretty much have no desire to watch his character. He did slightly redeem himself at the end, busting in on Hydra with a six-pack as if everything is cool.
In the world of the first season cast, we see Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) still struggling to deal with his brain damage. Things have gotten slightly more complicated since Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) has arrived back at the SHIELD HQ. Fitz feels that Simmons abandoned him when he needed her most. He tries to open up to her and she only scoffs and walks away. Mack, ironically played by Henry Simmons, has become the new Simmons in the Fitz-Simmons duo. Over the last few episodes, Mack has made an effort to befriend Fitz and help him deal with fallout from his brain damage. He has been a true friend. Simmons is confronted by Mack and he tries to set her straight. It's a pretty touching scene where Mack tells Simmons he never knew the Fitz she knew, and this new guy is kinda weird, but he likes him. I enjoy the dynamic between the new Fitz-Simmons a bit more than I enjoy watching the old Fitz-Simmons work through their issues. I appreciate that the show runners wanted to set the stakes high and actually let us see a character (Fitz) truly get hurt, but the fallout is starting to drag on a bit. There was a good twist when we first realized that Fitz was imagining that Simmons was there. But then they let Fitz work through that and start to open up to his teammates. I think it's time to let the brain damage run its course and make Fitz useful or bench him.
The Skye/Ward mind fuck games continue in the basement as Skye (Chloe Bennett) is tasked with getting any intel on Ward's brother Christian. Ward is just truly creepy this season. Not only does everything about him feel skeezy, but he is literally a creep at this point. He uses his every interaction with Skye to try to woo her back to him, saying weird ex-boyfriend shit like, "I'll never lie to you." Look, dude, you were a covert Hydra operative. I don't think that line is going to fly, like EVER. Director Coulson (Clark Gregg) finally tells him as much after striking a deal with Ward's brother. Sen. Christian Ward gets custody of his brother in exchange for calling the nations of the world off SHIELD's back. Seems legit.... NOT. How do you go from being attacked by supposed SHIELD agents one day to a week later being like "ok, they're cool." You don't. I don't think this episode weighed the gravity of this particular plot point very well.
Speaking of shitty plot points, we later see Bobbi Morse going "undercover" back into the confines of a Hydra held science lab. She is tasked with getting her hands on the latest Hydra weapon, which is something like a throwing star that causes your body to disintegrate once it hits you. She gets into the lab no problem and begins talking to Toshiro Mori, who created the weapons... in Japanese. Surprise! Oh and another surprise, Bobbi kisses the dude. How convenient since your ex-husband is watching this whole thing. Then, the two settle down for tea and decide to start talking in English. This whole scene felt forced and stupid. Bobbi waits all of three minutes before she tries to get Mori to give her some weapons. Sorry, Adrianne Palicki is smoking hot as Mockingbird, but I don't believe for a second any dude with some wits about him would fall for this. And it seems Mori doesn't as a huge fight ensues and the Agents come out on top.
The episode wraps up with a big Hydra/SHIELD throw down in a SHIELD safe house in Belgium. This scene is pretty awesome. We get to see May and Bobbi kicking a lot of ass, but Agent May (Ming-Na Wen) steals the show again here with her fight against Marcus Scarlotti, Whiplash in Marvel comics. Scarlotti (Falk Hentschel) wields a chain with a knife on the end for some pretty exciting fight choreography. In the end, the Agents defeat Hydra, but only after they lose 6 of their own red shirt, faceless agents. General Talbot (Adrian Pasdar) seems to be coming around to SHIELD, offering a handshake and condolences to Agent May at the scene of the fight.
One last stinger scene teases more mystery surrounding the alien writing that is clearly the central theme of this season. A new and unknown character (Brian Van Holt) shows up at a tattoo parlor and removes his shirt to reveal the alien writing all over his torso. I'm sure we'll be learning more about this guy next week.
Overall, A Fractured House demonstrates how this show is still on the come up. The fight scenes, the character development, and the choice of new Marvel c-listers added to the cast are helping to make this show more of what comic book fans want. The failings of this show could be summed up in criticism any bad comic book would receive. Stop talking so much. I'm tired of watching guys in suits standing around giving big speeches about how SHIELD isn't going to let this or that happen. It's like who wants to read a comic book with hundreds of speech bubbles all over the page? Most people don't. Not because we don't like to read, but because that is not what the medium is best suited for. You have to strike the right balance between showing and telling. I think Agents of SHIELD still has some work to do to get there. I only say this because I find myself waiting for the episode to be over. Whereas with The Flash and even Gotham, I'm pretty hooked until the end of the episode. Agents of SHIELD has made good on its second chance, bouncing back from a lackluster season one and winning back critics and fans. Now it's time to see if they can kick that same process up a notch to make this show something GREAT.
Agreed, top to bottom. It's better but it could be Great. For a show based on an action/spy book, there's WAY too much talking. They should pick up the Steranko run on Shield from the 1960's to see how it should be done. Action, sex, crazy bad guys, insane super-science… it's all there as a perfect template.
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