Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread

[The Old Mixer]

So the Skye angle was genuine...that keeps things interesting.

And yeah, the woman burning to a crisp was a bit much for an 8:00 time slot....

 

[Agent Richard07]

This episode started like a Heroes knockoff but turned into something pretty decent. And poor Skye. No more computers. What use is she now? And how long 'til the bracelet comes off? Oh, and Miles is a lucky guy.

 

[The Old Mixer]

So what was that teaser about? Who's the guy on inside?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I'm thinking the bad guy organization has to be AIM. While they were ambiguous last time about what they were messing with (being a mixture of everything but Extremis was the important part), this time seems to be explicitly continuing the experiments with Extremis.

Anyway, fun episode. Chang (not calling him Scorch) worked fairly well, although this is the second time where the guy they were rescuing ends up being the problem. The doctor being burned alive and Coulson and May causing Chang to detonate were both shocking moments. I'm not positive if Skye is still going to be an ongoing "is she a traitor" storyline, but it looks like they could have wrapped it up (which would be a good thing). She still has a secret past, but now it's more solutions oriented. I liked the Girl in the Flower Dress (better than the doctor, although I don't think the doctor needed to be killed off) and I like where the mystery there is building to.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

It's funny that I was swerved by the fact that I was sure last week's preview was a swerve because that's what they always do!

Pretty good episode, I really appreciated by the change of pace it seemed to offer. I don't know if that's the characters settling in or the change of locale (or just a better story) but it felt a little different and maybe a little meatier.

 

[Christopher]

Pretty good. We got some real progress with the character arcs as well as the return of the Centipede arc. We now know why Skye infiltrated SHIELD, and we have a new mystery about just who Skye's parents were... and who (or what) she is.

I'd been wondering if this episode would give Chloe Bennet (who was a pop star in Beijing for a while) the chance to show off her Mandarin-speaking chops, but it turned out that it was Ming-Na Wen who got to show off her linguistic abilities. (Apparently she speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese, and the Hong Kong setting suggests she was using the latter here, but I can't tell the difference.)

It was a bit awkward how they just jumped to having Skye and her friend released to help rescue the team. I wondered if I'd missed a scene. Her redemption did feel a little abrupt, although the denouement scene in Coulson's office balanced that out some.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

So, Skye's now wearing a probation bracelet....

Overall thumbs up.

However, I'm a little let down that Skye's secret turned out to be an evidently noble cause, rather than something that would complicate the question of her loyalty further, such as data collected on SHIELD like Coulson suspected. The way it turned out, it does sort of simplify her character, but it also moves things along.

It would seem that we know now that Skye is really on SHIELD's side.

 

[Christopher]

So... anyone know of a clairvoyant Marvel character who doesn't like to be touched? And what could the "toy soldiers on the shelf" possibly be? A HYDRA robot army stashed away somewhere? The inactive Chitauri invaders in cold storage in Area 51 or the Marvel equivalent?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

It's hard to find any clairvoyant Marvel character who arguably isn't an X-Men character.

 

[Trekker4747]

Thought it was a good episode. Be interesting to see where Skye's character goes from here. Again, it seems like the series gets progressively better with each episode.

 

[Agent Richard07]

I wonder if we'll see any of the show's regulars in a Marvel movie.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I'm thinking the bad guy organization has to be AIM. While they were ambiguous last time about what they were messing with (being a mixture of everything but Extremis was the important part), this time seems to be explicitly continuing the experiments with Extremis.

AIM seems too obvious for them not to just come out and say it. I took it as meaning that they were having trouble with the Extremis side effects and were trying to resolve that problem. That's just consistent with how Extremis works and the fact that this organization was previously established to be using it...doesn't mean they're AIM.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

True. AIM is the most sciency of the organizations. I don't think it's HYDRA (partly because I think that'd be more likely a Captain America thing). It could, of course, just be a brand new organization as well.

AIM just strikes me as safer to use. They aren't likely to be a recurring movie villain. Plus, there's a Graviton connection if they want to bring him back.

 

[Christopher]

It's hard to find any clairvoyant Marvel character who arguably isn't an X-Men character.

Or a Spider-Family character, like the two Madames Web.

 

[Turtletrekker]

True. AIM is the most sciency of the organizations. I don't think it's HYDRA (partly because I think that'd be more likely a Captain America thing). It could, of course, just be a brand new organization as well.

Wouldn't it be cool if they were laying groundwork for CA:TWS in AoS?

 

[The Old Mixer]

I think they sprinkled too many clues for the mystery organization not to be something that comics fans might be expected to recognize if they put the pieces together...but there'd be no reason for the mystery if it were something as obvious as AIM.

 

[Christopher]

...but there'd be no reason for the mystery if it were something as obvious as AIM.

Tell that to everyone who's assuming that Coulson will turn out to be a Life Model Decoy. If they're right, that's going to be a mystery with a very obvious solution.

And you know, for ages I was convinced that there was no way Benedict Cumberbatch's character in the Star Trek movie would turn out to be Khan, because that was just too obvious to be worth all the secrecy...

 

[sojourner]

So, is Skye a long lost sister of Peter Parker?

 

[The Old Mixer]

Oh, yeah...and after the very conspicuous disclaimers last week about there being no such thing as ESP...turns out a mystery man in the enemy camp is a clairvoyant....

 

[intrinsical]

I'd been wondering if this episode would give Chloe Bennet (who was a pop star in Beijing for a while) the chance to show off her Mandarin-speaking chops, but it turned out that it was Ming-Na Wen who got to show off her linguistic abilities. (Apparently she speaks both Mandarin and Cantonese, and the Hong Kong setting suggests she was using the latter here, but I can't tell the difference.)

They're all speaking Cantonese. Although Scorch's Cantonese is quite bad, the cadence is totally wrong. Ming-Na on the other hand was speaking perfect Cantonese.