Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Recap: Skye-Fall
Recap and review of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Episode 13 - T.R.A.C.K.S.:
Sometimes, Family Guy will do this strange brand of endurance comedy, where a joke that stopped being funny within the first two seconds just goes on and on and on and on and on until it loops back around to being kind of funny again. Such is the case with "T.R.A.C.K.S.", the first gimmick episode for Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. The non-liner nature of the gimmick is just like one of those endurance comedy segments: it starts out as an intriguing narrative conceit, but quickly ends up feeling like an obnoxious gimmick with no real reason for existing, until it loops back around to being at least somewhat effective. Don't get me wrong, I still think a linear, continuous narrative would have served the episode better, but this was a risk the show had to take. It's settled into a formula that doesn't always work like it should. In order to grow, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. needs to do stuff like this from time-to-time, so even while the episode didn't really win me over until the last quarter, I appreciated what the show was going for.
Credit: ABC
Of course, this isn't to say that I buy for one minute that Skye (Chloe Bennet) is in any real danger of dying from her gunshot wounds, so I found it kind of tiresome to have that be the cliffhanger, as the story ends up focusing on a story with no real stakes. The outcome is an inevitability, so the effectiveness of next week's episode will rely on how Skye's shooting affects the characters, what their responses tell us about them, and -- well, I suppose next week can also let us in a but deeper on the mystery of The Clairvoyant, along with Skye's past. But I'm very cautious in my optimism. With that said, I'll gladly eat my hat with fork-and-knife if I'm wrong and Skye ends up biting it. Hell, the last ten minutes of the episode were pretty great, I thought, as the team is brought together under the banner of saving one of their own. And hey, maybe that's the point of the split structure: each member of this time has his or her part to play in the overall mission, but the mission (and the story itself) doesn't really succeed until they all come together.
Credit: ABC
So the S.H.I.E.L.D. team is infiltrating a train in order to obtain an OA4 that Ian Quinn (David Conrad) has procured from Cybertek for unknown purposes. There are some decent moments here in the early-going, such as Fitz (Iain de Caestecker) offering up his impression of an American as part of his and Skye's cover, asking the usher about restaurants that offer affordable dishes with large portions. There's also a pretty great bit in which Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) pretends to be Coulson's (Clark Gregg) estranged British daughter. Her fake outburst against her "father" for abandoning her mother to be with prostitutes (plural!) leads to a cameo by Stan Lee, who tells Coulson not to lose his chance at fixing things with his "daughter". But while this is entertaining, it doesn't last very long before the split narrative gimmick introduces itself.
Credit: ABC
Basically, Ward (Brett Dalton) gets made, prompting him to warn Fitz, Skye and Simmons to find a safe place to wait for him while he searches for Coulson and May (Ming-Na Wen), who is riding atop the train. Coulson and Ward bail on the train right as one of the henchmen detonates a grenade that appears to make the train vanish. It's at this point that the storylines split. Each segment follows what happened to each of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team members starting from the moment the team is made by Cybertek, with the cycle starting over after each commercial break. In no short order: Ward and Coulson escape Cybertek henchmen and attempt to make contact with their ally, Russo (Carlo Rota); May discovers that Russo was the one who sold them out to Cybertek, and takes matters into her own hands by killing the traitor after escaping from captivity and torture; Simmons attempts to rescue Skye and Fitz, and ends up falling on one of the grenades used to make the train disappear, an action that knocks her out, but has the benefit of revealing to Skye and Fitz that the grenades cause a mild hallucination due to an advanced form of the toxins found in the night-night gun. So Ward and Coulson only hallucinated the disappearance of the train -- as we see in May's segment of the story, Ward and Coulson were actually frozen on the ground after detonation, and woke up having thought no time had passed.
Ultimately, Skye and Fitz follow Cybertek to Quinn's compound, with Skye deciding to infiltrate the mansion on her own. Once inside, she ends up discovering the OA4, alongside a hyperbaric chamber containing Mike Peterson (J. August Richards). Quinn catches Skye off-guard and has his men confiscate the night-night gun, revealing that he engineered his grenades using S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own technology. However, it's Cybertek's technology that is responsible for the OA4, as we learn that what Quinn purchased off of the mysterious tech company is a bio-mechanical leg for Mike, who is under orders to kill an unnamed target for The Clairvoyant. Skye can't believe what she's seeing, but Mike, who is scarred from the explosion that allegedly claimed his life, and psychologically troubled by what The Clairvoyant is forcing him to do, still has humanity of his own: when Quinn attempts to force him to harm Skye, he refuses on the grounds that The Clairvoyant hasn't ordered him to. Mike leaves to pursue his mission, leaving Quinn alone with Skye.
The coldly maniacal businessman wastes no time in shooting Skye. Twice. The cavalier nature with which Quinn disposes of Skye is actually pretty shocking, since the scene doesn't really build up to the shooting through a self-centered villainous monologue or anything. He just shoots her in cold blood, without thinking about it, and it's pretty chilling. Afterwards, Quinn claims he has orders of his own, which almost sounds like an apology to Skye for having to shoot her, although that doesn't really line up with Quinn's character, and so it instead comes across as a random expository dump. I mean, really, were we ever meant to expect that Quinn was the top of the food chain? Anyway, he leaves Skye behind to bleed out, and the makeup team does a hell of a job making it seem like Skye is a goner, with her pale face and color-drained lips. And the character reactions to what has happened adds to the possibility that maybe things won't turn out so great after all: Coulson nearly falls apart upon discovering Skye, while Ward lashes out in anger, and Simmons completely breaks down in Fitz's arms. While they're able to stabilize her using the hyperbaric chamber in which Mike was stored, things aren't looking all that good for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s resident hacker.
Credit: ABC
"T.R.A.C.K.S." isn't a bad episode, really. Despite the first half not doing much for me, I came around on the second half, particularly the tail end, as Skye's shooting was accorded all the momentousness it deserved. Of course, it still doesn't mean I buy for one second that she's in any real danger of dying, but I can appreciate the show attempting to raise its own stakes. If nothing else, it's not as groan-inducing as the potential love triangle they seem to be setting up between Coulson, Ward, and May, as Ward walks in on Coulson stitching up May and gets all upset about it, and then later implies that what happened to Skye is all Coulson's fault. I know the show is trying to bring more emotion into the relatively cold, business-like personalities of Ward and May, but I actually think they're more interesting as individuals than as a couple. Coulson giving Ward the business for engaging in a protocol-violating relationship with a colleague, while Ward stews over the implications isn't exactly riveting character development. But I'm willing to see where it goes, since this is still one of my favorite first-year shows of the broadcast season, despite its occasional stumbles. And hey, the show is doing a better job developing its characters and its world now, as well as its mythology, as the post-credits scene establishes not only that Mike Peterson is now "Deadlok," but also that The Clairvoyant refuses to allow him to see his son just yet. Poor guy can't catch a break. Still, it should make for some interesting TV, going forward.