Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Recap: A Happy Pranksgiving
Recap and review of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Episode 9 - Repairs:
This week's Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. looks to answer some questions I'm not sure anyone was really asking. Much of the show's central mystery has been centered on what happened to Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) following The Battle of New York depicted in The Avengers. We know he died, and we know he's somehow changed, but details are scarce. Since the show doesn't look like it's going to be answering that question any time soon, it needs to offer up a mystery it can solve, namely the backstory of why Agent May (Ming-Na Wen) is so damaged. "Repairs" is a decent character-building episode, although I wonder if the show isn't leaning too hard on having every one of its characters steeped in some tragic, insurmountable past. It's fine for one character, even two, but both Ward (Brett Dalton) and Skye (Chloe Bennet) come from broken backgrounds, and it feels as though it's a storyline approach that can wear thin, especially if the show continues to keep the real details behind these stories so tightly under wraps. But at the very least, we have May figured out...well, mostly.
Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) decide to play a series of pranks on Skye as a method of initiation, since she skipped over the hazing by not going through the same orientation they went through. Part of the pranking involves feeding her false stories about why May is nicknamed "The Cavalry". So they tell a perplexed Skye that May killed 80 mercenaries on horseback in an epic confrontation that only grows in stature with each retelling. Skye already has trouble believing the story, since she isn't exactly May's biggest fan, finding her to be too stern and alienating. However, as Skye retells the story to other members of the team, they each offer their own corrections. For instance, Ward says that May didn't kill 80 mercenaries, but rather 20 trained assassins, and she didn't do it on horseback. She did it with a single pistol. It's hard to tell whether Ward actually believes this story, or if he's just continuing to yank Skye's chain. If nothing else, one would think he'd know the truth, since he presumably commiserated with May about their mutually scarred pasts in between banging last week (which is more or less confirmed when we see Ward coming out of the shower in May's room the morning after). But this version of the story, too, turns out not to be entirely correct.
Credit: ABC
Coulson corrects Skye and reveals the real story: May and Coulson were sent into Bahrain with several agents as "the welcome wagon," the very first boots on the ground. Their mission was to rescue the hostages of a cult leader, and to neutralize the leader's hostile devotees. He adds that May didn't have a gun -- in fact, no one did. Perhaps this is why things quickly went south, as the situation apparently got worse (although Coulson doesn't specify how). Though May is able to subdue the tyrannical leader and rescue every civilian, she never reveals how. All Coulson knows is that when she exited the compound, she was a changed woman. May didn't lose any of the hostages, but as Coulson explains, "she lost herself." From that point on, she was never the same. Coulson recounts that May used to be warm, "fearless in a different way," pulling pranks, and adopting the attitude that rules were meant to be broken. In essence, she wasn't all that unlike Skye. But once she walked out of that building, "it was like that part of her was gone."
Credit: ABC
Skye quickly intuits that Coulson brought May onboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. team in order to see if the old May was still in there somewhere, and I suppose this is as good an approach as any in terms of fleshing out May, particularly in relation to Coulson. But do we really need another mysterious backstory? Even when giving us answers, the show doesn't paint a full picture, as we still don't know exactly what happened inside that building in Bahrain that so deeply affected May. It's okay to leave some mysteries open, and I tend to dislike the culture of viewership that solely wants answers and doesn't care about the journey, but the mysteries in question are so integral to the ability to enjoy the ride, as it were. How can we actually enjoy May, or Ward, or even Coulson, if so much of their personal histories are a complete void? Hopefully, the show starts sketching in some of the background sooner rather than later, as I feel the actors are more than capable of handling the material the script gives them -- it's just a matter of the script giving them more.
Credit: ABC
Of course, despite my issues above, I still found the May situation to be the more compelling aspect of the episode, as the case of the week didn't do all that much for me. The story centers on Hannah Hutchins (Laura Seay), a woman responsible for a series of tragic accidents, which many believe are due to her unwitting ability to manipulate objects around her. Yet Hannah insists that she isn't purposefully doing anything, and instead theorizes she's being punished by God. I'm surprised the show has taken this long to get to a storyline in which a person attempts to explain away the superpowered world of the Marvel Universe with a secular argument, and Hannah is as decent a character for it as anyone. She has a very wholesome, "girl next door" quality to her, and it's perhaps this meekness that prompts Skye to become protective of her, even as May adopts a more hard-line stance on the subject, shooting her with the Night-Night Gun when she suspects that Hannah is unknowingly launching an attack on the outraged mob of citizens who have taken to egging her house.
Credit: ABC
Naturally, the twist of the episode ends up being that Hannah is actually right: not about being punished by God, but about being innocent of actually causing the damage that her apparent powers have inflicted. Turns out this is all the doing of a "non-corporeal madman" named Tobias (Robert Baker), who is essentially a ghost trapped between our universe and another. This reveal takes "Repairs" in an interesting direction, as the episode pretty much becomes an homage to Alien, with the team being stalked by an otherworldly predator at 30,000 ft. (or, in the case of Alien, considerably higher). Ward attempts to fight the ghost, who is desperately searching for Hannah for reasons that remain a mystery. The fight itself is pretty interesting since it plays out like one long illusion, with Tobias disappearing and reappearing at various points in the fight, and Fitz remarking that Tobias becomes a little less powerful each time he vanishes and reappears, since he's slowly being pulled into the non-corporeal world. This leads to the climax, in which May uses Hannah as bait to lure Tobias to a barn, where a fight ensues and it becomes clear that the ghost isn't actually looking to harm Hannah, but rather to protect her, since he's in love with her. It's a twist that actually makes perfect sense upon rewatch, since every supernatural outburst was a response to Hannah being accosted or placed in danger, even her containment by S.H.I.E.L.D. Ultimately, May is able to subdue Tobias, at which point the spirit agrees to leave Hannah in peace.
Credit: ABC
Yet the real newsworthy development is in the post-credits scene, as we see May actively participating in the ongoing prank war, with Fitz ending up with shaving cream all over his face. In essence, it reveals that Coulson is right to believe that some of that goodness and warmth remains deep down in May. It's a succinct way of communicating a subtle change, and it paints May and Skye as far more similar than either would be willing to admit. I enjoyed that development, even if "Repairs" was a fairly uneven episode, in my opinion.
Credit: ABC
With that said, the return in two weeks looks outstanding, as it features the return of a character I was desperately hoping to see return, so I'm eagerly looking forward to Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. digging deeper into its pulpy, action-adventure roots.