Agents of SHIELD 1x04: "Eye Spy"
Mar. 4th, 2019 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsAgents of SHIELD 1x04: "Eye Spy"
I don’t really remember what my thoughts on this episode were at the time (especially since I decided not to go back looking for my old reactions from the time) so this may be inaccurate, but I feel like this was the first episode that gave me some hope for the show. I do remember that the next episode was the first one I felt I liked at the time, but I think this one at least stopped the downward momentum of the first three episodes. It still wasn’t the show I wanted it to be, and it was taking its sweet time getting itself sorted out what it wanted to be, and what it was I wasn’t sure I liked. But this episode feels like the show is ready to figure out what it is.
While this is episode is still very focused on its plot and guest star, there is room left for the main characters and we’re given moments with almost all of them. At the same time it feels a lot less like it’s trying too hard to sell something that I’m not buying. Skye is given much less focus; there’s less treating Ward as if he’s interesting and therefore is actually more interesting (actually in hindsight he’s kind of hysterical); while FitzSimmons are still very rough early characters, they seem more valued by the story. This episode finally seems to allow us to take the characters as they are rather than anything feeling quite so agenda driven. And as the show was still rather case driven just letting the characters be and play to their strengths was a good move.
These days I kind of think this episode is actually better than the next one (though we’ll see how I feel once I’m through it), but it sort of depends on what kind of mood I’m in. It also contains several things I find I miss in the later seasons of the show. I miss the globe-trotting, I miss that it films outside and has a lighting budget, I even find I miss the silly stingers; it’s not a great ending, but I like the idea that these characters have some time to just hang out and have actual relationships with each other.
The big question
This may not bother others as much as it does me, but these are my reviews and I’m going to talk about it for a while. I always (well maybe not at first) come out of this episode with an unanswered question: do May and Akela know each other?
It’s an area where the partially retconned nature of the Coulson and May relationship comes into play. Because I don’t think the writers had initially planned for their history to be as closely tied as they have over time made it out to be. Where we are now it’s hard to imagine Coulson wouldn’t have introduced them given the chance. It is possible that they were only working together for six months or so (we aren’t given a ton of detail on that aspect of their relationship) and they didn’t run into May during that time. But with Coulson trying to teach a young Specialist that they can also work with a team, May would seem like his go to; and you can’t tell me he wouldn’t have wanted to see them train together when this episode establishes just how big a fan he is of both of them.
I also think there’s a case to be made that the writers didn’t quite know when Bahrain happened (partly why this wasn’t much of a question on first viewing). If the writer here thought Coulson’s time working with Akela was after May went to administration, then would be no real need to explain where May was during that time. It would also actually leave room for some connected character readings; like maybe part of Coulson’s harshness with Akela was because of how things went down in Bahrain, that May went off alone without waiting for backup and things went badly, and then he sees some of the same traits in Akela and he doesn’t want to see another person end up like that. But that’s not what we get, since the writers decided that Bahrain happened after Akela’s disappearance; which has its own implications that we’ll get to down the line.
All that hypothetical work done, from what’s on screen should we assume May and Akela know each other? The strongest evidence would be against it; Coulson’s exposition dump at the beginning is not delivered as if May already knows all of this. If he had been delivering it more to Skye or the team at large, I’d have an easier time letting it slide as downplaying how much history he and May share. And like I said, it’s possible that there wasn’t time for May and Akela to know each other well, but it should be enough that Coulson doesn’t need to exposit who she is.
(Also the staging of that scene is weird; they come down the stairs from Coulson’s office, walk around the conference before going in and joining the others. I guess forced exposition also forces bizarre walk and talks.)
Most of stuff between May and Akela is pretty ambiguous on this front. If you just take as read that they do know each other, it can easily be read that way; but it’s also possible to assume they don’t. By the time May goes after Akela, Aklea definitely knows someone is after her, likely SHIELD and likely Coulson specifically. So being able to ID May as a SHIELD agent and ask if Coulson sent her doesn’t mean they’ve met, but if you assume they have the lines still work. May mentions not having to introduce herself, but does she mean to Akela or her handler? I would say their later scene makes a bit more sense if they knew each other before, but not enough to say it’s evidence.
But one thing I would call evidence of prior knowledge is in the argument scene. May mentions Coulson feeling guilty for pushing Akela too hard; but May was not in the scene between Coulson and Skye where he talked about that. Maybe she just knows him well enough to know that about him, but at that point she probably knows him well enough that he’s talked about Akela before now. It’s not quite evidence of them meeting, but it is evidence for me that May should have known who Akela was during the exposition scene.
Skye
I feel like my feelings on Skye in this one need some examination. For one they are fairy changeable depending on my mood; the last time I watched this episode I found her really annoying even though I was glad there was less of her. This time...I can appreciate some of her bits, this episode does a fairly good job of showing her as a useful but still very green SHIELD agent, and that part works for me; but any time I’m asked to care about her as a character I don’t. I just want her to shut up in her scenes with Coulson and for her/the writers to stop making this about her when it’s not.
And that I guess is kind of always my problem with Skye; as part of the group she’s okay even if I can take or leave her, but I don’t like her. I don’t care about her arc; I don’t care about her relationship with the others and kind of especially not with Coulson; I don’t care about getting into her background; I don’t particularly care about her views on the world. And on rewatch, any use there ever was in an audience proxy is lost, and I never particularly liked her in that role.
This episode actually uses her role as Doctor Who companion better than a lot of them. We’re still establishing what is and isn’t possible in the MCU at this stage, so we lay out that precognition isn’t a thing (I kind of wish they had stuck to that); and how people are questioning if aliens and portals are real then what else might be out there? And while I don’t like the scene as related to Skye, she is the opportunity for Coulson to exposit more about Akela to. And like I said, she’s clearly learning instead of us supposed to accept that she’s just the best. I’m even totally with her on questioning which side of the building would be the south side at one point; that was a nicely humanizing moment that a lot of people can relate to I’m sure.
Also, considering the fact that Skye is there under false pretenses, the fact that Coulson values her is not a sign that he’s a good judge of character, in fact it’s kind the opposite.
FitzSimmons
These two are by far the least important part of this story, but at least they’re part of it. There’s not a lot worth examining but I feel like we finally know where the characters are starting out so that they can begin to grow beyond it. In some ways it’s a lot more forgivable in retrospect than it was at the time, because I know they will get around to exploring these characters and I’m going to love them. In other ways it feels like it’s taking a long time to tell us very little; I get it, they’re innocent baby puppies but they have the ability to rise to demands of situations they didn’t expect. And I get the need to make that clear at the start so that that can be tested and broken as the series progresses until these puppies feel like such different characters than the present versions.
We are back to sort of a framing problem with them too. Because the scene in the van where they’re geeking out about scientists can be framed a couple different ways. I find it charming; I may not know what they’re talking about or share this particular interest, but I get why it’s exciting. But there is still a trace of laughing at the nerds about it. It’s less overt than it was in ep 2, and it’s only really in that scene, so I’m less bothered by it; but it’s still kind of there.
I suppose it’s also still there a bit in the phone call comedy scene, but (at least this time) I find that to be even less of an issue. Because the joke is kind of on all four of the younger characters; they all still have some ground to cover for this team to function as well as it could. But I think a better example of where FitzSimmons are at this stage as they find out about Akela’s condition, they find the tech fascinating and thrilling rather than a scary prospect either in itself or that they don’t know about it. That’s very early-FitzSimmons, the joy of science trumping the concerns about application.
And in the end they do step up, the show finally starts to show us how skilled they are. Though clearly nervous about this sort of emergency surgery, Simmons because she is not a medical doctor and Fitz because eye stuff clearly bugs him, they find the ability and steadiness to go through with it. Again, I’m not sure it needed to take four episodes to see that about them, but it’s good that we’re getting there.
Ward
There is so much about this episode that is worth considering in light of the later Ward revelations. Aside from one concern that I made several notes about, nothing in this episode needs the reveal to make sense, but there’s a lot that I’m wondering about. Again, I don’t know when the writers made the decision to have Ward be Hydra, so I don’t know that any of it was intentional for us to reexamine, but it’s interesting to do.
Starting with towards the end. They take the time to comment on how they don’t know what’s going on at the Tadorov building, and yet Ward shoots his way out like they’re the enemy. It works in the moment because it’s already been made clear that Ward is a cold blooded agent who doesn’t send a lot of time agenizing over what he does; and maybe he’s shooting to wound rather than kill, but on reflection I have to wonder.
All the way through the mission he’s pretty dedicated to going through with it instead of playing for time for them to get the eye out of Akela. Again it doesn’t seem worth noting in the moment, he’s just going about business. In the long view he probably doesn’t care if Akela lives or dies at this point, but there is a way for him to complete her mission for Cybertech/Hydra/Garrett. He may or may not have always known who was pulling Akela’s strings, but once they discovered the eye-tech (even though the team didn’t know all of it yet) he must have made the connection. And notice how after they find the eye-tech he talks to Coulson about how the team is shaken up and needs time and they need to pull back on this mission; and is immediately proven to not be reading the situation accurately; or perhaps trying to find time to report in that Skye had figured out how to hack their feeds and they should up security.
The thing that doesn’t quite work in the moment and I’m probably reaching to explain it even this way, is Akela’s handler not picking up on Ward wearing the glasses. He’s got at least a foot of height on her, if the handler spends that much time looking through her eyes the fact that everyone and everything is now shorter than ‘her’ view shouldn’t look right. And while Ward may have ‘man-hands’ it might be a bit more noticeable that his hands are also ‘white’. And I don’t think, particularly once he starts having to fight, that he does a great job keeping his white man hands out of the line of sight. I’m not sure Skye was never in view in the car either, plus there are mirrors if the handler was paying close attention. So either her handler isn’t that observant, or the questionable moments were being deliberately ignored until the mission was completed.
Ward also has a couple really interesting lines this episode in light of the reveal. He talks to Coulson about how terrible it must be to betrayed by someone you trained and trusted; to which my note was ‘fuck you, Ward.’ Also, by his estimation if someone sells them out and attacks the team, then former regard is set to be set aside and it’s too late to try and save them; to which my note was ‘good to know, Ward.’ Now this may go some way towards explaining why he keeps thinking Coulson will totally forgive him in time, but that doesn’t make the lines less strange to hear now. There’s also the time when Skye asks if Ward can be friendly with their target; which as a combination of seduction, bromancing, and trust building is exactly what he’s doing with the team.
I actually wonder, if they had it to do again, they might have had some indication that Ward was part of the unit that ‘rescued’ Akela a few years ago. She thought they were SHIELD at the time, and for all we know now, maybe they were.
Akela
Now, I’m clearly the sort of person who has more to say about Akela’s relationship to Coulson and the one she may or may not have with May than I do about Akela herself. But I do have some thoughts.
I do think it keeps a fair amount of mystery about how and why she’s doing what she’s doing for the first half or so of the episode up until we find out about the eye-cam. We know her actions are destructive, but there does seem to be a purpose to them that we’re not seeing. She’s stealing diamonds to buy a keycard, what’s all that about? She’s not just stealing for the money for the thrill apparently so we know for most of the episode that it must be important, but we don’t know why she would want that. Then it doesn’t matter whether she wants it, because it’s not her wants that are important.
Unlike last episode where the writing seemed to either not know how it felt about the guest stars or how to use them; Akela is very well used and the show has a clear point of view. Such a clear perspective, that I actually have more questions. It’s not clear at the beginning if she killed all those people or just knocked them out and cut the one guy’s arm off. How was there enough time for her to cut even one arm off without some tool that might be another concern or sign that they’re dealing with a bigger threat? Why would she need to attack all of them in either case? How does she sleep if when she closes her eyes the backscatter turns on? Even if she’s been trained to just deal with that factor, why would the feed be dark while she slept? Same goes for when she’s knocked out, wouldn’t the camera still be sending images of what was going on around her? And if they had already hijacked the feed, wouldn’t the handler have noticed the rapid change of location (we’re back to explaining unobservant with traitor)? Considering later reveals, why does Akela always have the same handler to prevent there from being any hints dropped or relationship built up?
That we never hear what happened to Akela means we don’t have full evidence of whether what she’s done is supposed to be forgiven or still punished. It’s clear she was being controlled, so her actions were forced; but she also was clearly forced to commit a lot of crimes. She could be the next Black Widow, or hang out with Deathlock with a backstory like that; there’s a lot of red in her ledger but she’s still (probably) a decent person.
But if she is forgivable (and I’m inclined to agree that she is, though perhaps a bit further to go for redemption), then why does her handler get so little remark? She is the only person who expresses any view that he was just as much a victim as her, nobody else seems to care. This hints at a huge problem with a lot of potential victims; though again, there are reasons why maybe SHIELD doesn’t look into this as much as they ought to.
Small thing that I’m willing to allow, but still want to note; Akela stays very still during surgery. She is of course well trained and highly motivated to do so, but they might be over-selling the badass-ness a tick. Small thing I am less willing to allow; I have to question her dissolving one of the golfballs back into diamonds, did the guy have the ability to put them back as balls or he did he now have a handful of diamonds to deal with?
May
I have a couple things to talk about with May, both of which come back to the point of: do not ever doubt that she has Phil Coulson’s back.
Towards the end of the episode when Skye talks about how solitude can be good but it’s also good to know someone has your back, May is sort of on both sides. The episode starts with her claiming that what she likes about flying is the solitude and Coulson quickly leaves her to it. She does also clearly like him, but flying is usually her me-time; if anyone was going to welcome it’s probably him, but she also likes that he takes a hint and respects her space. But the rest of the episode she is always watching over him, If what Skye says at the end is the theme of the story, it is not a Skye lesson of the episode, but it is what May exemplifies; even if she still sort of needs to let others have her back instead of going off on her own.
Having just had her come to the realization last episode that she doesn’t want to work backend, she gets left behind a lot. There are three different instances of May on her own in the conference room keeping an eye on her partner. Keeping HQ off their back, monitoring him and Akela, and guiding him in the end. And if sometimes she has to watch out for his blind-spots for people, she’ll do that too.
It’s also the episode that introduces us to what is both a strength and weakness of their relationship; they can fight and disagree, but they usually get over it pretty quickly and make up without any real fuss. He already knows the fight is over when she volunteers to take the first watch on Akela’s feed; and she doesn’t actually make him go through with an apology. Once they’re on the same page they just go on. But this ease of things becomes a problem in less easy situations; when they do have a big issue come up, they find it all the harder to find the words to fix it because they usually don’t need them.
And the ending is still her watching over him. When this episode first aired I saw the bit where May and Akela talk about Coulson as yet another annoying moment of them reminding the audience of the mystery with Coulson; now I consider it most telling about May. Because Akela sees Coulson as different and quickly assumes there’s something wrong, something has been done to him; and at the time that felt like the narrative leaning into the idea of the now one-eyed person being able to see more clearly that something was going on (maybe even that she had seen something when she had the backscatter-eye capability). But now all I can see is how May is most likely just concerned about Akela spreading that theory around because there is no way May is passing that idea along in her report. Again, watching his back, even from well-meaning friends.
And May has so much more of a view on Coulson than Akela can have; a backstory we didn’t have much access to when this aired. She’s known him long enough to know the difference between wrong and different. She knows how life changing experiences can impact people, so she understands that it’s okay for him to be different. It is why she is on this mission, and why she would never have let anyone else take the job of watching him; someone else wouldn’t love him so much and wouldn’t be there first and foremost to protect him.
Yes I am aware that I spend most of my May sections talking about her relationship to Coulson. I’m not sure how one argues this is an inaccurate perspective on her character at this point as she has very little relationship with anyone else. She still keeps herself deliberately apart and even her own backstory isn’t really figuring into things so far.
Coulson
I’ve long sense come to the conclusion that part of the reason we never Akela again is because a lot of her point (besides introducing the eye-tech) is to illuminate Coulson for the audience, but the version of him that she illuminates isn’t actually the character we’re watching, if he ever existed at all. Also her role is a little contradictory in that regard; she is partly there like Camilla to show that Coulson still remembers and is connected to his life before his death, but she is also there to propose that he has changed a lot and might not be the same person.
Part of the reason I keep coming back to wondering how long Coulson and Akela worked together is that I’m not sure how much the version of him she describes ever existed. He doesn’t dispute that back in the day he would have reacted as she expected, but I have some ideas on it being a matter of timing. That Akela might have been the first young trainee he took on, and going from mostly working with peers to being the guy in charge made him a bit gruff and pushy relative to his normal attitudes. Behaviors and attitudes that he was accustomed to in others like May and Garrett are different when he’s dealing with them as teammates or partners, or even subordinates than when it’s someone who he is responsible for like that. The way we see him now, with the team and even reunited with Akela, he’s much more settled into the role of leader and mentor and team dad; but he wasn’t that with Akela, which is part of why he carries a measure of guilt around for her fate.
But as to whether I ever believed Akela that something was fundamentally different about him...I didn’t care enough at the time and by the time I did care episode 6 happened and May gave the only answer I ever needed. Maybe he’s changed, because life changes a person. Akela hasn’t seen him in seven years; and those have been pretty big years for him. He’s better with this team than with Akela because he’s learned to a better leader. He’s more willing to offer second chances because he’s living one and trying to help others find theirs. I could argue that Coulson in IM1, the generic suit and detached agent, isn’t the same as Avengers Coulson who’s seeing a new age of heroes rise and meeting his childhood idol.
Odds and ends
You know, this is one of the few, maybe only, times that I really see the desire for Skye being May and Coulson’s long lost child. There is a fair amount to parallel between May wanting solitude in the cockpit while Skye is hiding in the car; and Coulson kind of wanting to hang out with at least one of them. And when the three of them go to check out the subway they do kind of look like parents who have dragged their daughter to work with them. I think it’s early for Skye to call them team mom and dad though, Ward is in some ways still acting more as executive officer, but this episode was kind of pushing a familial unit forming there.
On the rare occasion when we do get to see people’s feet, I tend to find May’s heeled boots a combination of adorable and hysterical. She’s still the shortest person on the show even in heels; but why exactly would that be her choice in character? Sure there’s a difference between combat heels and dress heels and we can only say for sure that she hates the latter, but it still seems like a strange choice.
Vehicle monitoring note: while I’m willing to say they probably needed to van as opposed to using the SUV as they were taking a lot of equipment and five of them in the vehicle could use more space (both in universe and for filming), I’m not so clear on where they got the van. I also understand that narratively them driving around in a generic van rather than a SHIELD branded vehicle allowed the moment where Akela rams them to play out (where did she get that van either?). I’m most confused on how they got back to the plane without May needing to go and help them out. Which actually would have suited the theme better, that when you get in trouble someone always has your back.
I feel like they were definitely setting up Vanchat to be the big corporate bad guy they had to deal with. I don’t know if they just liked Quinn so much that they decided to use him instead, or what happened, but after a few mentions Vanchat will be dealt with very quickly when he does come into the story.
Since we don’t know who was working on the stuff at the Tadorov building, I’m left to wonder where they got the Kree doodles. Coulson doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it, though we don’t know how much of a look he took at it before handing it over to HQ. But if these are somehow left over from the TAHITI experiments, they just took a very long way around to get back to him.
Small note about the eye-cams. I wish there was some external sign that those eyes were a little off. Yes, it would be important for Cybertech to not have the eye-cams stand out, but it’s more that I find it hard to believe that the fake eyes would be perfectly matched to each agent’s real eyes, so some way showing that the tech wasn’t perfect would have seemed right to me.
I debated a point about what this show has to say about surveillance state and how we as a people are making it so easy for people to keep us that way; but I think it’s really a better topic for next episode.
Closing thoughts
Name Watch
Skye attempts to call Coulson ‘Phil,’ he’s not having it. It really doesn’t fit them; especially this early when the show doesn’t even have May call him by his first name. AC is better, though I’m fairly glad it didn’t really become a thing either.
Elements that should come back
I still kind of wish they could let us know what happened to Akela; I’m not sure it would fit into any story these days, but it has been a dangling pot thread that never got followed through on.
May’s fuck that noise meter
Maybe a six, she’s not making any grand gestures but don’t ever doubt her commitment to having Coulson’s back.
What was I shipping at the time?
I don’t know that I realized at the time just how much flirting May and Coulson are doing in this one; considering by episode 6 I was well on board with this ship, I might have. I’m also not sure if I thought this then, but I would say this is some of the more natural chemistry we get between Skye and Ward; since I never came around to shipping them I doubt it.
I don’t really remember what my thoughts on this episode were at the time (especially since I decided not to go back looking for my old reactions from the time) so this may be inaccurate, but I feel like this was the first episode that gave me some hope for the show. I do remember that the next episode was the first one I felt I liked at the time, but I think this one at least stopped the downward momentum of the first three episodes. It still wasn’t the show I wanted it to be, and it was taking its sweet time getting itself sorted out what it wanted to be, and what it was I wasn’t sure I liked. But this episode feels like the show is ready to figure out what it is.
While this is episode is still very focused on its plot and guest star, there is room left for the main characters and we’re given moments with almost all of them. At the same time it feels a lot less like it’s trying too hard to sell something that I’m not buying. Skye is given much less focus; there’s less treating Ward as if he’s interesting and therefore is actually more interesting (actually in hindsight he’s kind of hysterical); while FitzSimmons are still very rough early characters, they seem more valued by the story. This episode finally seems to allow us to take the characters as they are rather than anything feeling quite so agenda driven. And as the show was still rather case driven just letting the characters be and play to their strengths was a good move.
These days I kind of think this episode is actually better than the next one (though we’ll see how I feel once I’m through it), but it sort of depends on what kind of mood I’m in. It also contains several things I find I miss in the later seasons of the show. I miss the globe-trotting, I miss that it films outside and has a lighting budget, I even find I miss the silly stingers; it’s not a great ending, but I like the idea that these characters have some time to just hang out and have actual relationships with each other.
The big question
This may not bother others as much as it does me, but these are my reviews and I’m going to talk about it for a while. I always (well maybe not at first) come out of this episode with an unanswered question: do May and Akela know each other?
It’s an area where the partially retconned nature of the Coulson and May relationship comes into play. Because I don’t think the writers had initially planned for their history to be as closely tied as they have over time made it out to be. Where we are now it’s hard to imagine Coulson wouldn’t have introduced them given the chance. It is possible that they were only working together for six months or so (we aren’t given a ton of detail on that aspect of their relationship) and they didn’t run into May during that time. But with Coulson trying to teach a young Specialist that they can also work with a team, May would seem like his go to; and you can’t tell me he wouldn’t have wanted to see them train together when this episode establishes just how big a fan he is of both of them.
I also think there’s a case to be made that the writers didn’t quite know when Bahrain happened (partly why this wasn’t much of a question on first viewing). If the writer here thought Coulson’s time working with Akela was after May went to administration, then would be no real need to explain where May was during that time. It would also actually leave room for some connected character readings; like maybe part of Coulson’s harshness with Akela was because of how things went down in Bahrain, that May went off alone without waiting for backup and things went badly, and then he sees some of the same traits in Akela and he doesn’t want to see another person end up like that. But that’s not what we get, since the writers decided that Bahrain happened after Akela’s disappearance; which has its own implications that we’ll get to down the line.
All that hypothetical work done, from what’s on screen should we assume May and Akela know each other? The strongest evidence would be against it; Coulson’s exposition dump at the beginning is not delivered as if May already knows all of this. If he had been delivering it more to Skye or the team at large, I’d have an easier time letting it slide as downplaying how much history he and May share. And like I said, it’s possible that there wasn’t time for May and Akela to know each other well, but it should be enough that Coulson doesn’t need to exposit who she is.
(Also the staging of that scene is weird; they come down the stairs from Coulson’s office, walk around the conference before going in and joining the others. I guess forced exposition also forces bizarre walk and talks.)
Most of stuff between May and Akela is pretty ambiguous on this front. If you just take as read that they do know each other, it can easily be read that way; but it’s also possible to assume they don’t. By the time May goes after Akela, Aklea definitely knows someone is after her, likely SHIELD and likely Coulson specifically. So being able to ID May as a SHIELD agent and ask if Coulson sent her doesn’t mean they’ve met, but if you assume they have the lines still work. May mentions not having to introduce herself, but does she mean to Akela or her handler? I would say their later scene makes a bit more sense if they knew each other before, but not enough to say it’s evidence.
But one thing I would call evidence of prior knowledge is in the argument scene. May mentions Coulson feeling guilty for pushing Akela too hard; but May was not in the scene between Coulson and Skye where he talked about that. Maybe she just knows him well enough to know that about him, but at that point she probably knows him well enough that he’s talked about Akela before now. It’s not quite evidence of them meeting, but it is evidence for me that May should have known who Akela was during the exposition scene.
Skye
I feel like my feelings on Skye in this one need some examination. For one they are fairy changeable depending on my mood; the last time I watched this episode I found her really annoying even though I was glad there was less of her. This time...I can appreciate some of her bits, this episode does a fairly good job of showing her as a useful but still very green SHIELD agent, and that part works for me; but any time I’m asked to care about her as a character I don’t. I just want her to shut up in her scenes with Coulson and for her/the writers to stop making this about her when it’s not.
And that I guess is kind of always my problem with Skye; as part of the group she’s okay even if I can take or leave her, but I don’t like her. I don’t care about her arc; I don’t care about her relationship with the others and kind of especially not with Coulson; I don’t care about getting into her background; I don’t particularly care about her views on the world. And on rewatch, any use there ever was in an audience proxy is lost, and I never particularly liked her in that role.
This episode actually uses her role as Doctor Who companion better than a lot of them. We’re still establishing what is and isn’t possible in the MCU at this stage, so we lay out that precognition isn’t a thing (I kind of wish they had stuck to that); and how people are questioning if aliens and portals are real then what else might be out there? And while I don’t like the scene as related to Skye, she is the opportunity for Coulson to exposit more about Akela to. And like I said, she’s clearly learning instead of us supposed to accept that she’s just the best. I’m even totally with her on questioning which side of the building would be the south side at one point; that was a nicely humanizing moment that a lot of people can relate to I’m sure.
Also, considering the fact that Skye is there under false pretenses, the fact that Coulson values her is not a sign that he’s a good judge of character, in fact it’s kind the opposite.
FitzSimmons
These two are by far the least important part of this story, but at least they’re part of it. There’s not a lot worth examining but I feel like we finally know where the characters are starting out so that they can begin to grow beyond it. In some ways it’s a lot more forgivable in retrospect than it was at the time, because I know they will get around to exploring these characters and I’m going to love them. In other ways it feels like it’s taking a long time to tell us very little; I get it, they’re innocent baby puppies but they have the ability to rise to demands of situations they didn’t expect. And I get the need to make that clear at the start so that that can be tested and broken as the series progresses until these puppies feel like such different characters than the present versions.
We are back to sort of a framing problem with them too. Because the scene in the van where they’re geeking out about scientists can be framed a couple different ways. I find it charming; I may not know what they’re talking about or share this particular interest, but I get why it’s exciting. But there is still a trace of laughing at the nerds about it. It’s less overt than it was in ep 2, and it’s only really in that scene, so I’m less bothered by it; but it’s still kind of there.
I suppose it’s also still there a bit in the phone call comedy scene, but (at least this time) I find that to be even less of an issue. Because the joke is kind of on all four of the younger characters; they all still have some ground to cover for this team to function as well as it could. But I think a better example of where FitzSimmons are at this stage as they find out about Akela’s condition, they find the tech fascinating and thrilling rather than a scary prospect either in itself or that they don’t know about it. That’s very early-FitzSimmons, the joy of science trumping the concerns about application.
And in the end they do step up, the show finally starts to show us how skilled they are. Though clearly nervous about this sort of emergency surgery, Simmons because she is not a medical doctor and Fitz because eye stuff clearly bugs him, they find the ability and steadiness to go through with it. Again, I’m not sure it needed to take four episodes to see that about them, but it’s good that we’re getting there.
Ward
There is so much about this episode that is worth considering in light of the later Ward revelations. Aside from one concern that I made several notes about, nothing in this episode needs the reveal to make sense, but there’s a lot that I’m wondering about. Again, I don’t know when the writers made the decision to have Ward be Hydra, so I don’t know that any of it was intentional for us to reexamine, but it’s interesting to do.
Starting with towards the end. They take the time to comment on how they don’t know what’s going on at the Tadorov building, and yet Ward shoots his way out like they’re the enemy. It works in the moment because it’s already been made clear that Ward is a cold blooded agent who doesn’t send a lot of time agenizing over what he does; and maybe he’s shooting to wound rather than kill, but on reflection I have to wonder.
All the way through the mission he’s pretty dedicated to going through with it instead of playing for time for them to get the eye out of Akela. Again it doesn’t seem worth noting in the moment, he’s just going about business. In the long view he probably doesn’t care if Akela lives or dies at this point, but there is a way for him to complete her mission for Cybertech/Hydra/Garrett. He may or may not have always known who was pulling Akela’s strings, but once they discovered the eye-tech (even though the team didn’t know all of it yet) he must have made the connection. And notice how after they find the eye-tech he talks to Coulson about how the team is shaken up and needs time and they need to pull back on this mission; and is immediately proven to not be reading the situation accurately; or perhaps trying to find time to report in that Skye had figured out how to hack their feeds and they should up security.
The thing that doesn’t quite work in the moment and I’m probably reaching to explain it even this way, is Akela’s handler not picking up on Ward wearing the glasses. He’s got at least a foot of height on her, if the handler spends that much time looking through her eyes the fact that everyone and everything is now shorter than ‘her’ view shouldn’t look right. And while Ward may have ‘man-hands’ it might be a bit more noticeable that his hands are also ‘white’. And I don’t think, particularly once he starts having to fight, that he does a great job keeping his white man hands out of the line of sight. I’m not sure Skye was never in view in the car either, plus there are mirrors if the handler was paying close attention. So either her handler isn’t that observant, or the questionable moments were being deliberately ignored until the mission was completed.
Ward also has a couple really interesting lines this episode in light of the reveal. He talks to Coulson about how terrible it must be to betrayed by someone you trained and trusted; to which my note was ‘fuck you, Ward.’ Also, by his estimation if someone sells them out and attacks the team, then former regard is set to be set aside and it’s too late to try and save them; to which my note was ‘good to know, Ward.’ Now this may go some way towards explaining why he keeps thinking Coulson will totally forgive him in time, but that doesn’t make the lines less strange to hear now. There’s also the time when Skye asks if Ward can be friendly with their target; which as a combination of seduction, bromancing, and trust building is exactly what he’s doing with the team.
I actually wonder, if they had it to do again, they might have had some indication that Ward was part of the unit that ‘rescued’ Akela a few years ago. She thought they were SHIELD at the time, and for all we know now, maybe they were.
Akela
Now, I’m clearly the sort of person who has more to say about Akela’s relationship to Coulson and the one she may or may not have with May than I do about Akela herself. But I do have some thoughts.
I do think it keeps a fair amount of mystery about how and why she’s doing what she’s doing for the first half or so of the episode up until we find out about the eye-cam. We know her actions are destructive, but there does seem to be a purpose to them that we’re not seeing. She’s stealing diamonds to buy a keycard, what’s all that about? She’s not just stealing for the money for the thrill apparently so we know for most of the episode that it must be important, but we don’t know why she would want that. Then it doesn’t matter whether she wants it, because it’s not her wants that are important.
Unlike last episode where the writing seemed to either not know how it felt about the guest stars or how to use them; Akela is very well used and the show has a clear point of view. Such a clear perspective, that I actually have more questions. It’s not clear at the beginning if she killed all those people or just knocked them out and cut the one guy’s arm off. How was there enough time for her to cut even one arm off without some tool that might be another concern or sign that they’re dealing with a bigger threat? Why would she need to attack all of them in either case? How does she sleep if when she closes her eyes the backscatter turns on? Even if she’s been trained to just deal with that factor, why would the feed be dark while she slept? Same goes for when she’s knocked out, wouldn’t the camera still be sending images of what was going on around her? And if they had already hijacked the feed, wouldn’t the handler have noticed the rapid change of location (we’re back to explaining unobservant with traitor)? Considering later reveals, why does Akela always have the same handler to prevent there from being any hints dropped or relationship built up?
That we never hear what happened to Akela means we don’t have full evidence of whether what she’s done is supposed to be forgiven or still punished. It’s clear she was being controlled, so her actions were forced; but she also was clearly forced to commit a lot of crimes. She could be the next Black Widow, or hang out with Deathlock with a backstory like that; there’s a lot of red in her ledger but she’s still (probably) a decent person.
But if she is forgivable (and I’m inclined to agree that she is, though perhaps a bit further to go for redemption), then why does her handler get so little remark? She is the only person who expresses any view that he was just as much a victim as her, nobody else seems to care. This hints at a huge problem with a lot of potential victims; though again, there are reasons why maybe SHIELD doesn’t look into this as much as they ought to.
Small thing that I’m willing to allow, but still want to note; Akela stays very still during surgery. She is of course well trained and highly motivated to do so, but they might be over-selling the badass-ness a tick. Small thing I am less willing to allow; I have to question her dissolving one of the golfballs back into diamonds, did the guy have the ability to put them back as balls or he did he now have a handful of diamonds to deal with?
May
I have a couple things to talk about with May, both of which come back to the point of: do not ever doubt that she has Phil Coulson’s back.
Towards the end of the episode when Skye talks about how solitude can be good but it’s also good to know someone has your back, May is sort of on both sides. The episode starts with her claiming that what she likes about flying is the solitude and Coulson quickly leaves her to it. She does also clearly like him, but flying is usually her me-time; if anyone was going to welcome it’s probably him, but she also likes that he takes a hint and respects her space. But the rest of the episode she is always watching over him, If what Skye says at the end is the theme of the story, it is not a Skye lesson of the episode, but it is what May exemplifies; even if she still sort of needs to let others have her back instead of going off on her own.
Having just had her come to the realization last episode that she doesn’t want to work backend, she gets left behind a lot. There are three different instances of May on her own in the conference room keeping an eye on her partner. Keeping HQ off their back, monitoring him and Akela, and guiding him in the end. And if sometimes she has to watch out for his blind-spots for people, she’ll do that too.
It’s also the episode that introduces us to what is both a strength and weakness of their relationship; they can fight and disagree, but they usually get over it pretty quickly and make up without any real fuss. He already knows the fight is over when she volunteers to take the first watch on Akela’s feed; and she doesn’t actually make him go through with an apology. Once they’re on the same page they just go on. But this ease of things becomes a problem in less easy situations; when they do have a big issue come up, they find it all the harder to find the words to fix it because they usually don’t need them.
And the ending is still her watching over him. When this episode first aired I saw the bit where May and Akela talk about Coulson as yet another annoying moment of them reminding the audience of the mystery with Coulson; now I consider it most telling about May. Because Akela sees Coulson as different and quickly assumes there’s something wrong, something has been done to him; and at the time that felt like the narrative leaning into the idea of the now one-eyed person being able to see more clearly that something was going on (maybe even that she had seen something when she had the backscatter-eye capability). But now all I can see is how May is most likely just concerned about Akela spreading that theory around because there is no way May is passing that idea along in her report. Again, watching his back, even from well-meaning friends.
And May has so much more of a view on Coulson than Akela can have; a backstory we didn’t have much access to when this aired. She’s known him long enough to know the difference between wrong and different. She knows how life changing experiences can impact people, so she understands that it’s okay for him to be different. It is why she is on this mission, and why she would never have let anyone else take the job of watching him; someone else wouldn’t love him so much and wouldn’t be there first and foremost to protect him.
Yes I am aware that I spend most of my May sections talking about her relationship to Coulson. I’m not sure how one argues this is an inaccurate perspective on her character at this point as she has very little relationship with anyone else. She still keeps herself deliberately apart and even her own backstory isn’t really figuring into things so far.
Coulson
I’ve long sense come to the conclusion that part of the reason we never Akela again is because a lot of her point (besides introducing the eye-tech) is to illuminate Coulson for the audience, but the version of him that she illuminates isn’t actually the character we’re watching, if he ever existed at all. Also her role is a little contradictory in that regard; she is partly there like Camilla to show that Coulson still remembers and is connected to his life before his death, but she is also there to propose that he has changed a lot and might not be the same person.
Part of the reason I keep coming back to wondering how long Coulson and Akela worked together is that I’m not sure how much the version of him she describes ever existed. He doesn’t dispute that back in the day he would have reacted as she expected, but I have some ideas on it being a matter of timing. That Akela might have been the first young trainee he took on, and going from mostly working with peers to being the guy in charge made him a bit gruff and pushy relative to his normal attitudes. Behaviors and attitudes that he was accustomed to in others like May and Garrett are different when he’s dealing with them as teammates or partners, or even subordinates than when it’s someone who he is responsible for like that. The way we see him now, with the team and even reunited with Akela, he’s much more settled into the role of leader and mentor and team dad; but he wasn’t that with Akela, which is part of why he carries a measure of guilt around for her fate.
But as to whether I ever believed Akela that something was fundamentally different about him...I didn’t care enough at the time and by the time I did care episode 6 happened and May gave the only answer I ever needed. Maybe he’s changed, because life changes a person. Akela hasn’t seen him in seven years; and those have been pretty big years for him. He’s better with this team than with Akela because he’s learned to a better leader. He’s more willing to offer second chances because he’s living one and trying to help others find theirs. I could argue that Coulson in IM1, the generic suit and detached agent, isn’t the same as Avengers Coulson who’s seeing a new age of heroes rise and meeting his childhood idol.
Odds and ends
You know, this is one of the few, maybe only, times that I really see the desire for Skye being May and Coulson’s long lost child. There is a fair amount to parallel between May wanting solitude in the cockpit while Skye is hiding in the car; and Coulson kind of wanting to hang out with at least one of them. And when the three of them go to check out the subway they do kind of look like parents who have dragged their daughter to work with them. I think it’s early for Skye to call them team mom and dad though, Ward is in some ways still acting more as executive officer, but this episode was kind of pushing a familial unit forming there.
On the rare occasion when we do get to see people’s feet, I tend to find May’s heeled boots a combination of adorable and hysterical. She’s still the shortest person on the show even in heels; but why exactly would that be her choice in character? Sure there’s a difference between combat heels and dress heels and we can only say for sure that she hates the latter, but it still seems like a strange choice.
Vehicle monitoring note: while I’m willing to say they probably needed to van as opposed to using the SUV as they were taking a lot of equipment and five of them in the vehicle could use more space (both in universe and for filming), I’m not so clear on where they got the van. I also understand that narratively them driving around in a generic van rather than a SHIELD branded vehicle allowed the moment where Akela rams them to play out (where did she get that van either?). I’m most confused on how they got back to the plane without May needing to go and help them out. Which actually would have suited the theme better, that when you get in trouble someone always has your back.
I feel like they were definitely setting up Vanchat to be the big corporate bad guy they had to deal with. I don’t know if they just liked Quinn so much that they decided to use him instead, or what happened, but after a few mentions Vanchat will be dealt with very quickly when he does come into the story.
Since we don’t know who was working on the stuff at the Tadorov building, I’m left to wonder where they got the Kree doodles. Coulson doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it, though we don’t know how much of a look he took at it before handing it over to HQ. But if these are somehow left over from the TAHITI experiments, they just took a very long way around to get back to him.
Small note about the eye-cams. I wish there was some external sign that those eyes were a little off. Yes, it would be important for Cybertech to not have the eye-cams stand out, but it’s more that I find it hard to believe that the fake eyes would be perfectly matched to each agent’s real eyes, so some way showing that the tech wasn’t perfect would have seemed right to me.
I debated a point about what this show has to say about surveillance state and how we as a people are making it so easy for people to keep us that way; but I think it’s really a better topic for next episode.
Closing thoughts
Name Watch
Skye attempts to call Coulson ‘Phil,’ he’s not having it. It really doesn’t fit them; especially this early when the show doesn’t even have May call him by his first name. AC is better, though I’m fairly glad it didn’t really become a thing either.
Elements that should come back
I still kind of wish they could let us know what happened to Akela; I’m not sure it would fit into any story these days, but it has been a dangling pot thread that never got followed through on.
May’s fuck that noise meter
Maybe a six, she’s not making any grand gestures but don’t ever doubt her commitment to having Coulson’s back.
What was I shipping at the time?
I don’t know that I realized at the time just how much flirting May and Coulson are doing in this one; considering by episode 6 I was well on board with this ship, I might have. I’m also not sure if I thought this then, but I would say this is some of the more natural chemistry we get between Skye and Ward; since I never came around to shipping them I doubt it.
