Here we are at the penultimate episode of the first season
of Agents of SHIELD and you’re supposed to get this feeling of tension and
action ramping up to a climax. Well that’s what you get from most shows but
last night Agents of SHIELD gave us the random slow jam on the mixtape to mess
up the flow. For some reason they decided to give us the Origin of Agent Grant
Ward and why he’s aligned with HYDRA through his mentor Garrett aka the
Clairvoyant. What we got was an annoyingly disjointed episode that really
leaves me less interested than ever in how this season will end.
So what does happen with this episode? It’s mostly in three
parts, the Ward flashback parts, HYDRA stuff and Team Coulson stuff. Let’s
cover the Ward Flashbacks first. We see Ward in juvie when he is visited by
Garrett, he makes him an offer to go with him or rot here, meanwhile his family
is planning on having him tried as adult for setting their house on
fire and killing (?) his brother. He chooses to go with Garrett who breaks him out
of juvie and then takes him somewhere in the woods. Garrett leaves Ward in
the woods with his dog and tells him to survive until he gets back for a couple
of months. Garrett returns six months later to find a more experienced Ward
that now has a camp, food and guns. He basically survived by robbing people. He
tells Garrett he plans on building a cabin and Garrett is pleased and begins to
teach him how to shoot. 10 years later Ward, now older, Garrett tells him about
his feelings on Shield and his allegiance to HYDRA. Then Garrett tells Ward
that he’s been approved to enter SHIELD ops training but first Ward has to kill
the dog. Here you think this is where they redeem Ward, nope he scares the dog
and snipes him. So the big traumatic event to show Ward is bad is that he kills
a dog…sigh.
Now for the Team Coulson storyline, while the team is in their new
base aka motel 6 they plan on getting into Cybertek the company that makes the
Deathlok technology along with other things that our team has been facing all
season long (I find it lame that AIM is not used at all even though they were
in Iron Man 3). Next Triplett comes in with a bunch of his granddad’s Howling
Commando spy gear which cause both Coulson and Triplett to go into complete
fanboy overdrive over. So with the old school spy tech and with Coulson and May
dressed up like Gilbert and Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds they get into
Cybertek. With coaching by FitzSimmons they get to the next level where they
then proceed to beat up all the scientists they meet in Cybertek. Looking for a
server room so that they can affix a dongle to the computers for Skye’s hacker
program to started so it can destroy all the HYDRA network’s copy of their
files they end up find an analogue room full of filing cabinets. They end up on
the Deathlok cabinet with the folders on the project, Mike Peterson and who we
find out Garrett the first Deathlok aka what I shall call that Betamax. May and
Skye have a heart to heart (why do Coulson and May have to have these with
her?) and Skye learns that May is very angry about Ward but just doesn’t pout
and throw tantrums about it. May just plans on destroying him in person when
she sees him again. Then she offers Skye to train with her in the morning.
So Team Coulson decides that they should split up with all
the fighting people with Skye going to another HYDRA base Garrett is using to
plant the dongle with FitzSimmons going to find the Bus and getting it back
somehow. They can’t fight but they go after the place with the killer
clairvoyant and killer Ward.
This show.
Also for some reason Fitz won’t accept the fact that Ward is
a bad guy. The dead agent Koenig and the kidnapping of Skye along with shooting of Agent Hand apparently means he can’t be bad if he’s his friend. So let’s talk about HYDRA time.
See Garrett sent Deathlok down to Bogota and had him punch off the head of the
drug cartel leader as a show of force. Garrett and Ward constantly bicker while
Garrett checks in on Reina about what they have learned from the hard drive.
She’s learned enough to make one vile of the stuff that was in TAHITI. Garrett
and Ward still argue, then something happens to Garrett which is the first time
we see his old Betamax Deathlok parts that Ward knows how to fix. He
ctrl+alt+del his gear and Garrett gets a little better and he tells Ward that
he is dying. At this time Deathlok and Reina have a talk with him still being
mad at his situation and Reina being disappointed that all Garrett wants is to
not die (so basically she’s just as disappointed as I am in the motivations of
this show) as she wants to learn more about Skye and other people with
potential powers as she herself is one.
Next up we see Ian Quinn getting a haircut and shave from
the HYDRA base front as he tells Garrett with SHIELD gone and it's reputation
tarnished means that he’s all gravy in the states and can conduct business as
usual there. Now he is headed to Washington to do some deals for the team.
Reina takes Ward to the side and says she has some secrets about Ward and his
thirst piques his interests. So remember when I told you they had FitzSimmons
scoping out the plane well guess who found them? Our man Ward and took them
right to Garrett. Fitz puffing his chest out at the evil Garrett when makes his
appearance to be all big bad to those two. When being taken away Ward notices
Fitz reaching in his pocket and takes what he was holding. Thinking it’s a joy
buzzer he presses the button but BONG it’s an EMP and takes out part of the Bus
and causes Garrett’s Betamax hardware to fail. With Garrett now on his deathbed
he asks Ward to kill FitzSimmons which Ward complies with. After Ward leaves
Garrett talks with Reina about his situation and has her inject his systems
with the TAHITI concoction to save his life. Garrett then gains the glow and saves he sees
the universe.
Meanwhile Ward gets to FitzSimmons with Fitz still unable to
believe Ward is a bad guy he goes ahead and drops the container they are in
into the sea. I still don’t know how the two nerds of the team got trapped and
couldn’t take over the whole plane they were on for month with some crazy
scientist hacking skills but alas. Now action
side of Team Coulson proceeds to get into the HYDRA base. There they end up
where they need to be but OH NOES they are surrounded by folks with red light
eyes! Ah man that must mean a whole army of Deathloks. The episode ends with Ian Quinn in a meeting
with two US Military higher up about them buying Deathloks.
Did You Know:
Most of the really good Easter eggs were in reference to
Deathlok and specifically to the Dwayne McDuffie 1990 Michael Collins version.
I thought that was pretty cool. There have been plenty of Deathloks to be
honest and it’s a bit all over the place if you really want to jump down that
whole do so at your own risk. It’s full of alternate futures, time travel and
brain switching with some of this stuff I don’t totally follow. See you next week
for the season finale.
