By: Brandon Wolfe
With “Making Friends and Influencing People,” ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ has struck out a new path, and that path is to rip off J.J. Abrams lock, stock and tomahawk. The series opens with the recently absent (except as a Fitz delusion) Agent Simmons waking up, setting about her normal morning routine of exercise and breakfast before strolling to work, all set to the chipper sounds of “God Help the Girl.” This is sequence so ‘Lost’ that it burns. It’s not just the sort of thing ‘Lost’ did all the time, but it’s almost a cut-and-paste of the opening sequence of that show’s Season 2 premiere, “Man of Science, Man of Faith,” right down to the record-scratch shocker revelation that ends the sequence, in this case, the reveal that Simmons is reporting for work at HYDRA. But the show is very quick – far too quick; they could have at least tried to let us think Simmons had defected for more than a couple of minutes – to assure us that Simmons is not another Ward. She’s a double agent sent by Coulson to infiltrate HYDRA for intel. So now the show is ‘Alias.’ They just need to work ‘Felicity’ in somewhere for the Abrams hat trick.
This revelation opens up some fairly significant questions concerning S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA. We know that as a result of the secrets that came to light in ‘The Winter Soldier,’ S.H.I.E.L.D. has been dismantled and exists now only as a clandestine shadow organization consisting of Coulson and about six people (as opposed to last year, when it was running in full capacity and appeared to consist of Coulson and about six people). If HYDRA was an element nestled within S.H.I.E.L.D., then why do they have their own corporate headquarters now, with their hilariously evil logo plastered all over the walls? They broke off from S.H.I.E.L.D. and had enough resources to immediately set up shop in a huge office building with a full staff? As far as things that make sense go, that’s not one.
Anyway, Simmons Bristow reports to Coulson that HYDRA is in pursuit of Donnie Gill, a “gifted” with Iceman powers whom the show assures me we met last year, and they’d know better than I would. This sets up a beat-the-clock scenario where Coulson competes with HYDRA to locate Gill in Morocco before the bad guys can. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s cover is blown when it turns out that HYDRA brought Simmons along for the field op, and ultimately Gill is shot and presumed dead (but probably isn’t) by a still-learning-to-kill Skye. And one thing that ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ is admittedly doing a better job of this year is with incorporating superpowered adversaries into the mix. First with Absorbing Man and now with Gill, we’re getting to see some neat displays of effects-driven supervillainy so far this year. After the parade of half-assed Bond villains we got last year, this counts as a significant improvement.
The remaining thread of the episode concerns Fitz, that brain-damaged old so-and-so. Fitz is angry and bitter, both because of his horrific lack of sentence-ending abilities as well as being left out of the loop on so much by Coulson. Fitz has always been an irksomely petulant character, but what’s especially annoying here is that he doesn’t seem to realize that this isn’t a Scooby Gang. It’s an intelligence agency, kind of, and everybody at each level of operation wouldn’t be privy to every piece of information available, a fact that, to the show’s credit, Coulson reminds him of. So Fitz, being left alone at headquarters while everyone else is out on a mission (which probably shouldn’t be an unusual circumstance for a lab technician) decides that he’s going to try to get some answers from the only person around who might have some: Ward. Fitz goes to the Hannibal cell to confront Ward, who is happy to see him and seems apologetic for what he’s done to Fitz (because the show is hellbent on redeeming this lug), but Fitz tears off into a blind rage and removes the oxygen from Ward’s cell (which, why would that even be a function?) to make Ward experience the brain trauma and sentence-incompletion that he feels. Fitz stops short of that, though, because the show’s not about to kill off Ward and wield one less implement with which to bore us.
The ‘Alias’ angle with Simmons is not bad, as far as this show goes. It gives a useless character a use and gives the show a potentially fruitful ongoing angle to pursue. And ‘Alias’ was a good show for a little while, so maybe siphoning off some of its lifeforce will help. Also, the episode-ending discussion between Ward and Skye indicates that Kyle MacLachlan as Skye Daddy will be emerging with a more substantial role soon, which can only help. It’s still very hard to feel anything like optimism toward ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ The only real way it could ever really improve itself would be to get some better people both in front of the camera and in the writers’ room, which it doesn’t seem willing to do. But, as with Fitz, we’ll see how this brain-damaged sadsack of a series manages in the weeks ahead.
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