Annnnnnd here we go! Agents of SHIELD is back and so our our recaps of the show. Lest you’ve forgotten, at the end of last season, SHIELD was in shambles. The fallout from Captain America: The Winter Soldier was severe. Hydra infiltration of SHIELD ran very deep. To the world at large, Hydra and SHIELD are one and the same. Coulson’s team isn’t faring much better. Ward was revealed to be a Hydra agent. Fitz has suffered brain trauma thanks to Ward dumping him and Simmons in the ocean. And Coulson is scribbling alien language on the walls of his bedroom. Which brings us to…now…well, actually World War II.

We’re given a sneak peak at the new Agent Carter TV series at the start of this episode. Agent Carter and her team are raiding a Hydra lab towards the tail end of World War II. Hey, that’s Dum Dum Dugan standing next to Agent Carter! It looks like the Agent Carter series will be Agent Carter and her Howling Commandos. I’m guessing that once the series launches, there will be many crossovers with Agents of SHIELD, with Agent Carter dealing with a Hydra threat in WWII that pops up in the present to plague Coulson’s team in Agents of SHIELD.

Case in point, Agent Carter and her team lock up some super-tech in WWII, whose location is for sale in a shady deal in the present. May and Skye are staking out the deal. Side note: Skye’s hair is really cute. Some girls disappear into a carton of Ben & Jerry’s when it’s revealed their boyfriend is a double agent. Not Skye, she got herself some post-Ward hair.

The deal goes bad when a third party shows up and makes off with the info.  That third party being a bald man impervious to bullets. Who is he, you ask? None other Crusher Creel, The Absorbing Man. I’m pretty sure he’s played by Penny’s ex-boyfriend on Big Bang Theory. You know, the guy who dressed like Tarzan at the Halloween party, the one Leonard had to get Penny’s TV back from. 

It turns out that the buyers in this deal were working for Coulson. May and Skye weren’t there to break up the deal. They were there as back up. We’ve got four new faces on Coulson’s team, SHIELD agents from a different group, and I swear I cannot remember their names at all. For now, they’re the four new guys to me.

Coulson and his team are living in one of Nick Fury’s secret bases. I was happy to see Patton Oswalt return as this base’s resident Koenig brother. Speaking of which, after this episode, I’m thinking that the Koenigs are life model decoys. Hear me out. There are at least three of them, and they all seem to be assigned to one of Fury’s secret bases. I think there are more than three Koenig brothers, that there’s one at every one of Fury’s bases. That’s just a hunch though.

Coulson’s team is being hunted by Brigadier General Talbot. Coulson arranges a meeting with him by sneakily kidnapping him in the middle of the day. Seriously, the army has nothing on SHIELD. Talbot is convinced that Coulson is not on the up and up, despite anything Coulson says or does. Coulson wants to help Talbot take down Creel and Hydra, but I get the feeling that Talbot would just as gladly take down Coulson and call it a day.

Is it me, or does it look like the special effects budget on the show took a major jump this season? The Absorbing Man looks fantastic is every scene he’s in, especially when he turns to glass in his prison break. Comparing the special effects in this episode to the those in the first episode last season is like comparing night and day. Costume design too. I felt that Deathlok looked pretty cheesy last year, but Absorbing Man looks cool. Yes, he’s basically just a shirtless bald man in pants, but they make his absorbing power look so cool!

Where’s everyone’s favorite SHIELD agent turned traitor? Ward is locked up in Coulson’s secret base. He’s sporting a nice prison beard, and looks pretty gaunt in the face. Coulson sends Skye down to his cell to get some much needed information. Skye’s not terribly happy about this. There is A LOT of tension between Ward and Skye. But Skye basically tells him that they’re never ever getting back together. Like ever. Skye leaves before Ward can tell her that he’s knows about her father (!!).

We also check in on FitzSimmons this episode. Fitz is not himself. The banter with Simmons is gone. He’s no longer happy go lucky. Instead he’s bitter about his impeded brain function. He wants to be better, but he’s having a hard go at it. His language center is messed up. He forgets words. More importantly, his scientific mind is not what it was. He’s tying to build a cloaking system for Coulson, but keeps coming up short. He lashes out a Simmons. Fitz, how could you? You two are FitzSimmons. But the big shock comes at the end of the episode, when it’s revealed that Simmons bolted a while back. The Simmons we’ve seen all episode is a figment of Fitz’s imagination. All episode, he’s just been talking to himself. As someone for whom FitzSimmons is the best part of Agents of SHIELD, this came as a major blow. I really hope Fitz recovers and reunites with Simmons. 

Since Fitz can’t build Coulson a cloaking system, Coulson arranges for Skye and May to steal one, in the form of a Quinjet. In the comics, a Quinjet is the Avenger’s supersonic jet, designed by Henry Pym aka Ant Man (aka Giant Man aka Goliath aka Yellowjacket). That’s one in the win column for Coulson.

However, the team suffers a couple of big losses. First, when they hack into Hydra’s communication system, it’ becomes clear that Hydra isn’t broken, just hiding. Hydra cells are still EVERYWHERE. The whole global map is full of them.

The second big loss when three of the four new members are taken out by The Absorbing Man. The super-artifact they’re trying to keep from him is deadly to the touch. When the new woman on the team touches it, she can’t let go, and it turns her hand and arm to rot. They have to remove her arm to keep it from spreading to her whole body. Unfortunately, while they’re dealing with her situation, The Absorbing Man, in all his super-powered glory, takes out their car and steals the artifact. Things are looking good for the new guys. One episode in and one of the four new members is already dead. Suddenly, I don’t feel bad about not immediately learning their names. 

Comic Book Connections:

The Absorbing Man first appeared in Journey into Mystery #114. He was initially a Thor villain, but has gone on to plague many heroes in the Marvel Universe. He’s often seen in the company of his girlfriend, the superstrong Titania. The Absorbing Man has the power to absorb the properties of anything he touches, so if he touches steel, he’ll turn into steel. This effect eventually wears off, and he turns back into flesh and bone. The show did a good job of showing this, having a shard of metal sheared from him turn back into rather bloody flesh in the lab.  It was a nice nod to the fans having Creel get his hands on a ball and chain, his traditional weapon of choice.

Agent Carter is Peggy Carter, who was the World War 2 girlfriend of Captain America, and sister aunt (possibly grand-aunt now) of Sharon Carter, Captain America’s present day girlfriend. Cap really has a type. Why the change from sister to aunt? Well, the years since World War 2 keep passing, but Captain America and company barely age. When Sharon Carter first appeared, she could have had an older sister in World War 2. But now, not so much. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it looks like Peggy is taking Nick Fury’s place as the leader of the Howling Commandos.

The Quinjet is the invention of Hank Pym. It’s a super-fast jet capable of deep space travel. The Avengers are constantly making adjustments and improvements to them.