Tag Archives: FitzSimmons

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Agents of SHIELD S1E7 – The Hub

I really enjoyed the seventh episode of Agents of SHIELD. I think it is because the usual pairings of Ward and Skye, and Fitz and Simmons were shuffled. Fitz is sent to the field with Ward, and Skye enlists Simmons in a mission of subterfuge within a giant SHIELD facility known at The Hub.

Both Fitz and Simmons are taken out of their comfort zones this week. The lab-bound Fitz is enlisted into a heavy-fire field mission with Agent Ward. There is tension between Fitz and Ward. Fitz resents Ward for being the one who saved Simmons in last week’s F.Z.Z.T. Ward feels like he’s babysitting Fitz in the field. I’m glad Fitz wasn’t portrayed as only bumbling in the field. Fitz and Ward both get to save the day at various points during the mission. Though I’m also glad that concern over Fitz’s lack of field experience was used for humor when he lost a fight with a sliding glass door.

FitzWard

FitzWard

Simmons finds herself partnering with Skye in an scheme of intra-SHIELD subterfuge. While Skye has no regards for rules, clearance and procedure, Simmons is completely by the book. If this were D&D, Simmons would be lawful good. Or in her own words, “I like following the rules and doing what’s expected of me. It makes me feel nice.” She’s given a great arc in this episode, as by the end of the episode, she’s bragging to Fitz, “I shot a superior officer in the chest.”

Of course I’m going to love an episode that focuses heavily on FitzSimmons, as they are my absolute favorite characters on the show. As if I needed another reason to like Fitz, we find out in this episode that the guy has excellent taste in sandwiches. His favorite? Prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella with just a hint of homemade pesto aioli.

Two Marvel Comics characters make their Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in this episode of Agents of SHIELD. Jasper Sitwell is a SHIELD agent who has been a member of SHIELD since his first appearance in 1966’s Strange Tales # 144. Victoria Hand is a newer character. She has a shadier past than Sitwell, in that she made her rise to prominence as  the evil Norman Osborn’s #2 when he took over SHIELD and renamed in it HAMMER. She eventually made it to the side of the angels when Captain America offered her a chance at redemption after Osborn’s downfall. I like the inclusion of these characters and hope to see more comics characters make their way to the show. As much as I like the new characters created just for Agents of SHIELD, it’s cool to see pre-established characters pop in. It ground the show more firmly as a Marvel show.

 

 

Victoria Hand and Phil Coulson

Victoria Hand and Phil Coulson

Jasper Sitwell

Jasper Sitwell

I’m really loving Agents of SHIELD, especially these last two episodes. If you’ve fallen off the SHIELD helicarrier, I think now’s a good time to get back into it. Next week’s episode has Coulson’s team cleaning up after the events of Thor: The Dark World. If you’ve seen the movie, next week should be a great jumping on point for you.

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Agents of SHIELD – S1E6 – F.Z.Z.T. – REVIEW

Spoilers abound! Read this only if you’ve already watched F.Z.Z.T!

Episode 6 of Agents of SHIELD, “F.Z.Z.T,” starts out normally. There’s a new super-powered mystery to be solved. This time, it’s a scout leader whose dead body is both electrically charged and hovering in the air. The good news is that it takes the team only half the episode to solve this one. The source of turns out a be a Chitauri helmet carrying some kind of space virus.

FZZT floaty

 

It was cool that the Agents of SHIELD TV show went beyond just passively referencing the Avengers movie here and brought in an actual prop that kickstarted this episode. It definitely helps the show feel like it’s securely grounded in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What was also cool about this plot was that there was no sinister villain hungry for power. The people who died thanks to the Chitauri helmet weren’t murdered. It was just wrong place, wrong time. Of course, it at first looks like one person is out to kill his friends, but when he dies and the SHIELD team recovers the helmet, everything is resolved and there’s no villain lurking in the shadows.

Chitauri Helmet

What follows is without a doubt the most intense half an episode we’ve had so far this season. I honestly had no idea if Simmons was going to make it out of this one alive. When she and Fitz failed in their final attempt at creating a cure, I was ready to yell at my TV, “You can’t kill Simmons!” But this is Whedon we’re talking about. He totally could.

Part of the reason that I love this episode so much is for the amount of screen time that Fitz and Simmons get. There is definitely chemistry between the two of them. We’re treated to their back story, which is great,except that it’s given to us in this frame that Simmons is about to die. If this was Lost, she’d definitely be dead for all the back story we got on the two of them.

When it’s revealed that the EM pulse from Simmons as she dies will blow the whole plane out of the sky, killing the entire SHIELD team, I breathed a sigh of relief. They can’t kill the whole team. There’d be no show. Then Simmons jumped from the plane…just as Fitz realizes they figured out a cure. It’s like a nerd version of Romeo and Juliet.

IAIN DE CAESTECKER, ELIZABETH HENSTRIDGE

If Simmons dies, we riot!

I literally cheered when Fitz tried to get that parachute on and Ward jumped out of the plane to save Simmons. This episode was INTENSE. At the end of the day, Ward saves Simmons and I don’t throw my remote at my TV over her death. Whedon, you played with my emotions like an episode of Parenthood here, and I thank you for it.

In Agent Coulson news, we get a BIG reveal tonight. Coulson undoes his shirt and shows off the massive scar where Loki blasted him in The Avengers. Someone told me that this is proof that Coulson is not a Life Model Decoy. I still think he’s a LMD, and that whoever designed the Coulson LMD went into very good detail. I’m guessing we won’t find out until the end of this season at the earliest.

Coulson Scar

Agents of SHIELD is crossing over with Thor: The Dark World in two weeks. In other words, make sure you see Thor: The Dark World. See you next week!

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Agents of SHIELD S1E4 – Eye Spy

The episode begins with a group of men all wearing matching suits and red masks and all carrying steel briefcases boarding a train. A woman observes them and follows. This was a nice set-up. I feel like we, as an audience, are more likely to be suspicious of the men in the red masks. They definitely set off my inner “If you see something, say something.” But as it turns out, it was the lone, silent woman who we should have been on the look out for. Well played, SHIELD screenwriters.

I do question the sanity of the passengers who boarded the train with those masked men. Is there anything more suspicious than a group of men in asks carrying steel briefcases? I would definitely wait for the next train. Actually, I think I would go upstairs and hail a cab.

agents of shield red masks

For the love of God, if you see something, say something!

Once SHIELD is assigned to the case, Agent Melinda May is given another compliment that further increases her bad ass quotient (She seems to average about one of these per episode). Coulson says he knew it had to be Akela behind these robberies. When May asks how he knew, he says he can think of only two people who can pull this off, and other one is on the plane with him. I’m really hoping we get to see May in full-on ass-kicking mode soon. I’m talking Wolverine in Uncanny X-Men #133.

xmen 132 final panel

I want Agent May to recreate the final panel of Uncanny X-Men #132 on an upcoming episode.

It’s interesting how adamant almost everyone on the SHIELD team is that telepathy and ESP don’t exist. I know Marvel’s merry mutant movies aren’t handled by Marvel Studios, but you would think even in a world where the X-Men don’t exist, the existence of beings like Thor and Loki would cause people to have an open mind about what powers are possible.

akela-amador-marvels-agents-of-shield

Pascale Armand has mastered “The Michonne Stare Down” for her portrayal of Akela Amador on Agents of SHIELD.

We get more in the “How did they resurrect Coulson?” mystery. Akela asks Agent May, “What did they do to him?” and going by her tone of voice, she’s not talking about Coulson’s personality. Akela’s surgically replaced eye has a back scatter function that basically allows it to function as an x-ray camera. Did she something not quite human in Coulson’s insides? My guess is yes.

Skye and Ward look like they’re developing feelings for each other that extend beyond being coworkers. There’s a lot of subtext and subtle flirting in their dialogue. Whatever. Give me more FitzSimmons!

The list of the SHIELD team’s enemies continues to grow. Whoever the mysterious bad guys are behind this series of break-ins, could they be part of the same group supplying the power brokers in the first episode? If so, I think we’re going to see the emergence of Hydra or AIM by the end of this season.

Agents of SHIELD continues to be a solid show. I think this might be my favorite episode since the season opener.

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Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD: Episode 102: "0-8-4" – Review

4/5 – But the last 5 minutes makes me want to give it 5/5.

The second episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD aired last night. During the preview at the end of the first episode, we were teased with the phrase “Oh-eight-four.” In last night’s episode, we found out what an 0-8-4 is. It’s the code for an object of unidentified origin. The last 0-8-4 Coulson dealt with was Thor’s hammer in the dessert. This 0-8-4 takes the team out of the country to a South American jungle.

The episode began excitedly, with a gaping hole in the SHIELD plane’s hull mid-flight. We then immediately flashback to the start of the mission. I know this cold open with the plane in distress was used to lure in viewers, but I think I would have preferred finding out about the hull breach when it actually happened. This opening telegraphed Camilla’s betrayal too much.

Speaking of Camilla, when she first started flirting with Coulson, I started to think that Coulson was like Will Ferrell’s character Detective Gamble in The Other Guys. Hot women are just throwing themselves at him. We find out later Camilla had other plans.

Another thing about Coulson: he bleeds. After he gets punched in the face, Coulson is clearly bleeding from the mouth. If Coulson is some kind of Life Model Decoy, he’s an advanced one, with blood pumping through his veins…or tubes.

If Coulson is a LMD, I hope we get a scene that involves a decapitated head with wires sticking out.

FitzSimmons continues to delight. They are easily my favorite part of the show.They remind of  equal parts Doctor Who companions and Ron and Hermione from Harry Potter. I would watch a FitzSimmons spin-off.

Fitz (left) and Simmons (right)

Ming-Na Wen’s character Agent May is my other favorite. She’s just so bad ass. I like that  the mysterious bad ass agent with a past on Agents of SHIELD is a woman. It seems like a refreshing change of pace from most shows. But I honestly wouldn’t expect any less from Joss Whedon.

Melinda May is the Wolverine of Agents of SHIELD.

The only downside to this episode is that it felt a bit uneven. While the episode served to bring this team of disparate individuals together as a unit, the build-up in the first half of the episode was on the slow side. The focus shifted a bit too often, but I guess that’s a problem when you’re still introducing a cast this big to the audience. I’m hoping future episodes, once we know everyone, will be a bit more streamlined. But the episode still has all the wit and charm you’d expect from a Joss Whedon show and I don’t see that stopping, so I can’t complain too much.

This episode’s fanboy service comes to you courtesy of the SHIELD team’s airborne mobile command center, whose call sign is SHIELD 616. In the Marvel Universe, 616 refers to the Earth where all the classic Marvel superheroes live. Captain America, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men, if you grew up reading Marvel comics, chances are you were reading the 616 universe. This term originates from a Captain Britain comic from the 1980s, in which Captain Britain discovers he’s a member of an interdimensional group of Captain Britains. He’s the Captain Britain of Earth-616.

Did you catch the blueprint of the SHIELD 616 behind Coulson’s desk?
Marvel will be selling this blueprint at NYCC 2013.

How awesome was Nick Fury’s appearance at the end of the episode? It felt like an after the credit scene in a Marvel movie! The fact that we got Samuel L. Jackson in this episode makes me hopeful that we’ll get some of the other bigger names from the Marvel Cinematic Universe showing up in future episodes, even if it’s just for a cameo. Maybe a debriefing with Thor after the team handles a problem of Asgardian origin, or an appearance by Jon Favreau as Tony Stark’s head of security Happy Hogan if the team needs to secure something on Stark property.

“Does the SHIELD 616 look like a bitch? Then stop treating it like one!”
Two episodes in and the only complaint I really have with Agents of SHIELD is that it conflicts with Brooklyn 99, my other favorite new show of the season.