Wednesday, October 16, 2013

'Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.' 1.04 "Eye Spy" Review

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‘People are surveying themselves.’ 

This is Agent Coulson's line during a mission briefing after a bold daylight heist in Stockholm puts the team on the trail of a former agent who at first it seems might actually have a power, but the truth is far more nefarious. While he’s referring to the fact that the nature of this particular diamond transport was flashy enough to gain the interest of several tourists and natives as great Instagram fodder, it’s also a great bit of wordplay and foreshadowing when we learn the true nature of former agent Amador’s immense capabilities. As it stands, it was moments like this one which made ‘Eye Spy’ possibly the finest hour of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. yet. 



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So maybe this will cut down on all the complaining casual fans of the show have done. I can’t have a single conversation with someone about this series without running into the same issues being brought up again and again. The loudest and most frequent of which is something along the lines ‘but it’s Joss and I expect perfection’. Nevermind the fact that showing the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to a friend is often accompanied with plenty of assurances that ‘it gets better, I promise you really it does.’ I understand having standards and expectations for any piece of entertainment someone chooses to spend their precious time on but really guys it takes time for some shows to get there. Yes, it’s Joss and that comes with very specific expectations, but another thing to remember is he’s not the only guy captaining this ship. Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen are part of the collaboration too, and do you know what else they worked on with Joss? Dollhouse. Another slow-starter that grew to continue to deeply divide the affections of many a Whedonite, but those who love it could find qualities in it worth exploring. I feel like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is going to go much the same way. 

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One of the trickiest aspects of really ‘selling’ this show to the non-believers has to do with the characters. I’ve said before that character is king to the group of people behind the scenes on this show, and this latest episode really gave these characters a chance to show us how they react when put to the challenge--really shoved outside of their comfort zones. It’s a great creative choice that things didn’t always work out in their favor either. Skye still couldn’t learn the difference between the safety and the magazine release on her sidearm when threatened out in the field. Agent Ward, he of the person skills of a porcupine if you’ll recall Maria Hill’s doodle from the pilot, was forced to try and be charming instead of simply knock out a guard in his way. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work and to err is human so what better way to start truly humanizing these characters out of their comic book archetypes than to show them messing up now and again? Even scientific wonder twins FitzSimmons got a bit squicked out when faced with the prospect of bionic eye surgery and Agent May got to use some of her skills but what ultimately got the best results was not her initial suggestion of taking Akela out. A change in the way these characters operate can be traced directly to their team leader, A.C. as Skye refers to him. 

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Agent Phil Coulson is a new man. Possibly literally if he’s a clone or android as many believe he may be.  For the purposes of this review, however, he’s certainly at the very least a different sort of agent now and people that have known him longer than most of our young S.H.I.E.L.D. upstarts have certainly noticed. It’s something you hear about or may have witnessed in your own life--how someone with a second chance at life takes a new perspective in areas they used to be more unyielding in. When he regarded the situation of presumed dead former agent Akela Amador, it was with an open mind and with the idea that giving people the benefit of the doubt can actually pay off even in the high-stakes world of super espionage and tactics. That's something his team needs to see, they need to know if they become compromised that this guy is going to have their back when they need it most. If you had to assign a phrase to describe ‘Eye Spy’ it could be a take on the popular Friday Night Lights tagline except in this case it would be something along the lines of ‘Biomechanic eyes, optimistic hearts, didn’t lose this time’. 

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As much as the show is about the quirky band of misfits working to keep the world safe from all sorts of new and terrible threats, it’s about Coulson. The show is practically built around him and many of the foes so far have come to either represent his past (Camila Reyes, Akela), his present (Mike Peterson), or his possible future (the birth of Graviton and the sign of what’s to come from it). In each of their own way, these adversaries have given us a chance to see Coulson 2.0 in action. We’ve seen him be forthcoming about his doubts, forgiving of the sins of the wayward, and hopeful that missions can be resolved with as little violence as possible. His standoff with Loki in The Avengers made him more of a peaceful man as a violent near-death experience is likely to do. ‘I live outside of the box’ doesn’t just mean he’s constantly surrounded by the weird and the wonderful, it also means that he’s approaching his missions outside of a militant at-all-costs standpoint. It stands to question whether or not this is all Coulson or whatever 'they did to him’ as Akela mentioned to Agent May before she was taken into custody. 

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Hopefully, we’ll get the chance to see her again and possibly some other characters we’ve met along the way. Part of the fun of this show is how they so often leave threads, character or story, dangling in a way that speaks to the fact that it’s probably smart to bet on return appearances or recurring ongoing plots being set up for exploration throughout the season. Quite a few people would like to see Akela and other characters we’ve met already back on the show and that’s a sign of good world-building. As is their choice of this week’s pre-credits tag of Fitz and Grant playing cards against one another with a little help from Skye and a piece of tech from the episode. Let’s face it, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a corporate animal from its very inception, but that doesn’t mean that it's without its own creative value. They should continue to be sparing with flashy tag sequences like the appearance of Nick Fury and instead focus on giving us character downtime moments instead. Hell, they have a whole (fantastic) comic series from Matt Fraction and David Aja on what Clint Barton’s off days from being an Avenger are like so this isn’t much different to expect from the House of Ideas.

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Even though the episode had a mostly happy ending, there was a sense of justice as well as a looming unease regarding Coulson's true fate. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t shy away from the consequences of Akela’s actions whether or not they were entirely voluntary. A former agent like herself would find that to be a completely fair conclusion to this chapter of her story since she finally got what she wanted: peace and rest. As for Coulson, there’s a great line early on in the episode where he's chatting with Agent May about why she enjoys being a pilot so much and she says it’s because of the solitude. Many of these hardened agents want nothing more than that some rest Akela craved. The worrisome thing is that if something is inside Coulson like Akela implied then one might assume he’s being powered by S.H.I.E.L.D. and that this particular agent has miles to go before he gets permission to sleep. 

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