Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review – “Face My Enemy”
There comes a time in every person’s life when they are tasked with the impossibly awesome: critiquing Phil Coulson’s dance moves. I will happily oblige. On to this week’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.!
Not-So-Short Summary: We start in a church in Miami where the entire thing has caught fire, save for an antique painting with alien language on the back. S.H.I.E.L.D. gets wind of it and manages to go undercover at the reveal party. It’s a May/Coulson team-up and it gets Coulson back in the field despite May’s trepidations.
And then: The dancing. Part of me wishes I had watched this episode with my sister-in-law, since she danced professi
onally for over a decade and could give better insight. But it’s not just the dancing (though Coulson dipping May was above and beyond suave): it’s the history between these two characters. We’ve caught glimpses of it in the past, but this episode gives us so much more. Between the quips about dance electives at S.H.I.E.L.D. academy and May saying her face hurts (because smiling is awful), you see the emotional connection between these two.
You see May caring for someone. You see Coulson scared of what his future may hold. That thread of nostalgia weaves its way through this episode, creating contrast with the uncertainty of Coulson’s mental state and the contingency plan that is better left unsaid.
General Talbot shows up to blow their cover. He and Coulson have a slightly drunk talk about Talbot not blowing their cover, but it doesn’t matter; he’s already taken custody of the painting. And he places a call to Whitehall, because everyone is HYDRA ever.
In the process of ducking out of the party, May and Coulson are cornered by Talbot’s Cadillac Escalade. He wants their help in deciphering the alien language on the back of the painting. Coulson agrees and when Talbot leaves, May follows to check out whether his offer is legitimate while Coulson returns to the Bus. She stumbles upon Agent 33 from last episode looking at files about her and Coulson. She kicks some ass, discovering that it wasn’t actually Talbot (thank goodness he’s not HYDRA), until she gets knocked out.
I may have been a little too excited to see the face tech from Captain America: The Winter Soldier in this episode. I would say we need more tie-ins to the MCU like this, but tying in from Guardians of the Galaxy may be a little tough.
Agent 33 takes on May’s face and I’m immediately suspicious. Their body types are similar, but for someone like Coulson who’s known her as long as he has, wouldn’t he immediately notice the difference? Regardless, Fake!May returns to the Bus, plants a bug in the electrical system, and takes off with Coulson. The cryptic conversation in the car about the contingency plan Real!May doesn’t want to discuss is awkward because Fake!May has to pretend she knows what’s going on.
Coulson recognizes the fake instantly, and before he can be lured into the room where Real!May is being tortured (plus, torture shouldn’t scare her, she’s a badass), he tells Fake!May they should get that coffee from all those years ago. She agrees and immediately gets punched in the face. “May hates coffee,” he deadpans.
What follows in the next five to ten minutes are the best fight scenes of this series. It’s May versus May, and Coulson says the truest thing we’ve ever heard: “I can’t believe I’m the only one seeing this.” Because it is unbelievable. The choreography, the sheer badass-ness of it… May slamming Fake!May’s head into the coffee table. Or May jumping up and kicking Fake!May over the breakfast bar. I really want to watch it all again.
Of course, May wins and when she and Coulson are back on the Bus (we’ll get to the B-plot in a second) and begin to discuss his contingency plan, she says she has no plans of shooting him in the head. She has money, passports, documents ready to go to get them to the Outback, because Coulson likes kangaroos. It’s not good enough for Coulson. If he’s going to turn into Garrett, he wants a bullet in the head. Nothing else will do. “Hard choices are coming,” he says.
In the B-plot, we jump back to when Fake!May plants the bug in the electrical system. It shuts down the Bs part by part, and when it hits the wings where the gas tanks are, it will explode with five main characters inside. Of course you know it’s not actually going to explode, and of course with all the Fitz-talking-to-Imaginary-Simmons about how he doesn’t fit in anymore, you know he’s going to do some maturing.
It’s easy to see what will happen, but does it matter? Fitz being a part of the action with the group supporting and helping him feels like a great step forward for his development until Simmons returns from her undercover mission in HYDRA. When Hunter offers him a beer and to hang with him and Mack, watching him try to bond is cute and also not as painful as it’s been in the past.
With all of the emotions running through the Coulson/May storyline, the B-plot is fine to be this light and predictable.
Badass Moment of the Week: Agent May. Agent May. And Agent May.
Best One-Liner: This episode was full of excellent quips, which is why Coulson needs to be in the field more often. As they are cornered by Talbot after the party, Coulson explains their leaving by saying, “The caters ran out of coconut shrimp. There’s no reason to stay.”
Bonus points for May: “Where is your location?” she is asked, regarding S.H.I.E.L.D.’s whereabouts.
“Currently? About five feet from kicking your ass,” May answers.
Fun Theory I’m Making Up Right Now: It’s not a theory, but it’s a text from fellow nerd Austin and then posted on Twitter: It’s a May vs. May showdown. All of a sudden, May pulls a Star Lord and starts a dance-off. And I’m left to wonder why didn’t this actually happen?!
Analysis on the painting that survived the church fire shows that while it is 500 years old, the carvings are new. Someone else out there is having the same issues as Coulson. Anyone else wondering when Skye will start to do the same? Of course Coulson’s had the GH-325 in him longer than her, but still. You have to wonder if it’s not affecting her because of whatever her parents were.
Speaking of her parents, it looks like next week’s episode is going to ramp up a lot of plot points: alien language, HYDRA, Skye’s dad, the obelisk, Raina… and the arrival of Mockingbird. Everyone is guessing she’s the ex-wife Hunter keeps mentioning, especially since he mentions her about twelve times this episode.
Raina is in this episode for a few minutes. She gets cornered in her car by Whitehall, who wants the obelisk within 48 hours or he will torture her beyond her wildest imagination.
It’s nice that this episode focused on just May and Coulson. Trying to spread it out across the group starts to get taxing with all of the plot threads left hanging. That being said, there’s still not enough Triplett for my liking, but at least the focus on Hunter seems more natural this week and I didn’t find myself bored whenever he spoke.
Clark Gregg is all sorts of wonderful. Just how he delivers lines as Coulson makes it so damn enjoyable. He holds so much gravitas when he deadpans that it’s hard to tell if he’s serious, joking, sarcastic, or all of the above. This is why we need Coulson in the field more! Get to the bottom of the alien language and fix him so we get more episodes like this!
Ming Na Wen…where do I even begin? It was fantastic to see her be able to stretch her acting wings, and even funnier to see her team’s reactions to her happy facade. “She just said more words than I’ve heard her say in a year,” exclaims Skye, completely blown away by May’s vivacious flirting undercover. With how much the marketing for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has focused on how every character has changed, they haven’t shown much in the way of Agent May. This episode changed that; she doesn’t need to change as drastically as the rest because she’s experienced so much more and has that steely reserve for a reason. Her emotions run deeper than everyone else.
Can we get more covert operations with Coulson and May in the field? Someone send a message out to the writers.