Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review – “The Writing On The Wall”
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is back in action this week after a brief reprieve, one which I didn’t think I was going to survive. It came back with a whirlwind of information… and quite a few more questions. In fact, my “not so short summary” may actually be relatively short! Or at least skimp on some of the Ward B-plot.
Not-So-Short Summary: We open with the crazy dude who was getting the alien writing tattooed into him now on a “date” with a woman who knows she knows him somehow. He ends up killing her, more on that in a bit.
Cut to Coulson carving to the kind of jazz I hate with Skye interrupting. She points out how everything is connected: Ward knows about her father, who has the Diviner which holds the alien writing which has something to do with the GH-325 serum which Coulson and Skye have inside them. She also hasn’t found what sort of map the writing is; she’s tried to match it to constellations and other things like that, but all she’s come up with is a map to nowhere.
In the meantime, Christian Ward is covering up Ward’s escape since it was from federal custody and he publicly vowed to punish his brother for what he did, so that won’t look very good. Triplett, May, Hunter, and Bobbi are on the road tracking him. Triplett finds him in Philadelphia and wants to take him out, but Ward is two steps ahead of them. He has himself lined with C4, but not like Principal Skinner. He boards a bus for Dallas where Bobbi waits for him, but he isn’t that stupid and threatens to blow the bus before leaving and hopping on another one with Hunter. He ends up in a bar where Bakshi shows up.
Ward wants to meet who Bakshi now works under because he knows Strucker is overseas–I love how subtle yet not subtle that name drop is! I’m already too excited for Age of Ultron; this doesn’t help. Ward promises a face-to-face meeting with Coulson so Bakshi can put a bullet in the Director’s head. When we return to this bar later in the episode, May and company find Bakshi unconscious in the back with duct tape over his mouth that reads “For Coulson.”
The S.H.I.E.L.D. crew back at home base discover the alien writing carved in the woman’s forehead from the beginning. She is Janice Robbins, a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, though Coulson does not remember her. It turns out this mystery agent died five years ago from cancer. Simmons finds traces of the GH drug in the woman’s system and traces of it in some cells under her fingers from her attacker. The only way they will find the answers they seek is if they torture it out of Coulson using Raina’s old machine.
This is where the episode turns dark. The cinematography of this episode is a great change to show the determination and fracturing of Coulson’s mental state as they delve deeper and deeper into his erased/suppressed memories. He discovers all of the testing they did on six different patients (Project TAHITI!) and how they handled their deteriorating mental states, including our big baddie with the alien tattoos who we come to find out is Sebastian Derek. One of the scientists working with Coulson makes the comment that their alien host body is older than the pyramids, so let’s just store that away…
In his memory flashbacks, Coulson watches the procedure of these people losing their memories like he did (I try not to think about that scene with him screaming “let me die” because it still gets to me), and he loses it until Skye and Simmons turn off the machine and bring him back to reality. Skye calls May, who says to lock him up and watch him until she gets back. Skye leads him down to Ward’s cell where Coulson pushes her into it and locks her away to go after the last person Derek hasn’t killed from the TAHITI project, Cameron Klein, now known as Hank Thompson.
Coulson only wants to pick Thompson’s brain, but Derek beat him to it. We come into a relatively gruesome scene for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. with Thompson tied up and Coulson hanging from the rafters of the model train warehouse at the mercy of Derek. He tells Coulson that the pain helps him remember and he starts to slice at Coulson’s arms. I’m not a horribly squeamish person, but I had to look away. I may love Clark Gregg a little too much to be able to bear that kind of torture.
Thompson breaks out of his bindings, helps to free Coulson, and takes off with his family only to find Skye and Mac on their way. Coulson and Derek start to fight it out… until Coulson notices the model train set and comes back to reality. Skye and Mac show up, ready to take Coulson down, but he assures them he is okay and points out the structure to Derek, who calms down as well.
It’s not a two-dimensional map, but a three-dimensional map. The layout of a city. The GH-325 acted as a homing device for whatever it is and it drove anyone with GH-325 crazy until they could see where it was trying to lead them. How to find this city is another question entirely.
We have no news on Ward’s whereabouts at the end of the episode, but we do see him shaving his beard and giving himself a buzz cut. He calls Bakshi’s cell phone, where Skye picks up with a hilarious, “…Hail Hydra…” We also get a fun speech by Coulson to his crew to assure them that he is fine; he shows them the map of the city and says they need to be the first to find it.
Badass Moment of the Week: “You want pain? Come and get some.” Agent Coulson being a badass. Unfortunately, their fight scene was slow-paced compared to everything we’ve had in the last four or five episodes, but what a way to goad someone.
Best One-Liner: “Corpse-y diem: seize the dead,” says Fitz as they put Janice Robbins’ body on a slate for Simmons to do an autopsy. I’m still cracking up at this line.
Many of the side-players were sidelined in this episode (pun intended), but what we did see of them gave good callbacks to the characters they were near the end of season one. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing: it was great to see Simmons back to her scientist self, giving explanations no one understands; we also got an allusion to Fitz having “backups” of his old mental state. Who cares if it makes very little logical sense because I want old Fitz back! He, too, had a fun scene with Mac where Mac was trying to fill in the blanks for him and couldn’t guess right, so Fitz came up with it on his own.
Anyone else catch the framed postcard next to Coulson’s record player that said “Trust Cap to lead the way,” or was that only me? Of course Coulson would have something like that framed and in plain sight.
Coulson’s monologue about pieces of the puzzle finally fitting together and giving them a clear picture of what they’re working with was very inspired and yet… I drew a lot of parallels about that “puzzle” of which he spoke to what the show has become. It didn’t start out like everyone wanted it to, many people gave up on it, and now that it’s found its footing, we know we are in for something special every week.
I may finally get to retire my #NoWardRedemptionArc hashtag! Because man can Brett Dalton play Ward creepily. Just when you think he can’t get any creepier–bam, there it is! You have to wonder where his loyalties really lie or if he’s just doing things for his own personal gain… or at least to get back at Christian.
As for the map of the mysterious city, everyone is assuming it is Attilan, the ancestral home of the Inhumans. If I start on this now, you’ll be here for another 700 words. Which brings me to the point below…
In case you missed it last week, I started our weekly brainstorming/roundtable session about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episodes. The first one is here. It covers overarching questions from this week’s episode as well as other things they have left as loose threads. Those are the serious ones, then we get into the fun things, like “Avengers Cameo of the Week” and “Weekly Webisode Idea.”
Be on the lookout for the latest installment Friday this week! I already have about seven questions written down that I’m going to hash out. If there’s anything you want me to try to cover, leave it in the comments below! Or bug me on Twitter. Or bug Bam Smack Pow on Twitter or Facebook. It’ll get to me somehow!