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Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD Recap – “One Door Closes”

By Christina Roberts

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Look, there’s no time for introductions in this week’s Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD recap.

Not-So-Short Summary: It’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, “The Day SHIELD Fell.” Hydra is looking for ship schematics and has Mack and his supporting crew cornered until Bobbi rushes in to save the day and Hartley adds in a bit of knife-throwing flare. We’ll get back to the flashback.

Bobbi returns to the Bus, skulking around and setting up for her and Mack’s escape route. Mack gets a peek under the hood of Lola, but in the meantime, Coulson calls out Mack on his sketchiness and wants him to confess. When Mack continues to say he works for SHIELD (which isn’t inaccurate), Coulson corners him with about seven armed people.

Bobbi drills into Coulson’s desk to retrieve Fury’s toolbox, only to get cornered by May, who gently reminds her that the last person who betrayed her trust got their larynx broken. By May. No matter what Bobbi says, May won’t have it, so she backflips through a window to escape.

And the May/Bobbi showdown ensues. It starts out sloppy at first, but then each of them gets to shine at what they do best. Of course it doesn’t last as long as I hoped, but it does end with Bobbi at May’s mercy, saying how she didn’t want this before she cuts the lights in the entire HQ and both her and Mack disappear.

Bobbi finds Simmons, who’s oblivious, and I’m already cringing because I had the feeling that Simmons would side with Bobbi in this whole thing. So it took me by surprise when Simmons successfully stalls Bobbi and “arrests” her, although it doesn’t last long because fake!SHIELD is on their way in through the out door controls room where Fitz and Mack are.

Fake!SHIELD discovers where Skye has been taken: The Retreat, which Bruce Banner built. (This episode is all about the name-drops, from TWS flashbacks to Banner to Fury’s toolbox made of Vibranium).

I couldn’t type fast enough to write down all of the points Gonzales made against Coulson, but with how quiet Coulson stayed for eighty percent of it, you know he’s attempting to formulate a way out of this thing. Coulson has a one-up on the situation because he knows Fury isn’t dead (like he’s going to let that out of the box anytime soon).

May swoops in to save Coulson, but not before she gets a call into Skye to warn her to leave the cabin. After knocking out all of the guards and Gonzales, she smuggles Coulson out of the room and tells him to go save Skye.

In the meantime over in Banner’s cabin, Skye tries on the gloves Simmons made for her, but they make her woozy and it’s not because of the Hulk Smash fist print she just found in the wall. It’s around this time that she hears noises and finds herself with an unwanted yet friendly guest: Gordon.

He comes as a friend, knows she’s curious about what she is. The Mist changes everyone differently–their difference is what happened after they went through the Mist. He had someone to embrace him after and accept what he is; what did SHIELD do to her?

The scene between Gordon and Skye is a great psychology session and I don’t know about you, but I fell in love with Gordon immediately. He brings a charismatic side to his character, one who is willing to give away secrets of the Inhumans when the time is right. He explains to her that she has the ability to tap into the vibrations of every living thing and can learn to manage the pain her power creates.

In the end, he says when she is ready to come to his HQ, he will find her. She asks how, and all he does is teleport away. I’d say that answers her question.

It’s around this time that May’s call comes through, telling her to leave the cabin. As she runs outside, the bright lights of a quinjet shine through the trees. Even Skye gets some time to shine with the hand-to-hand combat as a fake!SHIELD agent attacks her. Once she takes him down, Bobbi and the jerk bald guy (actually named Calderon, but “jerk bald guy” seems more accurate) find her, and Calderon shoots what definitely isn’t an ICER. Bobbi screams for Skye to watch out.

And that’s when the best scene happens: Skye uses her quaking powers to redirect the bullet, also completely shattering a tree, knocking Bobbi and Calderon back, spearing Calderon with a tree branch, and decimating the surrounding trees. In the seconds of silence afterward when Bobbi manages to raise her head up to look at Skye, Skye asks for Gordon and gets whisked away.

Post-Credits Stinger: “That’s a lot of umbrellas for one drink,” Coulson remarks as a bartender hands him a drink in a tropical location. Hunter meets up with him and is ready to rock and roll, so it’s now a Coulson-and-Hunter SHIELD.

Badass Moment of the Week: Skye manipulating the water from the faucet. That was a subtle and oddly touching way to show the neat side of her powers. Also, May coming to Coulson’s rescue after his interrogation with Gonzales because her entrance was sheer perfection.

Best One-Liner: “Fitz! Why did you make me watch Paranormal Activity?!” Skye mutters as she searches an empty cabin. I’d say the same thing if I was in your shoes, Skye.

Wow. I don’t really know where to begin with this episode, I really don’t.

The flashback to “The Day SHIELD Fell” filled in some necessary gaps in Bobbi’s backstory on why she’s on Gonzales’s side of this battle. We get to see a full-out, action-packed Bobbi coming to Mack’s rescue and disobeying direct orders from a dead man, seeing the faults Fury overlooked in his own plans. She’s seen enough of her friends die following Fury’s orders not to want to follow down that path again, and that’s all it seems like Coulson is doing.

You’ve got to feel a little bad for Coulson, too. Horribly outnumbered, betrayed by his own people whom he trusted.

This show is seriously lacking Fitz. I know quite a few fans believed his character weighed down the show at the start of the season while he struggled through his impediment, but in the last (at least) seven episodes, he’s held his own. He’s been able to face off against someone he thought was his friend by learning from previous mistakes (trusting Ward until he could see the truth with his own eyes). The fact that he is constantly calling Simmons out on her newfound hatred of new things makes my heart melt. Seriously, I wanted to high-five him when he asked, “How’s your science experiment going?” after she skyped with Skye.

What I’m not okay with: FitzSimmons calling each other by their first names. Anyone know when that started being a thing?

What makes me still like both Bobbi and Mack–aside from the fact that if I said I hated Mockingbird, I’m pretty sure Adrianne Palicki would hunt me down and throttle me–is that while they’re against our main group of heroes, they haven’t completely sold them out like Ward did. When Fitz is in danger of being exploded, Mack tackles him to the ground; and when jerk bald guy aims to shoot, Bobbi screams for Skye to look out.

Gordon also won me over completely (though that prosthetic over his eyes could look a little better), and I was thoroughly stunned by the visuals of Skye’s powers. I’m glad he explained that she can literally shake anything and that we finally glimpsed the sheer power she can wield. I want more of this.

I’m excited to see where next week’s Agents of SHIELD takes us. I have a hinting suspicion that Fitz will manage to break away from fake!SHIELD and reconvene with Coulson and Hunter, and I’d love to see those three take down fake!SHIELD.

And how will everyone else fare? I have a bad feeling about Mack’s chances, but since Bobbi just got bumped up to a series regular, she’s not going anywhere.

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