"Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Debrief: Episode 1.05, "Girl In The Flower Dress"

Wow, man. Here we are, folks, week five of these "Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." debriefs, and I must say all the surprising promise I had with the pilot is really fading with each and every new episode I see. Another week has gone by (and as I said on last week’s podcast), and this show is becoming more and more Scooby-like and not really spy-show-like. The constant focus on Skye is not really helping the show, since they (the showrunners) are not making her a good, or interesting, protagonist. To be honest, I thought this show would be more about my man Son of Coul, but each week he’s just the father figure, one of the two adults making sure the kids get out of these weird missions. If I really wanted to watch that, I could watch old Ben 10 Alien Force episodes.

But anyway, this episode’s title is “Girl in the Flower Dress,” and basically this episode brings back up the bad guys from the pilot with the centipede arm thingy. The “girl” is an attractive woman named Reina who in Hong Kong meets a man named Chan Ho Yin, a street magician that also has the ability to make fire, a.k.a. a pyrokinetic. She tricks him and kidnaps him to an unnamed facility. His disappearance alerts S.H.I.E.L.D. and Coulson’s team. We learn through some well-placed exposition that S.H.I.E.L.D. knows about people gaining superpowers and keeps a list and has handlers for these burgeoning super-people. The agent that watches this person is Agent Chen, and lets the team know that the man was kidnapped because The Rising Tide hacked into S.H.I.E.L.D.’s system and stole the list. The team now looks to Skye, who, if you remember, is spying for The Rising Tide. The whole team is betrayed and Coulson is pretty disappointed, especially because Ward and May told him so.

Skye is given a chance to help the team track the hacker, but instead she alerts him to the tail and we find out that’s her boyfriend. So instead of escaping or anything else that’s smart, they have sex. Like, come on, let’s think about this: S.H.I.E.L.D. is after your man who you helped to put in the area and instead of, I don’t know, jacking a car, shaving this dude (who looks like a fake Eric Bana), and sending him on his way, you bang him in stead. GTFOHWTBS! BOO!

So after clothes are put on, Skye goes to leave, and guess who is at the door? Agent Melinda May with her perfect YOU DUMBASS face. Both are taken into custody and Coulson is SALTY!

During all of this, Raina wakes up ole boy and gets into his head with fame and fortune. She gives this dude a wack-handle Scorch like he’s from American Gladiators or something. Dude falls for it because she gives him the sexy eyes and she takes him to lab where she claims some shot will make his powers even more powerful. She strings him along perfectly, and the random science dudes shoot this guy up with some Extremis and this guy can now make EVEN BIGGER FIRE! WOOOOOOOWW!

Nah, it was mad regular though.

The big reveal is that the scientist that gave Mike Peterson (J. August Richards) his Extremis is working with Raina on this. They want to take this dude’s blood platelets so they can stop people from blowing up like they have been since Iron Man 3.  They do that and now homeboy burns himself when he uses his powers because those platelets made him fireproof. Sucks to be that dude now.

Now Team Coulson has Skye and Fake Bana locked up and they are having a disagreement. He’s chastising her because he said she’s changed and is defending “THE MAN” but then Ward comes in and tells her man took a million for that info from that same Raina chick. Skye gets mad and leaves, ends her relationship with this guy, and helps the team find him. Once they get to the lab, Agent Chen and Coulson with May go up to and save Chan, but now after he got double crossed by the evil team, he decides it’s S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fault for not letting him be public with his powers. He shoots himself with the Extremis again and kills Agent Chen. He then starts attacking Coulson and May who evade all his fireworks. Coulson decides to shoot a whole clip of those special Extremis-curing bullet at this guy while he made giant flame wings, which melted the bullets. Think about this, like what really happened to Coulson? He can’t take apart a gun in one episode, puts a high school dropout on the team that is a spy, and now he shoots these plastic bullets into a wall of fire. C’MON SON!

So this guy is full on rampaging and can’t be reasoned with. He ends up killing the scientist from the Pilot by burning her alive. Coulson tells the S.H.I.E.L.D. Nerds to let out Fake Bana so he can help them escape the facility. Coulson stabs Chan with more Extremis, causing him to start reaching critical explosion time. The team escapes fine. They let fake Bana go but took his money. Coulson talked to Skye and we find out that she joined Rising Tide to find out who she is and who her parents were, since everything about them is redacted by S.H.I.E.L.D.. He lets her on the team. The aftercredits scene is basically a bunch of stuff with Raina, who I guess is now the new commander baddie of the show for the centipede people.

Did You Know:

+ Scorch is named using by two characters in the Marvel Universe. One for a guy with a flame suit and another a mutant, but we know there are no mutants right now in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so this guy is all new. Let’s just call him Scorch 3.

+ To be honest, I felt this episode was a couple of steps back. I guess I’m just not a fan of Skye at all. I don’t like her as the focus. I wish it were more spy-like and less NCIS-like in terms of a show. Maybe even if it was just like a Marvel 24 show. I also find it troubling that it seems that Coulson has to save POC all the time from evil organizations doing terrible experiments on them to make them do bad things. It’s like a weekly show about Coulson vs. the Marvel Tuskegee experiment of something. As we are right now with this, it’s going to be a long 17 more episodes or so.