Exciting First Promos for Marvel's 'Agents of SHIELD' Season 2

With a rash of new comic book-based TV series beginning this fall, it's funny to think of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD as a veteran as it goes into season two, but it kind of is. After a shaky first season both creatively and in terms of ratings, the show really picked up steam and recovered in the final stretch as it reflected changes brought about in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. And going into this next season the ramifications of the Hydra infiltration will continue to be felt

ABC and Marvel have released two new promos for Agents of SHIELD's second season, with one featuring a ton of never before seen footage. The first, titled "Rollercoaster", features footage from the prior season and teases the up 'n down nature of the team's adventures. But it's the second promo that is really cool as it gives us a look at what Agent Coulson's (Clark Gregg) team looks like now that SHIELD is no more. They're protecting innocents in secret, living "in the shadows" as he puts it. Essentially they'll be completely off the grid, which I guess means the traitorous Agent Ward (Brett Dalton) doesn't have time to shave. It also means Skye (Chloe Bennett) will be receiving more field training than ever, and she looks much tougher now than ever before. And although this teaser doesn't really show it, something has to be up with Fitz (Ian De Caestecker) after the trauma he suffered.

Lots of stuff going on, and with a whole slew of new characters coming aboard this should be an exciting season. Marvel's Agents of SHIELD returns September 23rd at its new time of 9pm eastern. If you're interested in recapping the show for us each week, shoot me an email at punchdrunkcritics@yahoo.com.




Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Season 2 - Teaser #1 [VO|HD] by Team Lyricis

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Sylvester Stallone, Nelly, and Terry Crews Look for Answers in 'Reach Me' Trailer

"There's no stopping someone that will stop at nothing", begins the trailer for Reach Me, a dramatic ensemble that features Sylvester Stallone in the rare role that doesn't require him to blow anything up or punch someone in the face. It's been nearly two decades since Stallone put on his drama hat in Cop Land, a film that was ripped at the time but has since been recognized as one of the actor's finer performances....at least compared to his latter Rocky, Rambo, and The Expendables efforts. And now Stallone is ready to show what he can do again but the trailer suggests the film may not be up to par.

Stallone is surrounded by a cast that immediately pegs this as something headed for Redbox with the quickness. Kelsey Grammer and Terry Crews (Sly's buds in The Expendables 3), Cary Elwes, Thomas Jane, Ryan Kwanten, Tom Sizemore, Tom Berenger, Kevin Connolly, The Walking Dead's Lauren Cohan, Agents of SHIELD's Elizabeth Henstridge, Kyra Sedgewick, ex-New York Giants fullback Jarrod Bunch, Nelly, and Danny Aiello star as a group of people who are all connected by a self help guru's book, but little do they know he's just a reclusive former football coach with his own problems.

John Herzfeld (15 Minutes) directed and wrote the script so if it looks like a poor man's Crash then he's the one to hold responsible. Reach Me will open on October 24th.

Reach Me Official Trailer (2014) Sylvester Stallone, Tom Jane HD by Newest Trailer

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Debrief: Episode 1.22, "Beginning of the End"

Finally, we are at the end of the first season of Agents of SHIELD. AoS was a show that started off with a bang and slowly trailed off into undirected boredom. It then proceeded to right itself once it hard connected to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and got a creative boost and some more fan appreciation as the show has sprinted toward its first endpoint. Now I’m not going to lie, I had to sit on this episode for a little bit. Most of the reaction I saw from people was very good, but for me, I felt underwhelmed. Everything seemed to wrap up a bit too easy and in a very short period of time. So let’s run through what happened here in this finale.

The show opens cold with a guy getting his orientation to Cybertek and his new role as a Deathlok controller. This cuts us directly to where we saw Team Coulson last week and in short order Coulson, May, Triplett, and Skye take out these cyborg super soldiers with ease. Skye runs off to put her little hack into HYDRA’s computer network with Triplett getting knocked down a little as Coulson takes out some of these guys with pistols (really tho?) and May straight jacks the Berserker staff and proceeds to beat up fools and then collapses the whole room by knocking out pillars as the team escapes.

Ward is all antsy, not really sure of his place, as Garrett has become a complete cartoon supervillain lunatic (but I must say Bill Paxton seemed to be having a great time in this role). Reina continues her thing about not caring about any of this and just about potential, and Garrett now with what he feels is his new understanding gets what she is after and lets her and Quinn’s people take the gravitonium. Garrett starts to scratch into some glass a bunch of symbols as he continues to blab on about what he now knows. Ward is there clueless but is told he just cares about Skye and that they need Skye soon, "that is your new mission." Now at the same time what’s left of Team Coulson is now plotting on hitting Cybertek hard to stop Garrett and HYDRA.

Now remember that giant cube FitzSimmons was stuck in? Well, it sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Fitz protected Simmons from the fall and broke his arm but at the same time was trying to figure out a way to get the cube up. They figure out a way to break the glass so that they can escape and get to the surface along with making a makeshift beacon. Being that there isn’t enough air and Simmons is a better swimmer, Fitz decides to do the heroic sacrifice while also admitting his feelings to Simmons. She refuses to let him die and she carries him up to the surface where they are picked up by Nick Fury. Nick Fury gives them a rundown of things, along with wanting to know where Coulson is and people him is after for some payback.

So Ian Quinn is doing the big sell to those US military officials and things are going well until Garrett comes in all crazy talking nonsense as Quinn looks on beyond frustrated. When Team Coulson attacks Garrett flips out and kills one of the high-ranking military officials by ripping out a rib. I don’t know why one rib, but I guess that’s all the gore they could have on ABC at the beginning of prime time. With Triplett handling things outside, Coulson gets in to find Garrett at the same time May and Skye gets into Cybertek offices to stop all the Deathlok soldiers. We also learn about Cybertek’s incentive program, which is that they hold on to people’s loved ones to make them work for them. While Skye is finding out information and hacking the Deathloks, Ward finds her and they have an exchange and what happens next is that May comes in and proceeds to H.A.M. on Ward.

When Coulson finds Garrett in his full crazy, he learns firsthand what the new Garrett can do as he is smacked across the room. Next Garrett gives a bad guy speech as more goons appear and as Mike real deal Deathlok unhappily looks on ready to body Coulson with the quickness. Well as Coulson gets up he see Nick Fury and they have a few words and he gives Coulson his Destroyer cannon from Avengers. From that point, Coulson blasts the goons away and Fury unloads into Garrett. Garrett laughs and makes some dumb tag-team comments and reveals his whole plan was based off not really listening to Fury’s initiation speech. As May beats the tar out of Ward, Skye goes in and starts freeing the captured family members of people and finds Deathlok’s son Ace. The whole time Deathlok has been free of control because of Skye but was waiting until Skye could find and save Ace. Once he knows that Ace is safe with Skye, Deathlok turns his arm missiles on Garrett, blowing him up.

Even though Garrett got that new juice he is still that Betamax tech compared with Deathlok’s new PS4 tech (pardon my set top box examples). When Garrett asks for mercy, Deathlok proceeds to stomp him out like fire. Now with the day saved and bad guys captured and families safe, Ward gets a stern talking to while Deathlok decides to wander around making up for all the wrong he has done under the control of Garrett. The team reunites with Simmons and they learn that Fitz is alive but won’t be the same again. Coulson gets to finally get off his chest everything to Fury, with Fury responding that May had his back and that Coulson is important and that agents like him are the heart of SHIELD. He then makes Coulson the new Director of SHIELD and asks him to rebuild it better than it ever was.

The episode ends with Reina the girl with the flower dress walking into a dilapidated house and talking to a person who all we see as a scarred, maybe bloody arm; she shows them Skye’s picture and tell them that she has found their daughter. The final scene is Coulson waking up in the middle of the night to carve in a wall a bunch of drawings that look like an alien language, the same as crazy Garrett was doing the previous day.

Did you know:

Well, not a bunch of Marvel comic Easter eggs; just wrapping up the season and setting up the next. I have a grander theory on what AoS means to the grander scheme and what it all leads to for the Marvel phases. Look for that soon. I hope you guys enjoyed the show and the season. I’m not going to lie: I didn’t really like the show and I don’t think I’ll be watching in next season, but I think I’ll give Agent Carter a go. Also, I live tweet 24, so if you want to see my thoughts on that follow me at @julianlytle.

Talk you to trill believers later, when I drop the knowledge of the SOURCE on you!!

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Debrief: Episode 1.21, "Ragtag"

Here we are at the penultimate episode of the first season of Agents of SHIELD and you’re supposed to get this feeling of tension and action ramping up to a climax. Well that’s what you get from most shows but last night Agents of SHIELD gave us the random slow jam on the mixtape to mess up the flow. For some reason they decided to give us the Origin of Agent Grant Ward and why he’s aligned with HYDRA through his mentor Garrett aka the Clairvoyant. What we got was an annoyingly disjointed episode that really leaves me less interested than ever in how this season will end.

So what does happen with this episode? It’s mostly in three parts, the Ward flashback parts, HYDRA stuff and Team Coulson stuff. Let’s cover the Ward Flashbacks first. We see Ward in juvie when he is visited by Garrett, he makes him an offer to go with him or rot here, meanwhile his family is planning on having him tried as adult for setting their house on fire and killing (?) his brother. He chooses to go with Garrett who breaks him out of juvie and then takes him somewhere in the woods. Garrett leaves Ward in the woods with his dog and tells him to survive until he gets back for a couple of months. Garrett returns six months later to find a more experienced Ward that now has a camp, food and guns. He basically survived by robbing people. He tells Garrett he plans on building a cabin and Garrett is pleased and begins to teach him how to shoot. 10 years later Ward, now older, Garrett tells him about his feelings on Shield and his allegiance to HYDRA. Then Garrett tells Ward that he’s been approved to enter SHIELD ops training but first Ward has to kill the dog. Here you think this is where they redeem Ward, nope he scares the dog and snipes him. So the big traumatic event to show Ward is bad is that he kills a dog…sigh.

Now for the Team Coulson storyline, while the team is in their new base aka motel 6 they plan on getting into Cybertek the company that makes the Deathlok technology along with other things that our team has been facing all season long (I find it lame that AIM is not used at all even though they were in Iron Man 3). Next Triplett comes in with a bunch of his granddad’s Howling Commando spy gear which cause both Coulson and Triplett to go into complete fanboy overdrive over. So with the old school spy tech and with Coulson and May dressed up like Gilbert and Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds they get into Cybertek. With coaching by FitzSimmons they get to the next level where they then proceed to beat up all the scientists they meet in Cybertek. Looking for a server room so that they can affix a dongle to the computers for Skye’s hacker program to started so it can destroy all the HYDRA network’s copy of their files they end up find an analogue room full of filing cabinets. They end up on the Deathlok cabinet with the folders on the project, Mike Peterson and who we find out Garrett the first Deathlok aka what I shall call that Betamax. May and Skye have a heart to heart (why do Coulson and May have to have these with her?) and Skye learns that May is very angry about Ward but just doesn’t pout and throw tantrums about it. May just plans on destroying him in person when she sees him again. Then she offers Skye to train with her in the morning.

So Team Coulson decides that they should split up with all the fighting people with Skye going to another HYDRA base Garrett is using to plant the dongle with FitzSimmons going to find the Bus and getting it back somehow. They can’t fight but they go after the place with the killer clairvoyant and killer Ward.

This show.

Also for some reason Fitz won’t accept the fact that Ward is a bad guy. The dead agent Koenig and the kidnapping of Skye along with shooting of Agent Hand apparently means he can’t be bad if he’s his friend. So let’s talk about HYDRA time. See Garrett sent Deathlok down to Bogota and had him punch off the head of the drug cartel leader as a show of force. Garrett and Ward constantly bicker while Garrett checks in on Reina about what they have learned from the hard drive. She’s learned enough to make one vile of the stuff that was in TAHITI. Garrett and Ward still argue, then something happens to Garrett which is the first time we see his old Betamax Deathlok parts that Ward knows how to fix. He ctrl+alt+del his gear and Garrett gets a little better and he tells Ward that he is dying. At this time Deathlok and Reina have a talk with him still being mad at his situation and Reina being disappointed that all Garrett wants is to not die (so basically she’s just as disappointed as I am in the motivations of this show) as she wants to learn more about Skye and other people with potential powers as she herself is one.

Next up we see Ian Quinn getting a haircut and shave from the HYDRA base front as he tells Garrett with SHIELD gone and it's reputation tarnished means that he’s all gravy in the states and can conduct business as usual there. Now he is headed to Washington to do some deals for the team. Reina takes Ward to the side and says she has some secrets about Ward and his thirst piques his interests. So remember when I told you they had FitzSimmons scoping out the plane well guess who found them? Our man Ward and took them right to Garrett. Fitz puffing his chest out at the evil Garrett when makes his appearance to be all big bad to those two. When being taken away Ward notices Fitz reaching in his pocket and takes what he was holding. Thinking it’s a joy buzzer he presses the button but BONG it’s an EMP and takes out part of the Bus and causes Garrett’s Betamax hardware to fail. With Garrett now on his deathbed he asks Ward to kill FitzSimmons which Ward complies with. After Ward leaves Garrett talks with Reina about his situation and has her inject his systems with the TAHITI concoction to save his life.  Garrett then gains the glow and saves he sees the universe.

Meanwhile Ward gets to FitzSimmons with Fitz still unable to believe Ward is a bad guy he goes ahead and drops the container they are in into the sea. I still don’t know how the two nerds of the team got trapped and couldn’t take over the whole plane they were on for month with some crazy scientist hacking skills but alas.  Now action side of Team Coulson proceeds to get into the HYDRA base. There they end up where they need to be but OH NOES they are surrounded by folks with red light eyes! Ah man that must mean a whole army of Deathloks.  The episode ends with Ian Quinn in a meeting with two US Military higher up about them buying Deathloks.

Did You Know:

Most of the really good Easter eggs were in reference to Deathlok and specifically to the Dwayne McDuffie 1990 Michael Collins version. I thought that was pretty cool. There have been plenty of Deathloks to be honest and it’s a bit all over the place if you really want to jump down that whole do so at your own risk. It’s full of alternate futures, time travel and brain switching with some of this stuff I don’t totally follow. See you next week for the season finale.

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Debrief: Episode 1.20, "Nothing Personal"

Only three episodes left before the first season of Agents of SHIELD is over and while most of the folks around are feeling better about the show I’m still in the same "this isn’t that good" camp. With last night’s episode titled 'Nothing’s Personal' really not changing my feelings either. I think after the first spoilery episode 4 days after the release of Cap 2 the show kind of settled back into its kind of average state of being again with every one being just a bit too cute. This episode continues directly where the last one left us with team back at the base, May out in the cold, and Skye in a terrible scary boyfriend movie plot with Ward.

The episode starts with us seeing Maria Hill (now a Stark employee sorry for more Cap 2 spoilers) in Washington dealing with Congressional hearings about what happened with HYDRA and SHIELD. She's snuck up on by Agent May who’s still on the hunt for who was in charge of T.A.H.I.T.I. with Hill not having much for her she dips away as Hill is taken into custody by FBI. Back at the hidden base bunker left over team Coulson is checking and sees from tapes that everyone left. Simmons ends up finding Koenig’s body with Fitz finding a message from Skye warning that Ward is HYDRA. After everyone gets over their shock at the betrayal they start to get angry and make a plan, only to have the base entered by Talbot (aka the #2 Hulk hater in existence) and his troops. Wondering how they got in Coulson finds out that Maria Hill snitched.

As Talbot starts questioning Fitz, Simmons and Triplett, Coulson is talking to Hill about what’s going on. Hill cut a deal to not go to jail and tells Coulson to get in on it. He’s like "naw", Ward is HYDRA, they done murdered Hand and broke out the fridge, took all the good stuff and he has to take out Garrett. Once Hill hears that she becomes extra gully again and with Coulson beats up Talbot and his troops and escapes to hunt down Ward and get Skye back.

So meanwhile the lovers Skye and Ward are in L.A. She tells him that the place to decrypt the drive is the diner where she first met Mike Peterson aka Deathlok. So she’s running the immaculate game on Ward feigning ignorance over the sudden arrival of cops, and just waiting for the moment to tell Ward she knows he’s HYDRA and that she brought the cops to the spot. He flips out and starts beating up cops and somehow doesn’t get shot by the LAPD while Skye gets kind of arrested and then as the cops are taken out drives the squad car away until the dude Deathlok jumps on the car punches through the windshield and grabs her up by the throat. Now with the supreme muscle that is Deathlok they all go back to the Bus with Skye really getting into Ward and hurting his feelings. An annoyed Deathlok who has no time or gives no damn anymore about these people tells Skye to give up the info or as he shoots Ward with a weird chest device that stops Ward’s heart. Skye has to give up the info or Ward dies. So because she is a good person she tells him and Ward doesn’t die. She tells them that the position to decrypt the data is high in the sky so as they try to take off the plane is stopped by Hill and Team Coulson.

It’s really just a stalling tactic so that Coulson can sneak aboard the plane. Ward takes off with Coulson now on the plane. He reaches Skye and Skye all happy to be saved asked him how he took out Deathlok. A shook looking Coulson is like Deathlok is here? Now Deathlok sees Coulson and begin pursuit. Coulson and Skye run to Lola (the flying car) open the Bus’ loading door and escape the clutches of Ward and Deathlok using Lola to not die. Ward being Ward is all salty and thirsty can’t let them escape and plans to pursue with Deathlok telling him to chill since they have the drive and the info but of course no one listens to him. The team now at a lowly motel 6 looking place is just now taking a rest and dealing with Ward’s betrayal. Skye tells Coulson in another one of their father-daughter like heart to hearts that she left a trap in the hard drive. So with things bad but not too terrible Coulson goes to his motel room to find Agent May standing there in the dark.

See during the episode she decided to go to Coulson’s “grave” and dig up the casket. There she found a flash drive with some video on it. She then brings it to Coulson and gets him to sit down and watch it since it will give him the answer to who ran the T.A.H.I.T.I. project. Guess what trill believers it was Coulson. Coulson was put in charge of project that was designed to bring an Avenger back to life if they just so happened to have died in battle. But what they learned is that the side effects were just too great unless you wipe a person’s mind so that they do not remember anything of the process. The video is Coulson explaining this to Fury and resigning all to which Coulson just says “huh”.

So that’s it. A little more mystery and more douche bag Ward ahead with hopefully more I don’t really care but I have to do this Deathlok in the next two weeks. Oh and Maria Hill named dropped the Man-Thing this past week. That was nice. 

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Debrief: Episode 1.19, "The Light in the Darkness"

So here we are, back again! After two pretty decent episodes (even though you couldn’t tell that from my writing about it), we are somehow back to a monster/bad guy-of-the-week episode. I really don’t know why they chose to do that when it seems they have enough possible stuff to draw from, with the whole fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the team on the run. Yet here we are with Team Coulson, off to deal with another D-list Marvel comic villain when we could have more HYDRA or even that grand Hulk hater Talbot.

This is episode is called "The Only Light in the Darkness." It starts with some guy walking around at night looking quite disheveled, and somehow all the electricity goes away when he walks past it. He asks a guy for a ride to Portland but the guy refuses so he touches this guy and kills him to steal his truck. With that we head back to the secret Koenig base, where the team is talking to Ward as he lies to them about what happened to the Fridge (which he just doesn’t say he was in fact robbing and killing too). Once Coulson finds out all the bad guys got out, he goes all altruistic and decides on taking a small team to go and find this Marcus Daniels, a.k.a. the guy that just killed a dude for truck because he is dangerous. Agent Koenig says no one can leave before orientation, which is basically a S.H.I.E.L.D. lie-detector test. Everyone passes, and we find out that Agent Triplett is a legacy agent since his grandfather was a Howling Commando (probably Derek Luke’s Gabe Jones from Captain America: The First Avenger) and that Simmons is a Doctor Who fan. After that Ward goes last, and after almost being shot for lying, he saves himself by basically saying he’s thirsty for Skye and Koenig is like, "OK, I can understand that" and gives him a lanyard (so dumb).

So with everyone cool Coulson takes Fitz, Simmons, and Triplett on this mission to Portland to get Daniels. All the time Fitz is treating Triplett mean because clearly Simmons is into Triplett and Fitz has got it bad for Simmons. I’m telling you this show is too focused on teenage love triangles to really be about super spies; I tell you! The four get into the cool S.H.I.E.L.D. Johnny Quest-like jet after Coulson and May have another argument about trust. You know he doesn’t trust her and won't forgive May for following Fury’s orders, like he never mislead anyone or not told the truth, like say to a rich industrialist or a Thunder God’s girlfriend or nothing. Just saying.

On the jet Coulson tells the group about Daniels and how basically he’s going after Coulson’s ex-girlfriend Audrey Nathan, who thinks Coulson is dead because you know Loki deaded him in The Avengers. Fitz and Simmons cook up some super flashlights to fight this guy because “pure light” hurt him before. They get to him, just as he found Audrey, to shine those flashlights on him, just to find out that S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t helping these people agents like Coulson locked up; they ran tests on them to make them more powerful (actually it could’ve been them secret HYDRA agents, though) so he easily blows up the flashlights with powerful Darkforce energy. During all of this Audrey escapes and Daniels leaves as Mini Team Coulson licks its wounds.

Then the team goes back to the jet to make something all new to fight this guy while hearing the sad story about Coulson’s lost love Audrey. How she can’t know he’s alive but he must protect her and all of that. The three besides Coulson actually meet up and keep Audrey informed about what’s going on as she tells her respect for S.H.I.E.L.D. and about Coulson.  Fitz keeps asking questions since it seems he doesn’t have the courage to tell Simmons his feelings for her. The two brainiacs make a new bigger version of the flashlights based on designs by Bruce Banner. They decide to use Audrey as bait for Daniels so they can corner him and the boogeyman with the super flashlights. Of course he comes after her, falling directly into their trap, but he overpowers the team with his powers, but once Audrey is in true danger Coulson grabs one and it’s somehow more powerful than before and the man is defeated and blown up or disintegrated, knocking Audrey back. Coulson goes over to her in slightly unconscious state and tells her that he’s always going to protect her and then he skates out before she fully wakes up. Letting her think it was all a dream.

On the jet back, Coulson and Fitz talk again as he asks Coulson why he didn’t tell her he’s alive and if he ever will. Coulson gives him some Coulson dad talk and advice and has now lost all his current cynical nature. He also resolves to forgive May when they get back to the secret base. Simmons then talks to Fitz to understand why is he so mean to Triplett, which Fitz just lies about and says he’s just not into change, instead of just saying how he feels about her.

Now during all that, back at the base Skye and Koenig are there having big nerd conversations as Ward creeps around the base being a creep. Ward ends up talking to May about the Bus, which is fine, but also sees that she’s leaving. May is bummed that Coulson doesn’t trust her and that she isn’t needed, so she decides to go away. Skye suggests they hack into NSA satellites, which Koenig is afraid to do but then goes ahead and lets her win. Skye does that as Ward does away with poor Koenig in secret. Ward then decides to put on his best sorry bad boy I have feelings too game for Skye and before things get hot and heavy Skye sees some blood on his ear (which is Koenig blood) and he goes to clean it up. This lets Skye wander around looking for stuff. She finds Koenig's tablet with the map of base that lets him track everyone with a lanyard. She follows a dot right to dead Koenig, and at that point this episode becomes like House at the End of the Street or something. Skye goes to hide in the bathroom as she figures out that Ward is HYDRA; she then, I guess, makes a plan. She starts counter seducing him and he takes her to the Bus so they can leave because Skye’s encryption on the hard drive (the whole reason he’s here) is location-based.  Off they go with Ward thinking he’s successful in his trickery with Skye going headfirst into the unknown danger, per usual.

Mini Team Coulson gets back to see no Bus and wonders where everyone is. The last thing we see is that May is walking the street like 70s Bruce Banner, then her mom picks her up. Her mom checks her a bit and then gives her an envelope with some secret stuff in it, being that her mom is also a spy or something. It seems that spying is the May family business.

Did You Know:

So Marcus Daniels in the comic is known as Blackout. As I said earlier a pretty D-list bad guy that first appeared and fought Nova in the 70s. He popped up later facing Captain Marvel Monica Rambeau and then later on the Inhumans and Dazzler. He ended up being used a lot by Baron Zemo in the Masters of Evil and really never amounted to much bad guy wise. His powers do come from a place called the Darkforce dimension, which he got by accident while working as a lab assistant. From that point on the powers drove him crazy. Maybe he’s in here to put a little fan Easter egg connection to Guardians of the Galaxy since the Nova Corp is pretty important to the plot of that film, along with the Kree.

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Debrief: Episode 1.18, "Providence"

Well here are back in the post Cap 2 Agents of SHIELD world. Still spoiling stuff for those that didn’t see the movie if that’s something you care about. This episode is called Providence, and as our little team of heroes is still dealing with a world where Hydra is back, it also shows things from Ward in that Hydra life. For me the episode felt like watching National Lampoon’s Agents of SHIELD as Coulson basically became Clark Griswold (ha ha Clark right) trying his best to lead his group even though things look like utter failure.

Let’s do this episode in the two parts: the SHIELD vacation part and the Team Hydra part. At the Hub we see our team watch all the news as it talks about the fall of SHIELD. At the moment we have Coulson leading the Hub with Skye as his main Ops person. Meanwhile they show Fitz, Simmons and Triplett working on the Bus. Here we have a full-on love triangle as it looks like Simmons is into Triplett while Fitz, who’s still into Simmons, is getting heated as he see her looking all dreamy eyed at Triplett. So Fitz is just being salty and yelling at folks. Then in the main room Coulson gets contacted by Colonel Glenn Talbot, aka the second best Hulk hater in the world. Talbot is talking about coming in and talking to SHIELD, in which Coulson looks like, 'This dude is shady, we need to bounce post haste.'

He had Skye erase all of his team’s identities (plus Ward’s) to go underground on some Mission--Impossible: Ghost Protocol lifestyle. Triplett asks to go and Coulson tells him 'No, I don’t know you,' but then Simmons in full thirstiness co-signs him and Coulson make him her responsibility as we see Fitz over there sulking. Coulson takes all the badges and puts them in the Coulson safe behind his desk as Skye laments that she just became an Agent and now they are Agents of Nothing (lame hashtag placement). At the same time we see Coulson’s badge light up with some coordinates, which Coulson thinks is from Fury. He then tells May to fly to those even though no one knows where they are going. They land in some place in the Canadian wilderness and are completely lost, and just when it looks like Coulson is losing faith, the secret bunker base reveals itself to the group. There they meet Agent Eric Koenig who tells the group about what’s going on and Fury is dead (aka more Cap 2 stuff), then he take Coulson to another room for a sidebar. There he tells him that Fury isn’t dead and what else is happening, and that he can’t tell his team about Fury. May and Coulson are still having their friendship issues with him still not trusting her and her constant reliance on saying she was following Fury’s orders. Coulson learns from May that Fury didn’t head up the T.A.H.I.T.I. project.

Meanwhile in that HYDRA life, we see Ward breaks out Reina, aka the Girl in the Flower Dress, and gives her a new Flower dress from the Clairvoyant. He takes her to meet the Clairvoyant, who we know as Garrett. When she learns that Garrett was basically just leaking files like Snowden, she is quite salty and annoyed with being played this whole time. Her concerns are quelled once Garrett says she has money in Project Centipede so she can learn how to use that Kree blood from the T.A.H.I.T.I. project. So right then Garrett tells Ward that they are going to hit the Fridge, the jail of SHIELD to go get some stuff.

Once there, it’s basically a recap of sorts of all the stuff the show has shown Team Coulson acquire over the season: Berserker staff from The Well, the 0-8-4, and even the Gravitonium that has a person in it. They also basically break out all the bad guys there, because why not. They head back to their HYDRA base and there Reina, after questioning Ward’s allegiance and his game, tells Garrett that the hard drive that they have with all the research data on the T.A.H.I.T.I. project is super locked down from super hacker Skye. Ian Quinn pops up and yells at Garrett for lying, beating him up and messing up his cred. That whole scene is just like stuff in the old GI Joe cartoons, with Cobra Commander and Destro or the Twins dissing his evilness. Garrett hushes him once he shows him the Gravitonium. Garrett tells Ward he needs to go back and get Skye or the password, and reminds him he better think with his head and not his heart. They make it look good with some scratches and bruises on his face as he contacts the Skye so he can find out where they are. He pops up with a thirsty-looking Skye waiting for him.

The More You Know:

One cool thing in one of Garrett’s constant war stories to Ward while breaking into the Fridge was talking about a guy he locked up with tiger paws for hands. That, my friends, is the Griffin. John Horton is a pretty smart Easter egg for this story arc being that he got his powers from the Secret Empire (a storyline I think greatly influenced Cap 2 along with the titular Winter Soldier). The Griffin is pretty much a C-list or D-list villain. It was a nice throw-out mention for the hardcore Marvelites watching.

Remember in that Gravitonium that Quinn just got back, Dr. Hall is still in there, going by that last scene from episode 3. Graviton is coming.

They’ve been making it a point in the recaps to focus on Simmons’ and her “poor ability to lie”; yeah she’s bad at lying, huh? C’mon son.

Ward really held onto that Berserker staff. It seems to be calling him like crack did pookie in New Jack City.

Eric Koenig is from the old Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. So it makes sense that they used him as a person Fury trusts. It’s adding to my theory for the MCU that I’ll put at the end of the season. 

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Debrief: Episode 1.17, "Turn, Turn,Turn" ...hail hydra tho

Aw man you guys ready for this recap! YOU HYPED UP! You saw Captain America: The Winter Solider and then tuned in last night for Agents of SHIELD because #ITSALLCONNECTED right! Well I watched it and I was just whelmed. Was it because I’m not basking in the Cap 2 afterglow like everyone else? Is it because Game of Thrones came back on this past Sunday and it was pure lava? Or was it that maybe the episode was a bit too easy to figure out and a bit late to have a seriously interesting direction to the show. Here’s the point where some of you call me a hater (even Travis) but hear me out as we go through the events of the episode.

Real talk even though I haven’t seen the movie the show spoils events in Captain America: The Winter Solider so read on at your own risk.

Turn, Turn, Turn starts off exactly where Beginning of the End ended with Coulson and Skye holding May at gunpoint with Fitz locked in the lab room. At the same time Garrett is flying along in his super-fast SHIELD jet is then attacked by some SHIELD drones sent from The Hub by Agent Hand. It also seems that Agent Hand is convinced that Coulson and crew are Hydra. Hand feels that only the agents she trusts with her are down for the cause and everyone else is possible enemy. Basically I think this episode is happening concurrently with the film. Agent Triplett and Simmons are basically stuck in the Hub trying to get back in contact with Fitz on the Bus.  On the Bus Coulson has completely lost all trust in May and when Garrett finds a way to get a SOS to the Bus he ices May (stun blast) and proceed along with Fitz and Skye to help save Garrett from the drones. The whole first 15-20 minutes is very fast paced and tight still not 24 level of tense though. With Garrett no attaching his plane to the Bus Race Banon style he and Coulson share info and ideas about who they think the Clairvoyant plus they get this encoded message on their computer screen about Hydra coming out like Diana Ross.

Around the same time Simmons ends up contacting the SHIELD school we saw earlier during the episode Seeds. Agent Weaver appears before Simmons in hologram and tells Simmons that Hydra done took over and to not trust anyone and to lock the door and hide. No lie the scene reminded me of a scene in another Whedon thing, Serenity when they learned about the birth of reavers but I digress. Triplett then goes ahead and locks the door with Simmons now being a bit shook he gives her his knife saying that if she tries to kill him then he knows she’s Hydra. Hand and her group ends up getting into that room and capturing Triplett and Simmons telling them she’s Hydra to test them. When the past Hand tells them that she thinks Coulson is Hydra and that they must take Coulson out. Coulson splits up the team to have Ward and Skye go take out the computers with Coulson and Garrett going to go after Hand.

While teamed up with Garrett they have a conversation about killing Agent Hand and once Coulson disagrees he notices that Garrett knows some things that he shouldn’t. At that point Coulson and the handcuffed not trusted anymore Agent May figure out that Garrett is the Clairvoyant!

Some SHIELD swat guys come in and at one point to get them and then Garrett is like…

And like half the squad shoot the other guys and Garrett is all like Bond villain now. He goes on to talk about why being bad is good and stuff and says how Coulson is going to die and May is going to die and that Fitz (yeah my bad Fitz is there too) basically going to be a Hydra science slave. Fitz crying tears of anger says he’s going to make Garrett pay which make Garrett give him the best you ain’t bout that life laugh of the whole series.  Ward and Skye have a heart to heart kiss and really was the slowest part of the episode that then goes to Ward fighting a group of SHIELD guys on some Double Dragon style wrecking. Ward comes out scathed, bruises and cuts looks all heroic and then they set bombs up all over the area and blows them.

Fisticuffs happen between Team Coulson and Them Hydra boys with Fitz hiding under a desk and May smashing faces with Coulson fighting the big bad. Fitz gets his first body saving May who was about to got from behind and Coulson overpowers Garrett as Hand and her crew comes in.  Hand and Coulson reconcile as they find out the end of the Cap 2 like everyone else. Hand decides to go to the fridge and leaves the Hub to Coulson with them being possibly the last two remaining highest ranking SHIELD agents. Ward is told his Garrett is the Clairvoyant and Hydra so he goes with Hand on the transport to the fridge. The rest of the Team helps Coulson fix the Bus with Coulson still being mad at May (who was talking to Fury on that special phone line).

Here’s the kicker part; on the plane with Hand she offers Ward a chance to kill the right Clairvoyant and he takes her firearm and then goes and kills the other guards and shoots Agent Hand a ton of times. These guys just bodied the best character yet Skye still lives.  There we have it; Ward was the traitor in the group.

Did You Know:

That this whole episode takes place during the Winter Soldier movie? Not a lot of real serious Easter eggs from comic but more from the new movie. I don’t know if it helped their ratings or DVR views but to me it’s a little too late to ramp up stuff like this when it should’ve been happening at the halfway point. I have a theory on all of this MCU stuff but I need to wait to see the last episodes.

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Debrief: The last three episodes including 1.16 "End of the Beginning"

So trill believers I bet you thought I done left you out in the cold. That I grew so fed up with the show that I was all screw this joint I’m out. You can take your Skye and your annoying random and long multi week breaks out of my TV life. Naw I wouldn’t do you like, life got in the way and a few movies but I’m back. So with yesterday’s episode I’m three episodes in so let’s just cover all of they shall we.

So back in episode 14 called T.A.H.I.T.I. which takes place just after Skye took two to the stomach the team was mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ can only stabilize Skye so Coulson is determined to find a way to save Skye, the same way Fury saved him. Time to find the magical place Tahiti. Remember Ian Quinn aka fake Cobra Commander well he is on the Bus and here we meet Bill Paxton’s Agent John Garrett and his sidekick agent Triplett. They are there to get Quinn, but Coulson is like naw and Garrett figures out he's on some, save the hacker, save the world mess and decides to ride with Coulson and help him while also beating up Quinn. Fitz & Simmons figure out that S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t bring Coulson back but some place called the Guest House did. Coulson, Garrett and Ward (who use to be under Garrett) storm this place like its contra taking out two dudes while finding out it’s rigged with explosives. Ward finds the medicine while Coulson finds a room marked T.A.H.I.T.I. and goes inside. There he sees more medicine that’s not medicine but blood coming out of half a blue guy (He’s Kree by the way more on that later)! They go back to where Skye is and Coulson is freaked out like they can’t put alien blood in my fake daughter! But then he gets there to stop them and it’s too late, she got injected and she woke up. So yeah the whole big Skye being in a coma thing lasted all of 45 minutes. Can’t get rid of her UGH!

So at the very end of that episode we see a woman wandering around Death Valley. She runs into a newly married couple and all of the sudden mind controls this guy into leaving his newlywed bride. The super home wrecker is an Asgardian named Lorelei. Episode 15 is called 'Yes Men' which is quite plainly a tie in episode with the Blu-ray release of Thor: The Dark World. It was actually a good tie in to the film more so than the weak one they did when the movie was actually in theaters. In this one as Lorelei is on Midgard (Earth) trying to make an army of mentally enslaved men Lady Sif comes down from Asgard to capture her and take her back to Asgard jail where she belongs. Our team finds Sif as she beams down from the Bifrost Bridge and she is pleased to see the homie Coulson who she thought was dead because, of course, the big homie Thor told great tales of the battle of New York and how Loki killed son of coul. So during this hunt for Lorelei all the men on the team are liabilities except for Coulson because her weak game can’t affect him. Ward gets gamed up which makes Agent May mad cause maybe she caught feelings a little. Ward has godly night and a reference to his berserker rage is made. Sif is like the terminator when going for Lorelei or more appropriately Wonder Woman. Taking out biker dudes with ease, being cool with the members of the team and just and all around heroic beast (Thor you slacking homie). Sif has this collar that stops Lorelei powers and Lorelei hates that thing. Like being mute sucks even more when you’re in Asgard jail. Come on you saw their cells in Thor 2; she can’t even tell people to leave her alone.

Eventually Lorelei gets on the bus thanks to Ward's knowledge of the team, she love controls Fitz to suck Sif out of the plane. May has to fight Ward while the other ladies and Coulson secure the Bus so that Sif can have that battle with the super home wrecker. Sif of course wins while Coulson is all like "don’t tell Thor I’m alive yet".  After all of that Coulson has a heart to heart with Skye and apologizes for letting them use the alien stuff to bring her back and that alien blood is bad because it was bad for him. Skye ever perky is like it’s all good I’m alive let’s solve everything! Coulson then tells Skye that the alien blood stuff should stay between them. Coulson then vows to find out stuff from Fury and get the Clairvoyant once and for all. So during that we see that Melinda May is creeping and watching and then she goes to a secret phone and tells someone that “Coulson knows”! Like damn May is a double agent and is snitching on her homie Coulson.

That brings us to last night’s episode End of the Beginning where Coulson has a grand plan on teaming up all the higher level agents we’ve seen in this show to finally capture the Clairvoyant. At the same time Clairvoyant is striking at them through Mike Peterson now known as Deathlok, who while looking not cool at all is pretty bad ass in his assaults. He’s kind of like Nemesis in Resident Evil games just not dead. Deathlok continues to terrorize our S.H.I.E.L.D. agents starting with Agent Garrett and Triplett. They chase him off by shooting him a lot. The Clairvoyant gives him a new piece, an arm missile launcher aka his mega buster. When Coulson brings the high levels together Garrett, Hand, Sitwell and Blake all go with Coulson’s plan for getting the Clairvoyant by going through the list of special people that S.H.I.E.L.D. has and looking for the rejects. Also Coulson has them make Skye an agent finally and has her lead the Op because she thinks differently. They send out teams in twos with Agent May and Agent Blake running into Deathlok with Deathlok stomping Blake out like a Goomba. Yet Blake was smart and tagged Deathlok with traceable bullet that Fitz made in the past. They use that to track Deathlok to an abandoned Horse racing track where when engaging Deathlok he escapes through the sewer system. They run into a man named Thomas Nash who basically looks like Stephen Hawking and they communicate with him through a speaker saying words that appear on a screen.  Basically a bunch of exposition happens and he talks about the future and how Skye is going to die and all the sudden Ward just shoots ol’ boy in the chest.

With this guy dead and Nash taken to the Bus, held in the special cell, and not sorry for what he had done. Coulson, along with Skye, starts to figure that Thomas Nash wasn’t the Clairvoyant but a red herring and that the Clairvoyant doesn’t have powers but is actually an Agent at S.H.I.E.L.D. using the files to do what they are doing. Also that Fury’s has a hidden file on Coulson which is why they don’t know how Coulson came back.  At the same time Fitz and Simmons have found out about May’s secret communication line. Coulson goes to question Ward to see if he is working against them and if he killed Nash on order. Ward says he doesn’t know what Coulson is talking about (D’uh Coulson, Ward is just thirsty for Skye). Fitz runs into Skye and tells her about the line and Fitz cuts it. The episode ends with Coulson and Skye confronting May about the secret line. Coulson and Skye now trust no one (well maybe Fitz and Simmons) then the Bus is taken control of with the course being changed. Coulson and Skye thinks it’s May with her yelling to them that she doesn’t know what is going on. The whole team is divided by mistrust as it cuts to Agent Hand telling her people to kill everyone on the bus but Coulson, Coulson is hers.  They then proceeded to show like 3 minutes of Captain America: the Winter Soldier that shows Fury on the run being chased and him trying to go off the grid. He is then stopped by the Winter Solider and that’s it.

So what about the did you know for this one well I don’t know really. I can tell you about the Kree, an alien race of people that no long evolves so they evolve other races to grow their empire. They war with the Skrulls a shape changing race that constantly deals with the Fantastic Four. The Kree is pretty important to the Avengers though. One of the most classic Avengers stories and really Classic marvel stories is The Kree/Skrull War. The Kree also is important in creating the Inhuman which a whole other longer ball of wax. That is important since people speculate that since FOX has the X-men and in turn the marvel mutant concept that Marvel Studios will use the Inhumans in place of them as these evolved people different from other humans. 

It also looks like the show is tying in really heavily with Cap 2 and I can’t say much as I don’t want to spoil it but that I literally don’t know. I haven’t seen it and I don’t plan to see it. It might affect how well the show works for me on the last two episodes. I hope they can work on their own but I’m not optimistic about it since for me 16 episodes in I don’t think the show has held up and maybe ties in not enough in some places and but maybe too much in others.

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Debrief: Episode 1.13, "T.R.A.C.K.S."

Hey trill believers! Agents of SHIELD is back again from its second break and it's recap time. Now I’m going to be honest with you guys: This is going to be a short one and not because I’m lazy or didn’t watch it or rushed through the episode. It’s going to be short because that episode made positively no sense to me. See, I’m pretty good at following stories here. I got Memento after the first watch. I get Inception. I can follow Rashomon. I can explain to you Final Crisis but this episode, titled "T.R.A.C.K.S.," goes so off the track that I was lost after the first commercial break.

This episode is following up from the last episode, "Seeds," with Coulson on the hunt for Ian Quinn since he now knows that Quinn and his company is connected to the Clairvoyant. They find out that Quinn has a package being delivered by train in Italy. So Team Coulson comes up with some Ocean’s Twelve-style train plan to find out what the package is and get Quinn. Here’s the thing: When on the train, the whole OP goes bad and terribly. All the stuff I’ve just said happened in the first 12 minutes. This is the point where the episode completely befuddled me. They decide to tell the story from three points of view. We see Ward and Coulson having to leave the train and their pursuers throw this weird blue gas-emitting grenade. Then the train disappears. Originally on the train Ward had Skye go and meet up with Fitz and Simmons in a safe place of the train. Outside Coulson and Ward try to figure out what happened to Agent May, who was supposed to be on the outside of the train that has disappeared.  

So then they show what happened to Melinda May and how the Italian police connect that Coulson had betrayed them, and capture her and start torturing her. She escaped and followed that guy as he found out where the bus was, but then she killed him by throwing a small knife into his back. Now that the three of them are back together, they focus on getting to the train again. While on the train, Fitz, Simmons and Skye try to handle themselves with the forces of Quinn’s company. Fitz is thrown around like a wrestling buddy. Simmons gets hit with the blue gas grenade, which we learned contained a weird nerve toxin. The train is stopped and the package is taken off and Skye thinks Fitz and she should follow them. That leads them to Quinn’s mansion, where Skye decides to go in while Fitz starts to sabotage the vehicles there.

Ward, May and Coulson end up finding the train since it’s stopped and they wake up Simmons. They find out that Skye and Fitz are at Quinn’s mansion. Skye, while doing her best Solid Snake impression, gets in and finds Quinn with the package along with a hyperbolic chamber containing Mike Peterson. Quinn goes full Bond villain with his speech as he wakes up Mike and the package that happens to be some crazy robotic prosthetic leg for him. Quinn tells Mike to kill Skye, which Mike refuses since it goes against the orders of the Clairvoyant. Mike then goes outside and kills all the people that helped lead the SHIELD to Quinn. Quinn goes full on Skye hater (like many of us in the viewing audience) and shoots like 5 times in the stomach (BLAOW BLAOW BLAOW). Quinn leaves the room and Team Coulson arrives on the scene to get to Quinn, and Coulson asks him where Skye is and he gives him a snide comment that makes ALL LOGICAL SENSE about letting a non-trained girl just wander around in serious SHIELD missions.

Coulson smacks with the gun and they capture Quinn (please note that in about three episodes Centipede lost all their commanders) and the team tries to find Skye. They get to her and see her leaking all over the floor. Simmons has the team put Skye in the hyperbolic chamber so that they can stabilize her. The team is now in a huge state of stress and sadness since Skye, the most annoying character, is dying. The last scene is Mike standing outside looking really creepy watching children at the playground where he writes a note for the Clairvoyant asking if he can see his son, to which the Clairvoyant says not yet. The camera then zooms in on the leg where it shows that it’s part of the Deathlok project.

Anyway. Peaces.

Did You Know?

That Marvel spoiled the Deathlok reveal on their Tumblr, website and everywhere else they could. It seems that the Mike Peterson version they are creating in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is based on the Michael Collins version. He is a probably the most known and liked version of the Deathlok character. Clearly he’ll be a main part of this show from this point on so I’ll be dropping more and more about him throughout. For the really frisky on knowing now the internets is your friend.

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Debrief: Episode 1.12, "Seeds"

Trill Believers! We get a whole new episode and S.H.I.E.L.D. is shady status quo, but it’s also back to the adventure of the week. This time there are weird happenings at S.H.I.E.L.D. Science and Technology Academy which Fitz and Simmons have been asked to come and check it out. Ah, but this time it’s different, Coulson and May go off on their own adventure so it's time to split up the kids from the adults for an episode! 

So Fitz, Simmons, Ward and Skye all go to, what amounts to basically S.H.I.E.L.D. MIT to go fish out who is setting up freezing bombs with technology Fitz and Simmons created while at school there. Since this is the first time Skye is seeing a S.H.I.E.L.D. academy Fitz, Simmons and Ward explain the differences between the Science and Tech cadets and the Operative cadets like Ward was. It’s kind of explained like it’s a version of super spy Alpha Betas vs. Tri Lambs from Revenge of the Nerds or something though.

During all of this our man Coulson is very bummed out, sitting there looking at his autopsy pictures wondering the whys on his situation to a point that May is worried about him and decides to get his mind on to something else. The something else is the secret past of Skye and why that Agent died while delivering her to that orphanage. May has a lead on that agent’s former partner who went off the grid and he’s in Mexico City. Back at the academy Skye and Ward are going around asking questions of students who might be using Fitz and Simmon's creation, during this Ward is also showing Skye some of the history and culture of S.H.I.E.L.D. The team learns about a young student named Donnie Gill who is a bit of a loner and doesn’t have any friends there. The suspicion of him is cast off during a full student body assembly led by Fitz & Simmons when Donny himself is frozen in place by one of the devices. The team scrambles quickly to save the kid and unfreeze him.

Ward thinks that while they continue the search that Fitz should go check on Donnie and befriend him to make sure he’s alright. So Fitz meets the kid who is a fan of him a bit (note at the academy Fitz & Simmons are like the Zack and Kelly of the place, all the kids sweat them hard) and Fitz notices the kid’s genius. Fitz ends up helping the kid with some problems he was having in upgrading one of Fitz’s old ideas on the freezing machines. Ward and Skye are taken by Simmons to the hangout area of the academy called the boiler room to do some more recon. They learn that Donnie isn’t as alone as they thought and that he’s working with another classmate named Seth. Ward contacts Fitz to put him onto what’s going on so that he would go back and when he does Fitz is knocked out by Seth.

In Mexico City we have Coulson and May staked out in Lola (Coulson’s whip of choice) while May is talking an uncharacteristically a lot to which Coulson notices. She keeps bringing up ways for Coulson to disappear and go off the grid. All that talk is ended once they see the man they are looking for and in classic Marvel fashion a fight ensues with May and the former Agent named Lumley which is ended once Coulson uses Lola’s flying ability to follow him and says that that is S.H.I.E.L.D. Coulson and May take Lumley to the Bus and ask him about what happened to his partner and why he went into hiding. He tells them of a mission where a 084 (item of strange origin code as we learned in the episode 0-8-4) and that a whole town of massacred but this one baby. They learned that the baby was the 084 and that their whole S.H.I.E.L.D. team was killed and Lumley and his partner decided to make up a new identity for the baby and while his partner was taking the baby to the orphanage she was killed. Lumley then disappeared. Lumley then asked Coulson was the child ok since if so it was all worth it. Coulson responded yes and decided to drop him off in a random location as they headed back to meet up with their team.

So now that Donnie has his device fixed he and Seth call Ian Quinn (you know the fake James bond villain dude from episode 3) of Quinn Worldwide to sell him this new device. Seth’s father works with Quinn and wants to use this as an in to making a lot of money. He ends up telling Quinn about the investigation and Quinn pulls out but asks the kid to demonstrate anyway. Seth decides to comply while Donnie is leery since it has never been tested. They turn the machine and while it looks like nothing happens what does happen is kind of a rip off of the scene from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs but its all super hail that flies out the giant super storm that machine created. Coulson learns about Quinn’s involvement and Coulson then decides to tell Skye everything he’s learned since he doesn’t want to manipulate people. The team has a plan to get down to where Seth and Donnie are with May using her uber pilot skills to land the plane in the eye of the storm. Donnie tries to figure out how to stop the machine and get Seth to help him but it explodes knocking Seth unconscious and knocking back Donnie with it being destroyed.

They plane lands and the Team tries to help Seth but he dies from cardiac arrest as Donnie is dismayed. Donnie is then sent to the sandbox so that S.H.I.E.L.D. can keep an eye on him. Coulson decides to give old Ian Quinn a call stating that it’s basically ON LIKE DONKEY KONG with Quinn countering with a The Clairvoyant says what’s up.  The post credits scene (still weird they are doing this in TV too) has Donnie Gill sitting in a seat as he drags his finger across the window he notices that it’s freezing as it goes on along. BAM we have our second classic super villain in the show.

Did you Know:

So Donnie Gill is known in the classic Marvel comics as the Blizzard (actually Blizzard #2) an Iron Man villain that wears a suit that gives him freezing powers. He’s also been a member of the Master of Evil and also became hero for a while joining the Thunderbolts. He was recently changed in a big way during the Marvel Comics event Infinity and I’m not going to spoil it.

Also it seems going by the show each time Ian Quinn has showed up a classic Marvel villain is created.

During the big assembly speech by Fitz and Simmons they talk about Hydra, Centipede and AIM. That means my theory that AIM is Centipede has gone kablooey.

Even though it just came back the show is going back on break until the beginning of February. I’m guessing that is where a lot of story and world buildup to Captain America 2 timeframe.

Peaces trill believers.

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"Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." Debrief: Episode 1.11, "The Magical Place"

So trill believer, here we are in the New Year 2014 and we are back to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. So where’s Coulson? What happened to Coulson? What happened to Mike? Will Skye be less annoying? Just how many times can Agent May side eye in an episode? Hopefully all these questions can be answered now that it’s starting to bother me and to entertain you with my spiteful recaps.

So this episode starts three days after the events of the last episode. Agent Victoria Hand and a large team of agents are with what’s left of the crew trying to find centipede and Agent Coulson. It seems that Agent Hand is more focused on catching Centipede than saving Coulson while that bothers most of the team they go with it...except for Skye. Oh Skye, still trying to break every rule by using her hacking skills except this time she is denied because of the SHIELD access bracelet, looks like Agent Hand is putting her foot down. With Skye’s access cut off and Agent May nowhere near co-signing for her with Hand, the rest of the team hatches a plan to get Skye off of the Bus (big old plane aka mini carrier) so that she can help find Coulson in her own special way.

Meanwhile Coulson is being held in an old nuclear test zone town. You know the ones with all the happy looking mannequins around.  There Mr. Po and Reina, the woman in the flower dress, are keeping Coulson to get him to remember what Tahiti really was. Coulson being the cold beast of an agent gives them nothing so this makes Mr. Po choose to torture him which also continues to be unsuccessful. Out in the world we see Skye trying to use her hacking abilities to follow a money trail to finding centipede and where they might have Coulson but her bracelet keeps locking her out from hacking anything. It seems Agent Hand basically put the uber parental controls on the ENTIRE internet for Skye.

So Skye uses some cunning and cosplays as Agent May and tricks this smarmy business man into thinking SHIELD is about arrest him unless he helps her get into his banking transactions, which somehow works. Over at the Coulson trials, Reina and Mr. Po disagree on how to handle Coulson when Mr. Po tries to flex his connection to the clairvoyant who calls to talk to Reina? The Clairvoyant.  When Reina gives the phone back to Mr. Po he is killed through some crazy blue virus via his old school flip phone (that real killer tech), now Reina is in charge. Reina then, instead of taking the tough approach with Coulson, talks to him in her usual nice/manipulative ways yet confirming some of the issues Coulson does have with his return after Avengers.

Here is where things start to wrap up a bit too easy. Skye finds out where Coulson is, takes the rich guys nice car, and calls Ward to tell him what she has found. The whole crew gathers around the phone, then Agent May comes in, takes the phone, and asks what she knows. After some creative interrogation techniques by Ward, Agent Hand admits that she has plans to launch attacks using centipede. Agent May asks Hand that they be allowed to go and save Coulson using Skye’s Intel. Hand agrees and the team is off. While this is happening Coulson is in this weird bed with this mind thingy so that it can help him remember and record his dreams (??) as he goes in the fantasy of Tahiti starts to fade to show him on an operating table with Dr. Stretain (Ron Glass) telling another doctor that they shouldn’t be doing this with that doctor saying that this is what Fury wants. During this you hear Coulson saying “let me die let me die” over and over again as the shot pulls back we see this weird spider robot shocking parts of Coulson’s exposed brain.

The team then descends on the place and fisticuffs ensue as Skye searches for Coulson. Ward and May defeat their foes and Skye walks in on Reina and Coulson, punches Reina in the face, and gets Coulson out of the machine. Mission accomplished. The team finishes up with Agent Hand, celebrations are had, Skye is relieved of her bracelet and Reina goes to SHIELD jail... but all is still not well.  Coulson pays a visit to Dr. Stretain asking him about the disturbing truth he just found out. Dr. Streatian tells him he wasn’t even there in the beginning of it and that Coulson had been dead for days when Fury used every resource to bring him back. There was one thing wrong they couldn’t give Coulson his will to live back and they made up the fake memories of Tahiti to cover up the memories of his return to life.  Then after the credits we see poor Mike didn’t die. He’s all scared up from the explosion and he lost a leg. The kicker is this when he looks into the mirror he sees a message meaning that he now has one of those crazy robot eyes that can kill you if you don’t do what it says. Poor Mike.

Did you Know:

Well I was looking hard for clues. The only one I see is that really for the first time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe you’re seeing the Nick Fury doing whatever he wants to get what he wants tactics from the comics here. Let me know folks if I really missed anything. Until next week.

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