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S02.E12: Who You Really Are


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Glad it didn't take all season for them to learn about Skye, but talk about your xenophobes.  Guess we know what side they'll be on in Civil War.

 

 

Xenophobia seems like a strange word to use when we're talking about beings with super powers.  They aren't wary of Skye because she has Alien ties, they're worried because she potentially very dangerous.  

I think fandom has also started taking sides in the upcoming MCU civil wars.

 

The characters on this show frequently say complimentary things to each other. I don't understand how it makes Skye a "special snowflake" any time someone says something nice to her. I could understand the annoyance when Coulson was constantly praising her last season (I've always liked her, but that even annoyed me), but she's been a valuable member of the team for a while now and has done genuinely brave and good things. She's going through a very rough time right now and could use some reassurance. But I've already ranted here before about how I think that "special snowflake" is an essentially meaningless term, so I'll spare you the repeat.

I agree with your rant, I just did a re watch and my supposition is that Lady Sif would have also complimented Bobbi for engaging her enemy if she was there.

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I don't think the show is suggesting that Skye has learned everything May can do, or that she can do it as well as her. In this episode, we saw her training with May - a session in which May scoffed at the very suggestion that Skye could hurt her

 

Except that during that session Skye bested May. The only thing she didn't do was finish her off with the final blow, which is what May pointed out (and that's when Skye said she hadn't wanted to hurt her, which of course May should scoff at).

 

So I just thought it was a little ridiculous that Skye has gotten so good she actually was able to take May down at all. That shouldn't happen yet. May is a badass. Ward was barely able to keep up with her and he trained for years too. But Skye comes in and trains for a year or whatever, and she's already taking May down. I don't buy it, and I think they're making it happen too fast. In fact, I think it would be more interesting if she weren't good at it and finds that hacking is her skill set, not hand to hand fighting.

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Except that during that session Skye bested May. The only thing she didn't do was finish her off with the final blow, which is what May pointed out (and that's when Skye said she hadn't wanted to hurt her, which of course May should scoff at).

 

I read it that May let Skye get to that point, performing at Skye's level as part of the training.

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Yeah, May could wipe the floor with Skye if she were really trying, but then Skye wouldn't learn anything. May is deliberately fighting at or around Skye's level, or at least that's how I interpreted it (hence May scoffing at the idea that Skye could hurt her).

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Did I hear Coulson tell Mack to pass a supply list to Maria Hill while they were taking inventory? Because that would indicate Maria/Stark Industries are allied with SHIELD and therefore Bobbie/Mack communicating with them shouldn't be a huge secrect.

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Assuming "Odin" is still actually Loki, I wonder why he wanted all this looked into.

 

 I thought I heard Sif say that Heimdall saw the Kree come to Earth. If Loki's impersonating Odin, he would almost have to send someone to investigate once other people knew about it. Too suspicious if he didn't. Plus, it's kind of a common sense thing. Kree and Asgardians are enemies and it sounded like the Asgardians had pushed Kree out of Midgard space. If this is a precursor to some kind of Kree move, the leader of the Asgardians should want to know, whether it's Loki or Odin at the helm.

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It's still kind of weird how Asgard being placed in outer space rather than a mystical dimension affects their interactions with alien species. I mean, are the Nine Worlds just nine particular planets that Asgardians have taken an interest in?

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Loved the big grin [sif] had over Thor's name, and Melinda knew why.

Why?  I saw both Thor movies and saw no hint that she had any feelings for him whatsoever.  Did she?  Because last I saw, he was happily with Jane at the end of The Dark World.

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Dark World had definite hints that Sif is interested in Thor. In fact Odin was trying to get Thor interested in her. But Thor only has eyes for Jane.

 

Then Thor needs his eyes checked. Jane's a total wet blanket compared to Sif. It's like watching one of your friends date a person who's totally wrong for them.

 I thought I heard Sif say that Heimdall saw the Kree come to Earth. If Loki's impersonating Odin, he would almost have to send someone to investigate once other people knew about it. Too suspicious if he didn't. Plus, it's kind of a common sense thing. Kree and Asgardians are enemies and it sounded like the Asgardians had pushed Kree out of Midgard space. If this is a precursor to some kind of Kree move, the leader of the Asgardians should want to know, whether it's Loki or Odin at the helm.

 

Totally, Loki's no dummy. He's probably extremely curious as to what a Kree would be doing on Earth. And after Loki's dealings with Thanos, he may be paying attention to the Mad Titan's goings-on, meaning he may know about Ronan. If that were the case, he'd probably take even more interest in a Kree coming to visit (I totally love this shared universe...it's like being a kid again).

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I think that's a fault of the TV budget, only being able to do limited stunts and effects. By rights Sif should be able to lift a bus one-handed, and small arms fire should be like paintballs to her. Without highly advanced weaponry human agents shouldn't be able to do more than dodge her blows and keep her busy for a bit (and only that if they're extremely capable and acrobatic like May or Bobbi).

The strength of Asgardians hasn't really been consistent though. I mean for the most part they are really tough, but at the same time in Thor 2, Thor's mother was killed by a single stab wound to the torso. 

 

As for all those comments on how, "Inhumans aren't replacing mutants" bs...There was a lot of "Might as well be mutants."....

-They're abominations! The government agency wants to find and kill them!

-Hated and feared by the Kree(and Simmons and soon to be everyone else). They need to be put down.

- "She didn't choose this""I Don't want to be this""You powers will grow and you'll become something even more terrible."

 

Who wants to bet by the end of the season the Diviners go around the world and awakens thousands or millions of Inhumans? And then  Inhumans are hunted by the goverment and SHIELD spends next season either protecting them or bringing them in aka the X-Men. I can't wait until FItz creates Lerebo and the government Mentinels.

I don't have a lot of hope, but I wish they wouldn't go to deep into that kind of story. Mostly because even when I read comics I thought the idea of mutant prejudice didn't make a ton of sense. Mostly because it seemed if you were born with your powers you would be subject to a bunch of prejudice, but at the same time if you got your powers from a science experiment or some kind of accident or you built yourself a suit, even if the public didn't know how you got those powers, you weren't subject to the same thing.

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It wasn't just a stab wound. It was a sword which completely pierced her body. You're right though, in that they tend to be rather inconsistent. Ten minutes into Avengers Loki was shrugging off gunfire. He also survived a wound similar to Frigga's near the end of Thor 2. The Asgardian history professor on AoS was taken down by a piece of his staff, and only survived because Coulson reached into his chest and kept his heart beating long enough for his natural healing to kick in. I guess Frigga died suddenly, before her body was able to react. Honestly, I think the idea is supposed to be that the average Asgardian, while far stronger and tougher than any human, is on a lower level of strength and durability than people like Thor and Loki

Edited by KirkB
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It wasn't just a stab wound. It was a sword which completely pierced her body. You're right though, in that they tend to be rather inconsistent. Ten minutes into Avengers Loki was shrugging off gunfire. He also survived a wound similar to Frigga's near the end of Thor 2. The Asgardian history professor on AoS was taken down by a piece of his staff, and only survived because Coulson reached into his chest and kept his heart beating long enough for his natural healing to kick in. I guess Frigga died suddenly, before her body was able to react. Honestly, I think the idea is supposed to be that the average Asgardian, while far stronger and tougher than any human, is on a lower level of strength and durability than people like Thor and Loki

And let's not forget that Loki isn't actually Asgardian, he's a Frost Giant who just looks Asgardian, so his biology will be different again.

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As for all those comments on how, "Inhumans aren't replacing mutants" bs...There was a lot of "Might as well be mutants."....

-They're abominations! The government agency wants to find and kill them!

-Hated and feared by the Kree(and Simmons and soon to be everyone else). They need to be put down.

- "She didn't choose this""I Don't want to be this""You powers will grow and you'll become something even more terrible."

Who wants to bet by the end of the season the Diviners go around the world and awakens thousands or millions of Inhumans? And then  Inhumans are hunted by the goverment and SHIELD spends next season either protecting them or bringing them in aka the X-Men. I can't wait until FItz creates Lerebo and the government Mentinels.

 

It's bad enough they somehow they couldn't negotiate with Fox for the rights to use mutants for film/television now they try to sidestep it to have it both ways without saying/acknowledging mutants considering Skye/Daisy/Quake is a mutant in Marvel Comics.  Also the Kree/Inhumans are mostly connected with the Fantastic Four and how did they get that past Fox Studio's  notice. The passive aggressive infighting is embarrassing.

 

And isn't Inhumans/mutants suppose to be a metaphor for race relations ("the other") and that's stepping into a very sticky subject matter that I'm not sure they can handle it with insight or tact considering only the mutated Inhumans are designated as badguys and Simmons seem really into euthanizing those who didn't ask to be mutated or asked whether they should live or die.

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And isn't Inhumans/mutants suppose to be a metaphor for race relations ("the other") and that's stepping into a very sticky subject matter that I'm not sure they can handle it with insight or tact considering only the mutated Inhumans are designated as badguys and Simmons seem really into euthanizing those who didn't ask to be mutated or asked whether they should live or die.

I'm not sure that's true - there've been plenty of bad guys on the show who weren't mutated inhumans, and no reason yet to believe that all who are will be portrayed as evil. Skye is a mutated Inhuman and is certainly not evil - she's the primary POV character of the show. We're way too early in this story to be able to judge how it will play out over time, or how well they will or won't handle it. All we've seen so far is the immediate knee-jerk reaction to something new and scary, set-up for the story still to come. The characters' attitudes will mature and develop over time, as the story progresses, I've no doubt.

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We've only seen three contemporary Inhumans: Skye, Raina, and Eyeless dude.  Skye isn't evil, Raina is complex, and we haven't seen Eyeless enough to know what he is.  In flashbacks, we saw Skye's mother, and she didn't seem evil.  I think they might be setting the Inhumans up as a separate faction from SHIELD, with a different agenda that will sometimes put the two groups in conflict, but not necesarily making them into the bad guys.  They already have HYDRA for that role, so I can see some plot lines where SHIELD has to work with the Inhumans against HYDRA. 

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It's bad enough they somehow they couldn't negotiate with Fox for the rights to use mutants for film/television now they try to sidestep it to have it both ways without saying/acknowledging mutants considering Skye/Daisy/Quake is a mutant in Marvel Comics.  Also the Kree/Inhumans are mostly connected with the Fantastic Four and how did they get that past Fox Studio's  notice. The passive aggressive infighting is embarrassing.

 

Daisy's not a mutant. In-story in the comics, she originally believed herself to be a mutant, but SHIELD scientists found out that she actually inherited her powers from the her dad's experimentation with the Hyde serum -- she doesn't have the X gene, which is what categorizes a person as a mutant (and I believe the comics that established this were published long before Agents of SHIELD, so it wasn't a retcon to allow Quake to be used here).

 

While the Kree were originally introduced in Fantastic Four, they aren't very strongly associated to the FF. Most of their big stories -- Captain Marvel, the Kree-Skrull War, Operation Galactic Storm, and the whole Ruul thing -- were Avengers-based. And most of the modern Ronan/Kree stories were part the Guardians of the Galaxy branch of the MU.

 

The Inhumans are more tightly associated with the FF, but they've had plenty of standalone stories. And many of Crystal's stories, aside from dating the Human Torch, have actually been Avenger-related, so they're probably somewhere in that gray area like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.

Edited by kennyab
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It's bad enough they somehow they couldn't negotiate with Fox for the rights to use mutants for film/television now they try to sidestep it to have it both ways without saying/acknowledging mutants considering Skye/Daisy/Quake is a mutant in Marvel Comics.  

Actually she isn't.  That was retconned out.  They later changed her origin to a MUTATED human, which is different in Marvel terms than a mutant (Spider-Man, for example, is one also).  In her case her power came from her father, Calvin Zabo, and his power came from something called The Hyde formula.

 

Which of course isn't the origin of her power in the MCU, but the point is still that they didn't simply take a mutant character and de-muant her for the show. They took a character who's mutant connections were already kind of fuzzy (that she'd been mistaken for a mutant early on) and simply ignored those connections in the MCU.

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Loved the big grin [sif] had over Thor's name, and Melinda knew why.

Why?  I saw both Thor movies and saw no hint that she had any feelings for him whatsoever.

 

Presumably Melinda May has no significant emotional investment in Thor, yet she understood that feeling.  (As for Thor's taste in women:  I liked Jane a lot better in Thor 2 than the original, but Sif is just all-around awesome.)

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Why?  I saw both Thor movies and saw no hint that she had any feelings for him whatsoever.  Did she?  Because last I saw, he was happily with Jane at the end of The Dark World.

 

I think she showed an interest in him, plus she had the mind of an adolescent Asgardian and Thor is hot. 

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Presumably Melinda May has no significant emotional investment in Thor, yet she understood that feeling.  (As for Thor's taste in women:  I liked Jane a lot better in Thor 2 than the original, but Sif is just all-around awesome.)

I was talking about Sif.  Did she have any interest in him?

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She showed an interest in him in the movies. It's been a while since I've watched, so I can't cite exact scenes, but I remember that I most definitely got that impression.

Plus, although the comics and the MCU are often far from identical, it's SO established in the comics that she's into him, that's got to be why a lot of people are assuming the MCU one is as well.

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I think she showed an interest in him, plus she had the mind of an adolescent Asgardian and Thor is hot. 

 

Yeah, I think we're over-analyzing this a bit.  It was basically just a "Thor is hot" joke like the one they did early last season.

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I think fandom has also started taking sides in the upcoming MCU civil wars.

 

 

I'm not taking sides.  Xenophobia= irrational/unreasonable fear of something just because it's foreign.  That word cannot accurately describe Bobbi, Mack and Simmons' reactions to Raina or Skye because their fear isn't irrational or unreasonable.   It's entirely rational.  That doesn't give them good reason to treat people badly for what they are, mind you, but describing their attitude as xenophobic belittles the trauma the team has already gone through because of alien and super powered beings.

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Was it ever established why the Kreeminator was using an amnesia staff? OK, non-lethal weaponry is always a good thing when you're not actually looking to kill somebody, but you'd think the Asgardians would have their own version of the ICER.

 

Wasn't Coulson tasked with building a better SHIELD? So far, he's built a team with one traitor (Ward), 2 potential traitors and one Inhuman Abomination (Skye). So maybe Nick Fury is going to turn up and kick his ass at the end of the series! Or as shrewd.buddha put it:

 

It also makes Coulson appear to be incompetent as a leader. Almost every member of his team has been a mole or is keeping some secret from him.

 

Reminds me of ST:Voyager when Chakotay said "She [seska] was working for the Cardassians, you [Tuvok] were working for Starfleet - was anyone on that ship actually working for me!?"

 

Actionmage I also love Phil's approach of "There was only one place that this totally unknown to us race was terragenesis-ing. We destroyed it enough just now. No way anyone can do that on Earth any more." I thought that spies learned not to think in absolutes.

 

Yeah, reminded me of (pardon the politics) George W Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech.

 

from the recap Mack and Bobbi are doing some sort of secret thing that they talk about in the vaguest terms possible. They might be double-agent spies, or they might be planning a surprise birthday party for Agent May.

 

 

I love the idea of them planning a surprise party!

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