S01.E16: End of the Beginning

[radishcake]

Agents Garrett (Bill Paxton) and Triplett are back to help Coulson's team track down S.H.I.E.L.D.'s nefarious enemy--the Clairvoyant. But will Deathlok destroy them all to protect his master's identity?

Original Airdate April 1, 2014

[AimingforYoko]

Why would you waste Brad Dourif like that?

[Jediknight]

Ward gets raped in the last episode, and there's no fallout in this one.  Great job, it's still presented as a hot steamy scene, and Ward was the bad guy for it.  Can't have anyone mention it either.

There will also probaly be no fallout with the exception of next week, for Ward killing Thomas Nash.  And that won't be much of a fallout, because it will still be presented as SHIELD being the villains for wanting Coulson's team (the moral team that doesn't like the shortcuts SHIELD takes) to answer for everything.

[Grammaeryn]

Not digging Sooper Special Skye or hints of Skward but I was pretty entertained!  I don't know if the Clairvoyant will be sidelined due to the whole SHIELD uprising or it's all connected.  My non-spoiled guess is that Victoria is not the Clairvoyant but she is who Melinda was reporting to.

 

 

 

 

[thuganomics85]

So, Coulson and Bill Paxton killing those guards episodes back?  No biggie.  Ward killing Brad Dourif?  Worthy of punishment and being taken to the board.  SHIELD is weird.

Skye is now an official agent, and will probably be on her way to replacing Nick Fury as the top dog, if TPTB had their way.

Please, please, surprise me show and don't make Hand evil, just because she dares to not agree with Coulson.

I really do love Simmons!

[paigow]

Hand just gave the order to kill everyone on the plane!  Looks like she is providing ultimate "fallout" for destroying TAHITI. 

[Cranberry]

If Coulson would just shut up about how great Skye is, maybe the viewers would like her more. He's the problem in my eyes, not her. She was grateful for the promotion and did her job this episode -- no more, no less. (It doesn't help that Ward is suddenly so enamored that he's shooting anyone who even dares to threaten her, either. Please don't go to the Skyeward place, show.)

I liked this one, though! Finally the plot's moving along at a fast pace. I think we're probably looking at a few different groups here -- May seems genuinely confused about why Coulson is accusing her of having ties to The Clairvoyant, so I doubt she is (intentionally, anyway) working for the enemy. It's more likely that she's reporting to a higher-up at S.H.I.E.L.D., as everyone originally assumed. I'm also not sure that Victoria Hand is "bad," but we'll see. The promo seems to suggest that she suspects Coulson of wrongdoing (that argument between Simmons and Hand is going to be great).

Hand is fun. I loved her little asides about Skye and her digs at Coulson.

Next week's episode apparently takes place after Captain America: The Winter Soldier, continuity-wise. 

[BKWordsmith]

Hi, I'm another TWOP refugee (TWOPugee?).

Anyway, I got the distinct feeling at the end that May is not a sleeper which to me is a let down. During the few moments between when she had Fitz cornered and when she was cornered in the cargo hold I was actually excited at this twist. For them to set up her up as the seemingly most reliable character all season, have her sleep with Ward, and then have her turn out to be a major antagonist? I was starting to feel the show was turning an important corner towards being gripping. But no, it's pretty clear she was spying on Coulson for another reason, maybe for something as mundane as covering up the oh-so-horrible fact he had extensive surgery.

Real people undergo gruesomely horrible medical procedures all the time, but through the magic of modern anasthetic their memories of the event are erased. That's essentially all that happened to Coulson when you think about it. I've had two major surgeries myself without which I would be dead, and I'm grateful to the anasthesiologists who protected me from the experience. That's not to say that whatever experiments were being performed on that blue humanoid in the "guest house" were ethical, but neither was murdering two guards to save Skye.

Speaking of the show's canon Mary-Sue, ZOMG she's a real SHIELD agent now! Let's grind the plot to a halt for the first 10 minutes so everyone can marvel (no pun intended) at how wonderful she is and how she's "earned" it. Even though she's been through little-to-no real training for the job, done little in the way of "hacking" that I couldn't do with Google, and most of her supposed talent is just so much hot air being piped into the room by Clark Gregg.

Still, maybe it's Ward driving the plane now and maybe he really is a sleeper agent. That would be awesome. Not as awesome as if it were May, since she's clearly more formidable in every way, but still.

Edited April 2, 2014 by BKWordsmith

[ottoDbusdriver]

The travel is getting beyond ridiculous for this show -- the 3 teams are scattered world-wide: one in Macon, Georgia, one in Muncie, Indiana and one in the UK, yet they all seem to reconnoiter back at the Hub (wherever that is) in record time. Then the Bus flew to Pensacola, Florida. It's gotta be nanite wormholes (from Revolution). And don't forget that they flew the Bus from the aircraft carrier to the North Pole (again, in record time), or the fact that Garrett/Triplett started out the episode in Australia.

Here's the really confusing part -- next time we see the Bus it appears to be flying westward (as the moon is reflected off of it from behind the bus), the Bus pulls a 180 (in mid-air no less) with the moon now on the opposite side of the plane and then is on a track towards England from a position off the east coast of the US. Unless the Bus was flying in circles, this doesn't make a lot sense. Why would it have been flying towards the US East Coast if it had just left Pensacola ?

May and Blake get attacked by Deathlok in Indiana and the other teams bolt to that location after the discovery, despite the fact that both teams discovered very odd circumstances at each of the other locations (no one on duty at a prison which is kind of suspicious and a mysterious road block at the other which was even more suspicious). Ward/Triplett actually dashed out of the prison despite the fact that they were on an entirely different continent. And there is no mention made as to follow-up at the two suspicious locations.

This episode seemed to plod along -- Coulson's chat with Hand and Sitwell, Garrett and Skye's chit-chat, Ward and Triplett's walk and talk outside the prison, Skye's induction into the superspecial SHIELD membership (did she get a decoder ring to go with her badge) despite the fact she really haven't shown her go through the motions to justify the accreditation. I would think that Fitz/Simmons would be kind of pissed since they had to go through years of formal education (they both have PhDs) plus a couple of years at SHIELD Hogwarts.

When the Bus landed on that aircraft carrier at the start of the episode, the wash from the Bus should have tossed a lot of those planes over board (those other planes didn't look tied down).

[ChelseaNH]

I'm wondering how they entered Skye into the SHIELD employee database when she doesn't have a last name...

Dun dun dun!  "He knows we're here!"  Well, yes.  Busting down the door was supposed to be kind of a giveaway, no?

Elaborate precautions so no one will know the full details of the operation.  Except, of course, for Skye.  The only thing that would make this season bearable is if she turns out to be the Clairvoyant.  Well, Wardsky is pretty unbearable regardless, but otherwise.

There was a lot of moving around, but it all felt arbitrary.  Busy-ness for the sake of being busy.

[KirkB]

I don't imagine Skye would have herself get shot twice if she were the Clairvoyant, unless she was supremely confident they had the skill to save her life, Up until that point though it might have been a nice twist.

If May isn't a sleeper or bad guy, why was she after Fitz? Yes, she had an icer, which means she probably wasn't planning to kill him, but what was her plan? Did whoever she was reporting to tell her to take out anyone who found out?

Hand may be a bad guy but I doubt she is the Clairvoyant. If anything she's working for him.

Just for the hell of it, I'm going to say the Clairvoyant is the Red Skull.

[Kromm]

Really Hand being the baddie is almost too predictable, given her checkered history in the actual comics.

It's not like it could be someone who's appeared in the theatricals, so among the SHIELD higher-ups our choices WERE limited though.

So what remains might be Hand being manipulated.  Coulson being correct that the Clairvoyance IS knowledge from SHIELD info, but Hand just being an interim step on the ladder to whoever is pulling the strings.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Kromm

[HistoryGirl]

Hand ordered Simmons to the Hub, but left Fitz at the Bus. Then she ordered everyone on the Bus to be killed, knowing full well that Simmons wasn't on it.  What's the plan for her?  Did Hand purposefully separate FitzSimmons for some higher purpose? 

My money is on either Hand as the Clairvoyant.  I thought her ordering the destruction of all people on the Bus was the giveaway. 

I loved Fitz being the one to discover what May was up to.  He's as bad of a liar as Simmons. His heart must've stopped when May shot at him. 

[MacGuffin]

So, Coulson and Bill Paxton killing those guards episodes back?  No biggie.  Ward killing Brad Dourif?  Worthy of punishment and being taken to the board.  SHIELD is weird.

I was under the impression that was not a SHIELD facility. Quasi ally at best. Am I wrong?

[Tara Ariano]

Here's what Nick wrote about the episode (but kind of about the show in general)!

[ChelseaNH]

The difference between shooting Nash and shooting the guards is that SHIELD didn't want Nash shot, and didn't care if the guards got shot.  And when Nash isn't actually the Clairvoyant, it will no longer matter that Ward shot Nash.

I realized that impression of busy-ness for the sake of being busy is essentially what a magician does with misdirection.  As long as there are all these moving parts, you're distracted from realizing that they don't actually mean anything.  Because meaning is passe.  Television shows exist to manipulate audience expectations, period.  Telling stories is so last century.

Edited April 2, 2014 by ChelseaNH

[caseylane]

This episode really frustrated me. I am so sick and tired hearing about how special Skye is. Not only is Coulson under her spell but Ward loves her in his tiny (supposedly) rage filled heart. WTF, is she the half sister of that Asguardian a couple of episodes back? I really thought Whedon was above that type of mess. As much as I loved Buffy and she was a chosen one from the beginning, I never felt like I'd been hammered in the head by the idea.

[SocaShoe]

I am sick of the special snowflake getting all the attention. I'm hoping that since she's now a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent she'll fade more into the background and just do her job. I don't want Hand to be a bad guy because she's the one who pointed out that Skye was only qualified to be a Level One agent. But if she is, oh well. My favorite moment of the episode was the Garrett/Coulson exchange in the car. (G: Have I told you this story?  C:I was there.)

[KirkB]

The difference between Skye and Buffy being so special from the start is that Buffy actually showed why she was the Chosen One. She was strong, she kicked the ass of every vampire, demon and ghost which crossed her path. Sure, her friends helped, but there was a reason Buffy was the star of the show named after her. Skye, on the other hand, hasn't (in my opinion) done much of anything to earn the devotion she's been handed. We weren't just told Buffy was special and expected to believe it, it was repeatedly demonstrated. Coulson and Ward and Fitz go on and on about how good Skye is (the only thing I agree with is how she thinks outside the box in a way the more regimented Ward and Coulson at least don't) without her really doing anything to deserve it.

[JayKay]

Here's what Nick wrote about the episode (but kind of about the show in general)!

The connections between the movies and the series can only ever run in one direction, thus making AoS the equivalent of that creepy drunk guy at the club who's pretend-grinding behind a pretty girl who doesn't know he's there.

So accurate. And I also agree that the show would be more successful in its own little mini-verse that focused on character over flash-bang-boom. The supposed Captain America tie-in amounted to a few lines of dialogue and a weirdly placed commercial that ate the end of the show.

[Cranberry]

Next week begins the real tie-in, I believe. 

[Tim Thomason]

I don't think Hand is going to kill everyone (or anyone) on the Bus. She ordered her men to "take them out". She probably means to have them tranquilized so she can safely extract May and then hold them in quarantine for review or something.

That's my guess. I don't think she's a baddie, just overzealous and she's been collecting info (via May and surveillance) on the various rule-breaking by Coulson and team over the months, and she's been forced to escalate events due to the discovery of May's infiltration.

Coulson's wildly jumping to conclusions over who's the Clairvoyant. First Ward then May, and next week probably Hand, Sitwell, Nick Fury, and Captain America in that order. My money's on Garrett (Bill Paxton), with help from his point man Triplett (whose offhand comments pushed Ward into killing Thomas Nash in the first place).

Speaking of Garrett, he was beaming with pride or something everytime Skye was nearby. I think he wants to add her to his collection of wives.

[missbonnie]

I loved every minute of it myself. Of course that may be due to the fact that I am not a comic book reader and the only thing I know about the Marvel super hero's I got from seeing the movies. I was torn about May being the mole or whatever. On one hand I love her as part of this team because she's so badass but, on the other hand it would have been cool that she was the one who has been working with someone else, again because she's so badass. I don't believe for a moment that the guy they found was the clairvoyant and Deathlock was cool.

Edited April 3, 2014 by missbonnie

[jhlipton]

May and Blake get attacked by Deathlok in Indiana and the other teams bolt to that location after the discovery, despite the fact that both teams discovered very odd circumstances at each of the other locations (no one on duty at a prison which is kind of suspicious and a mysterious road block at the other which was even more suspicious). Ward/Triplett actually dashed out of the prison despite the fact that they were on an entirely different continent. And there is no mention made as to follow-up at the two suspicious locations.

That bothered me, too.  Deathlok was in Indiana, but he could easily have been a diversion.  Otherwise, why create suspicion at the other two sites?  And then, they all converged in Indiana in minutes, despite being scattered here, there and everywhere.

[ChelseaNH]

on the other hand it would have been cool that she was the one who has been working with someone else, again because she's so badass

I was working my way through the "one of the team members is actually The Clairvoyant!" options.  If Ward were the Clairvoyant, I wouldn't care because he's basically a nonentity.  May as the Clairvoyant would be exciting, because she's a worthwhile opponent.  (Skye as the Clairvoyant would make me happy because everyone would look so stupid after being such woobies about her, but only if she had actual psychic powers.)

[Kromm]

I was working my way through the "one of the team members is actually The Clairvoyant!" options.  If Ward were the Clairvoyant, I wouldn't care because he's basically a nonentity.  May as the Clairvoyant would be exciting, because she's a worthwhile opponent.  (Skye as the Clairvoyant would make me happy because everyone would look so stupid after being such woobies about her, but only if she had actual psychic powers.)

To me the totally outrageous idea would be either Fitz or Simmons (but not both).  I haven't even thought that through.  Does it even jibe with things we've seen happen to them?  if its a matter of "access" Fitz might not have it inherently, but could have stolen it.  If its a matter of psychic stuff, a bioengineer like Simmons might be a good candidate for someone to have them.

[John Potts]

To me, this episode was "Full of Sound and fury, signifying nothing". It seemed at several points as if we were going somewhere, but instead of developing the idea they got bored and went somewhere else. I guess we should be grateful that the scenario of capturing the Clairvoyant subverted expectations, because that so screamed "It's a trap!" [/Admiral Ackbar] that the fact that everyone actually got out of that situation without anything bad really happening (even Deathlok's attack was over pretty quickly) was actually a surprise. Of course, surprising the audience is only a good idea if you actually use it to tell an interesting story. But instead of that, we learn that Victoria Hand is untrustworthy, everyone loves Skye and that Coulson doesn't like people keeping secrets from him (...even though he works for Nick Fury, who keeps secrets from everyone!). It's basically a microcosm of the series in miniature - the show has a lot of potential, but seems it can't help squandering it.

[Kromm]

To me, this episode was "Full of Sound and fury, signifying nothing". It seemed at several points as if we were going somewhere, but instead of developing the idea they got bored and went somewhere else. I guess we should be grateful that the scenario of capturing the Clairvoyant subverted expectations, because that so screamed "It's a trap!" [/Admiral Ackbar] that the fact that everyone actually got out of that situation without anything bad really happening (even Deathlok's attack was over pretty quickly) was actually a surprise. Of course, surprising the audience is only a good idea if you actually use it to tell an interesting story. But instead of that, we learn that Victoria Hand is untrustworthy, everyone loves Skye and that Coulson doesn't like people keeping secrets from him (...even though he works for Nick Fury, who keeps secrets from everyone!). It's basically a microcosm of the series in miniature - the show has a lot of potential, but seems it can't help squandering it.

Hah!  Except for the "full of Fury" part.  I didn't see no Fury!

Jokes aside, I agree.  It all seemed too anticlimactic. The fact that Garrett even JOKES about that when Raina is introduced to him doesn't magically defuse that (self-awareness of being anticlimactic is still anticlimactic).

Edited April 20, 2014 by Kromm

[webruce]

Was surprised that Deathlok(Mike Peterson) didn't stay to fight Agents John Garrett and Antoine Tripplett. He instead jumped through the roof.

I was surprised to that when the S.H.I.E.L.D.Agents broke up into 2 a team to go interview the people on the "13 Top Suspects forClairvoyant List". Should have known he would find out. So were Thomas Nash, Rico Santo and Elijah Fordham, just basically dead ends? I know Nash was setup to be theClairvoyant. But if he really wasn't, couldn't he have wiggled his eyes or something to make the team see he wasn't the speaker?? I also got confused when Fitz was on the secure line with Simmons and found a bug. I first figured it went to a room that theClairvoyant was in. I thought, why is he there alone? Then I found he was on the Bus, and it was May's tap. Now how could the Clairvoyant clear out all those places? He either is well connected or rich. Especially the prison entrance? But we know Ian Quinn had lots of money. I liked how Simmons almost gave up the blood info. to May. And that Jemma was smiling when Tripp told her he was staying at The Hub for awhile too. Poor Fitz wasn't smiling. It was like he didn't want to be separated from her.

Was nice to see Agents Victoria Hand, Jasper Sitwell, John Garrett, Antione Triplett and Felix Blake(Liked him as Glenn Childs on The Good Wife). The 2 man teams were funny with Garrett telling Coulson all about his exploits, and Coulson said he was there. Coulson wanted a good partner, lol .Blake was hurt by Deathlok, and he tried to talk about his son, but it didn't stop him. Surprised May or someone didn't try to shoot his rocket-launcher?? Glad Blake wasn't killed by Mike. He still seems conflicted. Did Ward have a little of Lorelei's magic still in him, or was he trying to really protect Skye and make up for the last couple weeks mess?

I was surprised that the Shield team made Skye a full fledged Agent so quickly. Ward really looked out for her, and you could tell he likes her a lot. Then she got to handle a gun in the show down with May. I worried that May would catch Fitz. She did shoot at him, but they weren't real bullets and Coulson said his were ,lol.

Coulson really had a rough day. First he had to question Ward for shooting Nash. I was so surprised myself. Then he hears from Fitz about May's tap. Funny after finding Fitz in the room that she made her call. Must be why Agent Hand had autopilot bring the Bus to her? Fitz cut off the call. Agent Hand said to kill them all. Wonder if she thinks that May was captured? That the Team is not Shield? Or is her team not Shield anymore? Skye and Coulson think the Clairvoyant is a Shield Agent. Will be very interesting.