Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review - Episode 19 "The Only Light In the Darkness"

[ExtraDebit]

Meh.....even The 100 is getting better than this show. There's no wonder or intrigue for me in this show anymore and it seems like all they're doing is to pander to hardcore fans without a good story that appeals to even non fans.

Say what you will about DC movies, at least Arrow is good.

Edit: I've never even heard of Patton Oswalt until I googled him a minute ago, let it be known that alot of people that visit the escapist isn't americans and the world is bigger than usa. So please write in consideration to us as well.

 

[Zontar]

Edit: I've never even heard of Patton Oswalt until I googled him a minute ago, let it be known that alot of people that visit the escapist isn't americans and the world is bigger than usa. So please write in consideration to us as well.

He's actually big in Canada, so it's more of a North American thing then an.... American thing.

 

[PiercedMonk]

People are upset that Patton Oswalt's character died? That just contributed to evil Ward's enhanced appeal over...flavourless Ward.

Sure, I get that Oswalt is "one of us," because he's in to geeky shit, but this show is already too winky and cute for it's own good. It's at its best when it's doing the super-spy drama thing, and dorky, bumbling lanyard enthusiast Eric Koenig didn't contribute to that at all. 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.' is well rid of him. Ward killing Victoria Hand was a much bigger deal.

Otherwise, this episode was a big bag of yawns. The lie detector scene was interesting, but Blackout didn't really register as a threat. If this dude was the most urgent escapee from the cube, maybe Coulson's crew could leave the rest of the round-up to another organization. Like the FBI. Or the boy scouts.

 

[Jeroenr]

"So, Blackout joins Agents' roster of Marvel supervillains who appear in plainclothes because (supposedly) ABC TV feels differently about comic-book costuming than Disney does. Oh, well."


Black Widow, Hawkeye and Falcon say high (tempted to throw in Hulk as he is CG rather than a costume) not to mention the previews of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.

Black Widow has a costume and so does Hawkeye (He even gets a new one in Avengers 2). They don't have masks, but they're pretty representative of what they look like in the comics. That said, I was fine with Blackout not having a costume. It's not like he had a lot of time to make one.

I agree. They talk about how he has a psychopathic one track mind for finding his "light." Why would he think "well I just broke out of a prison that suped up my super powers, man I could totally use a disguise right now."

Honestly the only villain who has had a costume so far really is Loki, and that costume is explained away as his Asgardian battle Regalia rather than a costume. Even other major villains like Red Skull had more of a uniform rather than a costume, and Obadiah just had a knock off bulky version of the iron man armor.

Even in the MCU the only person who is referred to actually having a "costume" is Cap because it's a symbol of his patriotism and his vows of justice and blah blah. I don't rally consider black spandex/leather jumpsuit much of a costume in the traditional comic sense.

I wouldn't even go as far as to call Blackout a villain.
Getting superhuman powers and not adjusting well to it can certainly turn you in to a villain, but it doesn't make you one by default.

Blackout didn't have a agenda beyond his original obsession.
so why would he even consider making a costume?
This makes him dangerous, not a villain.


This was kinda Hydra's plan, having super-powered crazy people running amok is highly distracting for any SHIELD remnants still trying to help.

Gravitron on the other hand has the potential to become a proper Marvel villain.
He has the powers and the motivation to become one.
so does that ice powered student (don't recall his name).

They also seem to take some effort to flesh out Deathlock, thats as close to a villain costume they have gotten.
And he isn't even a willing villain.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I'm liking evil War a lot more than boring, old Ward. I just wish Sky hadn't noticed the coins and he'd straight up executed her.

One thing that annoyed me is that Daniels was easily able to get the upper hand in their first encounter and then he simply walks away and lets the people who are trying to capture him live! WHY?! Shit like that is what makes this show's plot feel so contrived sometimes. And before someone uses the excuse of "he is only focused on the Cellist (I forgot her name already) so he didn't want to stop and kill them." Bullshit, he offs the one guy at the beginning just for the hell of it. Also, if he could absorb energy from a distance, what was stopping him from just sucking the life out of everyone near him? He made the lights go out without touching them, is human energy special or something? Also, Coulson's reasoning for not telling the Cellist that he's alive seemed pretty forced. I guess what I'm saying as a whole is that I really didn't care for the secondary story of Daniels and the Cellist. Evil spy War stuff was cool.

Edit: Also, releasing all of the prisoners from the fridge and making them villains of the week seems like a pretty lame set up story for what is going to amount to as much filler material as the writers want. Maybe the other ones will be better but this one really sucked.

 

[JimB]

Coulson's reasoning for not telling the cellist that he's alive seemed pretty forced.

I bought it. He died. She mourned, healed, and moved on. Walking up to her and saying, "Hey, guess what, God gave us a do-over" will force her to deal with all that baggage again, and while he tried to convince her he did actually die, he's going to have to explain that for a while he thought he hadn't and he had abandoned her to keep being a superspy. Even if she understands the deception and is okay with being the second-most important thing in his life at best, his death will color the rest of their relationship with the knowledge that she might and probably will have to go through all this at least once more, the next time he gets killed in the line of duty. Will she be able to heal and move on if she's sitting around hoping Nick Fury will resurrect him again?

 

[AliasBot]

Otherwise, this episode was a big bag of yawns. The lie detector scene was interesting, but Blackout didn't really register as a threat. If this dude was the most urgent escapee from the cube, maybe Coulson's crew could leave the rest of the round-up to another organization. Like the FBI. Or the boy scouts.

Judging by the context and the way Coulson reacted, I'm guessing it wasn't because he was the most dangerous escapee (he was powerful - though it was kind of downplayed in how they took him out - but he didn't have any sort of large-scale ambitions), but because he was an immediate threat to someone Coulson cared about. (It didn't hurt that he knew exactly where Daniels would be going, which is more than could be said for a lot of the other escapees.) Plus, given one of those escapees (sort of) was Graviton, a villain with the power level to go head-to-head with the Avengers in the comics, there are probably some tougher customers than Blackout now roaming the streets. Or at the very least, ones that someone on the team won't already know how to beat (which was the main reason Blackout wasn't a big threat, honestly: they didn't have to figure anything out about his powers, they just had to properly trap him, and that pre-existing solution let them focus more on the other plot threads of the episode). I'm hoping they don't revert back to the villain-of-the-week thing, but if they need occasional filler in season 2 - which, unless they go to some sort of limited-string-of-episodes-leading-up-to-next-Marvel-movie format (which they probably won't), they're going to need at some point - they'll be able to make them work as main villains...when they're actually the focus of the episode.

OT: As far as the rest of the episode...the lie detector was fun for a while (up until Ward gamed Koenig into believing he's telling the truth about everything else when the machine specifically built to test if SHIELD's best spy is lying caught him in about eight lies, just because he told the truth once). I'm sick of all of the attempted love triangles (Ward-May-Coulson, May-Ward-Skye...), but the Fitz-Simmons-Triplett dynamic is fun (and showing how Triplett is on that same level intellectually was definitely a nice touch). Just so long as it doesn't get dragged out for another half a season: resolving that thread by the end of this season (so, in the next three episodes) would be nice. And at least the other triangles and even lone pairings seem to be dissolving or dissolved, even the irritating Skye-Ward pairing: now that Skye knows Ward is Hydra, she's just keeping up the act as long as she has to. I hope. (Please don't have Ward turn good again because of the power of love, writers. Please don't do this. I'd tolerate some sort of last-second turn leading into an honorable sacrifice or something, but he's done too much damage to be genuinely believable as "good" again.)

So it's looking like the last few episodes - judging from the teaser for "Nothing Personal," and the fact that Nick Fury will be making an appearance in the finale - will be centered around Coulson's team simultaneously figuring out what its place and mission is in the new spy-world order and attempting to pull their own team back together, in whatever form that ends up taking. Or, in other words, figuring out who the Agents of SHIELD are going to be going forward...meaning what the show is going to be going forward into the next season (assuming it's picked up: hopefully it is). I'm okay with this, I just hope the track they end up getting put on makes a reasonable amount of sense within the plot and isn't just "this is what we want the show to be next season, here's some plot points to make things end up that way."

(Also, the Skye-as-Spider-Woman theory makes enough logical sense that I'm hoping that it turns out to be true. Spider-Woman was an Avenger, but she was also a spy...and if they attempted to work Spider-Woman into one of the teams of heroes, a lot of casual fans might just think they're ripping off Spiderman because they can't use him directly, so maybe introducing the MCU version of the character as a SHIELD agent and keeping her in the spy game would make more sense.)

 

[walsfeo]

The problem with the NSA wasn't how powerful they were, just that they would have the chops to stop/trackback Skye's hacking. That the secret SHIELD base might be revealed would be contrary to Fury's plan.

Patton Oswalt needed a little killing. Not in real life, he's cool, but the show didn't need him sucking up all the fanboy energy.

Triplett is better than Ward, though I have some small hope Ward will eventually turn interesting. It hasn't happened yet, but Dalton has a better chance at making him interesting as an antagonist. A good death scene, that'd be interesting. Right?

Coulson's chemistry has been pretty low-key overall. It's odd that he blindly follows Fury/SHIELD and then griefs MM for doing the same. Well, maybe not odd, but very inconsistent.


Also, for having supposedly deleted the existence of everyone from everywhere, Skye did a pretty poor job of it.

 

[PuckFuppet]

Two things I'm not getting in the way Bob is reviewing this.

In no way did "hot guy" Ward cause me to dislike the character; last time I checked I too have a penis and like women, along with being a TV/book nerd. What was I supposed to inherently dislike in a guy who got his job done well? It is worth noting that early Supernatural was almost certainly _not_ directed at a female audience from a "look its a hot guy" perspective, that became a natural avenue for the series because of how easy it was to take as the series progressed.

Patton Oswalt was less "one of us" and more "ineffectual parody of what has been stereo-typed as "one of us"". Fitz is far closer to "one of us", and Coulson is one of us. That was almost the point of the character.


Back to the episode. The show is doing a much better job at being a spy thriller now than it was before and if they lose the Bus, far too goddamn martini even for a setting with flying cars, and hold onto that slick jet I can see it being a far better show.

 

[Burnouts3s3]

You know what? I'm glad they mentioned the Mary Sue of Skye's character. It makes me think that the writers have actually thought this out and know what the reaction to Skye is.

I just wish they brought this element in sooner.

Also, I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying Evil Ward compared to his good counterpart.

 

[lastjustice]

If Koenig's really wanted to live...he'd told Ward about Skycake! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w

 

[jab136]

am I the only one that thinks that the cellist is gonna get powers now? I mean she got hit by a blast of some sort of energy and they were shooting the guy with gamma guns designed by banner, I am surprised that no one has said anything. let me know if I am completely crazy, I mean I don't read the comics, but they made a pretty big deal about the fact that they were using gamma cannons

 

[JimB]

I mean she got hit by a blast of some sort of energy and they were shooting the guy with gamma guns designed by Banner.

Amy Acker as She-Hulk?

Eh. I've taken flimsier excuses to watch her.

 

[VoidWanderer]

In regards to the whole why did Fury go to obscene lengths to bring Coulson back, I still reckon he is Adam Warlock under going the MOTHER of all memory-gambits.

Ever since rewatching Iron Man, especially the Fireman's Ball, you see how terrifying Coulson can be.

He gave a precise day, date and time, for his meeting with Stark. Not a vague one, but very precise. Stark blows him off but who just happens to be at Stark Industries when Pepper needs someone the most?

I think 'Coulson' knew the Infinity Stones ,as they seem to be called know, are going to be put into play and that Thanos was searching for them. Instead of going after Thanos directly, he is biding his time by completely suppressing all memory and his power until that pivotal moment.

I have been waiting for this series to go from 'Watchable' to 'Whedon is back!', but I doubt it will ever hit that pedigree. There are too many other facts/movies that has to be tied into this series for it to ever get to Whedon's normal level. But I still enjoy the show.

Given the whole 'evil Ward' thing, not really a fan as it seems more fanservice than character development, especially given Trip being his Suspiciously Specific Replacement. It's not like it is a surprise that Simmons is crushing on him, she seems to have a taste for black men, in case you forgot how she manually measured Mike while drooling.

EDIT: One thing I am confused about, why didn't Koenig shoot the obviously not SHIELD agent anymore who was in a base so secret it wasn't listed in SHIELD's files?

 

[Vim-Hogar]

I really liked the music in this episode. The bits where the cello playing flowed into the score when they switched back to the other characters were especially fun, but I also liked the subtle bit at the end of the first scene, where the classical-sounding music reminded me why it was significant that the creepy guy was trying to get to Portland.

Overall, this was probably my favorite episode so far. Things actually happen in this show now!

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

EDIT: One thing I am confused about, why didn't Koenig shoot the obviously not SHIELD agent anymore who was in a base so secret it wasn't listed in SHIELD's files?

It was revealed when he contacted the team prior that they gave him the coordinates to either the base or a place where they could pick him up. At least if I'm remembering that correctly.

OT: While I agree Oswalt's character had to die (because we saw him as Oswalt, not Koleig), I am disappointed he lasted only one episode longer than your standard red shirt rather than a few more. It would have been nice if they started gathering other agents on the Bus to try and rebuild SHIELD following the events of Winter Soldier. That said, once Ward was in the chair, you could tell that Oswalt's character would probably be the first (and in this case, only) character to die when Ward made his move. He was convinced enough to let Ward in, but with some clear misgivings.

As for the rest of the episode, I think I'm fine with non-costumed villains for the most part (I always found that to be an odd hang-up for movie adaptations) and that the story with Blackout was more to get Coulson and the others to split up when they had no logical reason to leave that bunker.