Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review - Episode 4: Eye Spy

[Absimilliard]

Two things:
1) No-one else notice that Shang-Chi was namedropped? They used the name as that of a province (which doesn't exist), but still a pretty nice easter egg.
2) When Amador asks what's been done to Coulson, could her curiosity have been not so much a result of her being his former protégé, and more to do with her x-ray vision? I'm still on board for theories about such things as L.M.D.'s, The Vision and even Ultron.

 

[kurupt87]

Early on, Skye posits that telepathic abilities would explain the abnormal effectiveness of the mystery jewel thief. That doesn't seem like an unlikely prospect given that this is a world of aliens, transdimensional portals and Vikings gods, but it's immediately shot down with the explanation that telepathy is not among the supernatural phenomena that have been confirmed to exist thus far in this universe.

The fact that none of the Red Masks knew what they had in their briefcase's would also, to me, suggest that telepathic powers would have been around as useful as a smack about the head.

 

[Mr. Q]

It was a great episode, imo, and it added another hint that Agent Coulson is not really himself. As for who the big bad is, in regards to the cyber-eye and the centipede, I'm guessing A.I.M. or possibly a new form of HYDRA. Hope this leads to MODOK or Baron von Strucker popping up on the show.

 

[Ieyke]

I'm not even looking down at my hands as I type this and I can see the skin colour of my hands just in my peripheral vision.

No you can't.
That's not humanly possible.

You may think it is, but it's not.

Human vision is in black and white on the peripheral.
When you're stopped at a stoplight and a car pulls up in your peripheral vision don't look at it. Just keep it in the peripheral and try to guess what color it is. You CAN NOT do it.

The photoreceptive cells in your eyes come in two types - rods and cones.
* Rods are sensitive to light intensity - darkness and light, and don't perceive color. Rods are almost entirely responsible for your nightvision, which is why you see almost no color in the dark.
* Cones are completely responsible for your ability to see color.

The scattering of rods and cones in the human eye make it impossible to see color in your peripheral vision. The center of your retina contains a dense mixture of rods and cones which give you your normal vision. As you move outwards from the center the cones rapidly become more sparse, and by the time you get to the parts of your retina where the light processed for peripheral vision is received...there are only rods, or at least a meaningless number of cones.

Your peripheral vision is entirely black and white. You just don't notice because the fade from the color in the center of your eye is so gradual, and it's what you've spent your whole life being used to.

-

Perhaps more importantly, her eye was a camera, or at least the video feed her handler was receiving was that of a camera. Cameras don't have peripheral vision.
*shrug*

 

[Jaebird]

I liked this episode well enough. The tone from the previous one carried over, which I like far better than the first two episodes. It's one thing to have comedic relief to break up the tension, but it's another thing entirely to have forced, awkward humor in my face. That said, at least the two technicians aren't as annoying as when they first appeared. I still dislike Skye.

On a side note, anyone else want to see a comic book mini-series about Mei? She doesn't necessarily need to be shoehorned into Marvel universe canon. Just a story about some previous mission she took part in prior to the films/TV show. And not even the one that resulted in her requesting to be a deskjockey.

 

[octafish]

Technically they could reinvent H.A.M.M.E.R. as an evil counterpart to S.H.I.E.L.D.
I wouldn't put it past them...

I really hope they don't, I want H.A.M.M.E.R. to show up...in about 8 years when all the pieces are in place for a Dark Reign movie/series, wasting the organization now while the good guys are still on top would suck, I loved the desperation the groups like The Dark Avengers brought to the Marvel Universe. When the good guys had to hide in basements and back alleys and the villains ruled the boardrooms and media.

As for the episode, I was really excited to see the Asian dude with the flame generating powers, I also though Sunfire for sure! Then I remembered Sunfire is a mutant so they probably won't touch him, which makes me sad because he's such an awesome, surly character, like Wolverine only with 10 times the pride.

It doesn't rule it out, they just have to tweak his story a little, make him a super soldier experiment and the character would still work. I'm thinking it is a fan fake out though.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

As long as the enemy organisation doesn't turn out to just be Rising Tide, which would be lame as hell and cliché, any of them would be fine.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

On top of the fact that they were transporting diamonds and were trained, which probably means local authorities would be at least somewhat informed since the whole point of the "50 identically dressed men none of whom know who has the right case" is so that if the info of the cargo leaked, there'd be no good way to identify the right one. I'm kind of confused why people are so estranged by this.

The only bit that seemed off to me was that only a handful of people seemed mildly curious about these guys. I'd think people would be at least somewhat more interested in such a spectacle.

When Amador asks what's been done to Coulson, could her curiosity have been not so much a result of her being his former protégé, and more to do with her x-ray vision? I'm still on board for theories about such things as L.M.D.'s, The Vision and even Ultron.

Amador's emphatic reiteration seemed a pretty clear indication that she meant she'd seen something with her "x-ray vision".
I may well be wrong but I also have the inkling that Coulson's frequent musings about Tahiti being a "magical place" may actually be Coulson himself (not just the writers) hint dropping that he knows something more happened than he has been told. Though, now that I think a bit more on it, it is perhaps more probable that he has been "programmed" (one way or another, perhaps even with "nonexistent" telepathic abilities) to default to pleasant implanted memories specifically designed to relieve any anxiety or dissonance caused by thinking about his death and "convalescence" too much. Maybe that's not his patented "knowing" smile but rather a smile caused by an induced state of "blissful ignorance". Possibly even both?

 

[Britishfan]

I kinda thought that the "But what did they do to him?" line had more to do with seeing him with x-ray vision than "his personality has totally changed".

 

[darth sasquatch]

So far, this show is not impressing me. I wanted this to be so good. I know enough about comics to follow most of the characters and mcguffins. With the first episode i was excited to see that orange glowy stuff that was featured in Iron Man 3, and then they never tied it to the mandarin or mentioned they had seen the stuff before, was a let down.

I dont read the comics much, so im probably missing alot of references, but so far the show just seems to be:
Step 1-fight random bad guy, Step 2-collect/destroy random item, 3-forget about it and move to the next random bad guy. I dont see how any of this junk is connected, i dont see some grand story unfolding, i see episodes that could be watched in any order. Its like watching Startrek to me, unless your deeply interested in slowly changing character dynamics (ERMERGURD they almost kissed that time, FINALLY), the planet-of-the-week backdrop is not enough to keep me interested.

And Agent Coulson makes me think of vader. When we knew nothing about him he seemed a total bad ass. Now that iv seen him as a main character, switching between omnipotent planner and clueless old dog... Ugg. He should have stayed dead from avangers.

Every damn episode iv seen someone says "hey maybe we should get help from that huge badass agency we all work for instead of Mystery Van-ing this ourselves again"

And Coilson always replies "WE CAN DO THIS ON YOUR OWN, I mean i dont have something to prove... Also we already had Samuel L Jackson in one of the episodes for 2 min. so thats our "outside help" budget for the season."

Didnt know Joss Whedon was in charge of this till now, it shows, i HATE firefly, and many of the reasons i hated it are showing up here