Agents of SHIELD (S1E5) Review: All The Pieces Fall Together

One reason Agents of SHIELD has found so much improvement this season is because of the expansion of focus the show has had in the past few episodes. More characters (like Fitz, Lance, Simmons and Melinda May) are being given storylines with more depth and fun that really enhance them and make the stakes more dramatically effective. That's a stark contrast to last season, when most things in the show revolved around Skye, a character who last season was decent at best, absolutely grating at worst.

In season two of Agents of SHIELD, Skye has been around a lot (she had a funny line about May laughing last week), and I've actually liked seeing her act more controlled and experienced, but she hasn't been a central piece of an episode until now. My worst fears about how she'd do in this episode seemed to be coming true in a pivotal scene involving her confronting Coulson about keeping secrets from her, a conversation which concludes when he tells her she may be an alien. Chloe Bennett has improved massively from last season, but she doesn't quite make the drama in this particular scene click, a facet that can also be chalked up to some really poor dialogue ("Epic fail" is uttered here. Really?? Really??)

What's kind of bizarre about this scene is that Skye's other major moment in the episode is handled extremely well, the moment in question involving her discovering her fathers former hideout. Both the score and the dialogue are smartly kept to a minimum, just allowing some emotion to flow through the scene. This particular portion of the episode also is home to nice moments from Clark Gregg and Kyle MacLachlan as Skye's father, whose extremely violent tendencies terrify Skye, much to his sorrow.

Like I said before though, this show has widened its scope beyond Skye this season, and this episode illustrates how great that is. Raina, a character who didn't leave much of an impression on me last season, has quickly become a great presence on the program. She gets to be at the center of a great scene where she attempts to blackmail Coulson, with the blackmail in question being a photo she has that proves Simmons is a SHIELD informant working undercover in HYDRA. The scene is already played in a nice, intense manner, but it gets excellent once Coulson makes it apparent he won't cooperate. Seeing Raina, the blackmailer, get nervous and plead for help is a nice subversion of typical tropes that adds an extra layer of tragedy to Raina.

But perhaps the greatest portion of this episode is the introduction of Bobbi Morse, played by Adrienne Palicki. If you're a superhero geek like me, you may know Bobbi by another name, Mockingbird. Yep, they've just introduced that character into this show and they do it wonderfully. Palicki gives Bobbi a presence of calculating calmness, she always seems to be full confident of being one step ahead of whatever she faces. Oh, and did I mention she gets a great debut action scene? I'm happy to report that that Melinda May doppelganger battle last week was no fluke, Holly Dale (the director of this particular episode) does a great job keeping both clarity and brutality in Mockingbirds first hand-to-hand combat sequence in the show and it...is...glorious. Oh, and that extra moment where she walks up to some powerful HYDRA figures, draws out her knives and then briefly twirls them? Good Lord, she's awesome.

And of course, to close out this review, Fitz gets a small but essential update in this episode. I like the nice touch in this episode of how at the beginning, he manages to let go of his minds projection of Simmons, only for the real Simmons to return at the very end. It's the kind of effectively done character work that's become par for the course for Agents of SHIELD this season, and let me tell you, it's been a blast. And there's still so much more to come, including that Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer next week!