Last night ’s episode of Agents of SHIELD delved a good deal deep into one of the independent theme of season two : citizenry who have lost themselves , or had their identities wrecked , and the absolutely terrible relationship they regain themselves in . And it turn out dealing with citizenry who are n’t genuine to themselves carries a high cost . Spoilers forwards …
True to its name , “ sexual love in the Time of Hydra ” focus on a smattering of relationships , mostly romantic but also platonic . And the melodic theme of personal identity crisis toy out in a pretty absorbing agency , thanks to the apposition of the inchoate “ genuine SHIELD ” coup against Coulson and the twisted Ward / Agent 33 offence fling .
So allow ’s look at the main pairings in the sequence , one by one :
agentive role 33 is pretty much the poster child for identity crisis — a formerly loyal SHIELD agent , she was brainwash by Whitehall into becoming his puppet , to the point where she no longer knows who she was . And then she was given a “ nano - mask ” that allowed her to masquerade as Melinda May — who then electrocuted her in the face , let out the mask and leaving her marred and stuck as a weaken duplicate of Melinda .
But now that Agent 33 has saved Grant Ward after he was shot by Skye , he ’s set to pay off her back in his own inimitable fashion . So he avail her to kidnap a guy who can fix her masquerade ( via a very Pulp Fiction - y diner robbery ) . But once she ’s got control over her face again , the concentrated part begins — helping her to domesticize her actual identity , something she believe is lose forever . In fact , she tries to score Ward by turn herself into Skye , something that actually sneak out the creep , a picayune :
But instead , Ward order her that he want to be with Agent 33 — but as herself , Kara , not as someone else . Ward believes that Kara can regain her sensory faculty of identity , by getting stoppage — which involves fall in into Talbot ’s base and busting out Bakshi , the man who dragged her out of her safehouse and gave her to Whitehall to brainwash .
Ward recounts the account of how his family hollowed him out and broke him down , will him vulnerable to the questionable influence of John Garrett . And Ward did n’t commence frame himself back together , he claims , until he was lock up and had a fortune to recall — and then he reconnected with his family , and they really get together and dug in and worked through a sight of their issues , and it was great . ( He cautiously lead out the part where he killed them all . )
Ward is SO well - aline now .
The point being , Ward was in the same situation that Agent 33 was in — he was a blank slate , and he was controlled by someone , and he did n’t know who he was , but then he was able-bodied to get past this and become whole again , thanks to the reviving mogul of killing all his closest relatives .
Agent 33 is an amazing combination of neediness and insecurity and furor . She ’s obviously vex past her program loyalty to Whitehall , but she has n’t been able to reconstruct at all . This is the kind of thing that ’s often portrayed as part of undercover piece of work and double agents and spy secret plan , only magnified a hundred - fold .
The whole successiveness where Agent 33 uses her face - changing powers to get inside Talbot ’s base gives us the comic - succor version of her angst — she impersonates Glenn Talbot ’s married woman and a few members of his staff , and his cause to catch her only make thing regretful . The bit where he eliminate one possible mole by having her accurately submit the number of time he ’s gotten her name right ( zero ) is pretty heavy . And he also get a little too personal with poor Meredith ’s cheek :
But after Talbot makes his veridical married woman get down on the ground with her face on the floor , his union seems to be in slightly bad shape . Poor Talbot — although I ’m still brainsick about the wayhis cartoon strip counterpart treated Betty Rosswhen he was matrimonial to her , so I ’m well-chosen to see the TV version suffer .
Anyway , Ward and Agent 33 catch up with Bakshi , who try on to reactivate Agent 33 ’s brainwashing — but gets knocked out . And apparently kidnapping the man who ruined her lifetime is good for Agent 33 , because she remembers her substantial name and find her real facial expression . And then , as the instalment terminate , they ’re turning the tables on Bakshi , subject him to his own brainwashing :
undecomposed times .
Meanwhile , Lance Hunter has been taken captive by the “ Real SHIELD , ” which wants to take down Coulson . And his ex - married woman and current lover , Bobbi Morse , is part of this gang of conspirators , as is Mac . They ’re conduce by William Adama , who manifestly never study anything from all the black putsch that bechance on board the Galactica . ( Also on the team : Annie Weaver , last seen at the SHIELD Science Academy . Plus a new quality played by Kirk Acevedo . )
This new divine revelation takes Lance ’s existent trust issues with Bobbi and amps them up to 11 . All season , he ’s been say that he can never tell who he ’s really dealing with , and whether she ’s lie to him or using him — and now , in spite of her best intentions , she ’s wound up lying to him again . It ’s just like when they first met and she was just trying to get intel out of him while he was falling for her . He ’s just a with child sad puppydog who keeps fall for her trick .
But even Lance has to admit that Coulson has n’t been perfect — and the list of indictments sounds pretty impressive when Robert Gonzales ( Edward James Olmos ) lists them . He led the team on a wild goose pursual , looking for an exotic metropolis whose location add up from the drawings he felt compelled to make after he was shot up with alien DNA . As a final result , Tripp die and Raina and Skye got turned into Inhumans — plus Hydra nearly get their hands on some serious firepower .
And they say that SHIELD was primitively founded with foil and answerability , which I witness somewhat hard to consider — and it was only Fury that turned it into a nest of secrets and slickness . They need to take SHIELD back to its theme .
In the end , Lance ’s trash public lecture about his relationship with Bobbi gains him one matter — she does n’t seek to stop him escaping the Real SHIELD alkali , but warns him that everyone else will . So he makes a break for it , and discover he ’s on an aircraft carrier :
Lance still manages to escape in a submersible warship , but it will take him 12 hours to reach nation and warn Coulson about the coup . So Bobbi proposes to go back to Coulson and end this — and she order she ’ll only require six hours . ( See above for a GIF of that import . )
Meanwhile , Mac has already gone back to the Original Recipe SHIELD HQ , to keep tabs on Coulson and keep him from becoming wary about Lance and Bobbi disappearing . ( And Mac seems kind of perturbed about Skye being sent away to a safehouse — see below for that . ) When Mac separate Melinda his screening story about babysitting a bibulous , heartbroken Lance , who ’s gone AWOL because honey draw people do crazy thing , etc . , etc . , Melinda shrug it off .
But by and by , it turns out neither Coulson nor Melinda trust Mac — and they ’re lastly keeping an eye out , a little too late .
regrettably , Coulson has just sent forth one of the fistful of masses he trusts categorically , leaving him with fewer allies at a really crucial moment .
Coulson tells May that he believes in his gut that he ’s “ mishandled ” something important with Skye — but by the sentence he adjudicate this , it ’s already a day recently and a dollar curt . Melinda has agreed with her ex - married man Andrew that Skye ought to allow for SHIELD , now that she ’s got uncorrectable quake ability that fracture her bones when she tries to repress them . But Coulson does n’t just need to cut her loose .
So rather , he gets Simmons to put together some kind of gauntlets , or vambraces , that suppress her powers a bit , while her arm heal . And kick in Simmons ’ zeal for solving the problem of the great unwashed like Skye , and how weird and tentative the scene between Coulson and Simmons is where they discuss those machine , it seems likely they do more than just reduce the severity of Skye ’s quakes a bit .
In any face , Coulson wing Skye out to a fishing cabin in the middle of nowhere , that Fury set up to contain multitude with major power — there ’s a powered fencing to keep her from entrust , but otherwise it count sort of cozy . Kind of . And then Coulson just sort of underprice her there — he anticipate Simmons will tell her about the side effects of the gauntlets later , and that Melinda May will visit , but then he just scrams .
And while en route to the cabin , Coulson tells Skye a unearthly story about the 1962 red corvette that his father and he worked on — which the young Phil Coulson considered a wastefulness of time , until it was finished . And this story means … what ? Skye concludes that she ’s the corvette and worth working on , but she could just as well be the nipper working on something with her “ father . ” It ’s a weirdly devious narrative .
Earlier , Melinda May warn Coulson that Skye ’s changes go beyond just some new superpowers — she no longer know who she is . She ’s changed , on the inside as well as the outside , and her whole identity has been rearranged forever . Which is a fairly denotative analog to Agent 33 ’s site , make it interesting that Ward does a better business of taking Agent 33 under his wing and helping her to rebuild than Coulson does with Skye .
And finally , the rift between the two science geeks carry on to extend . Early on , they have a enceinte argument about whether Skye ’s powers could be a good affair ( in front of Skye , which seems like a unsound mind for certain . ) Fitz argues that Skye could be as muscular as one of the Avengers — but if so , Simmons says she ’s the Hulk because she ca n’t control her destructive powers .
Later on , Fitz once again brings up the parallesl between the changes he went through after being drown and the change that have happened to Skye — and in both cases , Simmons could n’t accept that her friend had changed , and keep essay to “ fix ” them .
But this time around , Fitz change state this comparability on its head — because the one who ’s changed the most is n’t Fitz or Skye , but Simmons . She ’s the one who ’s being rule by fear and is go to extremes out of a canonical intolerance for people who ’ve gotten authorise or disabled through no defect of their own .
In any case , the installment gently hints that Simmons is another individual who ’s lost some of her sense of identity , or core value , and her relationship are being dragged through hell as a event .
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