Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D S01E11 The Magical Place (spoilers)

Cafe Society
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The Magical Place
Directed by Kevin Hooks
Written by

We need more episodes where Skye goes off on her own to get shit done. May said she could get more done without SHIELD agents breathing down here neck, and that is absolutely true, but I think it also made for a much better story. It would be great if they could figure out new ways to do that. Also, bring Rob Huebel back. He is very good at making me laugh.

The episode opens with Mr Van Chad trying to sell some Chitauri artificats. In the middle of the deal a Roomba bomb interrupts the proceedings and Van Chad is brought in. (after a perilious elevator ride courtesy of Sky.)

While Agent Hand and the majority of SHIELD are looking for Coulson he is 100 miles from civilization being questioned by Edison Poe. The questioning is violent, and we don’t learn very much beyond what we previously know.

During a briefing Skye attempts to use SHIELD’s computer technology, which is quickly caught by Agent Hand. With May agreeing that Skye is of no use on the plane Hand has her put in line for detention. FitzSimmons and Ward help her escape before she is taken back to SHIELD headquarters.

Ward takes over questioning and using a hole in the plane they are able to get all the information about Centipede they can use from Van Chad.

Skye is out in civilization trying, unsuccesfully, to break into computer systems with one hand behind her back. She sees an article about a sleazy businessman and, after a shopping trip, decides to use him to be his hacking hands.

Meanwhile, The Clairvoyant has decided that Poe’s violent efforts to get information about of Coulson aren’t good enough. Raina is chosen to lead matters. All of the work of getting Poe out of prison last episode are for naught when he is given a murderous hang up by the Clairvoyant. Perhaps, he should have used the speaker phone. Raina has a lot of private information about Coulson. She pushes him while asking about his former love in Portland, and how she cried for days when told that he died.

Hand is able to use the surprising (to her) amount of resources to track down most relevant places Centipede could be.

Skye, dressed in a black SHIELD type outfit and using May’s name, forces Rob Huebel’s Lloyd to use his computer to log into Swiss bank accounts. Security guards drawn by Lloyd’s silent alarm are bad assedly taken down by Skye. One of these guards is used to type commands into the computer when Lloyd admits that he usually has an assistant to do that kind of work. She tracks down where Coulson is. She takes Lloyd’s sports car and makes her way there. She calls the plane and has an awkward conversation with Simmons and then she finds out that May is still supporting her when she takes the phone away from Simmons.

Coulson is able to see what really happened when he was in “Tahiti”. In a awfully disturbing scene, Coulson is screaming out for death while some sort of robot jiggers with his open brain. He doesn’t seem to tell Raina anything useful. But, it doesn’t matter anyway, since Skye and May get there to save the day before she can report to the Clairvoyant.

The episode ends with Coulson in the back seat of Dr. Ron Glass’ car. The doctor tells Coulson that he had been dead for days and he had 7 surgeries to bring him back when he was brought on. They were reordering his neurological system to give him the will to live.

The last scene shows Mike Peterson waking up with one leg missing and half of his body burned. A message appears in his vision showing that he is, now, another Centipede puppet.

I thought it was great. Then again, I always do. And, I am usually surprised by how poorly people find the episodes. I do think that Skye being off on her own made for a stronger episode, her character just makes more sense as a lone wolf out on the world tracking down information. I wonder if there is a way they can make that happen more often, while still having a story about Skye wanting to belong. So, Coulson, not a robot? Yes? I guess so. But, lots of surgeries. Did Fury just really like him, or what? Still more to find out, but I think we got some more pieces of that puzzle. No headway on who the Clairvoyant is, and if he/she has actual powers, or just lots of moles. We do find out that The Clairvoyant can kill over cell phone. Overall, I found this to be one of the better episodes. Good action. Funny humor. And, movement on the seasonwide plots. Plus, everyone was very good acting wise.

[ul]
[li]Did anyone really think May was upset with Skye? The wording of the question made it obvious. I still enjoyed the reveal.[/li][li]Fitz was being something of a badass this episode. I guess missing Coulson, and having a mission gave him a bit of backbone.[/li][li]Still. Old reliable Scissors, huh Fitz?[/li][li]I said it before, but man was it fun to have Skye take over Lloyd’s house. She used her hacker mad skillz, AND the new found SHIELD Judo. That was fun stuff.[/li][li]I hope we meet the Clairvoyant soon.[/li][li]“What’s with the flowers?” “Thanks for noticing!”[/li][li]I also hope we find out soon why Fury wanted Coulson alive.[/li][/ul]

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I liked it - not much of a redirection with May getting Skye off the plane but that was clearly necessary for the plot. I dislike that all the agents become hand-to-hand masters with 15 minutes of training but such is life.

Good episode - answered some questions, asked some new ones.

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Very good episode. My favorite bit was Sky decking Rain.

I’m sticking to the “Coulson is a robot/maybe going to become The Vision” idea.

I don’t like Agent Hand. Just. Don’t.

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So, renewed or not?

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Not in Australia. Seven dropped the series before episode 10.

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First thing I thought when I saw his brain open was that they were copying his memories to upload them into something else.

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It doesn’t take a lifetime of training to disarm your average security guard who usually has little to no weapons retention training.

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To take a bookworm hacker with no training and have her disarm two male security guard (for a very wealthy businessman - they shouldn’t be simple rent-a-guards) with magic Kung Fu stretches my credibility to the limits. Would you have expected Fitz or Simmons to be able to do that? Then why would you expect Skye to be able to?

But the point is that I don’t really care - I accept that as part of the premise of this show.

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When Poe was killed by the phone, it was the same effect as the sonic paralyzer Obadiah Stane used in the first Iron Man movie - skin goes white, veins go blue and pop out. A clue, or just more tech that Centipede has obtained?

I think this theory has to be discarded. A few episodes ago, Coulson had Simmons run a bunch of medical tests on him, including a blood draw. So either Coulson is human enough that standard tests show him as human, he’s not human and Simmons is in on everything, or he’s not human, but all the medical equipment on the plane has been modified to detect that they’re testing Coulson, and return human-standard data if they do.

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First of all, the security guards appeared to me to be hired by the alarm company.

Second, I know security guards. I worked as one for a bit and had a friend (who got me the job) who worked as one for years longer and still knows lots of people in the business. Most of them have no training at all. A few do, but even those don’t have the sort of weapons retention and hand-to-hand training that even your average police officer gets, and that’s not that “elite.”

Third, she’s been training with Ward for months now. They’ve shown it a few times, which in TV-show-time means she’s been doing it constantly.

And last, she IS a young, hot looking female…I took it as the guard underestimating her.

But you’re right, it’s a comic book based TV show so I wasn’t expecting reality either. I was just saying it didn’t strain the bounds of credibility for me. Not any more than a 100lbs middle aged woman tossing full grown, highly trained male mercenaries around like rag dolls anyway.

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Just found this - Stan Lee will guest star in the Feb 4 episode. Apparently a real role, not just a cameo.

Excelsior!

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Because she’s:
a) a hot young girl
b) on a Whedon show
c) based on comics

It’s almost inevitable. :slight_smile:

I like this ep, and so did the wife. Not much to say other than a few little bits:

  • When doing brain surgery, even if you keep the subject awake (which I know is sometimes actually done), and even if you use a fancy sci-fi robot surgeon, wouldn’t you… strap his head down to keep him still?
  • Spotted May’s subterfuge immediately, but only because I’m an objective, genre-savvy observer. It made sense that Hand heard what she wanted to hear and didn’t catch it.
  • Nice to see Ron Glass back. Can he be a regular?
  • Of COURSE Mike survived the blast. I’m glad that wasn’t keep “secret” any longer. Was anyone really surprised? Nice touch that he got the eye implant, though. I didn’t expect that one.
  • I’m convinced the Clairvoyant is a woman. Listen to Coulson’s convo w/Raina. He uses “he” and “him”. She only uses “The Cairvoyant” and stuff like “this was my first time making contact… [with her]” where she leaves out the pronoun that someone would naturally use. I’m calling it now.
  • Skye was pretty awesome.
  • Clark Gregg is a surprisingly awesome actor. We’d seen glimpses before, but he was top-notch on fire in the interrogation scenes.
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I noticed what May said as well but I had kind of a “Let’s see where this goes” thought. I figured it was something like that but didn’t put too much thought into it.

So we get a big reveal into Coulson’s return and a pretty freaked out scene with his brain being tinkered with but then that leads me to ask why. Why is Coulson resurrected and why does SHIELD do all of this to him? I assume they don’t do that to all the other agents are KIA. The quick answer is that because he’s the hero of the story and a well liked breakout character, but SHIELD went through a lot of effort to bring him back.

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I noticed that, as well. I’d guess the latter.

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Oh and when the Bus used its VTOL to change course I thought Well that was pointless. It would have been easier to just make a big arcing turn.

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Yeah – I turned to my wife and said, “nice trick, pulling a bootlegger turn at 700 mph”. :slight_smile:

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Not a great episode but a good one. Nice follow-up to the cliffhanger.

The story in this episode - the team rescues Coulson - worked and they did a good job advancing the arc - what’s the mystery behind Coulson’s death. The characters were handled well for the most part. Except for Fitz’s anger - that seemed to be coming out of nowhere and didn’t go anywhere in this episode. At best, it’s being developed for future episodes.

I didn’t like them killing off Edison Poe. The writers had the Centipede organization going to a lot of trouble to get him out of prison last episode and now they casually kill him off. We’ve been told several times that Poe is important because he’s the only one who can contact the Clairvoyant and now we see Raina off-handedly replacing him. This seems like lazy plotting - how are we supposed to know what’s important in the story if the writers can’t decide?

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I didn’t like the previous episode; I was preparing to give up on the show. This episode changed my mind. Definitely the show I’m hoping to get every week.

[ul]
[li]The actors are mostly doing a fine job, even Edison Poe & Raina, it’s just that the characters are pretty bad. I’m happy to get more depth to Raina.[/li]
[li]My WAGs include: Melinda May is Skye’s Aunt; Raina is Coulson’s cello-playing girlfriend from Portland; Coulson is The Best There Is at being an agent (sorry, Wolverine), and that’s why Fury wants him around; the Clairvoyant is some Captain America villain.[/li]
[li]Skye On Her Own makes the show better. I especially liked her Melinda May Halloween costume, along with May’s approval. I also liked Ward’s support of her to Hand’s face.[/li]
[li]I’ll probably never like Victoria Hand (stupid hair), but I’m thankful to see more Marvels. Still want Carol Danvers! Jessica Drew! etc etc.[/li]
[li]Fitz acting tough is pretty funny. I hope that’s the intent.[/li]
[li]I hope to have more Simmons-centric stories.[/li][/ul]

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One of my favorite quick-thinking-on-her-feet things was Skye using the bracelet’s disabled-electronics screen to help her bluff by making it into an electronic S.H.I.E.L.D. badge.

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Well, the special effects people have to justify their budget.