Amador Akela, a former protege of Agent Coulson, is implicated in a series of intricate jewel thefts. While the team investigates her, Amador attacks their recognizance van and escapes. Back at the Big Bus the team finds out that Amador is equipped with a camera in her eyeball, and is being forced to carry out her actions by an outside force through on eye messages. Against May and Ward’s wishes Coulson orders the team to watch the feed from Amador’s eye cam, so they can attempt to stop her and bring her in. Coulson finds out that May went to confront Amador on her own. After a short discussion Amador and May commence on Kung Fu fighting. Turning out the lights gives the advantage to Amador and her x-ray specs at which point Coulson comes in and knocks Amador out with a gun from the first act.
Amador wakes up in a cell on the Big Bus with Coulson. She is worried that her handler will kill her for not following the mission, but she is informed that they have hijacked the signal, and Ward will fulfill the mission with eyeglasses cam while they operate on her to remove her unhelpful eyeball. Ward and Skye are on the ground running the mission, while FitzSimmons are performing the eyespyectomy. They cut off the eyeball right after Ward’s masculine visage is spotted in a mirror by the handler. Agent Coulson confronts this guy and shows his badge. When the badge is shown the handler’s eye cam blows up and it turns out he was a puppet, as well. Amador is taken into custody asking May what changed Coulson. I mean he is REALLY different! Oh. Never mind. And, the stinger has Fitz (or Simmons?) almost cheating at cards and Skye peeping on Ward.
This episode had the best humor of any episode so far. The “seduction” scene was very funny, and there were a few other funny bits thrown in here or there. This was a fun spy episode. Double double agents, exploding gadgets, and unknowable equations all make for a good time. It also cemented Coulson’s role as a great believer in the team, and going all out for people he believes in. I liked it over all. I think they are getting a bit heavy handed with the COULSON IS DIFFERENT stuff. But, hopefully they will let that die down for a little while, until they show us what happened. And, how they are portraying Skye’s crush on Ward is on the edge of being annoying.
Things I noticed and or liked:
Sure, the eye cam was neat. But, that melting golf ball was pretty nifty!
Big Bus to Short Bus “Next time I give out team names.”
Skye’s talent this episode was finding Instagram. On a serious note, it’s neat that they talked about the fact that the big brother of modern society is each other.
“You’re a robot. Can you do that?”
Amador was a bad ass. Especially so, when she grabbed the needle and stuck it right in her eyeball.
I wasn’t totally bowled over by it, but, yeah, a pretty good episode. Between the guys in suits with the red masks, the schtick with the artificial eye and the complete indifference of the two scientists to Ward wandering around their workroom, the show’s reaching “Wild Wild West” levels of surrealism. Oh, and I too LOL’d at “Seduce him”.
I’m sort of assuming this is all leading up to an eventual battle with HYDRA, but so far I don’t think the name has even been mentioned.
Once the ep is on-line, I think I’m going to freeze-frame the scene in Coulson’s office on the Bus, showing the momentos on the shelf, to better see what was there.
Oh, yeah: Ron Glass showed up in the pilot, spoke two lines and disappeared. Wonder if he’ll be in the cast again at some point?
I thought Agent Amador was going to turn out to be Misty Knight.
Lots of utterly unexplained stuff:
a) What happened to her super-hearing/telepathy. We (the audience) heard the standard group-whisper/mumble sound effect that telepathy or super-hearing usually makes when she was in her hotel room just before the golf-ball scene.
b) What happened with her super strength? She managed to rip that guy’s arm off AND defeat 9 other guys. How?
This strikes me as being sloppy.
I did like the guys in the masks, and given the color of the mask, I was thinking “Red Skull” related.
Not bad, but I’m getting worried that they won’t introduce the BB until everybody gets bored. Come on, guys. Get some serious hook out there. So far it’s fairly mundane procedural. Get with the Marvel.
I think the ESP special effects were a red herring to go along with Skye’s speculation. And, I don’t think she tore the guy’s arm off, but used a knife or something to cut and used her kung fu+ night vision to take all the other guys out.
Yeah, I thought the guys in masks were cool. I thought they were going with some sort of Anonymous plot.
In the confines of the plot, yeah, it’s all explainable with her X-ray vision and a knife… but I agree with Fenris that it’s kinda lame to purposely mislead the viewer in such a manner by adding sound effects of that nature.
There’s a lot of good little moments, but so far I’m still not really grabbed by the whole thing. If it wasn’t in the Marvel universe I’d probably give up on it. I’m still not enthused with any of the characters except Coulson. May is my second favorite but I agree with Cat Whisperer she’s starting to be a huge bitch. Ward is so stiff he’s boring, the scientists are horrendously annoying, and Skye isn’t anything great (not to mention I’m still wondering if she’ll betray them at some point, though it looks like we’ll have two episodes with that as a hook so it’s probably not the case).
The thing with the masks was just utterly bizarre and didn’t have a payoff. Feels like something the writer just felt would be cool but can’t really stand on its own.
Hydra was the Red Skull’s evil corporation, right? It was the first thing that sprung to mind when they described the ocular implant thingy, plus it doesn’t require any continuity jiggery-pokery with the movies.
I think this was the best episode so far. I liked the backstory behind Akela’s implant, I liked that Akela didn’t get to keep the bionic eye, and I liked the unexpected revelation that the handler was another hostage.
And that he was very, very expendable, just like Akela was. It shows that whoever is behind it is ruthless, which means Our Heroes will have to play rough to survive.
Thing is, I don’t see post-death Coulson being all that much different, personality-wise, than pre-death Coulson. Not that he had huge roles in the movies, but all along he seemed patient, persistent and well-dressed.
The red masks were freaky - they reminded me of the Gentleman in Buffy, or Hands of Blue.
I assume they worded that on purpose to give the impression she saw something with her x-ray vision. It could be either - she knew him very well from her training days. And the look on May’s face may mean she didn’t know much and now is wondering what is going on.
Originally it was some nerdy short guy with a hawt blonde daughter (“I’M DOING IT ALL FOR YOU, MY BELOVED DAUGHTER!!!”). Then, IIRC, Baron Zemo (or Baron Strucker…don’t remember which) took over. Then Hydra’s organization fractured into a bunch of little fiefdoms (AIM, Secret Empire, THEM, etc).
Yeah, it seemed that Amador was saying that he looked different to her cybernetic eye, but then she dismissed it when pressed about it. Yeah, he looks totally different now, oh never mind.
Decent ep, I liked how the handler was caught up in it as well. Again, I’d still like to see them dig into the Marvel sandbox more, but I assume that’s all coming.