I’d opt for the far more useful hoovermouse.
hear hear, foolsguinea!
I believe Ward still has some growing to do, and I think it won’t happen until the season finale cliffhanger. And then next season he will be much more relaxed.
Also, its really good.
I liked the episode, I thought the character development for Fitz and Simmons was long overdue and I’m glad I can finally tell those two apart now.
One odd thing I noticed: Skye’s bracelet was supposed to be the same one given to her boyfriend in the Rising Tide, something that prevented him from using computers or electronics or something. But Skye was perfectly able to use and manipulate the computers aboard their plane. What’s up with that?
When Coulson handed the bracelet to the Boyfriend, he commented that Boyfriend wouldn’t be using computers unless SHIELD wanted him to. So they can control whether it blocks computer use, or not.
Also, there was a line of dialog when Skye was digging up info on the first victim. She says something to the effect of “O.K. I have found information about that guy . . . of course, you KNOW I’ve found it because I’m wearing this bracelet that monitors everything I do on the computer.”
ETA: Also, I liked that there was so little Skye in this episode. It’s not that I really dislike her character so much, but I didn’t think she was playing very strongly as the “lead” for the series. I realize her character is the outsider- thereby a stand-in for the audience as we learn all about S.H.I.E.L.D., but she just can’t carry the show.
What part of “don’t touch Lola” do you not understand?
But my more serious thoughts on why they didn’t use Lola, they were over the middle of the ocean, what sort of range does Lola have? I doubt she’s fast enough to catch back up to the jet, and who knows if a mid air boarding is even possible, so maybe if he’d bailed out in Lola, he would have still wound up in the drink, just a little later, and maybe even harder to find (since he would be further from where he bailed out). And Phil probably wouldn’t be happy about Lola winding up in Namor’s garage.
And let’s face facts. A scene with a flying car would have hit the special effects budget a lot harder than a parachuting scene did.
I’ve read online - don’t recall where - that neither Thor nor Loki will appear. Makes sense; neither would come cheap. I’m betting that it will involve the Frost…beastie still wandering around town at the end of Thor II.
I really liked it. As a non-comics reader, the more folks complain about Marvel IP’s absence and mention what ought to show up, the gladder I am that it’s so light with Marvel IP.
Ward’s self-impression reminds me of a scene in Buffy in which some jerk builds a Buffy-bot, and then Buffy has to go in and pretend to be the Buffy-bot in order to get some information from the guy. And in that scene in which she was pretending to be a Buffy-bot, I thought, “Wow, Buffy’s a terrible actress! Or at least whoever’s playing Buffy is – waitaminute…” because I realized that Sarah Michelle Gellar was acting like Buffy acting like a robot acting like Buffy, and she was able to make each layer of this charade except the first one perfectly clear to me, and that’s some good acting.
So the actor playing Ward was acting like Ward acting like someone else acting like Ward, and you were able to follow what he was doing. That’s not bad acting, if you ask me.
I definitely like the answer to the question “How did Ward and Simmons make it back to the Bus?” to be “Namor.”
For me, suspension of disbelief is pretty easy. Coulson’s “Moroccan Navy” reference is enough.
I can appreciate the non-Marvel fans not really wanting lots of obscure comic book people thrown in, but I really do think it can be done in such a way that we fanboys have our nerdgasms and the rest of you don’t get lost.
Yeah, you’re supposed to fill in the blanks. For me, I filled it in with “Ward opened his parachute and, following his Shield training, scanned the ocean for a landing spot. His exceptional vision, so useful for finding the Jemma-sized speck among the clouds, came through again as Ward spotted the Morrocan Navy cutter on routine patrol. If he steers hard, they just might make it there…”
I’ll listen more closely when I get a chance to rewatch it online, but when I watched the original airing- the line that everyone in this Thread seems to have heard as “the Moroccan Navy”, I heard as “the Moroccan Office”. I understood this to mean that there is a S.H.I.E.L.D. office in Morocco and that, bureaucratically, it’s an office that Coulson dislikes having to deal with.
I took it as a quick shorthand way to give more of a glimpse into how global S.H.I.E.L.D.'s reach is, as well as an explanation as to why there existed a rescue team that had the resources to so quickly and successfully locate two people in the Atlantic Ocean.
Still doesn’t explain how they got back on the plane before the delivery to “The Sandbox”. Just wanted address all the references in this Thread to the Moroccan Navy- I don’t believe that’s correct. I will however pay close attention when I rewatch it to see if I am in error.
Oh, and by the way, with everyone listing their favorite things or most hated things about this episode . . . I’ll just chime in and say that I appreciated that this episode had the best acting of the entire series so far: Couson, Fitz, and especially Simmons- she was wonderful to watch in this episode, such a great performance.
Also, when they were scanning people in the firehouse, I totally called that Simmons was infected, which I suppose was an easy call; but I also disagree with folks that it would have been Whedony to kill her off. I knew she was safe, because he impending death was completely telegraphed to us as inevitable. When Whedon kills characters off, he does so in a sudden, random fashion that makes the deaths hurt more. He only gives you advance warning that a character’s gonna die if the character isn’t gonna die.
Of course, as soon as you’re sure of that, he can sneak up on you in plain sight. 
I actually thought that the scanner was going to reveal that something was “off” about Coulson- not that he was infected, but that there would be something about him that would read as an anomaly.
I just found out right now, looking at the Wiki page, that the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent from “The Sandbox” who we see on the screen during the communication, then we see him again at the end confronting Coulson- he is officially a recurring character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe:
He (“he” meaning both the actor and the character) was in the “Marvel One Shot” short film titled Item 47, which was included as an extra on the Blu-ray release of The Avengers.
In his first appearance, he definitely was under the impression that Coulson was dead (it’s included in dialog). In this, his second appearance, his first line was something to the effect of “Coulson, I’m glad to find out that you’re not dead.”
If I had recognized him at the time as a character that had previously appeared, I would have really gotten a kick out of it. Still, cool to find out after the fact. Since he has now officially “reoccurred”, I suppose we may well see him again.
I agree.
I know nothing about the Marvel universe. I did watch the Avengers movie but don’t remember much beyond the fact that there was a lot of fighting, the Avengers didn’t seem to get along very well, and “Hulk smash”.
I am guessing that the majority of viewers are like us.
BIGTIME-WHEDON SPOILERS:
Fred? and to a slightly lesser extent, Joyce? This ep was similar enough to Hole in the World that I thought Simmons had a distinct chance of really dying. And it wouldn’t have been that much earlier than Doyle in ep9 of Angel, either. (Nevermind Jesse in ep1 of Buffy for the moment)
Funny to see the wildly mixed reactions to this ep here. My wife and I found it solidly good, but not phenomenal. So we’re in between the extremes. The science was sketchy even for comic-book science, but the acting was out of the park. And finally some character to FitzSimmons, like a present just for me from the writers. Now, can we have that ep with no mention of Coulson’s mystery resurrection? please?
I did hate the “vaccine in 2 hrs” (ANTISERUM!) plot, and the midair rescue did instantly remind me of IM3, but it was spectacular enough that I forgive it.
That’s what I heard and understood as well.