“The Dirty Half Dozen”
Directed by Kevin Tancharoen
Written by Brent Fletcher & Drew Z. Greenberg
Skye Ward May. Something Something. Coulson. Something. Agent 33. Hydra. Something something. Mockingbird. Fitz. Ahhhhhhhh.
OH MY GOD AGE OF ULTRON IS ALMOST HERE!!! So soooooon!
Fun episode. I guessed that Bakshi was still under Ward’s control but thought he’d have been kept around for longer. Ward was right - Simmons has changed. Loved the scene with Ward and the Scooby Gang - Skye’s response was perfect, as was the rest of the team’s responses. No one trusts Ward, some trust him less than others.
Not-Adama is looking worse and worse. Bobbi is clearly setting up for a defection, or at least dropping her support. He may not keep as many secrets, but he views the specials as something to be feared and destroyed. Bobbi’s response was great - “We’re all dangerous.” Skye isn’t going to react well to keeping Sparky and her as prisoners.
Skye’s mom is also not coming off so well. She’s controlling and somewhat arbitrary in her leadership. Cal’s just a loose cannon. Raina is clearly working her own agenda.
Lots of Avengers: Age of Ultron call outs. Fury’s alive, Loki’s staff is in play, and metal men will invade our cities, and even a direct use of Avengers. And Maria Hill. So, we’re using this as a setup.
Liked the Hunter - Mack reunion, it felt good. Liked the May - Coulson reunion, very tense and plenty of well placed mistrust on both sides. Didn’t like the Skye fight scene - she’s now a super fighter on par with May and Bobbi and Black Widow. I didn’t buy that - too soon. But I liked her use of her gravity powers.
Same problem I had last week. It was too transparent the way they arranged to have the six original team members getting back together for a mission.
But other than that, a good episode.
I liked the theme of drawing the line between forgivable and unforgivable betrayal. Hunter was able forgive Mac but apparently can’t forgive Bobbi; May was able to forgive Coulson but only after she found out they didn’t involve her ex-husband; and of course, Ward. He learned two things in this episode; how important the team had been to him and how irrevocable his betrayal was.
Also on the subject of forgiveness, I see no sign of its existence in Jiayang. I think the only question at this point is whether she kills Cal next week or kills him in the season finale.
Right, I forgot that one. Certainly would be missed by casual fans of the TV show.
I hope not. I like the fact that characters change on this show. Fitz seems to be reverting to his original state - he’s not a man of action. But Simmons takes action - she took out Bobbi a few weeks ago and arranged for Fitz to take Fury’s toychest. It’s not all good, such as her reaction to enhanced individuals, but she likes Mike well enough and she’s not like Gonzalez who treats them as weapons only.
Whether I am fully ready to accept Skye as a SHIELD badass in addition to being an Inhuman and the PPS (Pivotal Precious Snowflake), I am not sure - but her fight sequence was very well choreographed and directed. Popped off the screen.
I was surprised to see Bakshi dissolve as well. Simmons has become the go-to reactionary.
I agree that her fight scene was wonderfully executed. Flowing around the whole room, shooting and reloading, hand-to-hand fighting…and all in one stedy-cam shot!
I hate hate hate the Simmons-is-now-and-insane murderer thing. She was always a bit precocious and I like that they’re giving her character some gravitas, but she’s gone from the fiery tech to a straight up cold blooded murderer. No bueno.
I too enjoyed the briefing scene where everyone got a chance to remind Ward just what they thought of him.
OTOH, I too thought Skye’s sudden ninja skills were way over the top, although the scene was well filmed.
I missed it when it was first used: who is this ‘Sparky’ everyone keeps referring to?
Simmons is rapidly turning onto the scariest character on Coulson’s team.
OK, maybe not important to anyone else, but I was highly annoyed at the casual way they sacrificed The Bus. Not only was that a rather expensive and hard-to-replace asset, people had a bunch of their personal stuff on it (although I did notice that Lola was conspicuously absent).
That scene took me right out of the episode. Hacker to super-spy in 6 months? Maybe…maybe…6 years. In my eyes, the episode never recovered after that scene. Don’t know if I’ll be back if it gets a season 3. At the very least, this show has been pushed down on the watch-list.
Sparky is my name for Lincoln, who has electrical powers. I can never remember his name when replying (except now when I looked it up) and someone in the show called him Sparkplug or something similar, so it stuck in my head.
One neat thing about Jiaying is that we have no idea how old she is. She can recover from death, and doesn’t age. For all we know she’s thousands of years old and has buried hundreds of husbands and children. Killing Cal may be completely meaningless to her.
I’d hardly call her plan to kill the guy who betrayed all of them and attempted to murder her and her best friend “insane”. She knows they can’t trust Ward. As soon as he was no longer essential to the mission, he became a liability. Killing him at that point was a practical thing to do.
But he lead them to where they wanted to go, killed people who could have easily killed them (if that’s what he wanted in the end like everyone thought), kept his word about having Bakshi work for him, and made his apology speech to everyone. So yeah, let’s kill him cuz of what he MIGHT do.
That’s like killing your boyfriend because he cheated on you once, was faithful and made obvious strides to show that to you now, but MIGHT cheat on you again.
More like killing your boyfriend because he tried to kill you and your best friend once (and came damn near to doing so), killed/tried to kill a bunch of your friends and co-workers, and all this after becoming your boyfriend under false pretenses. But now he’s sorry about all that, so it’s all OK.
I also liked the action sequence with Skye during the assault, that was very well choreographed and executed though I would think she’d use her quake powers a little more. I’m OK with her not though, more quake power usage is coming for sure.
It did pull me out that as soon as she got done with all that action, she ran up to Lincoln who was clearly flat lining and started urging him to wake up.
I wonder if they have another bus parked somewhere so they can go to that. Seems such a waste of equipment (as well as sets/models/etc.)
The “flying around on the bus doing missions” era of the show basically ended with Winter Soldier, there didn’t seem to be any point keeping it around and trying to shoe horn it into episodes.
That analogy was so terrible I think it gave me cancer!
Cheating and murder aren’t in the same ballpark. It’s not the same league, it’s not even the same sport. A better analogy would be dumping your boyfriend and refusing to ever see him again after he cheated on you, because he cheated on you once, was faithful and made obvious strides to show that to you now. Which is totally reasonable behavior, IMHO.