Episode Title: “T.R.A.C.K.S.”
Writers: Lauren LeFranc and Rafe Judkins
Director: Paul Edwards
Previously on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”:
Danger.
That’s what it’s really all about for fans of action TV series. People tune in to see characters thrust into life and death situations while an exciting story plays out. Intellectually, we know that main character deaths are rare in television. But the sense that the characters could die is an important aspect of why these shows work. We have to feel that danger.
The other important aspect is the characters themselves. We have to care about the characters or else there’s no suspense when their lives are on the line. With “T.R.A.C.K.S.,” “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” finally placed the team in a mission gone wrong that seemed legitimately dangerous for everyone. But it failed to make us care for the one character whose life hangs in the balance.
Clark Gregg deservedly earned some heat from Marvel fans this week when he told The Salt Lake Tribune that people who had given up on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” “aren’t geeks, those are losers.”
Gregg walked back those comments in a subsequent interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in which he stated “I don’t mean to say the people frustrated by that discovery period are losers. I just mean, perhaps, be a little more patient because we’re trying something new in a world where the sands are shifting so much.”
Besides biting the hands of fans who essentially clamored for his return as Agent Coulson, Gregg is still wrong about the backlash against “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..” If anyone has given up on the show, it’s because it features poorly developed characters, bad writing and lackluster stories. It took 12 episodes for “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” to even come close to the potential that it displayed in the pilot episode. 12 episodes is not a short period of time, even for a show attempting to find itself. Is Gregg really going to blame fans who wanted the show to be great from the start? It hasn’t even been consistently good.
As much as I hated last week’s episode, “T.R.A.C.K.S.” felt like an important step in the right direction. It didn’t magically solve all of the show’s problems, but this episode displayed the promise that’s been missing while telling a solid story. If the series had been able to match this tone from the start, it probably wouldn’t have so many detractors.
From this point on, there are full spoilers for “T.R.A.C.K.S.,” so if you missed last night’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” then you should probably skip this review or else you’ll have to turn on the holo table.
What immediately set “T.R.A.C.K.S.” apart from the earlier episodes this season is that it had a very Rashomon-like structure in place that followed different team members as an undercover operation on a train went very bad. First, Agent Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) and Coulson were forced to flee the train and make their way back to the bus before Agent Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) underwent a grueling ordeal to escape her captors and reunite with them.
The Coulson and Ward subplot actually had some very effective comedy bits as they struggled to work the holo table that Agents Leo Fitz (Ian De Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) so effortlessly use. But it was May who really shined in her solo section, as she goaded her captor into stabbing her before using his knife to cut herself loose, murder his men and escape. I think that May has finally earned her badass reputation to the audience at large. That was worthy of the Black Widow, herself.
Back on the train, Skye (Chloe Bennet) and Fitz watch helplessly as Simmons takes a stun grenade for the team before they attempt to track down Ian Quinn (David Conrad) and his mysterious package. The episode glosses over exactly how Skye and Fitz followed Quinn’s vehicle and Skye’s rationale for going in alone after Quinn was ludicrous at best. It would be different if Skye had more training as a field agent, but she’s a joke and she’s going to get herself killed.
And that’s kind of what happens here. In one of the most shocking moments of the show to date, Quinn shoots Skye twice after the newly cyborg-ified Mike Peterson (J. August Richards) refuses to do so. I was fairly convinced that Skye would come out of that unscathed, so it was nice jolt to see something else happen for a change.
None of this makes Skye any more likable as a character. It’s pretty rough when the audience surrogate character is also one of the most hated characters on the show. But the other team members care about Skye, and seeing their reactions to her near fatal shooting went a long way towards making them seem like real people. And that’s what this show needs! A touch of real emotions. These characters can’t be the one dimensional ciphers they’ve been all season. We need to care about them as people. That’s a more significant shift than Skye’s near death experience.
There is also an inherent problem in Skye’s potential demise: we already know that S.H.I.E.L.D. has the technology to resurrect someone even several days after their death. Coulson is living proof of this. As long as that technology is out there, even a seemingly permanent death could be undone by it. Presumably the next episode will address this, but it’s an interesting possibility to consider.
One of the other exciting parts of this episode involved Mike’s continuing evolution into the cyborg known as Deathlok. That name probably means very little to non-comic book fans. But for those of us who grew up reading Marvel comics, it’s something to get worked up about. Even in his relatively few scenes on this series, Richards has brought a lot of emotional dimension to Mike. He’s a good guy who is trapped and forced to work for the villains while slowly losing his humanity. Aside from Coulson himself, Mike is the only other character who is really resonating. If that kind of care and development can be given to Skye, Ward, Fitz and Simmons then “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” will be a much stronger show.
This was also a much stronger cliffhanger than the episode featuring Coulson’s abduction before the winter break. I’d like to believe that “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” is on the verge of turning things around, but I need to see more episodes like this one before I can definitively say that. In the meantime, this was a very good episode and I appreciate it on that level. Even if the Stan Lee cameo was bland and forgettable.
