Episode Title: “0–8–4”
Writers: Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon & Jeffrey Bell
Director: David Straiton
Previously on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”:
Somehow, Marvel managed to keep a big secret about this week’s special cameo appearance. And it would have been a hell of a surprise… had ABC not spoiled it yesterday on Facebook.
What that says to me is that ABC was more concerned with a ratings pop from a guest spot by one of the Marvel movie stars than it was for the audience’s experience of seeing that tag scene without any idea that was coming.
By pulling that stunt, ABC isn’t showing a lot of trust in a program that pulled in 20 million viewers across all platforms last week. “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” is still finding its legs and figuring out what kind of series it’s going to be. But it deserved to have that moment left intact. Even at this early stage, “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” is still more promising than most of the other new fall TV shows.
There are full spoilers ahead for “0-8-4,” 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’re gonna have to be the one to tell Coulson what happened to his vintage collection of Captain America trading cards.
You can’t have S.H.I.E.L.D. without Nick Fury and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” wasted little time bringing in the big boss for his first live action television appearance since the unfortunate Nick Fury TV movie on Fox. That one featured David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury and… I really don’t have to say any more, do I?
Samuel L. Jackson openly spoke about his desire to make an appearance on this show. And we should have known something was up when he stopped talking about it. I’m not sure when Jackson’s scene was filmed, but I suspect it may have been before the rest of the cast was even brought on board the show. Fitz and Simmons are namechecked, but only Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) is there to get chewed out by his boss.
Fury’s scene is brief, but his wistful appreciation of the destroyed bar on the plane was priceless. That little touch of humor from Jackson was very welcome. I’m wondering if the general audience is going to be a little spoiled by these Marvel Cinematic cameos when two of the big ones are already out of the way in the first two episodes. This cameo may have been better placed later in the season. But for what it was, I appreciated it. Hopefully Jackson’s next appearance on this show will be more substantial.
The one really serious piece of business out of Fury’s appearance is his warning that Skye (Chloe Bennet) is a risk. Something that Coulson already knows, he just doesn’t know how big the risk already is.
As an opening sequence, the episode had a flash forward to an explosion on the S.H.I.E.L.D. plane as Coulson held on for his life. That’s the kind of trick a writer normally pulls when they realize that the actual opening scene isn’t quite working or exciting enough.
Picking up where we left off last week made it seem like the show was covering its bases again by having Coulson relate his death and his recovery to a disbelieving Skye. The debate between Coulson and Agents Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) and Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) over adding Skye to the team also played more like another excuse for exposition. It wasn’t a bad scene, it just felt a little unnecessary.
Only Leo Fitz (Ian De Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) are really happy to have Skye on the team. But for the most part, Grant was still pulling his “I’m the only one who should be on this team” attitude, although he softened up considerably by the end of the episode.
Melinda may not be the main character, but she is the ass-kicker on this show. Both of her fights were well staged, but the most endearing thing about Melinda is that she has no desire to be the guardian of this group and yet she does it anyway. It’s also very amusing to see how much Grant, Simmons and Fitz admire Melinda’s reputation as “The Cavalry.” Although as nicknames go, it’s kind of dumb.
Answering the 0-8-4 emergency call from the pilot episode, Coulson’s team heads to an archaeological site in Peru to retrieve an object that seems to be connected to the Tesseract from Captain America and The Avengers. One thing that’s immediately clear is that Skye doesn’t serve much of a purpose out in the field and her attempts to be helpful only seem to annoy her new teammates.
Into the mix comes Comandante Camilla Reyes (Leonor Varela), a member of Peru’s military who apparently worked with Coulson in the past. Again, it seems a little early in the series for Coulson to be running into ex-love interests around the world. He’s not Wolverine, damn it! However it seems that Coulson never had that kind of relationship with Camilla. And it’s Camilla’s sudden romantic interest in him that seems to tip Coulson off to her true intentions.
About half of this episode takes place on Coulson’s S.H.I.E.L.D. plane; which almost makes this a bottle episode. Even so, the director handled the action sequences with skill and the enemy takeover became a team building exercise for Coulson’s recruits. That was fairly effective too.
One of the great moments in this episode came when Camilla called Coulson out on his apparent mid-life (or “Afterlife,” as Coulson put it) crisis by surrounding himself with a young team, a rockin’ airplane, various collectibles and a vintage car that flies. That seems like a very accurate assessment. The only things that Coulson appears to be missing are a convincing toupée and a trophy wife.
As much as Melinda doesn’t want to be a mother-figure, Coulson seems to embrace the idea of being a mentor. He boasts about his team’s capabilities even before they vindicate his choices by retaking the plane with no casualties… on their side. A couple of enemy soldiers weren’t quite as lucky when they were sucked out of the plane. However, Coulson goes out of his way to save Camilla and even Grant tries to save one of the enemy soldiers.
In the “that didn’t take long” department, Grant seems to pull a 180 on his assessment of Skye while speaking to a seemingly disinterested Melinda. I think it would have been hilarious if Grant had inadvertently talked Melinda into being Skye’s training officer or if Melinda had the obvious romantic interest in Skye that Grant seems to already have. Instead it looks like we’re heading towards an eventual Skye and Grant coupledom. It’s a shame that Grant doesn’t have a “p” in his name. Otherwise, they could be “Skype.”
The twist that really made the episode work was that Skye is a double agent who is still working with Rising Tide. And why not? She’s only known Coulson and his group for a few days while she’s been in RIsing Tide for much longer than that. It’s only natural that her loyalty would be to that group. Yet Skye’s facial expressions convey that she’s already conflicted about spying on her new teammates. But that didn’t stop her from telling her contact “I’m in.”
Ending the main part of the episode on that reveal elevated the entire story and it gave Skye some much needed internal conflict. Obviously, this is TV and Skye’s secret won’t last forever. I’m betting that it will come out by the end of the season and she’ll either be forced to betray the team or she’ll come clean and be temporarily forced out of the team. I’d be shocked if the story went somewhere else entirely. Skye is already our audience surrogate into S.H.I.E.L.D., now she can be our surrogate in the camp of the enemy as well.
