Episode Title: “Seeds”
Writers: Monica Owusu-Breen & Jed Whedon
Director: Ken Fink
Previously on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”
I don’t know if there’s anyone actively hoping that “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” will s*** the bed every week. From the beginning, I’ve just wanted this show to be great. Although given the last few episodes, I’ll settle for good.
But good would be a significant improvement over what we’ve seen so far. “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” is teetering on the edge of mediocrity at the moment.
The maddening thing is that this series could and should work. Some of the ideas in this show have promise and certain characters could become compelling if they actually receive some development. And of course, it’s the Marvel Universe on TV. It’s pretty hard to screw that up, but they’ve found a way.
“Seeds” exemplifies some of the best and worst aspects of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” within a single episode. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of the show’s finest hours.
Before we go any further, you should be aware that there are full spoilers ahead for “Seeds,” so you should probably skip this review if you missed last night’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” or else Coulson will give a long monologue about a scene that we never saw.
Last week’s episode was a big one for Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), as he finally learned that he was dead for several days before S.H.I.E.L.D. performed some very invasive procedures to bring him back to life. Now Coulson apparently has a file full of his own autopsy photos to obsess over.
Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) has been one of the more interesting characters on this show, and Coulson’s foul mood gives May the chance to be more active in the story. May sends the team off to S.H.I.E.L.D. Hogwarts while she and Coulson head to Mexico to track down a lead on Skye’s (Chloe Bennet) past. While looking for former S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Lumley (Boyd Kestner) — the partner of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who brought Skye to the orphanage as a baby — May is almost desperately chatty as she tries to get Coulson’s mind off of his ordeal. May even blurts out the truth about her ongoing fling with Agent Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) in one of the more amusing jokes of the episode.
When Coulson and May finally spot Lumley, the chase is pretty half-hearted. Lumley knows why they’re after him and he drops a bombshell on them by revealing that Skye was an 0-8-4 (an unknown object or person with great power) when she was an infant. A Chinese village and an entire S.H.I.E.L.D. team died trying to protect Skye, with Lumley as the only survivor.
That’s not the worst way to begin tying up Skye’s past, but this is one of the rare occasions when an extended flashback would have been a better way to go. When the tale is simply told, it loses a lot of its emotional punch. On the face of it, the idea that Skye has some kind of power could be interesting. But it also undercuts the notion that “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” is about the non-powered people trying to make their way through this insane world of superhumans and aliens.
Meanwhile, Agents Leo Fitz (Ian De Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) receive a warm welcome back at the S.H.I.E.L.D. science academy, alongside Skye and Ward; who feel out of place there.
It initially seems that someone is targeting students with a freezing device, including Donnie Gill (Dylan Minnette) and Seth Dormer (Daniel Zovatto). But it turns out that Donnie and Seth are the masterminds behind the plot; which was solely intended to draw Fitz into their orbit so he could solve a technical problem for them.
As far as plans go, that was a pretty bad one that shouldn’t have worked. Two geniuses came up with that plan?! I did like the way that Fitz empathized with Donnie, as it made him seem more like a human being. But Fitz’s reaction couldn’t have been predicted and it was a fluke that Fitz ended up trying to befriend Donnie. Fitz had to be told to do so; which means that Donnie and Seth’s plan really came close to not working at all.
In a callback to episode 3, the real villain this week is corrupt millionaire, Ian Quinn (David Conrad). Quinn is an improvement on Raina and Edwin Po, but he still comes off as a second rate Justin Hammer. Quinn just doesn’t have the screen presence to become the compelling adversary that this show badly needs.
There is an attempt to make Donnie sympathetic, as he was apparently roped into this scheme by Seth. Donnie also appeared to have a genuine rapport with Fitz; which gets shattered when Fitz and the team aren’t able to save Seth’s life during the insane ice storm that was created just to impress Quinn. On a side note, there’s a very effective gag when Ward says that he can reach Donnie and Seth in the eye of the storm…. before immediately deciding against it once he sees how harsh the conditions were. Some of the funniest jokes on this show have always been at Ward’s expense. That’s really the best use for him.
Near the end, we see that Donnie has become embittered towards S.H.I.E.L.D. and even towards Fitz as well. For his transgressions, Donnie is getting a one way trip to the Sandbox, the same place where Raina is most likely being held… and I believe that’s where Graviton (Ian Hart) is still gestating as well. With the emergence of Donnie’s freezing powers (he’s the minor villain, Blizzard in Marvel’s comics), it seems like S.H.I.E.L.D. is only creating a bigger problem for themselves by putting their new enemies in such close proximity to each other.
But that’s assuming that the writers on this show are actually taking us somewhere with this story. I don’t have a lot of faith in them anymore. And the dénouement for this episode is so howlingly bad that it ranks among the worst TV moments in recent memory.
At one point in the episode, Coulson takes Skye aside and he starts telling her what he learned about her past. Then the music kicks in, the tears come and it’s incredibly sappy and stupid. But that’s just the warm up for the really horrifically written scene in which Coulson relates a conversation he had with Skye in which she embraced the idea of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the family she had all along (because they looked out for her, yo!) and it reaffirmed Coulson’s faith in humanity at the same time.
Are you f***ing kidding me?! SERIOUSLY?!
I’m not sure that there are words to adequately convey just how terrible that was. Let’s examine this for a second. The writers choose not to show us this scene… why? Is it because they couldn’t deliver something that lived up to the emotional and uplifting moment that they wanted? Or is it because they didn’t trust the acting abilities of Bennet and Gregg to bring a scene like that to life?
Either way, it was incredibly unsatisfying.
