REVIEW: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "The Team"
Well it’s finally here. After seventeen episodes, we finally have a story revolving around a team of super-powered secret agents saving the day. SHIELD is good when it comes to action, and these characters, on some levels, are good or deep enough to carry the team. Sadly, even the Team falls under the show’s bigger priority: the big twist. And not even a good one.
But you know what people would rather see than superheroes on a superhero show? Knowing the results of the New York Primary of course! The fact that this is the second time that happened warrants a comment here unfortunately since I fear this will not be the last time this year. Fortunately, we open otherwise interrupted with a fantastic reintroduction to Joey and Elena who bounce off better than half of the new characters this season. Since the show does not spend that much time on them, I won’t either on how fantastic they were, even though they easily rescued the team.
Then again, this is SHIELD after all. The only thing more important than super-powered characters are the twists, and their best twist is a hidden traitor who is taken to the base after coming in contact with Hive. You can’t possibly want to keep those warm successful feelings of a job well done after all. Seriously, the knowledge that one of them’s a traitor immediately brings down the episode even before we really started. And I really liked The Capitalized Team.
I guess that’s the price we pay for having characters we like. Once we see Elena now Yo-Yo talking/flirting to Mack next to weapons, Joey acting distant after nearly killing Lucio, and Lincoln acting sketchy around the Kree device (or was he always like that?), no one’s safe. The episode quickly turns from a superhero rescue to a who can you trust game. I can’t say I’m surprised, but it’s a little disappointing after the long wait.
One bright side is the acceleration of knowledge. They finally explain Hive’s mind control system on Inhumans. They even call him Hive, his actual name. SHIELD is good when it’s moving, even when it involves half the team threatening the other half. Or in this case, literally showing Simmons taking a man’s brain apart. If you read this review before watching the episode, the best thing I can tell you is that when you see FitzSimmons in hazmat suits, just look away until the scene’s over. It doesn’t matter what you think of the rest of the episode, I guarantee I am helping you.
Of course, the base is then under attack because that’s what happens every other episode. Tensions run even higher when the Secret Warriors start to turn on each other for all being on their own at one point or another. Eventually, they’re all caught for their own good as SHIELD can’t tell who the traitor is, and they can all take out the base easily. Finally, they corner Lincoln since he once caught a glimpse of Ward two episodes ago on his own. As much as I would have loved for Lincoln to be the traitor to add some kind of interest towards his character, the second the entire group believes this idea, it has to be something else.
Sure enough, when the two are alone, Daisy confides in Lincoln that the two need to escape before revealing that she was, in fact, the traitor. Is this the show’s solution for people’s dislike of Lincoln? What did Daisy ever do to them but bring superheroes into the show? This is the exact opposite solution considering now we have to go through episodes considering Lincoln the good guy with superpowers. That’s almost, wait, no, it IS worse than just killing her since now she’ll be around just to tease us.
And I don’t know how I feel about the show after this. You can argue how you feel about Daisy as a character or how you felt about her as Skye before, but when you take a character who we have followed around for two and a half years and do this, it makes me feel like the show has no point. And SHIELD has argued to find a point since its beginning. Tearing apart what was the base of the show is probably worse than seeing the superhero team falling apart before it started. Betrayal made Ward more interesting as a villain, but for Daisy, it just makes her look weak as a hero. No one wins here.
Is there a bigger word than disappointment? I feel like that the word doesn’t come close to this episode’s fall. What could have been fun has now fallen to misery. I can’t help but feel as though this is caused from the desire of shock value over decent storytelling or the idea that sad and miserable is somehow better than happiness and victory. Granted, there are still a few episodes to backtrack from this nonsense since they would never end a season on Daisy permanently being evil, and many shows don’t get that chance. But the bottom line is, they poisoned what could have been a good episode. Even as weeks go by and they work past this issue, this will always be that episode. You have been warned.
