Agents of SHIELD (S2E7) Review: Answers And Questions

One major flaw of Agents of SHIELD's first season was the way it constantly delayed giving the audience answers on pivotal questions, instead relying on lackluster storytelling to distract them from the fact that nothing of substance was getting answered. The major pivotal question that never got much resolution was Coulson's resurrection, which gets more clarity in this episode than it did in the entire first season.

For this second season, Coulson has been obsessed with drawing strange markings that come as a side-affect of the alien substance he got injected with to bring him back from the dead. This week, he learns he may not be the only one whose looking for what these symbols mean, and in order to figure out some answers, he decides to use a machine last glimpsed in Season 1 that can retrieve memories SHIELD erased from his brain.

Quite a sci-fi-ish setup there, huh? But it's a pretty good plotline that does an excellent job giving Clark Gregg some room to show off how much the symbols Coulson is carving is damaging him. Seeing him suffering while remembering lost memories related to the alien serum is quite compelling to see, especially when he wakes up from the machine and starts attacking his fellow agents in a haze. This kind of behavior has some of the agents, like Mac, feeling untrustworthy of Coulson, and it's nice to see the show continue to conflict and mistrust within this group. It adds a dash of realism to the proceedings, as well as giving more depth to the ensemble cast.

While various members of the cast (Skye, Fitz, Simmons) were at HQ helping Coulson, the rest of the cast was out tracking down Grant Ward. This plotline could have felt like a distraction, and to be frank, it does at times, especially once the Coulson plotline gets really engaging. It doesn't help that some members of the cast, like Triplett and Mockingbird, aren't given anything notable to do in this story. But I do like seeing Ward in this manner, as his calm demeanor clashes with his vicious threats in a compelling way. It's also nice that he gets to namedrop Strucker for the first time since The Winter Soldier.

Recently, someone brought to my attention that Clark Gregg is 50, which blows my mind. The dude is in great shape and does action sequences, like the one featured in this episodes climax, in a great manner. As Coulson faces off against another fellow suffering from madness over the symbols, played by Brian Von Holt, it's neat to see Coulson handle combat alone with no other agents to back him up.

It's during this finale that Coulson see's a 3D rendering of the symbols and finds clarity. The urge to carve them is gone, and he returns to a normal state. Thankfully, the show has learned it's lesson from the first season and gives some definitive closure to the storyline, with Coulson facing all of the agents in the compound, assuring them of his sanity and revealing the alien symbols are a map of a city. A city, eh? I can think of a few "inhuman" ways that plotline could go, heh heh. In all seriousness, though, it's nice to see distinct improvements in AoS over it's first season, especially when it's done in a satisfying manner that can allow characters like Coulson to expand.