Plot: When the United Nations is seemingly attacked by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Director Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) is forced to negotiate with Grant Ward’s (Brett Dalton) brother, Senator Christian Ward (Tim DeKay). Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) leads a mission to save whatever remains of S.H.I.E.L.D., while Skye (Chloe Bennet) talks to Grant and Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) work through personal issues.
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been great this season. The show’s felt more streamlined than ever, the conflicts are exciting, and our protagonists are functioning like a well-oiled machine despite their small resources. It’s become a really fun show. Yet despite this huge jump in quality, viewership is abysmal. Last week’s episode registered the lowest record number in the show’s brief history. In order to remedy this, Marvel promised to reveal the first ever trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron during this week’s broadcast. Unfortunately for them, a hacker leaked the trailer not even 24 hours after the news broke, so Marvel had to do some damage control. They used an exclusive scene as a band-aid but half of it was footage people already saw in the trailer. “A Fractured House” was perhaps a bad pick to show any Age of Ultron footage too. Compared to the past two episodes, this week’s was a step down.
The biggest issue of the night was definitely the episode’s structure. Unlike the past few weeks where the team was all working towards a similar goal, you know, as a team, “A Fractured House” divided everyone up. May, Bobbi Morse (Adrianne Palicki), and Lance Hunter (Nick Blood) were off globe trotting to fight Hydra, Skye spent all her time talking to Grant, Coulson was playing politics in Washington DC, and Simmons was trying to work through Fitz’s issues. Perhaps “A Fractured House” meant more than how Grant and Christian are completely divided or how S.H.I.E.L.D. is damaged. It can also apply to how the core team structure was broken up and only connected through pretty flimsy means.
Everything that happened spiraled off the attack on the UN, but it’s also that attack where the first issue arises. Marcos Scarlotti (Falk Hentschel) led Hydra’s ambush using weapons crafted from The Diviner. The special effects were really, really cool, and I like what the weapons could do. Yet using them didn’t make any sense. Sure, Hydra wanted to make an impression, but using normal guns would have had the exact same impact. Christian pushed his anti-S.H.I.E.L.D. bill because of the attacks and not the weapons used. Plus, May’s little team went on a completely pointless mission to Okinawa, Japan to learn about the Diviner disks. This was such a waste of time. Why wouldn’t they just go right after Scarlotti and deal with the disks later? S.H.I.E.L.D. is at risk and needs all the help they can get. They clearly don’t have time for trips to Japan.
Christian’s push for legislation felt oddly placed too. Why now of all times? I can definitely understand the UN attack being a tipping point, but why wasn’t any of this suggested after Hydra’s uprising? Why did anyone wait this long to do something like this? And considering how Hydra killed several major political figures in cold blood, the public response was stupidly minimal. You’d think more people would be up in arms about this. This conflict was put on a global scale and yet it was exceptionally limited. I really, really hope this isn’t the last time that someone in politics suggest a bill to bring S.H.I.E.L.D. down (considering how Captain America: Civil War is coming, it’s definitely not). There’s no reason why an impassioned speech from one US senator should mean the end of this issue.
Thankfully these issues improved near the end. Once Fitz and Mac (Henry Simmons) discovered how the disks were invented (again, rendering the Okinawa trip pointless), May’s team is right back on track. They duke it out with Scarlotti’s band of Hydra agents in another excellent example of this season’s amped up fight choreography. Bobbi was especially awesome as she handily took down several enemies on her own. Outside of the fights, she even makes Lance a much more compelling character. Clearly bringing Mockingbird in was a brilliant idea. If only we had more of this action and less of the plodding dialogue. Fortunately this allowed Brigadier General Glenn Talbot (Adrian Pasdar) to open his eyes too. Even though I enjoyed him as that wild card, we all know that eventually he’d realize Hydra was the real threat. That moment came last night and I actually welcome it. With The Doctor (Kyle MacLachlan) now paired up with Daniel Whitehall (Reed Diamond), the time for S.H.I.E.L.D. to focus more on the true danger is now.
Skye’s story unfortunately was the universal low of the night, which is a shame when you consider how great she was last week. She practically spent the entire episode shackled to Ward and it was mostly a waste of time. Ward kept talking about how he always speaks the truth, Skye bought into it, and they talked about her father a little. It’s basically everything we had already seen before. The only kernel that was somewhat worthwhile was the knowledge that Hydra was responsible for the death of Skye’s mother. Apparently, her father went absolutely crazy once he saw what happened. There’s definitely something lurking underneath him and I look forward to finding it out. Ward’s escape was unfathomably predictable though. How many times have we seen a prisoner escape while being transferred to captivity? We even had this last season with Garrett. But while the act was predictable, Ward actually being out is great. He really is a much better villain than a hero, and shouldn’t be locked up. Playing up the “he said, he said” angle with Christian was a great touch. We really don’t know who is telling the truth, but that chilling look at the end certainly says a lot.
Fitz-Simmons was definitely the universal high, as you can expect. You’d think Simmons returning would be great for Fitz, but it’s actually not. The man is too upset that she left him in such a damaged state. You can see why too. He spilled his heart out to her with death around the corner, even saved her life, and then watched her leave. That sucks. Their damaged relationship is such a great/tragic twist too. I loved their pairing together and I want nothing more than for it to be repaired. The added benefit to this though is we still have Fitz-Mac for a little while longer. I honestly don’t know what Mac would do without Fitz.
“A Fractured House” was a good episode. This whole season so far is really great. But when you measure this up to the past two outings, it just doesn’t compare. It started off too divided and most the episode suffered for that. At least it rebounded near the end to finish on a strong note. There’s also promise to focus on Coulson’s mystery drawings when the show returns in two weeks (next week is a 75th Anniversary special for Marvel) which is simply spectacular. I hope they actually give concrete answers and don’t bait us with more teases. Seeing as this episode ended with a guy (Brian Van Holt) getting the very same drawings tattooed on his body, it’s easy to get the impression that something is coming. I hope it’s worth the wait.
Rating: 8.5/10
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Luke Kalamar is Pop-Break.com’s television and every Saturday afternoon you can read his retro video game column, Remembering the Classics. He covers Game of Thrones, Saturday Night Live and The Walking Dead (amongst others) every week. As for as his career and literary standing goes — take the best parts of Spider-man, Captain America and Luke Skywalker and you will fully understand his origin story.
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I’m not liking the whole “Bobbi is Lance’s ex” thing. It seems to cliche. Especially because it seems them getting back together (in some capacity) is inevitable. His ex would have been a great one-off.
I just don’t know what to believe with Ward. Was he lying about his brother the whole time? Was his brother the true liar? Was Ward full of it when he told Skye about her mother? If her father did go berserk and skill a bunch of Hydra, is that foreshadowing for what’s to come?