Plot: In order to get a leg up against the rapidly growing Hydra, Director Coulson (Clark Gregg) sends his team out to recover a high profile target. Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) runs into major complications on her top secret mission.
Even though the first season wrapped up a lot of its major threads earlier this year, there were plenty of minor elements that were left completely unresolved. The vast majority of these unresolved elements were characters that came and went once an episode was finished. We still have no idea where people like Akela Amador (Pascale Armand) or Elliot Randolph (Peter MacNicol) are. We know that, eventually, the show will have bring them back in some capacity, but to date we never found out how. “Making Friends and Influencing People” gave us our answer by bringing back Season 1 guest character Donnie Gill/Blizzard (Dylan Minnette) and making him the primary target between these two battling organizations.
Out of all the one-off guest characters, Donnie had the most going for him. He became close with Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Simmons, he attended a S.H.I.E.L.D. academy, he developed superpowers, and he was still out in the open. In a very wise move, “Making Friends and Influencing People” played all of those pieces to give its conflict some extra weight. Hydra wants Donnie because his ice-based powers are incredibly strong. S.H.I.E.L.D. wants Donnie because his past history (and abilities) make him a huge asset for their righteous path. And both hoped to use his affinity with Fitz and Simmons as a means to get closer. To have him join either side would tilt the scales immensely one way or the other.
Seeing as we’re only just starting off this season, it shouldn’t be a surprise that this episode ended with neither S.H.I.E.L.D. or Hydra gaining the Donnie advantage. To be honest, I’m torn about this. On one hand, the backbone of this season is a severely damaged S.H.I.E.L.D. fighting against seemingly unstoppable threats. Getting Donnie on their side might make things a little too easy in that regard. Sure, they wouldn’t use him every single time, but considering how many people that kid wiped out in one episode, he’d be one hell of a secret weapon. It’s simply too early for S.H.I.E.L.D. to get that easy way out. But then there’s the other side, which is a continued lack of forward momentum for our heroic team’s growth. Even though one of Coulson’s objectives is to restore S.H.I.E.L.D., we’ve only seen him fail at that so far. Two people died in the premiere and now Donnie is at the bottom of the ocean with a (possibly) fatal bullet wound. Why can’t the team win, or at least not get put into a situation where winning is also losing?
http://youtu.be/chEZ2zN7QBs
“Making Friends and Influencing People” did the very necessary job of exploring Hydra’s inner workings. To contrast Coulson’s extremely dire straits, last night’s episode opened up with a upbeat happy tune played over Simmons getting ready for work. Rightfully so, that music comes to a screeching halt once we see she’s working for Hydra. I personally didn’t believe for a second that she was a traitor, but I do love that Simmons of all people is the double-agent, so I’m a fan of her story regardless. Her placement in Hydra brings her face to face with Sunil Bakshi (Simon Kassianides), the no longer mysterious former handler of Carl Creel (Brian Patrick Wade). Bakshi is a pretty terrifying guy and his intense interrogation of Simmons really proved just how much of a threat he is to our heroes. However, Bakshi pales in comparison to the real master: Daniel Whitehall (Reed Diamond). Whitehall spent the entirety of the episode acting all evil and brainwashing an Agent 33 (Maya Stojan). Yet even he was brought into the main story as it’s revealed Donnie was already brainwashed to become a sleeper agent. Easily one of the better twists I’ve ever seen on this show.
Fitz continued his meteoric rise to becoming one of the show’s most interesting characters. For starters, the rapport he’s developing with Mac (Henry Simmons) is one of my favorite new aspects. Unlike Lance Hunter (Nick Blood) who’s still characteristically shackled to his dead teammates, Mac is piggybacking off Fitz’s development and popularity to appeal to the audience. It’s absolutely working too. But the Fitz-Mac pairing was hardly the big highlight of this subplot. That belongs to Fitz discovering that Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) is a prisoner. That entire exchange was incredible and I’m very impressed with Caestecker’s ability to carry us through Fitz’s insane emotional roller coaster. It was awesome watching the “nerdy scientist” get drunk with revenge and threaten to mentally break Ward with oxygen deprivation. If there’s one thing this show can always use, it’s Fitz getting justifiably pissed off.
It’s also made abundantly clear throughout the night that Skye (Chloe Bennet) is still a massive work in progress. The first time we see her is in a shooting range with Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), learning the finer points of firearms. A big part of that is keeping her heart rate at a controlled level. Why exactly that’s a focus is never stated, but some people online are speculating that this could be a subtle hint to her becoming She-Hulk. Personally, I’m not buying it. What I am buying though is Skye still continuing as a trainee. Though it was cool to see her in the field before, it was way too early for her to suddenly graduate into full on super agent status. I’m glad we have some clarification. There’s also the simple matter of her learning from Ward that her father (Kyle McLaughlin) is still alive. Glad to see the show is so ready to tackle this head on and not drag it out like Coulson’s survival last season.
In what shouldn’t be a shock to anybody, this season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. continues to excel in ways that the early parts of Season 1 could not. The episodes all have a sense of connectivity, the main villains are clearly outlined, and our heroes are much more compelling. Now that Donnie officially returned, the door is now open for those other loose ends to continue, which is something that obviously excites me greatly. I do hope to learn more about Whitehall though. You’d think after being around since World War II he’d have more stuff going on than brainwashing people, but that’s really all he is right now.
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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