TV Corner: Agents of SHIELD

[Content Note: Discussions of violence; hostility to consent. Spoilers for the most recent episode of Agents of SHIELD.]


We rejoin the story in Sweden, where a bunch of dudes in matching suits and red face masks, each with a metal briefcase handcuffed to his wrist, get into a subway car. A young black woman sizes them up, then closes her eyes, and the train lights go out. Struggle struggle struggle. When the lights come back on, she's gone and they're dead. One of them has had his hand detached from his arm, and the briefcase once attached via handcuff is missing.

(It is at this point that Iain observes someone with a cuffed briefcase just lost his hand in an episode of The Blacklist, and we both resolve not to cuff briefcases to our wrists. Just in case.)

The woman exchanges the contents of the briefcase—a shit-ton of diamonds—with some sketchy dude in exchange for an access card which he assures her will get her where she needs to go.

Meanwhile, at SHIELD HQ, the team is reviewing footage of the robbery, in which Coulson has taken an interest because he believes the culprit may be a SHIELD agent. Ha ha jokes about how everything is on social media now and people are surveilling themselves. They find images of the robbery on Instagram, and Coulson recognizes the woman as a former SHIELD agent thought to have died in a mission gone bad. She is his former protégé, Akela Amador. Coulson says he may have pushed Amador too hard, to try to turn her into a team player.

Something something they go after Amador. Something something she gets away, but doesn't kill them. Something something they realize she is being controlled from an implant in her head. This last bit would have been a pretty neat reveal if the show hadn't already revealed it to us last week in scenes from the upcoming episode. When shows spoil themselves, it makes me grumpy. I'm looking at you, The Walking Dead.

Anyway. The thing in Amador's eye socket allows her unknown captors to see what she sees, gives her backscatter x-ray vision, transmits her mission info straight to her brainpan, and also obliges her compliance, because it contains a kill switch that will end her life if she tries to escape or deviate from their directives.

The team hacks into her vision feed so they can try to find out where she is. Melinda May takes the first watch—and while everyone else is asleep, she discovers where Amador is hiding and takes off to confront her. Fight fight fight. Coulson busts in and shoots Amador with a non-lethal weapon on which Fitz and Simmons have been working. When Amador wakes up at SHIELD HQ, she asks how it's possible she's still alive since she's off-mission, and they tell her that her captors believe she's still on-mission, thanks to TECHNOLOGY that has put on Chiseled White Hero's face. He is acting as her stand-in, and doing her mission, with Skye's tech help.

Luckily, the person who has been watching Amador is very stupid, and doesn't notice that her feed is suddenly about a foot taller, nor that her hands are now white and male. Also! He has revealed himself to be an Englishman, because he uses words like "lift" and "flat" and "cheerio" and "crumpet" and "wicked googly."

While CWH subs on Amador's latest mission, Amador goes under the knife back at SHIELD HQ so Fitz and Simmons can remove the implant. Simmons is reluctant to jab a needle to deliver local anesthetic directly into Amador's eyeball, so Amador grabs it and does it herself, because she is a BAMF, and I really hope that she is going to join the team!

Everything's going great for CWH, until he is directed to "seduce" a guard in the facility he's infiltrating. He does not seduce the guard, but instead knocks him the fuck out. He gets into the room he needs to access and takes a picture of a bunch of alien-looking maths on the wall. MISSION COMPLETE. But, on the way out, the guard's computer is gleep-glorping a warning, and CWH realizes he was supposed to seduce him to get his password. How Amador would have discerned this is a mystery, as is how she would have magically seduced a guard into giving over his password in like thirty seconds.

So CWH has to make a run for it and whooooooooops he just looked in a mirror, so he tells Fitz and Simmons to cut the wiring on Amador's implant ASAP, which they do. Phew. Skye shows up to rescue CWH, and they drive off. Phew. Coulson locates the Englishman who's been controlling Amador, who, upon seeing Coulson, is brain-bombed and dies. THE CONTROLLER WAS BEING CONTROLLED.

We are left with two mysteries: Who's the Big Boss controlling this whole operation, and what is that weirdo formula?

In the end, my hopes that Amador will join the team are dashed, as she is being held in a cell and Coulson is explaining to her that she'll get a fair trial. Um, WHUT. Who is taking her to trial after there's mountainous irrefutable evidence that she was being coerced under threat of death? Fuck that.

Skye uses the backscatter function on the special Amador-eyeball-feed-replicator glasses to check out CHW's naked bits under his clothes. This is, of course, played for a giggle. For real, Joss Whedon? Gross.