What They Say:
The Writing On The Wall – The alien glyphs Coulson has been etching lead the team to several murder victims; lies and secrets come to a head.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After seeing how Hydra, ot at least one element of Hydra, caused a good number of problems for SHIELD by trying to alter the public landscape and view of them through their attack on the UN, we got the fun twist of solidifying some position for the organization after discovering that Ward’s older brother is actually a US senator. With a little careful dialogue from Coulson, that got his agency a little more breathing room to exist, especially considering the kind of damage that was about to come down on them from what Hydra did. This doesn’t exactly enamor the senator with them, but he’s trying to keep his position as well and likely comes out ahead politically. He may not come out well in terms of health though, now that his brother has escaped and is on the move once again, which is definitely a dangerous situation.
The cold open for this one takes us to Rhineback, New York where a woman has just come back to her apartment with a man she met at a bar that she’s convinced that she knows from somewhere. She’s kind of all over the map with how she’s trying to identify him and how she’s very interested in connecting with him based on how she feels about him. When he reveals the tattoos on his body and his intention of making her remember things, it turns pretty dark and violent – off screen of course – that pushes more of what these designs may all be about. Going from that to Coulson as he’s still struggling to get the writing out of him, or the map or puzzle that Skye thinks it is, is pretty much like a whiplash. But it’s useful overall as we see how Coulson now has someone new to confide in about it with Skye, and also making it clear just how far gone he is in the need to get this carving out of himself. It’s certainly driving him in a big way.
With a nod to what Ward is up to, as he hits one of his dead drops and picks up gear that gives him protection in the form of a lot of C4 and knowledge that he’s being followed, the show sets up some fun along there. But we also get Coulson learning about the death of the woman from Rhinebeck as grisly murder photos have surfaced with her body being carved up with the same writing as he’s trying to get out. While he can’t place her properly in a way, he’s convinced she’s a SHIELD agent, even though she doesn’t come up anywhere that Skye can find. Putting Skye and Coulson together to investigate works well since the two have started to work better together since they had the encounter with her father’s place and his work, and there’s a near-gallows kind of humor about them that manages to work since she’s pretty much in a darker place right now and he’s just hoping to figure everything out before he goes absolutely crazy from what’s driving him in this direction.
The autopsy turns up some fun information as it goes along, especially in that the woman, who really was a SHIELD agent, and the killer, both have the GH-325 treatment in them that Coulson and Skye have. She’s not really worried about these two, but she associates things with Garrett and what he was acting like because of the treatment and how it altered him. Skye’s still acting fine, owing to her own biology, but Coulson’s worried about what his path may be with all of this. With a lot of things at stake, and intent on figuring out who this other GH-325 recipient is, he’s going the dangerous route of using the machine that lets him really start trying to figure out the hidden memories inside of him that happened back with the Guest House and his encounters with the other patients that went through the treatment and how they started off as normal, feeling great, and ended up going crazy over time, including the writing being revealed.
Because of how it impacts them, we see how they wanted to keep the alien remains they have but have to deal with the people that were being put through it. What they ended up doing was wiping their memories and giving them new lives, but that meant going through the horrifying process that we saw Coulson go through with his brain being reworked. Coulson’s humanity shows through well here overall as he doesn’t want the process to be used any further, and that he is completely against what it is that they do to the participants in order to keep the whole project going. While it’s not really deep or explored greatly, what we do get is the names of those involved as they attempt to figure out who it is that’s targeting all the patients from the project.
Coulson’s intensity is something that’s driving him in a big way here as we go into the second half as once he’s out of the machine, he’s manipulating things to let him get to the other survivor, Hank Thompson, in order to try and see what kind of information he has. That puts him at a bit of odds with his own team, since he locks up Skye and sneaks out, but with the way his mind is being pushed in so many ways, it’s at least a little understandable. It doesn’t exactly go well, since he starts off by threatening Hank and ends up being taken down himself as the tattooed man, Derik, has them both in his clutches now. There’s a nice realization that comes into play during it, and seeing Coulson handle a tough situation works well, but it also goes into some fun physical territory as Coulson goes up against him. It’s a little forced in some ways in several spots, but it’s par for the course with the series overall as it’s trying to hit the story beats it needs to.
Ward’s storyline in this episode is certainly interesting. As we see him shaking the SHIELD agents along the way, some encounters are better than others. When he gets on a bus and sees Bobbi, he toys with her a bit before making his way to another bus to head to Boston. It’s here that we see him heading into another safe haven for himself, only to have the Hydra agent Bakshi show there as Ward called him in there from a surprising phone, as we learn. This all has an odd feeling about it to be sure, especially since when Hunter and his team head in to stop things from getting worse by having Ward go with Bakshi, it turns out that Ward gifted Bakshi to Coulson. Ward’s goals are unclear in a really big way here, but he’s forging his own twisted path and hopefully it’ll all come together this season since it could be an interesting take on the turncoat character. Even more fun is that we get him calling out Strucker’s name, he who will be key to Avengers: Age of Ultron, and others get a moment to talk up a few name Avengers as well, tying things again nicely to the mainline properties.
In Summary:
Agents of SHIELD has a busy episode here as it works its two main arcs, with most of the time spent with Coulson and his roller coaster ride of being who he is. It’s kind of all over the map, but some of it you can attribute to the way he’s just not right these days. It feels like it could have been a lot tighter and cleaner in a number of ways, but the end results are here and he’s coming clean about things now that he’s stabilized having discovered some of the truth about the markings and what they mean. I rather liked Ward’s arc since it has him on the outside and being a potential spoiler for a lot of things coming up for a whole lot of people, and I also like his little call out to Strucker, tying us to the events coming up in Age of Ultron. The small moments are good here, whether the name dropping or seeing Fitz starting to realize he may have a way out of his own situation. It’s a decent episode overall, though mostly for the reveals that we get and the potential of what it all may mean.
Grade: B+
