A second season of SHIELD begins and this time I'll be giving more of a brief synopsis of the episode and then my opinions, instead of the entire play-by-play like before.
The episode starts a few days after the first Captain America movie, as the remaining members of HYDRA want to store all the stolen highly technological goods they had shortly after the Red Skull died. Agent Carter and the Howling Commandos bust in and seize the goods, wanting to have them locked up for the safety of the world.
In present day, Coulson is now the new director of SHIELD and he now has a new set of hired mercenaries working alongside Sky, May and Triplet (one of them played by Lucy Lawless) and find out that HYDRA is after that same piece of technology. They soon find out from Grant (under lockdown for potential HYDRA intel) that they have Carl Creel, The Absorbing Man working for them, a guy that can gain the skin structure or whatever material he absorbs.
He goes after a General that's in charge of the hunt against both SHIELD and HYDRA, and Carl is captured and sent to the same base where all the technology is being held. Coulson's team sneak into the base and confront Carl and the soldiers in the base. One of the mercenaries finds the item and grabs it, and the block of strange metal grafts itself to her hand. The mercenaries decided to run and take her to the hospital. The SHIELD agents manage to get a plane with cloaking technology to better continue their missions.
Absorbing Man goes after the mercenaries and turns into stone to overturn their car. He steals the block and escapes. He turns it in to his leader, which looks pretty much like the same guy we saw at the beginning of the episode (during Captain America's WWII era) not looking much older in present day.
Meanwhile the episode ends on a sad note. Throughout the episode we saw that Fitz was trying to work on cloaking technology while suffering some sort of Post-Dramatic Stress Disorder after the events of last season, with Simmons calming him down. It gets worse as Coulson reveals that Fitz suffered brain damage from the underwater escape that saved Simmon's life from the last season, and that Simmons had left the team. The whole time we saw Simmons comforting him, was a delusion, further showing the extent of the brain damage.
My Opinions
Wow. This episode hits the ground running with a great flashback scene happening several days after the first Captain America movie, and it was nice to see Agent Carter (in her prime) and the Howling Commandos for a few moments. Coulson gets busy as the new director of SHIELD and is now even more serious than before. I wonder if he'll be hitting the field though since now he can just stand back and give orders like Fury used to. Sky is more battle ready now, a fighter as well as a hacker. The brief scene with Grant shows she still hates his guts, but she might still care. Grant is hard to read, he might still care for her, or he might be using her as a ticket to escape. May is still watching over Coulson to make sure he can handle his new responsibilities. Triplett is still a wisecracking fighter.
The mercenaries were cool and it was nice to have Xena guest star. Yeah, I would have liked these new guys to stick around, especially Lucy's character, but she was dying due to that metal block thing trying to fuse itself to her hand, and then she had her buddy cut off her hand to survive it.... But then Absorbing Man showed up and she died in the car crash. The other guy just laid low and played possum until Carl walked away, so who know if he'll come back. I just wish Xena stayed as a regular.
Then we have Carl 'The Crusher' Creel, the Absorbing Man, now working for HYDRA. Apparently his execution was covered up by Garrett and Grant knew about it. He's basically like the comics, but with someone with his powers.... where are Hulk or Thor when you really need him? Luckily the agents didn't have to face him too much, he kinda ran off after seeing the item he was trying to steal try to fuse with Xena's hand, and came back to swipe it after the heat died down.
But yeah, we got to see him absorb wood, steel and even diamond in this episode. He even had the chance to use the famous ball and chain from the comics. One thing that came to mind when I saw him was that the first Hulk movie was had in 2003 had the Absorbing Man be the villain, or rather they gave Bruce's father the same kinds of powers....
As you know, the not-sequel The Incredible Hulk would later make like this movie never happened.... and even added a Tony Stark cameo in the after credits to further tie it into the new cinematic universe they were starting up at the time. Since this series is tied to that movie universe, we now officially have Carl Creel as the true Absorbing Man of the series, and we can further believe that the Hulk 2003 movie never happened with this new continuity.
As for Fitz.... damn.... that's just so sad... Throughout the episode he seemed so shaken up and kept losing his train of thought whenever he wanted to finish a sentence (in which Simmons would correct him) and he'd only feel calm and relaxed whenever he 'stared into her eyes'. To know that she was gone the whole time and this was all a hallucination caused by brain damage.... dude... That's hitting the feels kinda hard in the first episode, isn't it??? And to make it more tragic, this was caused by his sacrificial efforts to rescue Simmons from downing in the sinking death trap that Grant put them in. I do wonder, will Simmons come back in real life? Will the show continue to twist the knife by having more scenes of Fitz 'talking to Simmons'? I guess we'll find out next week.
 |
| Sadly, Fitz' bold rescue plan from the end of season 1 had horrible consequences..... |
No comments:
Post a Comment