A Hen in the Wolf House

This week's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was another strong episode, but it did bring with it a little bit of disappointment. I felt we may have been cheated a bit out of some great things we didn't get to see.

First on the list was "more of Simmons in Hydra." It was such a wonderful and tense situation to put that character in, having her undercover with people who we know had a brainwashing machine. So it seems a shame to me to pull her out after basically giving us just two episodes of that situation. I'm not suggesting Simmons should have stayed put for half the season, but I do feel like they hadn't even come close to tearing all the meat off that particular bone. And now the opportunity is permanently lost.

The other things I felt a bit cheated out of can at least be fodder for future episodes. The brief taste of Fitz and Simmons' reunion hardly scratched the surface of what I want to know. Did Raina find a way out before Whitehall's 48 hours expired? These things at least will be dealt with down the road, though I would have thought them appropriate for this episode.

Those complaints lodged, what we did get was quite good. The introduction of Bobbi Morse seemed just about perfect. Marvel fans (I gather) got to squeal over her fighting all badass with (what I understand is) her signature weapon; fans of just the show got to enjoy her fighting with her ex-husband, a wonderful payoff to the stories Hunter has been telling us. (That character got instantly more interesting, by the way.) And I do have to wonder if having Morse's first big action scene culminate in her jumping onto an invisible jet was a deliberate tweak at the people who utterly failed to make a Wonder Woman TV series work starring that actress, Adrianne Palicki.

Skye's storyline was also quite good. This season having now well established the new, awesome Skye, this episode helped reconcile that version of the character with the first season's more fragile model. It also seemed to me that it laid a really big brick in the foundation of getting Ward out of his cage at some point, as he volunteered information about Skye's father that proved totally true. (There at least is a situation that the writers seem content to let play until they've milked it for everything. And "caged Ward" I think has a lot shorter shelf life than "undercover Simmons" anyway.)

I'd say this episode earns a B+. I'm yet again looking forward to next week's episode -- which, regrettably, probably now won't get a ratings spike from people tuning in to see what now won't be the premiere of the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer. (Sad face.)