As
I've recounted my adventures in skiing, I've fallen behind on new
episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I'll start by backtracking a few
weeks to "The Inside Man," the March 15th installment that focused on
General Talbot's first mission with -- and immediate betrayal of -- the
team.
I
should say right away that Talbot has never really done it for me as a
character. He just doesn't seem in the same league as villains and
quasi-villains like Garrett, Ward, and Cal. And I suppose he was never
meant to be. But he just seems borderline inept, a person that Coulson
should be able to run circles around on even a bad day. So I was
unimpressed by his "shocking" double-cross; if anything, I was
disappointed Coulson didn't see it coming from a mile away.
But
at least the situation had some depth lurking beneath it. If Talbot is
going to be a more regular fixture on the show, he needs to be rounded
out as a character. Giving him a family -- which was being leveraged
against him to force him into a double-cross -- is a good step. At the
same time, this also made Malick a more credible character too, getting
him off the sidelines and doing something more menacing than twirling
his figurative mustache.
Yet
I'm still looking for more when it comes to "Ward." The final scene,
where he devoured five victims to regenerate himself, was a good start,
but I feel like I need to know what exactly he's doing to bring Inhumans
to his side before I really start to respect him as an adversary.
Overall,
though, I enjoyed the episode. Because, hooray, another heist! And it
was loaded with pithy one-liners from May, Bobbi, and Hunter. ("I love
you." "I don't hate you quite as much." -- That might be some of my
favorite banter on the show, ever.) And if the sudden conflict between
Daisy and Lincoln seemed a bit unearned, at least it served to put some
nuance into their relationship. We're still definitely in the "build up"
stage of a multi-episode arc, but it does at least seem to be building.
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