Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. finally does what we’ve wanted it to do all along, bring in the second tier, as Lady Sif shows up to trash Midgard while searching for Lorelei. And, if the episode was perhaps not brilliant, it moved too fast and had too much action for us to care.
The episode picks up from last week’s cold ending, with Lorelei recruiting a knock-off SAMCRO and the good Lady Sif out to drag her passive-aggressive derriere back to jail. Once the show establishes that Lorelei can apparently only seduce men, it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen on a show with three guys in the cast.
The guy who pulls the short straw is also obvious: Ward. But, in a nice touch, the show acknowledges Ward’s previous run-in with the big Viking rage stick, which it made a big deal of before summarily dropping, and Elena Satine actually does quite an effective job of showing Lorelei has something of a thing for Ward. It also gives Brett Dalton something to do other than look stern for once. His deadpan statement that he knows he’s up the creek is oddly hilarious.
The connective tissue running between these plot points? Beatings, and lots of ’em. You’ve got Sif beating up said motorcycle club, Lorelei beating up pretty much everybody, Sif beating up Lorelei, and Ward getting beaten up by May. Everybody goes flying absurdly far and/or bounces off something when hit by an Asgardian, which makes it all the more entertaining. Really, if this show had this much action every episode, we’d be noticing the plot holes a lot less.
The show ends on a genuinely surprising note: May is a mole for someone, presumably Nick Fury. And the next episode promises more Deathlok, although we might not see it for another few weeks; the show’s only got seven episodes left this season, and presumably will be saving four of those for May. Next week, there’s going to be a special about the Marvel movies, so that will probably bump up the ratings.
Some more thoughts:
- Coulson’s behavior is pretty out of proportion to the problem. Yeah, he pumped Skye full of alien healing juice, but he’s acting like he gave her space AIDS. Sure, maybe he did, but Skye has a point in that she’d rather have space AIDS than a gunshot wound.
- Why this show thinks Clark Gregg is best utilized being a jerk to the rest of the cast is utterly beyond me. Poor Simmons.
- Fitz getting decked was as funny as it was inevitable.
- Jaimie Alexander got more to do in this episode than she did in two hit movies.
Any thoughts? Let us know in the comments.