Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: Agents SHIELD, entertainment, tv

Age Of Inhumans – Recapping Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. 2.20: "Scars"

 By Amanda Gurall 

[**Warning: there are definite spoilers for Age of Ultron in this episode and recap!!]

Tam Nightingale's "Robot Tourist" plays and we see a man in Star Wars sheets, sleeping..or laying in a bed with his eyes open. Sam Koening (Patton Oswalt)! "Robot tourist", eh? Billy calls him, they talk about gaming and Sam gets dressed in his suit, robot socks and his choice of lanyard.  He takes a note off his mirror that said "call your sister"…they have a sister? I am thrilled to see the Koenings back in action and I don't care if they are Life Model Decoys, humans or tin cans with batteries inside.

It turns out this takes place a year ago and Sam greets Coulson (Clark Gregg) in a nondescript hallway, gives him a new lanyard and takes him to Theta Protocol.  Behind the opened doors we see the massive helicarrier being built in secret.  Now we're talking tv.  Present day Coulson and Gonzales (Edward James Olmos) are debriefing the events of the season of SHIELD as well as the events of Ultron.  Coulson acknowledges he was wrong to do what he did alone and he wants SHIELD united with Gonzales for oversight. As he says, this way they will have a cool underground base. And a boat. Gonzales agrees because Coulson prevented Ultron from killing thousands of people.  Really it could have been millions, Gonzales, get it together.  Is Fury really ok with this?

In the lab Skye (Chloe Bennet) is watching over Lincoln (Luke Mitchell) as he recovers and it seems that Kara (Maya Stojan) is now free from her Hydra programming. Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) should probably run that program on herself as a precaution.  Lincoln wakes and disturbs the lab's electricity serving as a reminder that Gonzales' fear that the enhanced people could pose a threat may not be entirely unfounded.  Lincoln is angry that he was saved because the secrecy that surrounded "Afterlife" is what protected them until now.

Raina (Ruth Negga) is giving out some psychic predictions to fellow Afterlife residents when Gordon (Jamie Harris) drops by.  Seems Raina has embraced her gift and her purpose to help however Cal (Kyle MacLaughlan) warns Jiaying (Dichen Lachman) not to trust Raina.  He ends up later telling Jiaying how selfish and determined Raina is.  Raina tells Gordon of a mysterious dream she had involving a rock that turns into an ocean, freaking Gordon out.  They go to Jiaying and she tells Raina that stories of this rock have been passed through generations of their people and it could destroy them forever. It is Kree and intended to erase their mistake on Earth so Gordon and Raina go looking for it. They apparate in the hold of the SHIELD ship.  So that's what is in the cargo hold!

Hunter (Nick Blood) sees the duo and they vanish, finding the cargo hold and entering. They find the grey rock like item with deep square holes cut into it but then it liquifies and a new set of holes appears.  Bobbi (Adrianne Palicki) and May (Ming-Na Wen) interrupt them and they vanish again. Apparently the item was recovered from a dig site 100 years ago and the only thing they know about it is that Hydra wanted it.

May and Coulson are trying to get some information from Skye and she says they should be called Inhumans, not enhanced people. Finally we get their proper title on the show. Skye is torn between both groups and defensively brings up the Bahrain incident to May. Low blow, Skye.  Gonzales and his crew rebuilt the tracker Hydra had been using and they know where the Inhumans are and intend to go after them.  Coulson is not interested in following Gonzales and his people into an attack but wants to sit down so he goes to Skye to broker a meeting.  Skye shares that Jiaying is her mother.  She is pretty lost between both groups and Coulson is afraid of losing her.

Bobbi and Mack (Henry Simmons) who has barely been in the last couple of episodes have a short chat about Hunter but nothing really progresses except the unnecessary hint that he is leaving.  Coulson finds May and tries to apologize but she remains unreceptive.  She has cut herself off from him to reset the professional boundaries they once had and feels that she should have stopped him before Puerto Rico but didn't because of their personal relationship. Skye and Lincoln head off after Simmons and Fitz give Skye the hula girl from the bus. Coulson tried to get Lincoln to trust him but it is not happening.  They go off to let Gordon find them and Coulson sadly watches her go.

Cal has been warning the group about Raina and the possibility that she is using her visions to manipulate.  She does exactly this by claiming that if Jiaying talks with SHIELD they will be doomed and maybe she should be the one to meet with them. That should end well. Jiaying is having her group pack up their valuables when Skye and Lincoln return.  Skye does her best to explain that Coulson and SHIELD have their best interests at heart but Cal has a more negative influence on Jiaying and offers to give himself to SHIELD to protect his family. Gordon comes to Jiaying with news of Raina's planned take over and they take Raina away, ranting.

At SHIELD HQ Gonzales compares Coulson to Tony Stark as a man bent on his own ideas above the needs of the many and he wants Coulson to stay behind. May ends up being the voice that sets this in motion and Coulson takes their advice against his better judgement.  Fitz (Ian De Caestecker) and Simmons work on indexing together and become more open with each other, Simmons confessing that she did try to kill Ward but failed and he did not react as negatively as he might have weeks before.  Mack goes to Coulson's office to resign because of alien blood, things we can't understand, blah blah.  No goodbye scene with his BFF Fitz? I am kind of sad to have Mack go but he is short sighted and hasn't been interesting since he was a mind controlled sentry.

So let's get this straight. The SHIELD crew has a mission planning meeting where they decide who goes in which plane.  May is the lead pilot and basically second in command who is set to pilot the jet with all of the main characters on it.  At the last second May comes up to Bobbi and says "Change of plans, Coulson wants us to scout ahead," and they take off.  Bobbi is unarmed and wearing a sweater.  Nobody in the remaining crew notices that Bobbi is gone or that one of the jets just took off, both things that were not in their mission plan? Bobbi and May are mid-flight when May turns to her gun in hand and changes her face back to Kara. They fight and the plane auto-lands, Bobbi steps out into a field and is immediately shot in the head with an icer courtesy of Ward (Bret Dalton). I love surprises and plot twists but I don't love them being done in such a nonsensical and stupid way.  I can handle suspension of disbelief; I AM watching a super hero based genre show after all.  However what I am not a fan of is lazy writing doing a disservice to a show just gaining it's momentum this season and with such great potential.

Gonzales is with most of the crew, some sort of back up plan in a little box in his suit jacket. They find Afterlife and touch down, surprising Skye that he is there instead of Coulson.  Jiaying sends Skye out to the plane with the likable psychopath Cal so she can have a little private time with Gonzales.  Cal says a very sweet goodbye to his daughter and Skye has a tense chat with May who is clearly feeling betrayed by Skye.  Gonzales presents Jiaying with the little box, inside is a trinket to ward off evil spirits that Jiaying was going to give her baby but was not able to. This emotional gift nearly put a hitch in her plans but she got back on track and offered her own.  She starts to tear down everything Gonzales said about indexing and reveals that she is now able to make her own Terrigen crystals but they still have some diviner metal in them. Uh-oh.

She smashes it on the table, revealing her plan to us as he slowly turns to stone.  Full of rage but in complete control she shoots herself in the shoulder with his weapon, stumbles out bleeding and declares war on SHIELD. Unless Afterlife allows a forensic examination of the scene, I doubt her deception will be found out before chaos ensues. Would Coulson have been able to be less patronizing and escape Gonzales' fate or would he have been killed? Jiaying is single minded so probably the latter. She is also pretty foolish since SHIELD still has the rock-not-a-rock that could destroy the inhumans.   Both sides were willing to do what it takes to protect their people or in SHIELD's case the public as well.  Will this war of good intentions and bad actions stop with Coulson back in charge? Only if he gets his confidence and his team (May) back.  His humility in the face of the mistakes he feels he made running SHIELD made him afraid and easily manipulated by the faux-SHIELD faction and I hope he figures this out early into the season finale next week.

In the last scene Bobbi is tied up on the jet, Ward tending to his protege who seems very much in his control. The fallout she will have once he is done using her will be sad to see.  Ward intends to dig in, do the work and then kill Bobbi.  What is his endgame?

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!