Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 1 Episode 19
Episode Title: “The Only Light in the Darkness”
Writer: Monica Owusu-Breen
Director: Vincent Misiano
Previously on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”:
The rise of Hydra in Captain America: The Winter Soldier has helped give “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” a much needed creative boost and a sense of forward momentum. It’s definitely a better show than it was earlier in the season, but some of the same problems remain.
At its core, the biggest problem of the show is that most of its primary characters still feel underdeveloped and vapid. Why did it take going evil to make Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) interesting? And can Skye (Chloe Bennet) be interesting too? Please?
As a character, Skye has never clicked for me. So it was hard to get invested in the moment where Skye is seemingly in jeopardy in this episode. For that kind of scene to work, we need to care about Skye. And I don’t think that the audience is in love with her to the degree that the producers are.
Another problem on this show is the onslaught of paper thin villains. This week’s bad guy, Marcus Daniels (Patrick Brennan) was one of the least interesting to date. In the comics, Daniels is the supervillain known as Blackout. And while Blackout was never the most compelling character to begin with, Daniels does suck the life out of his scenes much in the way that his character absorbs energy.
The lone upside to bringing Daniels in for an episode is that we get to meet Audrey Nathan (Amy Acker), the Cellist mentioned by Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) in The Avengers. Audrey is Coulson’s ex-girlfriend who believes that he died in the line of duty. Acker was a good choice for the role, but it was disappointing that she never had any scenes in which she played off of Coulson.
From this point on, there are full spoilers ahead for “The Only Light in the Darkness.” So if you happened to miss last night’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” then you should probably skip this review or else Melinda May’s mom will chew you out.
The strongest parts of the episode occur early on when Eric Koenig (Patton Oswalt) put Coulson’s team through a sophisticated lie detector to test their true loyalties. That gave us a rare glimpse into the character’s personalities and motivations. We learn that the new guy, Antoine Triplett (B.J. Britt) is the grandson of one of Captain America’s original Howling Commando’s while Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) isn’t sure she wants to stick around and Leo Fitz (Ian De Caestecker) is struggling with something he wants to tell Simmons.
At the PaleyFest, De Caestecker and Simmons kept defining the Fitz and Simmons relationship as something more like siblings than anything like a romantic connection. But that’s not quite how it’s looks onscreen, as Fitz is obviously distressed and threatened by Simmons’ bond with Triplett. We’ve seen this from Fitz before when Ward stole his thunder by saving Simmons when he jumped out of a plane.
Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) admits to Koenig that Coulson is the reason that she’s stayed this long. But after Coulson rejects her friendship once again, May packs a bag and leaves… saving Ward the trouble of killing her.
Would Ward have really murdered the woman whom he was having regular sex with? My doubts about Ward’s loyalty to John Garrett (Bill Paxton) and Hydra are starting to vanish. I barely blinked when Ward shot Victoria Hand and a few other random agents. But when Koenig ended up dead, I said “No! Not Patton Oswalt!”
It’s not entirely out of the question that the murders of Koenig and Hand were faked, but it would be pretty cheap for the show to go that route at this point. Ward was a bland, boring hero. But as a villain, he’s very compelling. The interrogation scene between Koenig and Ward was well played as Ward had to find the right lie within himself to fool the machine.
In all honesty, I really wanted Oswalt to stick around as Koenig longer than he did. He brought some comic relief to the show that was actually funny. Koenig also came off as a pretty competent agent who was willing to shoot Ward when the machine threatened to expose his lies. Nick Fury must have thought highly of Koenig as well, by bringing him into his inner circle and sharing the secret of his survival. Now he’s gone.
As mentioned earlier, Skye’s realization that Ward is a Hydra agent didn’t carry a lot of dramatic weight largely due to Bennet’s performance. I just don’t buy into her as that character. Skye showed some momentary flashes of potential when she fooled Ward into thinking that she wasn’t on to him. But for all of her efforts, Skye is essentially Ward’s prisoner in the closing scenes.
Meanwhile, Daniels was stalking Audrey, so Coulson and Fitz stayed out of sight while Triplett and Simmons realized that Audrey was the Cellist whom Coulson has previously mentioned. It felt vaguely inappropriate for Coulson to have dated someone he was assigned to protect as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. At the same time, I can see why Audrey had complete faith in S.H.I.E.L.D. after knowing Coulson the way that she did.
That said, the whole obsession angle between Daniels and Audrey was very silly. It didn’t help that the way that Daniels used his powers was very “Smallville.” You can interpret that as “unimaginative” and “cheap looking.” The one moment that Daniels seemed like a credible villain was his first scene in the episode, as he drew in energy from all around him before murdering a man by touching him. The rest of the episode never lived up to that introduction.
It was also underwhelming to see Audrey remain in the dark (so to speak) about Coulson’s survival after Daniels blew up like a Power Rangers villain. Obviously Audrey couldn’t be involved in Coulson’s life on the run and Acker is still a series regular on “Person of Interest.” But she saw Coulson come out of hiding to save her from Daniels. Audrey’s theory that she saw what she wanted to see was the worst way to stuff that genie back in the bottle.
By the end of the episode, Coulson, Triplett, Fitz and Simmons are left wondering what happened to their team when the Bus is missing and no one is there to greet them. As for May, she gets a ride from her mother (Tsai Chin), who turns out to be kind of a bad ass herself. I can see that. And in the tag scene, we learn that May is on her way to find Maria Hill.
This really was a pretty decent episode of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” especially when stacked against the earlier episodes of the series. I wish I could say that all of its problems have been solved, but the show remains a work in progress.
