Coulson, Ward, Skye and FitzSimmons are in a van heading into Belarus. FitzSimmons nervously argue about the scientific history of the area, using the bickering as a way to mask their fear at being back in the field. After all, their last field assignment didn’t turn out very well for them. May contacts the van, and Ward answers with, “Go for Shortbus,” which gets a disgruntled, “Next time I’ll decide what we call ourselves,” from Coulson. May is covering for headquarters, sending them on a wild goose chase in order to keep them off the crew’s back. Coulson and Ward set off to wander the town and look for Amador, leaving Skye and FitzSimmons to sit safely in the van and try to track down Amador, telling them not to break radio silence unless they really need help.
The tech side of the crew discover a weird signal being broadcast, but they can’t clear it up. Skye calls Ward on the radio in one of the funniest scenes of the episode, and asks what they’re supposed to do if they have to pee. Ward is exasperated that they would break radio silence for that, and tells them that there’s a container in the van that they can use, but which turns out to just be a water bottle. Skye gives him an angry reply about how “boy parts and girl parts are not the same… our parts are not penises,” while Fitz asks if Ward brought any snacks in the van. For some reason that the techies can’t understand, Ward hangs up on them.
Coulson and Ward encounter a woman who recognizes a picture of Amador, telling them that Amador is her “angel” and that Amador correctly told her that she had a dangerous tumor inside her. Meanwhile Skye unravels the mysterious signal and it turns out to be a video feed that’s looking at a white van that oddly resembles their own. The image then switches to an x-ray view and they see themselves inside watching the computer screen. Before they can react, their van is slammed into by Amador, and they’re pushed into a ditch before she leaves.
The team walks dejectedly back to the Bus, where Coulson asks Ward how the team is doing. He says they’re not holding up well, and that it will probably take a while for the group to refocus after the attack, but Skye pops her head in to say that she’ll be tapped back into the video feed in no time. They gather around a screen and watch as Amador watches herself in a mirror, and they realize that the camera is behind her eye. When she closes her eyes, it switches to an x-ray view, prompting Skye to ask Ward, “You’re a robot, can you do that?” Fitz says that sort of technology is at least 10 years beyond SHIELD’s current level. May wants to take her out, and call in backup, but Coulson says no. As they watch, Amador writes a message on a notepad that says, “Can I sleep?” and they’re surprised when a typed message appears asking her to stand by. Coulson realizes that Amador is being controlled, and they set up a schedule to keep a constant watch on the monitor.
Skye and Coulson share another moment, where she tells him its hard to watch “mom and dad (Coulson and May) fight downstairs.” She tells him that she doesn’t know much about him, other than that he values really old stuff, and seems to value her. She says that he is the first person to do that in a long time, and therefore she thinks he is an extremely good judge of character. She tells him that if he wants to give Amador a second chance, that she will support him, “even though she tried to kill me and I kind of hate her guts.”
When Coulson goes to check on the video, he finds Fitz asleep and that May has disappeared. They replay the last chunk of time and discover a receipt which gives the name of the hotel where Amador is saying. May shows up in her room, and as they talk Amador reveals that whoever is controlling her can’t hear their conversation, just see what she sees. She hesitates to look at May, because as soon as she does her boss will use facial recognition to scan her and that they’ll have to fight. It will be a fight that either ends in May’s death or when Amador’s boss activates a failsafe device in the camera and kills her. Nevertheless, they fight and Amador puts out the light and uses her x-ray vision to aim a gun at May, but is stopped at the last second as Coulson bursts in with the night-night pistol and knocks her out.
Back aboard the Bus, Coulson talks to Amador while Ward sets out with Skye to take Amador’s place, wearing a set of glasses that broadcasts his view over the hijacked feed, tricking Amador’s boss into thinking she’s still on mission. She tells Coulson that she’s been controlled for years, and that she should have listened to Coulson about trusting her team. She’s surprised when he doesn’t give her an “I told you so” but he says that that’s “not me anymore.” May watches with interest. Amador tells of how she was captured after the last mission, which left her blind in one eye. She was held in a cage for years until someone rescued her and repaired the sight in her eye. She thought it was a blessing but it turned into a curse when she started receiving orders. Whenever she refused they would trigger a surge of pain in her head, and she eventually gave in. As Coulson presses her for information she begins to paint a picture of her controller, of an englishman in his 30s or 40s using dated references and who types rather clumsily. With each new message the man in charge sends to Ward, May is able to narrow down his location, and eventually Coulson sets out alone to find the man behind the scenes.
Ward infiltrates a building using the keycard purchased by the diamonds, while Skye monitors his signal from the van and gives advice that Ward finds extremely annoying. As he passes a mirror, Skye warns him to look away, as his reflection would give the game away, but he tells her he doesn’t need her help. He comes to the end of a hallway and encounters a guard blocking a doorway and receives the message “Target Acquired”. He and Skye speculate on whether he’ll have to kill the guard, when he receives further instructions telling him to “Seduce Him.” Now Ward wants help, but after a quick analysis she decides that the guard probably isn’t gay and that Ward should try to “bromance him” by talking about things like sports and girls, and just to be friendly with the guy, if that’s even possible for Ward.
Ward tries, but fails, and eventually knocks the guy out. He goes through the door and finds a small room with several older men sitting at desks surrounded by blackboards covered in formulas. He focuses on one set of drawings which doesn’t look remotely familiar when he gets another message telling him that the mission is over and wishing him luck on escaping. He starts to fight his way out, telling Skye to meet him at the south side of the building. Meanwhile, Simmons is attempting to remove the camera and failsafe (and therefore the eyeball) from Amador’s head. We get our second gross image of the night (technically our third, as Amador injected the anesthetic into her own eyeball before the procedure), when Simmons pulls Amador’s eye out in order to get to the device beneath. Fitz, who spent the operation looking like he might be sick, steps in to deal with the tech side of the device, but is unsure how to proceed. When Ward accidentally looks into a mirror during his escape, alerting the boss to their ruse, Fitz is left with no option but to sever the connection before the failsafe is triggered, and they drop the eyeball device into a canister just as it detonates.
Coulson manages to track down the boss, who is trying to calmly escape after seeing Ward’s reflection. Coulson stops him and flashes his SHIELD badge, and the man lets out an “oh no” before his eye turns red and he collapses. It turns out that the man on the other end of the signal was just as much a pawn as Amador, and they’re no closer to discovering who is behind the operation. The dead man turns out to be a former MI6 agent, while the SHIELD headquarters tells them that the formulas that Ward saw are completely a mystery to them, though they might be of alien origin.

I have yet to watch this episode, but your review encourages me to give it a chance. So far, I haven’t been all that impressed with Agents of SHIELD, but I’m trying to stay optimistic. Great recap.
Also, I wanted to drop by and let you know that I nominated you for The Versatile Blogger Award. Love your content!
(You can check out the nom here: http://sublimezoo.com/2013/10/17/people-actually-like-us-the-versatile-blogger-award/)
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SHIELD isn’t for everyone, and I think it will take a while for it to build up some steam, but I’m enjoying it. And I’ll keep writing recaps, so if you decide to quit watching, I’ll at least try to keep you up to date.
Thanks for nominating me! That’s very nice of you, as I’m a fan of your blog as well. And thanks for reading! While I don’t write to please other people, it still means the world to me that people actually read my blog and like it. It’s something I couldn’t have imagined when I started this. Thanks again!
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I’m liking this show. I kind of wish it was a bit more Avengers/superpowered but perhaps we should leave that sort of thing for the movies and rejoice in stories focusing on “normal” humans living in a superpowered world.
The theories on Coulson’s return are becoming as varied and interesting as the theories on how Sherlock survived The Fall. I vote for it’s actually Coulson and he was faking it… or one of those superpowered individuals he hangs out with had some “sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic” (to paraphrase a line from Thor, and Arthur C. Clarke). Or perhaps. Tahiti is on Asgard. Or, as one tumblr fan suggested, if you pay attention in one scene in Captain America, there is a kid (in the 40s) running on the street with a garbage can lid ;painted like Cap’s shield. his mom calls him for dinner, and his name is… Phil.
Hmmmm. Could he have been one of the subjects experimenting with the Serum?
…could they make something from Cap’s 21st century blood to save a life?
Stay tuned………
PS, I like the recaps, I have a tendency to miss stuff, and this is a great way to catch those details.
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I think if they featured superpowered people every week then they would lose their “superness” and the show would just become another Heroes. I like your suggestion that they used something related to Cap to revive Coulson. I bet he would really geek out over that!
As always, thanks for reading and commenting. It means a lot to me that you keep coming back, and you always have great comments!
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I think Agent Coulson was resurrected with Khan’s blood.
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that…………….is……………the………BEST……idea……. yet…
somewhere, there is a fanfic, I just know it)
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LOL! That’s the funniest thing I’ve seen all day! 10 points for you!
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