Recap: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – “Repairs”

Skye has been researching Hannah’s online footprint and wants to go in to talk to her.  Coulson says it’s too dangerous, but Skye doesn’t think so.  Everything she’s found about Hannah suggests that she is “overly nice”, a person with real empathy, who took a job as a safety engineer because she genuinely cares about others.  She says that her guilt is causing her to believe nonsense, like God punishing her, but May says that people believe what they need to believe to justify their actions.  Skye asks if that’s how May justifies shooting Hannah, and asks Coulson to let her go in to repair May’s damage.  Suddenly something falls from Coulson’s shelf, which seems odd to Coulson but is ignored because it’s too early in the episode for everyone to realize what’s going on.  He tells Skye that she’s asking the right questions, but that he doesn’t want her talking to Hannah.

Skye goes to Ward to complain about May and her tactics, saying that you can catch “more flies with honey than with napalm.”  Ward listens while making a sandwich, but he momentarily freezes when Skye says that she thinks that May just really needs to get laid.  He recovers and defends May, and when Skye brings up FitzSimmons’ ridiculous horse story Ward corrects her.  He says that the number of bad guys was more like 20, and that there was only one pistol and no horses.  Skye wonders why May objects to the “Cavalry” nickname so strongly, but Ward says that she’s “not in it for the glory”.  He turns back to his sandwich but the knife he was using has disappeared.

Inside the cage, the doorknob rattles and Hannah backs away in fear.  “Oh God, please forgive me,” she begs.  Simmons is still examining the scans of the particle accelerator when Fitz sneaks up on her wearing a gas mask, which doesn’t scare her in the slightest.  Fitz says that a good prank is all about timing, and that he’s still workshopping.  Skye is looking at the files of the workers who were killed, and notices that one of them, Tobias, filed 3 safety complaints.  She thinks he might have been out to get Hannah.  Fitz heads to the supply closet looking for parts to try to replicate their scan data, when he stumbles upon a mop and gets an idea for another prank.  Behind him a man appears but when Fitz turns around the man is gone.

As Simmons looks deeper at the scan data, she discovers a faulty part, but when she zooms in the holograph reveals an alien landscape, as though she’s looking through a window into another world.  As she wonders aloud where the window goes, a voice behind her says “to hell” and the mysterious man smashes the holotable with a wrench.  Simmons screams but the man vanishes.  Coulson arrives and Simmons says that Hannah has been telling the truth, just as we see the man materialize by an electrical panel and rip out a bunch of wires.  The plan loses power and Coulson says, “We’re going down.”
May and Ward manage to successfully land the plane in a field, and May diverts all remaining power to keeping the cage shielded.  Everyone regroups, and as Coulson passes out walkies Simmons fills everyone in on the new developments.  “I saw a ghost,” she says, rather unhelpfully.  Skye wants to be the one to tell Hannah the good news that she’s not the cause of the problems, but Ward asks whether the good news is “that a noncorporeal madman is hunting her?”  Skye says that comments like that are why she should be the one to break the news, and Coulson agrees.  They decide to split up; Coulson will try to contact SHIELD, while Ward will escort FitzSimmons to fix the plan.  Only then do they realize that Fitz is missing.

It turns out he’s locked in the supply closet, which he assumes is a prank.  The door is jammed and when he eventually forces it open he discovers that it was wedged shut with Ward’s missing sandwich knife.  He eventually runs into Ward and Simmons, meanwhile Coulson is using the emergency transceiver which is hidden behind a painting in his office.  An antenna rises on top of the plane, but as he starts to send out a mayday the “ghost” man smashes it, earning a sarcastic “1990s technology at its best” comment from Ward.

Skye introduces herself to Hannah through the door, who immediately apologizes for causing the crash.  Skye says that they have figured out that Hannah isn’t the cause of the problems, and won’t admit to Hannah that the events are the fault of demons.  Then comes an interesting bit of dialogue that I’m just going to stick in here, word for word.

Hannah asks, “Do you believe in God?”

Skye replies, “Honestly?  Not really…”

“Well I do.  And I know that he’s punishing me.  And I deserve it.”

“No.  No you don’t.  No one does.  I had a few nuns around me growing up and they would talk like that, scaring kids with stories of God’s wrath.  It made me not want to believe.  The only words that stuck with me were something Sister McKenna said, from the Bible I think, she said ‘God is love’.  It’s simple and it’s a little sappy, but that’s the version I like.  God is love, the thing that holds us together.  And if that’s true, I don’t think he would punish you for making a mistake.  I think he’d forgive a mistake.”

“I want to believe that.  I do.”

At this point May, who has been listening in, interrupts, telling Skye that Coulson needs her help with the transceiver.  Skye doesn’t want to go, but May makes it an order.  On the way out, Skye tells May, “Try not to hurt her any more than you already have, Agent May.”  It’s a pretty cold comment, but it’s easy to see where Skye is coming from, even if she’s not able to see May’s point of view.  The comment clearly gets May thinking, as she turns back to watch Skye as she leaves.

Fitz and Simmons discuss theories of how this could be happening.  Simmons says that the image she got in the holoviewer looked like an alien world, which makes her think that it was a portal.  Fitz says that reports from London state that Thor was travelling through portals while he battled the Dark Elves, and perhaps the people at the particle accelerator were trying to create one.  They speculate that the man is not a ghost, but is jumping through universes as a result of the accident, and perhaps all “ghosts” that have been encountered are simply people trapped in the same circumstances.  There’s a loud bang, and Ward goes to investigate but is attacked by the “ghost”.  He tries to fight back, but the “ghost” keeps disappearing.  The “ghost” eventually grabs Simmons, and as Ward rushes to rescue her he vanishes and rematerializes behind Ward, knocking him out and locking them inside.

Skye isn’t able to help Coulson, and says that she’d rather be with Hannah instead of the “Cavalry”.  Coulson says, “Don’t call her that,” and when Skye starts reciting Ward’s story he says, “She didn’t have a gun, none of us did.”  He explains that the event that earned May the nickname was not a rescue mission or an assault, but was instead a “Welcome Wagon” that went south.  A bunch of agents and a civilian girl were captured by the followers, or worshipers, of a gifted individual in Bahrain, and that May took it upon herself to try to solve the situation.  Skye asks him if she lost anyone in the effort, and Coulson says that she lost herself.  He says before the incident, May was “always quiet, but warm, fearless in a different way, getting into trouble, pulling pranks, thought rules were meant to be broken.  Sound familiar?”  She wouldn’t say what happened in the building afterward.  Skye correctly guesses that this is why Coulson wanted her on the plane, to help her, when suddenly the door to Coulson’s office slams shut.

The “ghost” appears and smashes Coulson’s walkie, before grabbing Skye and yelling at Coulson to either let him in to the cage, or to let Hannah out.  When Coulson refuses he vanishes.  May is standing guard over the cage and the “ghost” appears at the end of the hallway.  The emergency lights flash and each time the light appears he’s closer to May.  When he is close enough he raises the wrench to attack, but in the next flash May disappears.  The “ghost” checks the cage, which is now open but empty, and he screams in rage.  May has taken Hannah off the Bus and into the woods, telling Hannah that she’s going to “fix the problem.”

Everyone still on the Bus is trapped, and Coulson uses one of the antique collectables to help them escape, in this case a Dick Tracy style watch radio.  He contacts Fitz in the control room, who sends a signal that overloads the watch and breaks through the lock on Coulson’s office door.  The only problem is that the watch is now destroyed, and Coulson thinks they only ever made 20 of them.  Ward regains consciousness and seems confused that the man jumping through dimensions would have a weapon as ordinary as a plumber’s wrench.  FitzSimmons guesses that it was what he was holding when the accident happened and Ward wonders whether he was using it to loosen the magnetic coupling that caused the accident.

May leads Hannah to a barn, telling her, “I don’t mean to scare you, I just need to use you as bait.”  “Well that’s comforting,” Hannah replies, but May goes on with her plan to draw the “ghost” out.  The “ghost” appears and Hannah recognizes him as Tobias, one of the workers who was “killed”.  Before he can do anything to Hannah, May tackles him and the two begin to fight, though Tobais’ ability to disappear makes things difficult for the typically deadly May.

On the Bus, Simmons says that it makes no sense that Tobias would have filed so many safety complaints when he was the one causing the problems.  As they talk she opens a door and a mop pops out at her, dressed up like a monster.  She jumps and Fitz screams, and then she screams at Fitz for his childish prank.  “Obviously I rigged this little beauty before I knew there was a dimension jumping psychopath in the mix,” he says.  Simmons’ “childish” comment sparks something in Skye’s brain, as he realizes that Tobias was being childish.  She realizes that he was causing safety problems just to get Hannah to come down to see him, to get her attention.  He hasn’t been trying to attack her all along, but has instead been defending her because he likes her.  The group gets a device that Simmons calls the “golden retriever”, which sends glowing orbs into the sky to track May, Hannah and Tobias.

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3 thoughts on “Recap: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – “Repairs”

  1. This show is shaping up very interestingly… you never know just what they are going to throw at you. Telekinetic girl with (scary to her, to the conservative Christian community around her) powers, conservative religion vs science (my old school, Dover PA, is the one featured on a Nova special for trying to introduce “intelligent design” into a science class)… no, wait… demons?!?!? have I tuned into an episode of Supernatural??? Wait, remember Thor? Nine worlds, dimensional gateways??? Leftovers??????

    Send in the gods of cleaning up after themselves!

    The thing I love about the Marvel Avengers/SHIELD series of films and TV is that the important stuff hinges on character, on people, on their stories, emotions, interactions, relationships. We peel back some layers here on some regular characters, and find ways to deal with crises beyond “blow them up and let God sort it out” or “get a bigger hammer”. And points for not merely dancing around the edges of science and religion, but addressing both in some depth, while showing a diversity of opinion without siding with any single viewpoint. This gives this episode some great depth… one of the core qualities of fantasy/SF/comic books is diving below the surface, exploring faith, spirit, what might come of science, and the places on the circle where the mystical and the scientific meet.

    Now, I wonder what happened to our “ghost”, and if he’ll return in another episode.

    And is he phasing between the worlds of Helheim, Niflheim and others of the Nine Realms? It occurs to me our guest “ghost”s bamfing abilities echo another Marvel superhero, Nightcrawler.

    I doubt that SHIELD has just solved all of history’s ghost encounters. They have a sample of one species of encounter. There are probably many other kinds and explanations, as diverse as species of tree or bug or bat (1 out of every 4 mammal species is a bat). As a comic universe heavy on the science fiction, SHIELD tends to put forth scientific explanations. Ironically, I usually watch Supernatural right after it (where everything really is demons and ghosts and angels and stuff). It would be fun to see SHIELD cough up some moments where there isn’t a real science solution, where the phenomenon is not understood.

    A great deal of the stuff we see in the Thor films falls into that category. Yeah yeah, “sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic”… the fun thing is they don’t feel the need to explain how everything works, they just show it to us and let us gape in wonder. Of course, that’s what Gene Roddenberry did… the cowboy doesn’t stop to explain how his six-gun works, he just uses it, and we see how it works. Capt. Kirk doesn’t stop to explain how a phaser works, he just uses it, we see how it works.

    I’m amused by the tech names; Golden Retriever. If they had one called Siberian Husky, it would simply take a message and get back to you…. maybe… while devouring some rabbits along the way. If there was one called Schipperke, it would ignore all commands, gallop across the Highway From Hell, and pee on the neighbor’s porch (true story) before being corralled with a flying tackle.

    The online episodes don’t show “scenes from next week’s episode”, so it’s great to have a heads-up in this blog.

    Like

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