Agents of SHIELD Episode Four- Retro Review

 By Mark Rodriguez

Originally written on October 15, 2013. Keep in mind these reviews were done way back when the show first aired, so we had no idea what future events or movies would bring. Also, before it was retconned away, at least at the moment, the Agents of SHIELD show was in canon with the movies.

This particular episode gives some focus on Grant and Melinda and a bit more of Agent Coulson's past. I'm not sure if Amadora Akila is a character from the comics or not, but this is still an interesting episode that opens doors to more mystery.

The episode opens with several men walking around the subway in Sweden, all wearing matching red masks and briefcases. A woman is in the general area and starts to follow them. The man all head for a train and get on board, with the woman still following. She hits the side of the train and it causes the inside of the train to go dark. A fight breaks out and later we see all of the men taken down and one of the briefcases is missing.

Later SHIELD investigates and see how these men were actually transporting diamonds with such an elaborate manner due to several robberies in the area. However, with all near-identical men in red masks with matching briefcases, this woman was somehow able to steal the right one that did contain the diamonds. After checking some photos of the scene due to people being able to use things like Instagram and such, Coulson recognizes the woman as Amadora Akila, a former SHIELD agent he trained himself that was thought to be dead in a past mission.

Coulson is disappointed she turned to a life of crime. He wants to give her the benefit of the doubt, but Melinda is convinced they have to take her down. Skye thinks she might have some sort of ESP power, especially due to all these super powered characters running around recently during the battle at New York.

Amadora is in Belarus selling her diamonds to a buyer in exchange for some sort of information. The SHIELD team heads to Belarus and Coulson and Grant go to that same hotel to ask around for Amadora. Meanwhile, Skye, Fitz and Summers stay in the van and try to hack into any cameras Amadora might be using. The hacked video feed shows the same van the gang is in, which then turns into an x-ray camera showing them inside it. Amadora shows up, driving her own van towards them. Skye tries to shoot her, but messes up due to her confusing the safety release with the magazine release (a mistake Grant mentioned earlier she still had a problem with). Amadora's van smashes the SHIELD van over on a small hill. She gets away before Coulson and Grant can show up.

Later on, the gang is shown to be alright, though a bit shaken. They figure out that the camera Amadora is using is actually in her eye, which explains her abilities. They see everything she sees, including her writing on a sheet of paper 'can I sleep?'. This suggests that she is being controlled to commit these crimes against her will. Since they hacked into her video feed, they can continue to see everything she sees and takes shifts watching until they see something important. Later on Coulson checks up on Fitz and sees that the video is black since Amadora is sleeping, but Melinda is gone. Coulson rewinds the footage and notices a receipt that Amadora puts down, which indicates what hotel she is staying in. Coulson realizes that Melinda went after her.

Melinda shows up at Amadora's hotel bedroom. Amadora says there's a kill-switch in her eye and either she kills Melinda or she dies. A fight breaks out between the two women. Amadora manages to kill the lights and use her night vision eye to grab a gun that fell on the ground during the fight. Coulson shows up and manages to shoot her. After she wakes up, she realizes it was just something to knock her out.  She explains that sometime after her mission where she supposedly died, she was captured and had that device placed in her eye that forced her to commit these crimes. She feels guilty that due to her not getting along with others, the rest of her team died during her final SHIELD mission.

Coulson and Amadora talk it out and try to get more information about who her handler is. However all she knows is the information he sees in her eye, but has clues on the kind of person it might be based on how he types and the terms he uses. Coulson actually has Grant heading out in place of Amadora with glasses that give the exact same video feed as she eye cam, with Skye as his guide. In the meantime, Fitz and Summers will remove her eye and deactivate the kill-switch.

Grant heads down towards a building, pretending to be Amadora, being careful not to look at his hands or into a mirror so he won't give himself away to the handler. Coulson is on the lookout for who the handler might be. Summers manages to get Amadora's eye out, but needs help from Fitz to kill the kill-switch.

Grant runs into problems where there a guard he has to seduce (which wouldn't be a problem is he was Amadora). He tries to talk about sports and women to the guard, but the man is stone-faced and insists on seeing his ID. Grant fighting out with him and drop him. He then enters the room and sees several men working on some sort of equations. The room is full of long blackboards covered in complicated equations. Once Grant gets a good look at them, he sees the message 'Mission Complete. Good Luck' on his 'eye'. As he leaves he sees a timed alarm go off and he has to fight his way through armed guards. During the fight he looks into reflective glass, which would reveal to the handler that he's not Amadora. He yells at the others to kill the kill-switch now since he's been discovered. At this time, Fitz was able to deactivate the eye and contain it.

Coulson is outside looking for anyone that might be the handler. He finds a man stepping outside of the building in a hurry and looking suspicious. Coulson stops him and identifies himself as SHIELD. The man panics and his eye goes black, dropping dead since he had a kill-switch of his own.

Back to the HQ, Amadora will be going to trial for her crimes, but Coulson will testify and make sure she gets a fair trial. Amadora is grateful that she was given another chance at life since she is now free from her handler. Before she is taken away, she asks Melinda what happened to Coulson to make him change. Melinda mentions that he almost died in the battle of New York. Amadora asks what they did to Coulson because he seems different, but she says never mind before Melinda could ask any further.

Coulson tells the others that this handler was just being controlled the same way Amadora was, so they don't know who is really in charge of this. Plus they can't figure out the equation that was stolen, saying it's so complex it might be even alien in origin.

The episode ends with Fitz and Grant playing poker. Grant doesn't know that he's linked to Skye using the glasses with the mini-cam technology. Skye reminds her that if she uses those glasses, she'd able to see him naked. Fitz forfeits the game and leaves the room. Skye turns on the glasses (since Grant is still in the room) and smiles at what she sees.

Our Opinions-

We thought this was an interesting episode. One thing we found was a bit of a red herring was the guys with the red masks in the beginning of the episode. Early trailers made them seem like some sort of strange group or organization that SHIELD might be facing. Chuck even thought they might have been related to or some sort of reference to the Red Skull or Hydra. Instead they turned out to be some overly-elaborate plan to protect their diamond shipment (which was stolen anyway). That is still one weird-ass way to ship diamonds and yeah, it would freak me out to see all these dudes in matching red masks and suit head out in a certain formation.

Though Skye's ESP theory was interesting, it made the whole 'battle of New York' reference feel a bit tacked on to keep reminding us this does take place in the same universe as the Avengers movie. The second reference near the end of the episode was a lot better and even raised some doubts about Coulson. Amadora trained under him so she knew him personally before he almost died to Loki. So while we know nearly dying does change people, she senses something deeper than that. More doubts as to Coulson possibly being a clone?

Amadora herself was an interesting and tragic character. I do wonder if she was a character from the comics, or if she was made up... but if she is, why does the show keep wasting time with made up characters when we got tons of Marvel characters out there that deserve an appearance.

We both liked the episode, and Paige in particular was glad they didn't get too gorey with the eye surgery scene. I guess poor Amadora will be stuck with just one eye from now on. The fight between Melinda and Amadora was pretty cool too, I had to admit. It's cool seeing Melinda up against someone who is a match for her. As for Skye, I like the implied comedy that came back to her. Earlier in the episode Grant mentioned she has a problem with confusing the safety release with the magazine release on her gun when she was trained to shoot, as well as saying 'bang' when she does it. Later on when Amadora was driving her van at them, Skye whips out her gun, and sure enough she accidentaly drops her magazine, and lets out a scared 'bang?' as the van hit them. I like that kinda humor where you have to pay attention to get it.

We also liked the references to Instagram, especially since Paige and I downloaded that not too long ago. It is true though, with so many people carrying cameras on their phones nowadays, it's almost impossible for any weird scene at a public setting to go without someone clicking a picture of it.

It was a good episode and it seems like the next one will be even more awesome as we see some dude with fire powers and Coulson cuffing Skye and calling her a traitor. Is this the end of Skye? Watch next week to find out.