| Season 1 | Episode 4
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Cold Open: In Stockholm, a group of twenty-five men in red masks and sporting briefcases handcuffed to their wrists march out of a building, and some of them board a subway; a youngish woman who's been tailing them and who also looks perhaps not quite right kills the lights in the car; when the police later inspect it, they find all the men incapacitated or dead and, in one man's case, his arm severed at the wrist and his briefcase (which we soon see contained a large quantity of diamonds) gone. In Belarus, the woman sells the diamonds (thirty million dollars worth) for a simple proximity card, which seems like maybe she got the exchange rate wrong?
S.H.I.E.L.D. is brought in because a casino hired the men to transport the precious gems (there had been a rash of diamond thefts across Europe recently), and they went to such lengths that no one, not even the casino people, knew which of the twenty-five briefcases contained the diamonds – yet the thief figured it out; also, she seems to tap into some great power when she closes her eyes. Skye suggests the woman has some kind of second sight, and Coulson soon confesses that he got them this assignment because the thief, "Akela Amador," is someone he trained. She was presumed killed on a mission seven years earlier on which two other agents died, but Coulson was never convinced. He also confesses to Skye that he pushed Amador hard and might be responsible for whatever she's become.
With Coulson and Ward off looking for Amador, she attacks the van (nicknamed "Short Bus," hee) in which Skye, Fitz, and Simmons are waiting, but she only shakes them up. Skye then figures out how to back-trace the feed Amador was using to monitor them, and they realize that one of Amador's eyes is actually some kind of tiny sophisticated camera (including a backscatter X-ray feature) that's beyond any technology S.H.I.E.L.D. has. Coulson then realizes Amador is being controlled, or at least coerced, somehow, so over the objections of May and Ward, who want to take her out, he says they'll watch Amador in shifts to figure out where she is. May takes the first watch, only to go rogue and confront Amador herself, who tells her now that she's there, either she kills May or her controllers will kill her via a switch in her eye. They fight, and when Amador kills the lights and turns on her X-ray vision, she's ready to shoot May – but Coulson arrives just in time and knocks Amador out with a new version of the night-night gun. When she comes to, Coulson tells her they hijacked her feed, so as far as her remote captors know, she's off on a mission for them. They have a little heart-to-heart in which Amador confesses that "VanChat" (from the pilot, you might remember) wouldn't have caught them if she'd done her job and trusted her team like Coulson taught her.
Ward takes on Amador's mission to keep the feed going while Fitz and Simmons race to extract the kill switch from Amador; Ward eventually finds his way into a room in which there's something on a chalkboard that even S.H.I.E.L.D., once they later see it, can't recognize. But whether it's design plans, alien writing, or some kind of equation, Ward gets a message from Amador's handler saying the mission is complete, and with Skye's help, he escapes. Fitz/Simmons are also successful in removing the eye before the handler (a former MI6 agent, as it happens) pulls the kill switch – but when Coulson then confronts him, his own kill switch is activated and he drops dead right there. In the end, Amador gets taken off to trial – but not before telling May that Coulson is different and wondering what S.H.I.E.L.D. did to him. Whatever it is, it seems to be making him and Skye bond, which is a solid emotional development even if Coulson is a robot.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!At "Sergel's Square" in Stockholm, there seems to be some kind of celebration going on; people are dancing, drums are being beaten, that sort of thing. So it's possible people think it's all just part of the fun when a number of men in identical suits, holding identical briefcases, and wearing identical masks appear and start marching through the place. I mean, I've certainly seen less accessible displays of performance art, so I probably wouldn't bat an eye either, although I'm not sure I would have gone with blood red as my choice of mask color if I cared about people remaining calm. But I should add that this is my favorite so far among a group of pretty excellent cold opens, it really taps into this visceral uncertainty you feel when you don't even know who, if anyone, is the good guy.
Speaking of the parties involved, the processional passes right by a young African-American woman sporting some requisite-for-this-day-and-age ear buds; the camera pans around so we can see her face, whereupon she closes her eyes for the kind of length of time that suggests either she's got a migraine or she's engaged in some serious thought. (Maybe both!) Once she reopens them, she turns and menacingly regards the backs of the oblivious red-masked men, whom we then follow into the subway. Away from the square, I'd think the random travelers might be a little more likely to get freaked out by the masked men, but I've heard the extreme latitude there does weird things to people. Anyway, not all of the masked men head for the same track, but several of them end up getting on one subway car onto which the woman follows them. After the train pulls out of the station (named "T-Centralen," if Stockholm public transportation is of interest to you), the woman steals a look at the handful of masked men to the other side of the car, and at least three of them are alert enough to note her intense interest.
As ominous music builds to a crescendo, she looks at the briefcases, and it's there we can see they're all handcuffed to their carriers' wrists, and then she closes her eyes again and throws an elbow into a glass-covered control board (I guess), at which point the lights go out. There are screams, fight noises, and brief strobe-like glimpses of men in masks being attacked, and when the train pulls in, all the non-masked passengers rush off, as well they might. Inside the still-darkened car, a lone transit policeman warily makes his way on to see all the masked men unconscious at best, and as the camera pans down, we see one of their hands has been severed at the wrist… that guy's briefcase is gone. Bone is not the easiest substance to cut through, so I wonder how in the allotted time she -- you will forgive me for this eventually -- pulled that off.
| Season 1 | Episode 4
Elsewhere, the woman is opening the briefcase, now tastefully decorated with trickles of its former carrier's blood, and she has no problem entering the correct eight-numbered combination. Inside, she finds a quantity of diamonds that would make even the owners of de Beers sit up and take notice, which she retrieves as the lights and noise of an approaching train become apparent. A wider shot lets us see she's sitting on a support frame to some tracks, and presently, the train blows by for about two seconds – and when it's gone, so is she. Who and what are we dealing with? I suspect we'll find out after the title card.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. plane familiarly races through the sky toward us until we see May's face in the cockpit; from behind, Coulson enters and wonders if maybe he should learn to fly. He's trying to bond as he asks what May likes best about it, "The freedom, the view?" May's answer, as you might guess, is "the solitude," and the clichéd response would be for him to try to draw her out further or at least to something like "if you ever need to talk," so I admire him for being like, message received, see you in Stockholm! When he's gone, May's face looks like there might be a hint of appreciation for his effort but not nearly enough to call him back.
In the lab, Fitz is proudly showing off a new, pistol-sized version of the night-night gun that will handle up to eight rounds of Dendrotoxin before it needs to be reloaded. Simmons pipes up that that's in case you miss, but at a look from Ward, she amends it to, "or have multiple assailants!" I mean, I like the idea that Ward misses shots as often as I miss Archer, but the reasons for having multiple rounds of ammunition are pretty well established, Simmons, so find a better way in or cut the joke. A superior effort ensues when Fitz informs Ward that the new night-night gun will be ready soon, and Ward is like, "Great. One thing: We're not calling it that." When he's gone, Simmons is like, told you, but Fitz stands firm. I'm not so much a fan myself, but in Fitz's defense I have to acknowledge the fact that no one's suggested anything else.
Coming out of the lab, Ward runs into Coulson, who asks if he's seen Skye, but the answer is not since weapons training. Coulson: "She stop saying 'bang' when she pulls the trigger?" Hee. Ward says she has, mostly, and if she gets the difference between the safety release and the magazine release, they'll be cooking with gas. Coulson then side-eyes the SUV in the hold, marches up to it, and knocks, whereupon Skye rolls down the window and asks with a smile, "What's up, Phil?" Somewhat surprisingly, he asks that she not call her that, so she amends it to "AC" (for "Agent Coulson") before saying that she misses her van, so she's taking a little "me time." Coulson tells her that someone's stealing millions of dollars in diamonds, and he'd like her to figure out how they're exploiting the attendant security systems. This, as you might imagine, is up Skye's alley, as her intrigued smile indicates. She might even get out of the car!
| Season 1 | Episode 4
In the Stockholm subway, Coulson tells May and Skye that the day before, one of the largest gem brokers in the world hired fifty-five military men (somehow I heard this as twenty-five on first viewing), dressed them in identical outfits, and gave them each a randomly assigned briefcase and sent them along twenty-five (ah, there it is) routes in Stockholm. (Although that would average out to just over two per route; there were certainly at least eight in the train car we saw).
Coulson goes on that the gem brokers themselves didn't know who had the diamonds, but they were still stolen. As they board the car we saw, May asks what was up with the kabuki theater (her words), so Coulson explains that there's been a rash of diamond heists in Europe lately to the total tune of over $30 million. May smells an inside job, but while that's possible it seems unlikely given the facts as told by Coulson, and Skye quickly notes that Coulson doesn't share that opinion. Skye asks if the local CCTV caught anything, but Coulson tells her it went dark for an hour, probably due to a hack, before telling them that each heist was perpetrated by one solo woman who pulled them off with her eyes literally closed. He gives a description gotten from witnesses, and then Skye comes up with a suggestion for how she could have pulled off the stunts -- ESP.
May recites the party line about there being no credible studies that support precognition, telepathy, and the like, but Skye's point is that they're living in a world of superheroes, so why discount it as a possibility? And even though this isn't what's going on here, I like that someone advanced it as a theory, especially since I believe the X-Men, at least in comics, live in the Marvel universe. (I wonder if Coulson ever met Jean Grey? The stories he could tell!) Coulson, however, looks as stony-faced as May does, so Skye sits down to do a little hack-fu, leaving May to wonder why HQ even wants them to investigate these crimes. Coulson, however, admits that they don't and that he picked up this assignment specifically. Before May can ask why, though, Skye triumphantly produces an Instagram photo of one of the masked men. This, they didn't have yet?
Back on the plane, as he uploads images, Coulson talks about how social media is making the surveillance part of their job easier. And look, I don't think I've never plugged one of my own projects mid-recap, but since he's going to so much trouble to make it this easy for me I'll say this: Pull up a chair and tell me about it, dude. Skye pipes up that the way S.H.I.E.L.D. tags and searches is beyond anything she's dreamed of, which does not endear S.H.I.E.L.D. any more to me, and then Coulson pulls up a photo of our thief, whom he IDs as "Akela Amador." May asks if he's sure, getting this reply, "I should be. I trained her." Good meeting!
| Season 1 | Episode 4
When we return, Coulson tells May and Skye that Amador was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and seven years earlier, she led a raid on one of Vanchat's (you'll remember that he's the one from whom Ward stole the Chitauri artifact in the pilot) gulags, a raid that failed. Everyone believed that the three agents involved were killed, but Coulson wasn't convinced and the second team he sent to investigate couldn't conclusively prove she was dead either. May realizes this is why Coulson chose their current mission, and he replies, "Only a few women in the world could pull off something so impossible. Since you were on the bus, I thought it had to be her." Well, I don't think Amador could have done it without her implant, but while Coulson's line maybe doesn't stand up to scrutiny I'm not going to argue too hard with any compliment given May's way.
The group joins Ward, who tells them Swedish Customs confirms Amador left the country using an alias on a Swedish passport, whereupon she traveled to Belarus and bought a train ticket to a small town called Zloda. He's also put together a list of local people who could fence that many diamonds, and I'm glad to know his propensity for apple-polishing hasn't taken a break since last week. The bad news is that she hasn't made contact yet, and after Coulson speculates that she's saving them for something special, May says she'll inform HQ about Amador being alive so they can assist in the search. Coulson, however, wants to hold off until they know more, and although I think this episode is the strongest so far, I'm surprised May and Ward, the experienced agents of the group, don't make a bigger stink even this early about what must be a serious violation of S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol. If something were to go wrong, he'd get a lot more of Fury's wrath than we saw over the plane damage.
He gives marching orders -- contact authorities in Belarus to find a place to land the bus, get a list of local inns, that sort of thing -- and after May and Ward have headed off to comply, Skye notes that she's not so special after all, as she's not Coulson's first protégé. That's a little weak -- it sounds like Coulson was Amador's S.O., so (a) I'd imagine he's trained many other agents and, (b) the analog for Skye would actually be Ward, not Coulson. But she goes on that she's kidding, as she's not even a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent yet. Coulson is like, "You couldn't be more different -- Amador's smart, talented, and fearless". Skye replies, "Wow. There's nothing in common." Heh. Coulson's point, though, is that Amador played poorly with others and didn't value teamwork. "I pushed her… maybe too hard." So this week, Coulson is Obi-wan Kenobi. Good to know. Agreeing with me, Skye tells him not to blame himself because "this chick went to the dark side," and as obvious as it might be, I'm never going to be in the first hundred people to complain about a Star Wars reference.
| Season 1 | Episode 4
Cut to a shot of Amador in the foreground of a hotel room; she closes her eyes and slowly rotates around before reopening them wide and grabbing a…golf club out of a nearby bag? I can't imagine she has much time for such leisure activities, although I'll concede she probably lines the ball up pretty well. Throwing open the door, she grabs the fairly harmless-looking guy on the other side, throws him onto the bed, and holds the club up to his neck as she speaks her first words of the episode, reminding him that their agreement was that he come alone. If it were Wynn Duffy from Justified, he'd be like, "Do you see any other men," but it's just as well he's not, since that would totally backfire – she did see other men, one in the room and one on the stairs. The guy, reasonably enough, says they're there to protect him when he leaves with the gems, which seems like a good precaution to the point where Amador warily lets him up. The guy apologizes and adds that he's never done this before, which is bad news for Ward and his list, I suppose. He then, fairly reverently, asks if he can see "them," so Amador opens a plastic canister of what appear to be golf balls. Now we see the reason for the clubs; they're completing the cover. But, when she drops one into his hand and douses it with water, the covering dissolves, to leave him holding a handful of diamonds. He's delighted, and she adds that, "in golf-ball form, he'll be able to get them through Customs". It'd probably help if she'd re-form the disguise for the gems he's currently clutching, but he doesn't seem to be too concerned. Maybe he's not planning on that handful leaving the country anytime soon.
Amador asks for her payment, and the guy removes what looks like a keycard from his jacket as he grins that when he set the price at $30 million, he never thought anyone would actually pay it. Telling her this doesn't seem like great business, but the guy did say he's never done this before, and Amador isn't interested in discussing it anyway as she warns him that if the thing fails, she will find him. Dropping any humor, he assures her it will access all levels as promised, and if this is some kind of gaming cheat it's no wonder he thought the price was a little steep. He goes to grab the clubs but then turns back to ask if she has a plan for once she's inside; after a pause, she replies, "It'll come to me." I'd think that was a funny joke if she looked like she'd ever laughed in her entire life.
| Season 1 | Episode 4
In the charming little town of Zloda, a white van proceeds down a lane. Inside, Simmons says how exciting it is, as the birthplace of Nobel physicist Zhores Alferov, she's always wanted to visit. She then babbles on a bit about how "technically" he was born an hour away and how could Fitz not know that and whatever, to which he replies, "I'm very much aware of the birthplace of Alferov, freak show, but since we almost died in the field last time I'm not so much concentrating on the small-town charm?" Coulson assures them that their electronic search for Amador won't even require them to leave the van, and then May calls in with a "Bus to Short Bus." Ha! Ward, unfazed, tells her to "go for Short Bus," but Coulson grumbles that time, he'll decide what they call themselves. He really is more fun when he allows himself to get annoyed. May reports that HQ requested a status update, but she kept them at bay by telling them they're merely tracking a potential suspect. Coulson: "I owe you one." May: "More like three." I know May likes her solitude, but when can we look forward to her having a beer with the rest of the team?
Short Bus (hee) reaches a secluded spot. Before he takes his leave, Coulson tells his tech team what to search for, and Fitz/Simmons and Skye are polite enough not to laugh in his face. I mean, these three together could probably bring down the NSA, and he's like, "Don't forget to search emails and cell-phone communications!" You're so cute, Dad! Ward keeps his advice terse -- maintain radio silence unless they need help -- and when Fitz calls out the question of what exactly defines needing help, he doesn't get an answer as Ward shuts the door. Well, Ward, you're going to be annoyed later, but it's your own fault for not making it clear. You can't expect common sense from geniuses!
In town, Ward offers that Amador's betrayal must be hard for him, but Coulson once again takes the position that they don't have all the facts yet. Ward still thinks it's most likely that Amador sold out her fellow agents, but would you believe Coulson doesn't want to jump to that conclusion? Back on the van, Skye pushes her ESP theory again, and I wonder if it's going to surface in a future episode, but she doesn't get far before she finds a local server. Ward's phone rings, and Skye reports that they found a weird encrypted signal. Also, that she's not sure how to handle the fact that they don't have access to a bathroom. Ward is annoyed, but honestly, this is a problem they should have been prepared for. Does S.H.I.E.L.D. not have the latest in field-agent adult-diaper technology? No, Ward merely directs her to a "container" in the bottom of the blue chest within her reach, which turns out to be a water bottle, and only a sixteen-ounce one to boot! I don't have to be a woman to know that that is not cool. I suppose Fitz could shoot them with the night-night gun if things really get dire. Skye then tells Ward that Fitz wants to know if he packed any snacks, and of all things in the scene I don't find it credible that Fitz would be empty here. If anything, I'd expect him to have an entire cooler full of anally-organized alphabetized snack foods. Predictably enough, Ward hangs up on Skye, but Ward, as a producer I have to warn you that not feeding people is a guarantee of getting little to no usable work out of them.
| Season 1 | Episode 4
Ward and Coulson enter a little shop, and as it happens, the female proprietor speaks English. Coulson shows her a photo of Amador, and the woman smiles that she's her "angel" at which Ward and Coulson exchange a side-eye. Ward then asks why she'd say that, so the woman explains that Amador knows things. She told her to go to the doctor, who found a tumor in her, so she's having surgery in time, "This girl saved me." Ward looks skeptical, but that is his default setting.
Back in the van, the kids are working to stabilize the video feed from the encrypted signal. Skye's Rising Tide tricks are successful, and they get a clean feed, while back at the shop, Coulson tells the woman they really need to talk to Amador. The woman smiles that Amador, via her gift, probably knows they're coming. This doesn't seems to set alarm bells off in Coulson's mind, but it does in ours, especially when, cutting back to the kids, we see the van appear in the feed. Skye, oblivious, complains that Russian TV is so boring, but the truth slowly dawns. Especially when the feed's image suddenly changes to an X-ray via which we can see the three S.H.I.E.L.D. people inside the vehicle. Fitz stands and waves his arms around, seeing the movements reflected in the feed. But this surely confirms that they're watching the watcher, and the feed accelerates toward and then impacts the van. Outside, we see a truck in position to knock the van off a little hill; Skye gets into the driver's seat and looks out to see Amador back her vehicle up in preparation to finish the job. Simmons hands Skye, the only one with even minimal weapons training, the night-night pistol. But just as Ward foreshadowed, she screws up the safeties and releases the ammunition magazine. With the truck approaching, she plaintively asks, "Bang?" Hee. And bang it is as the truck hits the van and knocks it off the little bluff to land upside-down. It's probably not great that everyone already had to go the bathroom, no?
May is grimly waiting on the hold stairs when the team, apparently unscathed, returns, and we then cut to Ward telling Coulson that whatever regard Coulson may have for Amador obviously isn't being reciprocated. He adds that the team is rattled and probably will take a while to refocus – whereupon Skye appears in the doorway and says she should be able to reverse the feed so they can watch Amador within an hour. Heh. Ward doesn't try to argue that Fitz at least is shaken up, which is probably for the best even if it's true.
| Season 1 | Episode 4
Later, in the lab, Skye has apparently succeeded. The team gathers around the monitor to see Amador, somehow facing us, wiping the steam from a mirror in front of her. Coulson asks where the camera is, whereupon Amador takes one of several small tools from a case in front of her and makes a small adjustment to the camera -- her left eye. To remove all doubt, the feed goes X-ray again, and we see what looks roughly like the Terminator's eye after he'd had half his face ripped off in the first movie of that franchise. Fitz pipes up that her vision switches to backscatter when she closes her eyes, which means the explanation for her exploits is technological rather than mutational or mystical. Skye jokingly asks if Ward can do the same thing, since he's a robot, and he somewhat robotically asks who has technology like this. Fitz replies that it's ten years of anything he's seen, although now that he's observed the concept he might be able to concoct something similar. As the feed goes back to normal vision, Coulson says they need to bring her in, but May snaps that what they need to do is take her out.
She starts to go call HQ, but Coulson tells her the team can handle it, and I'm not sure what he's basing that on but May tries to reason with him. She knows he feels responsible for her, but that's not sufficient reason for him to risk all their lives again. Coulson gets a little hot about it (again, I like it) when he reminds May she told him she'd have his back, and she replies that he can rely on her, "but you are defending this girl at the expense of the team." Ward comes in on May's side, but then Skye calls their attention back to the feed, Amador is writing something on a piece of paper: "Can I sleep?" Simmons wonders why on Earth she'd have to ask for permission, but then some text is typed into her vision: "Stand by." Coulson immediately takes this as evidence that Amador is being "controlled" (I think it would be clearer to say "coerced," but the point is taken) and excitedly goes on that they'll watch the feed continuously so as to get a clue to her location. May, apparently as a peace offering, says she'll take the first watch, and Coulson doesn't reply verbally but the look he gives her appears to be laced with gratitude.
Some time later, Skye uses a flimsy excuse to stop by and see how Coulson's doing; Coulson apologizes for the van incident, but Skye tells him it wasn't nearly as bad as "watching Mom and Dad fight downstairs." It's a good line in the abstract, but it resonates more deeply than it might because of Skye's obvious feeling of S.H.I.E.L.D. as her surrogate family. It'll make things way more interesting when she's faced, as seems inevitable, with the prospect of betraying them. Coulson asks if she regrets joining them, and she admits it was impulsive even for her. She still doesn't know much about him other than his predilection for old things. "And you value me," she says, adding "You're the first person to do that in a long time." She goes on that she thinks he's a great judge of character, so if he thinks Amador deserves a second chance, she believes it too. "Even though she tried to kill me and I kind of hate her guts." Heh. Coulson, once again, looks happy to hear it.
| Season 1 | Episode 4
However, he's much less pleased to enter the lab to discover Fitz asleep and May gone. He has Fitz play back the feed, and about the last thing on it (other than a set of new mission parameters) is a close-up of a receipt ,which has Amador's location on it. He tells Fitz to wake the others (we get another clever call-and-response transition) as Amador's eyes fly open and she sits up in bed to see May, who asks if whoever's monitoring her has audio. Amador says no, but they will use facial recognition to get May's identity as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. May offers to take Amador in to S.H.I.E.L.D. for a fair trial, but Amador tells her it isn't that simple -- her controllers built in a failsafe. "Either I kill you, or they kill me." It might be kind of long for an hour show, but if when we return we get a shot-for-shot remake of the opening of Kill Bill, Vol. 1, you won't hear me complaining.
Amador gets out of bed and draws a gun, but May kicks it away, and then the two of them start fighting. May flips Amador over a dining table, and Amador takes the opportunity to grab a knife and hurl it at May, who sidesteps it. Amador gains the advantage by knocking over the lamp to her, plunging the room into darkness, and although May stays at the ready, she can't really do anything about Amador locating her gun and aiming it at her. However, Coulson enters at that very moment, and now that it's about the equivalent of the third act, Chekov would approve of the night-night pistol being discharged.
Later, Amador groggily comes to, and Coulson greets her by her first name before telling her she's safe. Understandably, she looks wary as she explains there's a kill switch in her eye, but she does seem to recognize that under normal circumstances her handler would have blown it already. Coulson tells her that as far as her handler knows, after she fought May she left the building to complete her mission. S.H.I.E.L.D. hijacked her feed, and Ward is now wearing a set of glasses mimicking the behavior of her implant on his way to try to complete her mission. That's quick work by Fitz/Simmons, which definitely argues for them having more snacks/bathroom access on their field assignment.
We see that Skye is in the back seat of Ward's car (he's now got to be careful how he has the rearview mirror positioned) providing tech support. Amador points out that she also gets messages from her handler, but Coulson tells her those are being covered as well. We see May watching the view screen intently as Coulson goes on that the deception should buy them the time they need to figure out how to remove the failsafe. She reluctantly turns to look at him (and her eyes are closed at first, which may or may not be important) and he asks how long they've been monitoring her, and she admits it's been years. Years of asking when you can go to sleep? I might submit to the kill switch, honestly. Amador asks why he's helping her, "Where's the 'I told you so'?" Coulson used to say stuff like that? Can we get some flashbacks? He soberly tells her that's no longer him and he's just glad she's alive, and Amador can't look at him anymore as she expresses the opinion that VanChat would never have caught them if she'd run the mission and trusted her team like he taught her. May is taking this all in, and Coulson takes a tight breath against the emotions of the moment. We're getting somewhere with this character all of a sudden!
| Season 1 | Episode 4
Ward and Skye arrive at the "Todorov Building," which looks industrial but Ward decides is actually research instead of the military he was expecting. We now see that Ward's glasses are actually plugged into Skye's computer via a cable, but she tells him they're ready to go wireless; however, when she goes to disconnect them and touches his ear, he flinches like he's gotten an unexpected prostate exam, and Skye is like, "Awwww, the robot is ticklish!" Forgive me for being such a cliché, but that is kind of cute.
Back on the plane, Coulson asks Amador how she managed to escape, but she's like, "I didn't, I got caught in a cross fire and went down, then I woke up with one eye out and spent the four years in a cage at the bottom of a copper mine". If S.H.I.E.L.D. does end up imprisoning her, I hope they at least consider deducting that time from her sentence. Coulson tells her S.H.I.E.L.D. looked for her, and there were rumors she'd been taken to Shanxi Province. She replies that when a team finally came, she thought it was S.H.I.E.L.D., but no. She still doesn't know who they were, although they were organized. They took her to a clinic and gave her multiple surgeries until she could see out of the damaged eye once more. She was grateful until she realized what had been done to her. She goes on that while the assignments were less nefarious at first, she still tried to ignore them, but when she did she'd get a pain "like an electric migraine." OMG has this girl not suffered enough? As if to agree, she tells Coulson that she'd rather be back in the cage than exist as she does now. He asks for her help, but she tells him her handler is incredibly tight with his information. I wonder how many kill switches are between S.H.I.E.L.D. and someone who's actually pulling the strings?
Back in the car, Skye remarks how hard it would be to live as Amador has been made to, but Ward is more interested in testing the backscatter function than chatting. It works, both in his lenses and on the feed, so Skye tells him they're good to go. He reminds her that he won't be able to help her should she run into trouble. But, hey, as long as she doesn't have to deal with guns, I think she'll be fine. Coulson asks Amador if there's really no relevant info she can give him, and she says she's noticed from his vocabulary that he's English. Also, from his fairly dated references, she puts his age in the late 30s or early 40s. There are some graphics here of words being typed that are meant, I'm guessing, to be reminiscent of Sherlock. The device is used well on that show, but the less said about that here the better. (Also, Amador, given the age range you describe, that could be me! Hold on while I mine Dilbert for an appropriately pithy rejoinder).
| Season 1 | Episode 4
The last bit of news is that the handler is a shitty typist, and when Coulson speculates that he's got fat fingers (he doesn't put it that way, but it's what he means), Amador smiles for the first time and tells him she forgot how good he is at this. I'm all for the nice moment, but still, come on. That bit of deduction wouldn't draw attention even in the Law & Order franchise! Simmons' voice then announces that they're ready, and we cut to Ward hearing from Skye that the kids are prepped for surgery. Ward is approaching the lobby security station when Skye reminds him not to look down when they scan his ID because of his "man hands." I appreciate the PC choice, but I have to say that might not be the first thing the handler notices. Ward is like, "I know, rookie" before getting through without a hitch. But his efficiency is a double-edged sword, because the closer he gets to completing Amador's mission the less time Fitz/Simmons have to get the implant out of her. (Which maybe isn't strictly true, but it's not like Ward wants to keep doing missions for an enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Fitz/Simmons need to shake it and that's all there is to it).
Downstairs, Fitz/Simmons are expressing their reservations (Simmons on her surgical abilities, Fitz on his ability to keep down his breakfast) and did I not just hear that you guys said you were ready? Coulson is like, "Get it together, kids" before marching off to see if he can determine who's pulling Amador's strings. In the building, Skye warns Ward he's approaching a mirror, but after he avoids looking at it, he's like, "Don't need your help!" Hee. I like Skye as the nervous mother and Ward as the too-cool-for-school teen.
Coulson checks in with May, who's narrowed down the handler's location but as yet hasn't pinpointed it. She offers to track the guy down if he wants to stay and oversee, but Coulson declines and then starts to apologize for his part in their fight. May, however, cuts him off to tell him to find the guy, which is as good of a reciprocal apology as he's going to get. For her part, Simmons puts on an ingratiating smile and tells Amador she may need her feedback during the operation, but what she means is that she's going to need her to carry on a conversation with her FAKE EYE HANGING OUT, and while I'm not easy to gross out I do hope they at least thought to keep a barf bag close at hand for Fitz.
Another little tidbit is that Simmons is going to have to inject a local anesthetic, and I don't know what damage to my internal organs would be caused if I resisted the urge to tell you that Amador doesn't bat an eye, so I'm not even going to try. Simmons flips on the light in the center of her headband, while Fitz sports a much more stylish pair of glasses with twin lights on the outsides of the frames. Simmons then uses both hands to pick up a rather large hypodermic needle, but her hands shake almost as much as Fitz's stomach, so Amador calmly grabs her wrist and guides the thing in. If she joins the S.H.I.E.L.D. team somewhere down the line, the badass quotient is going to be hard to equal.
| Season 1 | Episode 4
Ward reaches his "target" -- which seems to be a dude in a room guarding the entrance to something -- and the handler tells him to stand by, leaving Ward time to hope that it's a knockout job instead of a kill. Skye, no fan of the idea of Ward killing someone, much less someone who might not even be an enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D., tells him to get out of there, but Ward, cool as ice, is like, "Nope, I'm going to do whatever it takes. Then, as he steals a look at the burly Russian inside, he gets his orders: "Seduce him." Ha! I mean, it seems wildly unlikely that whoever's giving the orders would choose this path just based on the extra time it would take alone, but such practicalities will not stop me from enjoying Ward's meek "Help?" And I honestly think it's less of a hetero panic thing and more that Ward thinks he just won't be good at it. But you never know until you try!
Skye is like, "Wait, you need help now?" Ward explains that he's being asked to "go all Mata Hari" on the dude. After some consideration, he decides just to knock the guy out, but Skye points out, refuting my complaint, that they may need him to get wherever he's supposed to go . Ward says that he's not sure he's the guy's type, so Skye checks out the dude's "cheap haircut" and five o'clock shadow and agrees. "You're gonna have to bromance him," Skye says. The idea of Ward bro-ing up to a dude is almost as funny as him doing Mata Hari dance moves. But he gives it the old college try anyway as he attempts (in Russian) to bond over "that game last night" and his wild evening with two Ukrainian girls and how the dude knows how it is, right?
Unfortunately, his claim that he left his ID at home would be suspicious even if he hadn't needed it to get this far in the building. So it's no surprise when the dude doesn't take the bro-bait and Ward is forced to knock him out after all. Presumably, this doesn't alarm the handler too much, as games of seduction are not guaranteed to succeed even when the parties' teams are correctly aligned. Ward, surely using the Brewster's Millions keycard, continues to the interior room -- in which he sees two researchers working impassively. He then observes that there's a blackboard that wraps around pretty much the entire room; examining it, he sees writing, some of which looks like equations, some of which looks like design elements, but all of which looks distinctly new. After a clear shot of one particular drawing, he gets a message that his mission is complete, followed by a "Good luck," which has to be one of the most ominous afterthoughts I've seen in a while. May reports to Coulson that thanks to that last message, she knows the handler is only a few blocks from Coulson's position out on the street; she adds that one more transmission should allow her to pinpoint him. Come on, May! Kick some technical ass!
| Season 1 | Episode 4
When Ward steps back out to the room, he sees a digital display on the wall counting down from ten seconds and glumly realizes he needed the guard for his password. time buy him a drink before trying to bond, Ward! Skye wants to try to talk him through a hack, but there's no time, and a security alarm goes off. Ward tells her to meet her on the south side of the building, and as she heads for the driver's seat, she mutters, "Which way's south?" They must have an app to tell you that, girl.
Inside, a security guard guesses Ward's an impostor and starts pursuit. While in the lab, amid a series of gushing noises that make Fitz squirm, Simmons gets the eye out of the socket, but she can't disengage it without "Dr. Fitzy"'s help. This is why you should always drink some ginger ale before performing surgery, but Fitz gets himself and his stomach together and steps up, saying the power source and kill switch should both be within the eye, so the trick will be disconnecting the former without triggering the latter. I mean, I get the need for nervous exposition, but Amador's already been an impossibly model patient…can you hurry it up for her sake?
He says he has an idea and while inside, Ward uses his X-ray vision to shoot a couple guards through a wall before they can get to him. He then gets a call from Fitz asking him for wire-cutting advice, which seems sensible enough. But the distraction unfortunately causes Ward unwittingly to look in a mirror, and with his cover blown he urgently tells Fitz to cut the wires immediately. Fitz complies, and Simmons is there to drop the thing into a metal container just before it detonates, resulting in a cloud of smoke to remind them of just how close a call that was. Ward, for his part, shoots open a window, jumps out and runs across a cargo container, and hops down to the ground just as Skye slams on the brakes in front of him. He gets in, while Coulson, in "Victory Square," wonders if the handler's already gone. But May then gets a read that he's only twenty meters away. After a couple tense moments, Coulson figures out which fat-fingered guy it is and accosts him. But as soon as he displays his S.H.I.E.L.D. ID, the guy breathes "Oh, God," and we see his own kill switch activate in his right eye before he drops dead right there. Hardcore, I like it.
Later, Coulson tells an eye-patched Amador that the handler was an MI6 agent who went missing a few years back, and Amador sounds slightly ill to realize he was as trapped as she was. Coulson adds that the real threat is still out there, and while "Big S.H.I.E.L.D." is trying to decipher what was on the blackboard, they've never seen anything like it, and there's speculation that it might be an alien equation. Amador then notices the dudes in commando gear waiting for her, so Coulson assures her she'll get a fair trial and that he plans on testifying himself. Good, because this girl survived too long just to be sent to prison, although I'd imagine she'll be glad of the sleep for a while.
| Season 1 | Episode 4
Amador, however, thinks it's enough that he saved her from the living hell she was in, so Coulson wishes her luck. Once he's walked away, Amador urgently asks May what happened to Coulson, as he's different. May thinks she's being figurative, so she starts to talk about how he almost died and whatever, but Amador cuts her off. "What did they do to him?" he asks. It took me until the day after I watched this (recapping after you've spent all day traveling cross-country in the wrong direction isn't highly recommended) but remember how I pointed out her closed eyes in that one scene? She saw inside him, and whatever came up on the backscatter wasn't something normal. That seems to bode well for my theory of robot rather than clone, but honestly there are still a ton of possibilities. May doesn't get Amador's meaning, and Amador chooses not to enlighten her, for which I can hardly blame her, especially given that she can't prove anything now that the eye is gone. I hope they don't drag the reveal out too long, though. This is one instance where I think the audience should find out the truth earlier than the character does. We need to see Shepherd Book soon anyway, right?
Coulson joins Skye in her van-cave (just give me this one), and after some more talk about whether "AC" is a good nickname for him (I actually vote up, but I usually am good with anything short for typing-related reasons), Skye tells him he made a great call with Amador by giving her a second chance. Coulson points out that he got one, so it seems only fair, and after a moment of comfortable silence, Skye admits that her current location is far more peaceful than her van. Speaking of peace (as Skye continues to), we see Amador in her cell lying down before her good eye slowly closes for a restful sleep. Really solid episode; it was much better from a character standpoint than anything before. And what's going to be our amusing little coda?
Why, Fitz and Ward playing Texas Hold 'Em! Fitz is imperiously and deliberately chomping on a pretzel taken from a big bowl of them (told you he was entitled to snacks) as Ward raises him with a suited Queen-Jack in the pocket. Fitz grandly asks if Ward knows how Fitz knows he's going to beat him. Ward responds, "By losing?" (Makes no sense, but it's still something I'd say). Fitz says that Ward has a tell, and as he stares, he adds, "If I watch you carefully…" He's waiting for something, but seconds go by, so Fitz repeats himself and Skye answers him, the backscatter glasses at the ready. She points out to Fitz, though, that if she cheats on his behalf she'll see not only Ward's cards but also Fitz naked, and that's enough for Fitz to fold and bravely run away. Hee. Ward then turns around in confusion, affording Skye the opportunity to check out that legendary chiseled chest, among other things. Why is it not creepy for her to do this when a gender reversal would be unforgivable? To quote Bruce Hornsby, that's just the way it is. (There's your dated reference!)
| Season 1 | Episode 4
John Ramos is a writer and film producer living in Los Angeles. His new film, a documentary on online privacy and the exploitation of personal data called Terms And Conditions May Apply, a New York Times Critics' Pick, is now on iTunes here. You can get news on it from the film's Twitter accountor website, or check out trackoff.us to learn how to protect your privacy. Also, you can email John at couchbaron@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/couchbaron, or check out his blog, "Pull Up A Chair," which he'd just love for you to stop by.