Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B+ | 477 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT The Tide Is High
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.24.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.So if your memory needs refreshing, or if you didn't see The Avengers (there must be people out there who didn't!) S.H.I.E.L.D. stands for "Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division" – self-described as "the line between the world and a weirder world." The S.H.I.E.L.D. organization has James Bond-ian agents who look dashing in suits (well, at least one of them does), speak fluent French, fight like ninjas and use all sorts of neat high-tech gadgetry; however, as Cobie Smulders shows up to tell us (you'll remember her as Agent Maria Hill from the film), in the wake of the events of the alien invasion and the Avengers' defense of New York, the world is turned on to the existence of superheroes, and as such the agency really has its hands full managing what people do with that knowledge. Lucky for them – and you already know this if you've watched any commercials or billboards or really just had your eyes and/or ears open recently – Phil Coulson is alive and in the captain's chair. The "explanation" is that he stopped breathing for a bit but survived after a time in the ICU, and while that's not really a satisfactory explanation for how he lived after being stabbed clean through by a demigod, I doubt anything else would be either so it's wise of the show not to dwell on it. However, there's a secret concerning him of which he's unaware, but it apparently has to do with Tahiti in some way and Hill and the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor (Shepherd Book from Firefly!) know about it.
So, other than Coulson (Hill doesn't count because Cobie Smulders is committed to Season Five Hundred Three of How I Met Your Mother), who's the S.H.I.E.L.D. team? Well, there's Grant Ward, an incredibly skilled agent with an unspecified dark family history who likes being a lone wolf, Agent Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen) who's been sidelined apparently at her own request for a while but still kicks ass when she's reluctantly drawn back into the field, married British (or –adjacent) tech geeks (engineering and biotech, specifically) Fitz and Simmons, and Skye, a crack hacker who initially regards S.H.I.E.L.D. as The Man but comes around to their way of thinking to join them. Phew!
Now that you've got all that, speaking of entities having issues with S.H.I.E.L.D., there's a "Rising Tide" on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar, which seems to be a hacktivist organization akin to Anonymous who are opposed to the kind of secrecy S.H.I.E.L.D. maintains. Meanwhile, Mike Peterson (played by J. August Richards of Angel) is an as-yet-unidentified superhero who's down on his luck. When a building in East LA suffers an explosion, he uses his heightened strength to rescue a woman from the burning structure. Unfortunately, his abilities turn out to be due to some artificial treatments given to him thanks to a shadowy organization (unclear if this could have anything to do with Rising Tide or not) under the project name Centipede, and a side effect seems to be a turn towards extreme violence. S.H.I.E.L.D. soon realizes that Centipede is a throwback to a 1940s program intended to produce supersoldiers, but their treatments have made Peterson a ticking time bomb, both literally and figuratively, so Coulson tasks Fitz/Simmons with figuring out a way to defuse Peterson without killing him. After a tense standoff at Union Station, Coulson talks Peterson down, only to see his agent shoot him in the head – but it was all part of the plan, and Peterson survives without detonating. That was all too brief, Gunn! I hope you work some more!
In the end, S.H.I.E.L.D. hears about an "oh-eight-four" and Coulson goes all Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The show's got some things to figure out, but I think it could be worth it – hopefully ABC will agree.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Hey there, and welcome to Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.! Before I start, I must apologize – I was three-quarters asleep when I wrote the recaplet and as such missed at least one fairly obvious inference, which I'll mention here in the relevant spot(s). Also, if you don't follow ratings, the premiere did phenomenally well in all demos, so that's one of many, many hurdles cleared. And given that the last Whedon show I recapped was Dollhouse, it's nice to be able to relax for a week or two, at least. Now let's get to it!
Over a montage of city shots, a VO (it's Skye), addressing S.H.I.E.L.D. in the second person, says that for decades, "your organization" hid the truth from people, but now they know – both superheroes and monsters walk among them. To illustrate, we get a series of shots from The Avengers -- Iron Man flying, Thor's hammer, Captain America's shield are among them – and while they do show The Hulk, which is a CGI image owned by Marvel, we do not see any of the other Avengers, because this show must be enough of a production nightmare without dragging approval rights for actors like Robert Downey Jr. into it.
Speaking of likenesses, with a chyron informing us we're now in East Los Angeles, we then cut to an African-American boy of about ten or so looking through a store window at some Avengers action figures, and then J. August Richards (Gunn from Angel, who wins the first-to-screen Whedon alum award for the episode and series) hands "Ace" a hot dog he just bought from a street vendor (whom he thanks by name, for the record) and asks if he'd like to visit his "Aunt Mindy" that weekend. Ace absently says sure, so "Mike Peterson" (we'll learn that's his name soon enough; might as well keep it consistent) acknowledges his son's interest by noting he's got a birthday coming up in a couple months and asking which Avenger (or which of the "Heroes of New York," as they're being advertised) is his favorite. Ace, however, tonelessly says he's okay, so Peterson addresses the unstated "I know you can't afford it, and it sucks" by leaning down and telling his son that things may be tight right now, but he's going to find something – "not back at the factory," but he's got prospects, so there's no need to worry. Ace, perhaps more aware of the job market than most kids his age, doesn't look particularly uplifted, so Peterson tries what seems to be their own private call-and-response by holding out his fist and asking, "You and me, what are we?" Ace brightens just a bit as he bumps it with "We're a team" – whereupon the building catty-corner to them suffers a huge explosion, with flames bursting through all the windows on its uppermost floor. Well, one event isn't usually enough for any kind of conditioning to kick in, but I still think Ace is going to look around warily next time he knocks fists with his dad.