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So you guys know about this movie Thor: The Dark World, right? Well, this episode basically has nothing to do with it, but it's true S.H.I.E.L.D. starts out checking out the UK's Greenwich for alien artifacts from the events of the film, unaware that in Norway, a couple are following some ancient clues that lead them to cut down a tree and discover an Asgardian staff. When the woman touches it, it imbues her with a rage that gives her superhuman strength and sends S.H.I.E.L.D. scrambling to Scandinavia; the man and woman then cause riots in Oslo and leave the message "WE ARE GODS" in burning letters, and S.H.I.E.L.D. IDs them as part of a "Norse paganist hate group," because that needed to be a thing.
The team then heads off to Seville to see a "Professor Elliott Randolph," an expert in Norse mythology, who tells him the piece they have is one of three that made up the staff of a Berserker warrior; according to the myth, he lost his rage and fell in love with humanity, so he stayed on Earth when his comrades returned to Asgard; what's more, to prevent the dark magic of the staff from falling into the wrong hands, he broke it into three pieces and hid them, and the ancient texts written about it are what the couple is using to locate them. The team realizes Seville is actually a possible location for one of the pieces, and when they investigate, Ward finds the professor attempting to abscond with the staff. Unfortunately, Ward doesn't cover his hand when he grabs it, causing the second piece to infect and momentarily incapacitate him (and also to unearth unpleasant memories of his horrible childhood), allowing the professor to escape – only to run right into the NPHG. (I'm sure as hell not typing "Norse paganist hate group" more times than necessary.)
While Coulson interrogates the professor, Ward basically struggles not to punch the entire Under 25 set, and when Coulson gets nowhere with his questions, he has Ward stab the professor – who harmlessly crushes his knife, revealing himself as the Asgardian Berserker who stayed behind. He tells them that the staff shines a light into the dark places of your soul, but he's reluctant to help them find the last piece until Coulson threatens to call Thor on him. Not being clear on how idle a threat that is for this show, he sends them to Ireland while assuring Ward the super-strength will fade quickly enough, but the rage will take a long time.
When they reach the monastery housing the last piece, they find the male half of the couple, who stabs Professor Berserker in the chest with Piece Number Three – which Ward then grabs to go full-on psycho. While he kicks as much NPHG ass (the couple have recruited and juiced a bunch of disciples at this point) as a double shot of dark magic permits, Coulson literally sticks his hand into Professor Berserker's chest wound and slows the bleeding from his heart enough to allow his body to heal, saving him. Then, when Ward gets overwhelmed by grief from that terrible memory (I'll go into it in the full recap, but there are little kids and an episode-title well involved), May grabs the reconstituted staff and makes short work of the girlfriend. Later, Ward asks May if she saw anything terrible when she held the staff, and when she affirms that, he asks how she could possibly have borne holding all three pieces. May: "Because I see it every day." Cheery!
To wrap things up: Ward comes clean to Skye that the memory was about his brother. It looks like Ward and May hook up, and if they needed to throw in some sex this is much, much better than him and Skye. And finally, we see Coulson on a beach being massaged by a Tahitian woman; after a Dollhouse shout-out, he says it seems too good to be true, and she replies that it's a magical place – whereupon he awakens in a cold sweat. Maybe he heard May and Ward through the wall?
Want more? The full recap starts right below!So we start off with a little wonder-filled VO from Simmons about what people used to believe with regard to Asgard. The point is that people now know that it's real, and we get a few Marvel-owned shots from Thor: The Dark World. Of course, they do not actually include Thor (other than a distant CGI shot) or Loki or anyone, really, because while Marvel/Disney may be willing to throw this show a few computer-generated bones. No way are they going to shell out for or even facilitate the production getting the likeness/photo rights for Chris Hemsworth or Tom Hiddleston.
They will, however, encourage/require the show to do a tie-in of sorts. So we open in Greenwich University in London with the team apparently having been hired as specialized janitors as they clean up the mess made at the end of the film while keeping an eye out for any alien artifacts. Simmons then rejects a call from her parents for…no TV-worthy reason as far as I can tell. She mentions that they want explanations and answers for "all this," as probably any parent would, plus she doesn't want to tell them about her near-death experience two episodes ago. So…don't? Maybe chat about the weather instead? It's such an odd little point to include. Maybe they're going to expand on it in future episodes but they pay it so little attention here it doesn't seem worth bringing it up at all. Not to mention the fact that a sure way to exacerbate parental worry is to screen their calls for extended periods of time.
Elsewhere, Skye once again is tasked with audience-surrogate duties as she explains to anyone who doesn't know that Asgardians are aliens from another planet that visited Earth thousands of years ago. (After several weeks spent shedding millions of viewers I'm pretty sure anyone who wouldn't know this has moved on to other things, but thanks for the expository effort, I guess). Skye goes on about how she'd have loved to check out the alien ship, and May's face admits to some intrigue at the idea. Skye and May also agree that Thor is "dreamy" and I'd joke that Mr. Hemsworth's people will send them a check, but they're not exactly wrong. Still, is this what watching the show is about? A bunch of people talking about Thor like he's the Tino of this show? Fitz's Alien-O-Meter then goes off, so Ward quickly bags the piece of the alien ship that set it off and then smiles that that's why they're there is to "to keep everything under control." Good job, Ward! Now sew this "Thematic Line Of The Week" patch on your sleeve!
In a nature reserve in Norway, two rangers pull up to a sign that informs us the trees are in the range of 400 to 9000-years-old. Also, that someone's spray painted a symbol of unknown origin on it, and one of the rangers is actually forced to say the line "Who would do something like that?" Like why not go the whole nine yards and give him a string of pearls and/or a monocle in that case?
Still, the show goes on to give us an answer to that simply horrified question, as inside the reserve, a young man and woman walk hand in hand until they reach a particular rock formation. Based on some written directions they recite to each other ("A halo of stones protect the tree still"), they conclude they're at their destination. We then cut to the dude revving up a chainsaw and going to work on the tree. Nearby, the rangers hear them, and the pearl-clutcher literally says aloud, "We should check that out." Like how slow does he think his partner is here and how filler-y is this episode that short-bus dialogue like that isn't getting cut?
After finding the tree, the guy cuts it open in a particular spot and finds a staff with alien writing on it. When he removes it, you can see it's uneven on its ends, so apparently it's a piece of a bigger object, but that doesn't stop the guy from returning to his girl and crowing that they finally found it. She kisses him and says she can't wait to tell "the others," and then his gloved hands hold it out to her and ask if she's ready. She nods before taking her bare hands and grabbing the thing, at which point it glows red and -- in a cool visual effect -- the symbols engraved on the staff appear in red light on her skin. She convulses but keeps hold of the thing as he exhorts her not to fight or be afraid of the rage that's flowing into her, and moments later, she lets go with an animalistic yell just as the rangers show up with a "What have you done?" line. This guy, seriously. They rush up to her, but she hits the non-pearl-clutcher with a palm heel that sends him flying into a tree at literal breakneck speed. If his partner blurts out "You killed him!" we missed it thanks to the appearance of the title card.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. team has arrived, and Simmons is afraid to walk up the fallen tree, even though Ward points out that it's only about fifteen feet. So up to now we have "Simmons won't take her parents' calls" and "Simmons is vaguely acrophobic thanks to her skydive without a parachute" as plot points. (I'm looking forward to seeing where "Simmons is ambidextrous" and "Simmons has never stepped on a crack for fear of breaking her mother's back" subplots take us). Ward then continues with the super text about "some feelings will take over if you dwell on them," which makes me wonder if the show sees the audience as the equivalent of the pearl-clutching ranger's partner. Also, Simmons is taking baby steps up the fallen tree while wearing a cable/harness contraption that looks like it would keep you secure even breaking the sound barrier, so her trepidation is really, again, pretty thin fare. Speaking of the pearl-clutching park ranger, he's shuddering to Coulson about the hate in the woman's eyes and then sniffling about how he ran, and now I have to think the writers are having fun with us because he actually asks, "Who would do something so evil?" YOU SAW WHO!
"Up" in the tree, Simmons concludes that whatever was inside was definitely not of Earth, although it wasn't Chitauri, either. It was Asgardian, according to Fitz's spectrographic analysis. Simmons then realizes that an imprint of the object is visible, so she scans the tree in order to reconstruct a 3-D image of it. (And then I just laugh and laugh as the pearl-clutching ranger cries to Coulson that the forest is a protected reserve. "Who do they think they are?" Now ask if they were raised by wolves!). Skye then cuts in from the plane with news, and May sends him a TV report about rioting in Oslo led by the guy and girl. WHY WOULD THEY DO SUCH A THING? Oh his phone, Coulson shows Ward the words "WE ARE GODS" in burning letters on the street, so I guess these guys are as bad at not answering comically distraught rhetorical questions as I am.
On the plane, Ward has ID'ed the couple as "Jakob Nystrom" and "Petra Larsen," leaders of, as I mentioned in the recaplet, a "Norse paganist hate group" (NPHG from here on out). Skye explains that the name refers to anyone obsessed with stories of Asgard, and she's pretty knowledgeable for someone who might for all we know have mispronounced "Asgard" as recently as ten minutes ago. Ward picks up a model recreation of the staff as Fitz points out what I mentioned earlier, that being that it's only a piece of the full thing, and Ward adds that "Sid and Nancy" may be looking for a complete set. I'm not sure I believe that's the reference Ward would go with or really even have at his fingertips, but it fits well enough so I'll live with it.
Skye suggests Coulson give Thor a call to translate the carvings on the thing, but Coulson replies that Fury told him Thor is "off the grid," like pretending that Thor is someone this show will ever get to turn up is insulting, and besides, is there no one else in Asgard that could help them out and WHAT GRID? I mean, it may seem like a small thing, but this episode is billed as a tie-in, and the best you can come up with to cover the fact that no Avenger's agent is going to let him get within a million miles of this show is a reason that's absolutely meaningless in context? I'm far from a Marvel diehard, but I can't imagine anyone who heard how this episode was advertised didn't find it a total disappointment. They couldn't conjure up a Dark Elf? Ward points out Nystrom and Larsen found a needle in a haystack, so it's likely they had some help, and Skye wonders if the staff called to them by magic. She's met by predictable harrumphing, but Coulson says that when they first found the hammer, they consulted a leading expert on Norse mythology "Professor Elliot Randolph." Having seen the first movie recently as well, I can pretty assuredly say that that did not happen, but it's nice of them to give it its due by faking a tie-in to it as well.
Cut to Seville, in which the ostensible professor (played by Peter MacNicol, best known as John Cage on Ally McBeal and a series regular on Numb3rs) is lecturing some student about her paper, and on top of the non-tie-in tie-ins, this is another weird filler segment that does absolutely nothing for the episode. Although, there is a bit of inappropriate horn dog fraternizing thrown in for good measure. The S.H.I.E.L.D. team then enters and Coulson immediately admires Randolph's fancy pen. Randolph, in turn, wonders if Coulson found something on the ground in London, but Coulson corrects him that it was Norway as he produces the replica of the staff piece. Randolph believes that what they're looking at is a piece of the Berserker staff, and even though I'm familiar with the mythology I can still only think of Randal from Clerks when I hear that word. Randolph goes on that the myth -- which dates back to the twelfth century -- is about a powerful Asgardian warrior and Berserker soldier.
After explaining that the Berserkers' staffs contained a magic both dark and powerful enough that gave them super-strength at the cost of uncontrollable rage, he goes on that this particular Berserker somehow traded his rage for love of Earth and humanity, and when his army returned to Asgard, he stayed behind. Not wanting the staff to fall into the wrong hands, he broke it in three and hid each piece in a different location, and said locations are described in an old poetic text, which must be how Nystrom and Larsen found it; the remaining two have to do with a burial site and a holy place. Coulson is disappointed the indications aren't clearer, but Randolph tells him about a place in Canada where many interesting Viking discoveries have recently been made, so Coulson resolves to check it out.
However, back on the plane, Coulson tells Ward that their agents on the ground in Canada haven't found anything Asgardian. I mean, look, I know we're meant to be impressed that Coulson was on to this guy from the start, but I don't understand what Randolph thought he had to gain by telling Coulson anything about the staff, much less as much as he did. Half the runes on it were missing… why didn't he just say it was unreadable? Regardless, Skye reports that Nystrom and Larsen have a bunch of disciples who want to become Destructo-Gods or whatever before telling them she's researched Viking trade routes like Randolph suggested. There are some along the Volga River and, as it happens, right there in Seville. May pipes up that there's a church built over an eighth-century crypt they should check out, so Coulson replies that they should investigate the bones and discover what they can "dig up." He then asks if they saw what he did there, and Coulson, let me ask you this: WHAT KIND OF PERSON STILL USES THAT EXPRESSION?
As they wait in an SUV in front of the church, Fitz marvels at how nice "mandatory nap time" must be, but Coulson tells him the siesta isn't mandatory, just very pleasant. He then checks in with Ward and Skye, who are inside the crypt in different spots scanning the place for anything that pings as alien. Fitz then tells Ward something on his spectrograph is reading alien, and even though Ward says he can't see anything, Fitz tells him it's right in front of him. This setup reminds me of a fateful scene involving Tom Skerritt in Alien, so you'll forgive me if I take a break to get a blanket. Fitz then redirects Ward, and Ward sees the tail end of someone rushing away from him and gives chase. Just like that, he's got the professor up against the wall, staff in hand. Randolph says that he has a wonderful explanation for this, but Ward's like, "Yeah, I'm sure you do" and then he grabs the staff with his bare hands. I mean, this is preposterous. There's no way he would even have gone in without gloves, much less have neglected to put them on now. This is the guy who made a big show of being super careful earlier in this episode around dead bits of alien metal, and they already have an idea of what the staff can do. This is twice now that agents have acted completely incompetently just to advance the story. This show has enough problems without writer laziness. Anyway, Ward falls to the ground and sees some disjointed, disturbing images of a couple kids struggling to stay afloat in a deep well. He then seems to lose consciousness for a moment, and by the time Skye reaches him and he comes to with a terrified start, Randolph is gone. Ward shakily informs her that "he" took the staff.
"He" is also out on the street carrying a leather bag…out of which the staff is protruding significantly. Like, AGAIN, this guy would know better than anyone how big a case he'd need to conceal it. It may again seem like a minor thing, but it's completely illogical for him not to have taken steps to make sure the staff wouldn't be observed. Literally the only reason is so that Nystrom and co. will be able to see it when they pass by, as they do now. This is a story obstacle; finding a way to credibly achieve the story goal is a basic tenet of scriptwriting. When you take the time to do it well, you get Breaking Bad and Justified; when you ignore it completely, you get Dexter. This is in-between, to be sure, but a Whedon/Marvel audience is at least going to notice these details even if they like the show enough ultimately to forgive them. In other contrivances, Randolph has to fiddle with his car keys. Haven't remote unlocks been standard since, like, the '90s? This is the car equivalent of a TV character still using an answering machine so the audience can conveniently hear a message. By the time he gets it open the NPHG is upon him, and then from down the street, Coulson sees what I suppose is the professor's car come flipping into view from the right. By the time Coulson gets there, though, there's only the professor, who sits on the ground and says he screwed up. That's…a send-off to the act break? The episode is really odd, and not in a good way. And Commander Riker directed it!
In the lab, Ward is reluctantly sitting through a medical examination. I am surprised it took the show this long to get his shirt off, but all the hype about his iron chest seems actually to have been warranted, so it's nice that something on this show has paid off. Ward gets more and more agitated with the kids hovering over and pressing him about what he remembered when he touched the staff, and he'll only say it was something he hadn't thought about in a long time before he taps into Coulson interrogating Randolph. Randolph tells Coulson he wanted to be the first person actually to study the staff, but Simmons cuts off the feed, as Ward's getting more and more worked up with every word out of the professor's mouth. Ward does try to get himself under control, but Skye doesn't help matters when she puts on a watery expression and asks if the memory was about his brother.
He cautions her to drop it, but she goes on that she's there for him, so he seethes, "Right. To talk. Because that's what you do. Talk. And talk. Don't you ever get tired of hearing your own voice?" It's not quite Jack Nicholson in The Shining, but I like this Ward. Fitz tries to intervene and almost eats one of Ward's rage fists as a result, but Simmons brightly tells him that the anger he's feeling is chemical, nothing more. Unfortunately, she uses a lot of words in aid of getting to "nothing more," so soon Ward's telling her to shut up too. She wants to give him a sedative, but he thinks if he chills out and they run into the NPHGs that it won't be good, and he goes on to ask Fitz in that case if he's going to take them on, "or am I going to have to save Simmons' ass, again?" Ooh, taking back what he said last week about Fitz being a hero. That's some good ragin'! He finally storms out, whereupon Simmons assures the group that that was just all a biochemical reaction and Fitz says, "No explanation necessary." Heh.
Back in the interrogation room, Randolph is rhapsodizing about how the gods brought the staff to Earth, but Coulson is like, "Those were aliens and I don't like them all that much, so talk." Randolph, however, claims not to know any more, so Coulson tells him to sit tight and then he leaves.
Instead of twenty-somethings who never stop flapping their collective yap, Ward is taking out his frustrations on a punching bag, but the physical activity isn't stopping more of those awful images from the well. As the desperate kids keep crying to someone at the top to help them, Ward punches harder and harder until May taps him from behind. This time, he does take a swing, but she deftly sways out of the path of his fist. He warns that she should be more careful, but she evenly tells him the last thing he needs is to be punching things, and she can help him. I don't know if she's talking about practicing Tai Chi with a side of eye rolls, but Ward doesn't bother to find out as he says he'll be helped once he stops the NPHG from hurting anyone else. And when he punches the bag a few more times, apparently.
Speaking of fighting, Larsen and some attendant goons walk into a Fight Club-like basement in which Nystrom is already working a crowd of idiots up into a lather about the new order and taking back their world from the gods and whatever. Then he has two dudes touch the two pieces of staff in his possession, at which point they yell like…well, Berserkers, really. I'm still not sure their stated goals are clear (do they actually plan to wage war on Asgard?) but they do seem berserk enough to get it.
Ward, doing a much better job of calming himself (maybe the shower he obviously took helped), tells Coulson that he's concerned his ability to do his job may be compromised. Coulson doesn't dismiss this out of hand, so you know it's serious. Ward goes on that, as Coulson knows, he's got a terrible family history, so he does his best not to think about his childhood ever, otherwise he'd lose his focus. Now that the staff has unlocked his worst memory -- the first time he felt hate -- and since he can't get rid of it, he doesn't trust himself. Coulson, however, tells "Grant" that coming to him like this makes him think he can in fact trust him. Unlike Randolph, who Coulson is sure is hiding something. "You've got some rage built up. Maybe it's time to let it out," he says. Coulson, that's a cute setup, but with Fists of Fury over here I'd be a little more specific.
Ward marches into the interrogation room and orders Randolph to stop lying and tell them how to fix what was done to him. Randolph, however, continues to deny any knowledge, so Ward draws a knife and swings it to stab him... only to have Randolph grab the blade and twist it into a harmless pretzel without so much as a drop of blood appearing. Coulson enters, and Ward tells him he was right about Randolph being Asgardian. Coulson then makes a lame joke about how it would have been embarrassing had he been wrong, but what's actually funny is Randolph's bored and disdainful "You got me, congraaaaats" expression. Take notes.
When we return, Randolph is casually asking Coulson how he figured him out, and Coulson babbles on about the expensive pen and how cool Randolph was under pressure and whatever. I mean, couldn't he just have just been a professional thief? In response, Randolph notes that Coulson is more observant than most. (Show, stop having your character blow smoke up Coulson's robot/ghost/clone ass. The more times you tell me what an amazing agent he is the less likely I am to believe it). Randolph begs them not to expose him as outside, the kids babble their excitement about meeting an actual Asgardian, and then May presses some controls to seal the interrogation room, which she tells them she's doing on Coulson's orders. After Ward says with a sneer that the room is designed to hold people like Randolph, Randolph sighs that he never wanted anyone to know the truth about him, but he blabbed some stories to a French girl in the 16th century, who in turn told them to her brother, a priest who ended up writing them all down.
In another non-tie-in tie-in, Coulson asks Randolph if he knows Thor, like bringing up Thor's name as if he's captain of the football team and Coulson's got a man-crush and it isn't really working. Randolph says he was a mason for thousands of years until the opportunity came to serve with the Berserkers, and though he wanted to travel, he hated the rage that staff brought. "It shines a light into your dark places," he says. Outside, Simmons sniffs, "'Shines a light -- that's no explanation." (So I guess if Skye can be the audience surrogate, Simmons can be the voice of the recapper). As we see members of the NPHG poring over maps, Coulson asks Randolph to find the last piece of the staff, and when Randolph refuses, Coulson threatens to expose him. "You may not know Thor, but I do. And if I can find a way to drag you into the film in that franchise, there will be hell to pay." Okay, I may have embellished a bit. Regardless, Randolph apparently takes the threat seriously as he tells them about an Irish monastery he liked. Coulson is like, "Near God," and Asgardians may not be deities, the bored face that accompanies Randolph' "You got it" gesture is pretty divine.
The plane comes in for a landing, and as they prep, Ward asks Randolph how long the effects from the staff will last. Randolph replies that the strength will wear off soon enough, but "that dark nasty ache in the pit of your stomach" is worse on humans. "But give it a few decades and it'll wear off, too," he adds. I can't tell whether he's being snarky or sincere, and the fact that I can't tell is tickling me no end. Ward walks off, so Skye asks Coulson if he really thinks Ward's okay to go into the field. Guess what? He does! Skye then looks to May, but May tells her she's with Coulson. In other news, did Skye lose her bracelet without any ceremony?
In the monastery, the group takes its sweet time but eventually heads upstairs to the hiding place of the last piece. But no sooner has Randolph gotten it open than does Nystrom appear and, after grandly insinuating he tortured the monks for the location, wields the last piece of the staff and stabs Nystrom straight through the heart. WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS? Ward doesn't wait to find out. Instead, he grabs the staff, absorbs its power, and then yanks the thing out of Randolph, which if not for the shock might, like, hurt? Speaking of which, Ward tackles Nystrom over the upstairs railing, and they both fall into the camera and the commercial break.
Downstairs, Nystrom and Ward rage fight as Skye rushes down to help Ward and May rushes after her to stop her from getting herself killed. Upstairs, Simmons is trying to revive a dying (according to Coulson) Randolph. When she desperately points out that she's unfamiliar with Asgardian anatomy, Coulson takes charge by sticking his hand straight into Randolph's chest cavity. (I hope he used some Purell recently or there might be some ugly consequences down the road). Fitz and Simmons are appropriately taken aback, but Coulson tells them Asgardians regenerate faster than humans, so if they keep him alive long enough he may recover. It seems like a long shot, but if not, there's always Tahiti.
Ward seems to be getting the worst of the fight here, and then we see a bit more of the memory, which shows a kid at the top of the well crying. This gets him to his feet, and after a bit more rage-fu, he knocks Nystrom out. Back upstairs, Coulson apparently finds Randolph's heart. Fitz asks if he can feel a rupture, and Simmons tells him to clamp down on the heart to slow the bleeding. Downstairs, Skye (did she and May have to wait for the elevator?) appears and tells Ward to drop the staff, but then a bunch of NPHG goons enter, so Ward picks up the piece Nystrom dropped and goes to bloody town. We then see the full memory as the two kids struggle to stay afloat and call for "Grant" (who is a bit pudgy in the memory) to help them. Ward finally can't take it anymore and grabs a rope. But then the infamous elder brother appears, and unlike the actual young (Grant) Ward he's a dead ringer for the adult Ward, which could possibly symbolize how Ward has become like his brother in certain ways in his current capacity. The elder brother tells Ward it's not time for the rope yet, and if he helps the kids he'll just end up in the well too. When he walks away, Ward lowers the rope anyway, and it's a brutal enough memory as it is so I'm fine with not seeing what trouble he gets for this.
Back in the monastery, the goons are all lying dead or unconscious around him, when a distraught Ward drops the two staff pieces and collapses to the ground. Skye starts to help him up, but then Larsen appears, the third piece in hand. (I don't understand the staggered entrance here. Was she getting a manicure?) Ward shakily tries to go for the staff again, but May stops him and says "This time, let me help." I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to this.
As Skye helps Ward, Larsen takes a moment to process her dead boyfriend, and May grabs the two staff pieces in front of her, which duly imbue her with their power. She dispatches the one goon accompanying Larsen before the two women fight, and May succeeds in knocking Larsen's piece away and sending her to the ground. Once it gets within a certain range, the third piece jumps forth and attaches itself to one of May's. She then sticks the third piece into the middle one and fully reassembles the staff. Getting to her feet, Larsen tells May she's not afraid of her, but May quickly knocks her out. (I've come down hard on the show for the obvious dialogue so I must thank it here for letting May's bad-ass pose speak for itself instead of making Ming-Na Wen give a stock answer like "You should be.") May carefully places the staff on the floor and exchanges a look of understanding with Ward. Upstairs, Randolph comes to WITH COULSON'S HAND STILL IN HIM. That was gross of Coulson not to mention he might have healed around you. What's also gross is Randolph immediately slobbering over Simmons, but I suppose I can't begrudge him that after what he just endured.
Later, after a little chatter among the kids about the way Randolph's life was saved, Simmons gets another call. This time she takes it because…the events of the episode have taught her not to be afraid of talking with her own parents? I have no idea. Elsewhere, Ward asks May if she saw anything when she held the staff, and she nods, so Ward asks how she could bear holding all three pieces. May says, "Because I see it every day." (I've been waiting to find out the backstory on May, but if it's THAT horrible maybe I can do without a visual retelling).
For his part, Coulson is reaching a tentative hand toward the staff when Randolph walks over and asks what he hopes to see. Coulson tells him about having died(-ish) and that his memory of the months afterward is gone. Randolph asks if that haunts him, but Coulson tells him it's not that exactly. When Randolph inquires what the problem is then, Coulson sees his point and leaves the thing for a couple S.H.I.E.L.D. flunkies to take away. They then have an entirely-too-long discussion about where Randolph might go to (Coulson suggests Portland), and then Coulson has to bring up "if Thor shows up" again. Like, that is NEVER HAPPENING and pretending like it does just for the sake of meeting your quota of saying "Thor" in this episode still demeans us all.
In a nice-looking hotel bar (maybe in Dublin's Temple Bar? Also, they're getting an "overnight" here), Skye finds Ward and his triple-sized shot of something amber and asks how he's feeling. He admits he is "not great," although, disappointingly, without an Archer-like intonation. Of course, Skye didn't set it up with "So, how's this going?" He apologizes for his earlier behavior, but Skye's fine, so Ward asks if everything just rolls off her back. She tells him no, but raging doesn't help matters, and he admits that the memory had to do with his brother. She puts a hand on his and tells him she's there to talk if he needs to, and you might fear that this is leading to sexy times but the way he looks down at her hand like "What is that doing there?" suggests otherwise. Sure enough, he tells her he's beat and makes his escape, after which she looks…concerned? Interested? We'll go with concerned.
Upstairs, Ward is getting out his key card when May appears down the hall. After she opens up her room, they exchange a pointed look, and then she enters as she leaves the door open and uses her mostly-full bottle of something to kind of lazily beckon him to join her. He considers for a moment, but sure enough, he follows her in and shuts the door. Honestly, after the day they've had (and the experience they shared), who can blame them? If there are any characters more capable of having casual sex without it turning into any drama, it's these two.
In the end, Coulson is on an idyllic beach getting massaged by a Tahitian woman. He asks, "Did I fall asleep?" She replies, "For a little while," which as I alluded to in the recaplet is a call-and-response from Dollhouse. It's cute, but it also makes me recall that that show had figured itself out by this point in its run. Get it together, S.H.I.E.L.D.; I know a lot of people who have dropped you already. Coulson sighs that Tahiti is too good to be true, and the woman smiles that she knows that "it's a magical place." And with that, Coulson wakes up in a cold sweat. Should have grabbed the staff after all, huh?
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.