Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Thoughts on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode "0-8-4"

Eh. It was an okay episode, but it didn't blow my socks even half-way off. Whereas the pilot showed the formation of Phil Coulson's team, 0-8-4 was about the team actually coalescing into well, a team. The plot was pretty cookie cutter: Coulson and his team - which I hereby christen the Super Friends - head to Peru to investigate a report of a "0-8-4", which is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s code for an object of unknown origin. According to Coulson, the last time he investigated one, it was Mjolnir, Thor's hammer. The object in question turns out to be a Tesseract-powered weapon built by HYDRA long ago. Now, at this point, I thought we were going to get an appearance by Baron Zemo, since he had ties to the Nazis and fled to the South American jungles near the end of WWII ended.

Things pick up a little when the Super Friends end up in a standoff with a unit of Peruvian soldiers led by an ally of Coulson's named Camilla Reyes. Then both groups are attacked by rebels and they make their escape on-board the Super Friend's plane, which I'm calling the Hall of Justice. There's a scene after this where a reference to the Avengers movie is made. The weapon is being examined in the plane's lab and all of the Super Friends, with the exception of Coulson and May (who's flying the Hall of Justice), all become very angry and start arguing with each other. Sound familiar? It's exactly what happened in the movie when the Avengers were in Banner's lab with Loki's scepter. The fact that Coulson wasn't affected is very interesting and lends more weight to my theory that he's not human; he wouldn't be affected by it if he were an LMD or some other type of android.

The rest of the episode involves Reyes and her men hijacking the Hall of Justice to get her hands on the weapon. The Super Friends are forced to put aside their differences and work together to stop her and save Coulson...by using the weapon to blow a hole in the side of the plane, killing most of Reyes' men (parachutes would have been handy) and allowing Coulson to turn the tables on his captor. After this, they head to a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. base where the weapon is loaded onto a rocket and fired off into the Sun, which Coulson explains is standard procedure because Tesseract-powered weapons are simply too dangerous to have around. We also discover that Skye is still connected to the secret hacker group, Rising Tide, and appears to be playing the part of mole in the team.

The best part of the episode, though? Nick motherfucking Fury! I did not expect Samuel L. Jackson to do a cameo on the show, mostly because I didn't think the show would have that kind of money to do it. Either way, it was totally worth it.

The Good: Interesting bits and references to Captain America, Thor, and the Avengers. Also, Phil Coulson. The surprise cameo by Nick Fury was worth watching.

The Bad: The entire episode felt like filler. Nothing was spectacular. The show is still getting its legs.

My rating: 7/10.

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