Sif’s first appearance on Agents of SHIELD in “Yes Men” is a highlight in an otherwise uneven first season. It is strange then that in season two, Sif’s big return in “Who You Really Are” is a bit of a letdown.
The season two midseason finale “What They Become” is a bombshell in Agents of SHIELD. Triplett and Whitehall are dead. Skye and Raina have transformed into super-powered Inhumans. Bobbi and Mac are not being completely honest with Coulson and the rest of the team. In “Aftershocks,” SHIELD and Hydra are both hurting. Hydra has a power vacuum with Whitehall gone, and SHIELD is fractured, fighting over Coulson’s decisions from their last mission. Even characters like Raina or Skye’s father who are only looking out for themselves are having a rough go of it, especially Raina post-transformation.
To quote Bill Hader’s beloved SNL character Stefon, “Making Friends and Influencing People” is an episode of Agents of SHIELD that has everything: Double-agents! Hypnotism! Nazis making The Sound of Music jokes! A male version of Queen Elsa from Frozen (minus the singing) freezing a ship! Underneath all of these borderline silly moments, however, is one of the best episodes of Agents of SHIELD yet, not just for season two but season one as well.
“Nothing Personal” opens with Maria Hill taking an evening stroll and chatting on her phone with Pepper Potts, but May is waiting around the corner for her with questions about Nick Fury and the T.A.H.I.T.I. project. Meanwhile, Coulson is back at Fury’s secret base with Triplett, Fitz, and Simmons, and they are trying to figure out why Skye and Ward left the base, taking their plane with them. Thanks to a bit of cleverness from Skye, they uncover Ward’s secret, but Fitz is unable to accept that Ward is a Hydra agent. Unfortunately, they have very little time to process these revelations as Colonel Glenn Talbot (Adrian Pasdar) has found their base and brought Maria Hill and a team of Special Forces along with him. As Coulson tries to convince Hill to help them, Skye is traveling with Ward back to where it all began for her, in a small diner where she met Mike Peterson for the first time.
Set in a spruced-up Glasgow, Not Another Happy Ending is an offbeat romantic comedy starring Karen Gillan as Jane, a quirky young novelist struggling to overcome a nasty bout of writer’s block. With the editorial guidance of her passionate but single-minded publisher, Tom (Stanley Weber), her debut autobiographical novel became a huge bestseller, as well as reuniting her with her estranged father (Gary Lewis) and landing her a relationship with a renowned but narcissistic screenwriter, Willie (Henry Ian Cusick). Relying on Jane’s new book to rescue his ailing publishing company, Tom believes that her newfound happiness is preventing her from writing and sets out to make her life as miserable as he can.
The Fades, Series One Created by Jack Thorne (whose previous writing credits include Skins, This Is England and Shameless), this six-part supernatual horror series which originally aired in the UK on BBC3 last year, has now arrived on BBC America. Perhaps half-inspired by the success of E4’s superhero drama Misfits, The Fades marks BBC3’s next …