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Agents of SHIELD, Ep. 2.18, “The Frenemy of My Enemy”: Ice Cream With Dad

“The Frenemy of My Enemy” is an episode with a whole lot going on, probably a little too much going on. The return of Ward, Hydra seeking out super-humans, and Cal’s day out with Skye all come to a head in a big showdown in Milwaukee. Plus, Simmons and May are clashing over Gonzalez’s SHIELD, and one of Jiaying’s super-humans goes missing on a camping trip. As a result, everything except for Skye and Cal’s father-daughter date feels rushed, but thanks mostly in part to Kyle Maclachlan’s performance, the episode is still very entertaining despite its minor flaws.

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Agents of SHIELD, Ep. 2.09, “Ye Who Enter Here”: Accio Hidden Temple!

Agents of SHIELD takes a heavy influence from the Harry Potter series, especially Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in “Ye Who Enter Here”. Skye, a character orphaned long ago, has a special destiny. Billy Koenig returns to save Raina with SHIELD’s very own Invisibility Cloak. There is a hidden place that can only be found and entered by someone who is worthy. Fitz-Simmons are the team’s Ron and Hermione, getting the team into a hidden city while playing out their will-they-won’t-they interpersonal drama. I suppose, in this example, Mac is the team’s Dumbledore, with his secret ulterior motives and sudden death in the episode’s climax, taking a long fall down. If that isn’t obvious enough, Raina mentions alien technology being mistaken for magic on numerous occasions. “Sounds a bit Harry Potter to me.” “It’s alien technology.” Like The Half-Blood Prince, the story also feels incomplete, leaving the audience on a cliffhanger until the mid-season finale.

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Agents of SHIELD, Ep. 1.16, “End of the Beginning” Leaves Coulson, May in Mexican Standoff

“The End of the Beginning” wastes no time with pleasantries but jumps right into action with Deathlok (J. August Richards) breaking into a SHIELD safehouse. He is nearly taken down by Agent Garrett (Bill Paxton) and Antoine (B.J. Britt), prompting Coulson, Agent Garrett, and the gang to call up Victoria Hand (Saffron Burrows) and bring SHIELD into the fold on their newest mission. Together, Coulson hopes they can search through a list of potential suspects, people that SHIELD is aware of with ESP abilities, and find the Clairvoyant once and for all.

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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Ep. 1.06, “FZZT”: Ghosts of New York haunt S.H.I.E.L.D.

“FZZT” opens with a ghost story, and in a way, it ends with one too. The plot comes back around to New York and the invasion in The Avengers thanks to the episode’s threat, a virus carried to Earth by the Chitauri. This type of Marvel Universe connectivity is something many viewers have been hoping for since the beginning of the season. Rather than vaguely referencing the events of The Avengers, writer Paul Zbyszewski brings the action around to New York in an unexpected way, grappling with something that the Marvel movies so far have missed. New York was a victory for S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers, but it was a victory with casualties. There are obvious parallels to the volunteers who worked tirelessly in the rescue efforts at the World Trade Center only to be rewarded with cancer and respiratory illnesses years later. The episode’s three firefighters demonstrate that the world is still reeling from the attacks, and their sudden deaths represent the unforeseen damage still lurking under the surface.

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