Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review: 2×04 “Face My Enemy”

Duplicity, amazing stunts and sharp writing made this into what might be one of the best episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. yet.

Time flies when you’re having fun and for that very reason, this hour of television zipped by way too fast. Coulson (Clark Gregg) and team are on a mission to investigate a 500 year old painting containing the same alien markings that Coulson has been scribbling since last season. As the only surviving artifact from a church fire, the painting is dubbed a miracle to have escaped unscathed. Who knew alien writing was fantastic fire repellant? As the team works to get their hands on the prize, Coulson and May (Ming-Na Wen) must go under cover in a high society fundraiser to try and steal the miracle art before it disappears.

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With General Talbot (Adrian Pasdar), high-tech doppelgangers, Hydra and a Coulson and May ballroom dance, things get out of hand in a hurry. Wait? Coulson and May dancing? Oh yes! And that’s not even half of the trouble Coulson finds himself in when he is attacked by the one person he trusts most: Melinda May. Meanwhile the rest of the team finds themselves trapped in an explosive situation, with only Fitz to save them–but is he up to the task? Deception, fisticuffs, betrayal and a race against the clock are too much not to discuss so lets get right into the wild details of all that happened in this week’s episode!

It takes three to tango, that is if you have one too many Mays.

This episode was a Philinda shipper’s dream. We couldn’t help but have a True Lies moment as Coulson and May took stock of security, reminisced about the old days and talked shop throughout their undercover dancing. You could tell Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen had fun. It just beamed through their performances.

When the two spot Talbot, they realize their cover may be up. But in a bold move, Coulson approaches him directly and asks for latitude to finish the mission that can benefit them both. With the risk of loosing the painting now that Talbot is on the scene, Coulson and May move to quickly secure their goal. Watching them navigating retinal scans, laser grids and security guards made us seriously want Coulson’s phone. We looked in the app store and there’s not Eyeball Scanner or Laser Grid Detector to be found. Needless to say we were bummed.

“Why is it always laser grids?” ~ Coulson

Much to their dismay, they discover Talbot has secured payment to the church to purchase the painting. The two exit posthaste only to be offered an olive branch by Talbot to work together and solve the mystery of the writing. When May comes face to face with Agent 33 (Maya Stojan) later and discovers Talbot is working for Hydra, stunt double and visual effects brilliance ensues. As May takes on both in the first of several fantastic fight sequences, she discovers Talbot is actually Bakshi (Simon Kassianides). He has been using a stunning digital face impersonation mask to look and sound like the General all along. Not many things give May pause, but this stopped her—and us—for a second! Agent 33 subdues her in the momentary lapse and with May as a prisoner, 33 uses the same digital face tech to impersonate May as well.

33-May works to draw Coulson into a trap and sabotages the bus as Bakshi tortures the real May for information. Suspend the belief for a moment that even brilliant digital face tech doesn’t change the rest of a person’s body (this is a comic book show after all) and some of the genius of this episode shines through. All of these scenes were just so well performed by Ming-Na Wen. We’ve loved watching her leave behind the “always stoic” feel of season one, but this episode was a virtual feast of variety for her to play. Her 33-May “felt” just off enough that we, as audience, thoroughly enjoyed watching her dupe Coulson and wondered where she’d slip. When Coulson does put two and two together at the last second and Bakshi turns his back on the captured May, we end up with a May versus 33-May throw down. As the two women battle it out, Coulson says what we’re all thinking.

“I can’t believe I’m the only one seeing this!” ~ Coulson

The stunt, visual effects and special effects teams all deserve serious props for brilliant fight sequences with two May’s at once. This May on May brawl felt like it lasted a third of the episode as the two women fought through multiple rooms and exchanged enough blows to put down a prized fighter several times over. Yes, there was the occasional glimpse of stunt doubles, but the entire thing was so well choreographed that we didn’t care. It was just too much fun watching it play out and seeing Wen play both sides was an absolute treat. We know it takes a village for a sequence like this to play out so well. Kudos to writer Drew Greenberg, director Kevin Tancharoen and everyone that helped bring this together. This kind of action, spy tech and great dialogue is what Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. should have always been and we love seeing it finally reach it’s potential.

Explosives, exes and to moving on.

May versus May alone made this episode, but we got a second helping of gratification as the emotional story of Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) continued. Early scenes highlighted his struggle to fit in as the team bonds over exes and banters back and forth with each other. As Fitz argues later with Phantom-Simmons, the truth seeps out that sharing his feelings for her wasn’t reciprocated and has become an incredible sore point that is holding him back. We have to hand it to Vapor-Simmons, she is supportive of Fitz and as a figment of his imagination, it gives us continued hope for his recovery knowing that all the sound advice she gives him is actually coming from somewhere deep in his own mind. De Caestecker has played this role so well that we genuinely feel his isolation and understand all too well why he doesn’t feel like he fits with the rest of the group as they continue to bond through humor.

In that regard, Nick Blood as Hunter, has truly been a great addition to this cast. His snarky humor is entirely believable and fun to watch, while not sacrificing his ability to be a highly capable field agent. He’s quickly become the glue around which everyone else in this cast but Gregg and Wen have bonded. Seeing Fitz feel on the outside of this banter was well done and it’s only when 33-May’s sabotage seals them all in the Bus as it slowly self-destructs, that Fitz is forced into the group. Noticing the problem takes Fitz no time, but getting that out to the rest of the group takes everyone filling in the gaps that he can only articulate through gestures. As he points to the problem, everyone realizes the danger.

“Uh, I think I know. S-Somebody… We-We’ve been…” ~ Ftiz

“Sabotaged.” ~ Mack

“Yes!” ~ Fitz

We’ve been bro-shipping TurboMack ever since Mack (Henry Simmons) first stepped past Fitz’s mental barriers and started to believe in him where others couldn’t. More and more, it’s Mack that finishes the sentences Fitz can’t instead of Figment-Simmons. We can’t help but think that the more this happens, the better Fitz will be.

As the team races to try and fix the failing Bus before it explodes, Fitz takes Hunter below and guides him through the steps to stop the Bus from self-destruction. We hope there’s a lot more Fitz and Hunter interaction ahead because this entire sequence was a gem. They couldn’t be further apart in skill set and know-how, but watching the two interact works and is joyously entertaining for that very reason.

With the group back at the base, it’s Hunter that steps into Mack’s world and offers a drink to TurboMack as a salute to a job well done and many more ahead with Fitz. In this moment, for the first time, Fitz feels as if he’s part of the group again and we have to admit there were genuine feels as we watched. For the first time, Fitz admits aloud that he may not have an ex, but there’s a girl that he admitted his feelings to and turned him down. Though he doesn’t say, we all realize it’s Jemma and though slightly awkward at first, this moment brings the inclusion into the group full circle as Hunter and Mack realize he’s reaching out. We can easily see where this trio could bond where others couldn’t. Neither Hunter or Mack knew Fitz before he changed and so they don’t harbor the same detachment as the others because of the stark contrast to who Fitz use to be. They are beginning to accept Fitz for who he is now and it was a nice touch by the writing team to allow newcomers to play that valuable role in Fitz’s recovery.

Nostalgia is good, but it’s time to face reality.

A common thread touched on multiple times throughout the episode between May and Coulson is his need for a plan in case the side effects of his writing episodes become worse and he were to lose his mind like Garrett (Bill Paxton). May has been reluctant to discuss it and Coulson continues to insist they need to do so. Through all the action they don’t get to finish this conversation until the end.

Wen and Gregg have been a joy to watch interact this season and they play extremely well off of one another in their roles. They really have become the father and mother figures of this group and you can see both actors taking that responsibility seriously as they interact with each other an the rest of the team. Throughout the final scene as they discuss the plan, it’s clear that these two characters have a very long and trusted history. They care about each other. We only get glimpses of what that history may include, but May finally makes it clear she doesn’t intend to kill him if things go south. She’ll protect him and take care of him. This entire scene is tender and that makes the weight of Coulson’s stance all the more serious. He admits this is one of the sweetest things that anyone has ever tried to do for him, but she needs to forget that and kill him as ordered if things go wrong.

In a nice twist of writing, Coulson uses May’s own words from earlier in the episode against her and both actors deliver great performances as the scene slowly transitions from relaxed, to emotional and ending on a very serious tone.

“May. Nostalgia is fine. But then life happens. It’s time to deal with reality. Hard choices are coming. I need you to make this one. For me.” ~ Coulson

We don’t know what that foreshadows, but it serves to highlight how well the writing team has delivered this season. Weaving action, humor and scenes of emotional gravity together deftly has thus far defined a more mature Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. We’re glad renewal happened and this team was given the chance to prove their mettle.

FINAL VERDICT: Action packed and fun throughout, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is definitely hitting it’s stride.

This might have been one of the best overall episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. thus far. Action, humor, emotion are all layered together with smart dialogue that made this an extremely fun episode to watch. Writer Drew Greenberg did an outstanding job of taking the break out from the writing room and splicing together what could have been a complicated nightmare to write. The script was tight, well paced and moved the episode through all the scenes with ease.

We suggest everyone go back and re-watch the first meeting between Coulson and Bakshi-Talbot after you’ve seen the entire episode. The sharp writing of Drew Greenberg, which had us laughing out loud more than once, becomes even more impressive. We didn’t see Talbot as anyone but himself in that first meeting, but upon re-watch it’s clear that Bakshi-Talbot didn’t know Coulson and was smartly playing along. There’s some genius in how well that was written and Adrian Pasdar played it so cooly that we didn’t realize it until the reveal of who he really was later came to light.

With such a great script to work from, Director Kevin Tancharoen had the pressure squarely on him to do it justice and bring to life a complicated episode that could have easily been confusing and difficult to follow. Instead, he nailed it. Pace, performances and amazing stunt work were all brought together into a fantastic hour of television. Special Effects Supervisor Gary D’Amico and Stunt Coordinator Tanner Gill and their teams deserve tremendous praise for some outstanding effects with the facial masks and some of the best fight sequences and stunt work in this series to date.

If we have some tongue-in-cheek nits, and there aren’t many with this episode, S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra have got to take this logo concealment more seriously. So much trouble tonight came from the logo alone! May wouldn’t have known Bakshi-Talbot was working with Hydra had the logo not been on the folder! If we get hired in to do security for either of these organizations we’re going to become super spy security rock stars—their mishaps and losses will improve dramatically once we suggest erasing the logos wherever they appear. Don’t get us wrong, both organizations have uber-cool logos. We’d love to work in their branding departments because they’re busy putting those things everywhere! We figure that’s comic book television for you and it doesn’t detract from our fun one bit. Perhaps the writing team will even get clever with them at some point to fool us. We can only hope.

As the episode came to a close we got one final treasure of a scene as Whitehall (Reed Diamond) confronts Raina (Ruth Negga) and demands she return The Obelisk. Raina is rarely rattled, and though she obviously was—and who wouldn’t be if paralyzed by the sinister little remote device they attached to her hand—she handled it and ever-creepier threats from Whitehall better than we would have! Reed Diamond must be having a ball playing such a juicy villain. We know one thing for certain, after his calm, cool and collected threats, we NEVER want to end up in his torturous clutches.

We don’t know if one of our team will find themselves in that situation this season, but Coulson’s ominous warning makes us feel sure someone will end up in Whitehall’s grip at some point. They’ve set him up to be creepy as hell and we’re certain there will be a payoff for that setup somewhere down the line. With so many mysteries still unsolved and such a fantastic episode in the books, we’re in for the long haul and can’t wait to see how things play out next week!

Questions, Comments, Concerns and My Reaction on Twitter…

• “What’s that sound? That’s May. She’s laughing.” New sound? LOL! @clarkgregg @MingNa
• Is anyone else having a True Lies moment here? #AgentsofS.H.I.E.L.D.
• I gotta say, May looks dazzling in that dress. And I bet she’s lethal with heels. @MingNa
• “Yes, everyone on the planet understood what you meant!” Ha! @nickdiscoblood @clarkgregg
• “We’re modern.” Holy hell did she just say that?? @MingNa
• “It was just…” Yes it was! Eyes up Mr Guest Star..
• “Why is it always Laser Grids?” ~ Coulson “They already know we’re here.” ~ May HA! That was awesome!
• Okay, I just looked and the Eyeball Copier and Laser Grid Detector aren’t in the AppStore. I feel ripped off. lol
• “You liked it?” ~ C “No I didn’t.” ~ M “A little bit?” ~ C “A little bit.” ~ M Those two are so good with each other.
• Seriously. Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. need to both ditch the logos being on EVERYTHING. How is that covert?? lol
• Okay, the facial and voice tech to replicate someone was badass.
• I guote Trip on taking the dress: Awe hell no!
• Okay. That Hydra bomb had a LOT of tendrils. I’m not liking this.
• “I won’t go down easy. ~ M “That makes two of us.” ~ 33 Gimme back my dress back woman!!
• Bakshi just learned the hard way what the rest of us already knew. NEVER turn your back on May. @MingNa
• “I can’t believe I’m the only one seeing this right now.” ~ Coulson Holy hades was that hilarious! @clarkgregg @MingNa
• Take my face? I’ll kick you’re shiny ass with the slow mo face plant!! @MingNa
• “To moving on.” That was a genuinely heart warming moment. I have hope for Fitz.
• “Little things. And she wanted to get coffee.” ~ C “Punch her in the face?” ~ M “Yeah.” ~ C Love how these 2 are growing.
• Hard choices are coming. I need you to make this one. For me. That sounds ominous. @clarkgregg #AgentsofS.H.I.E.L.D.
• Oh snap Raina! Whitehall was creepy before, but he is getting darker every time we see him! @reeddiamond
• What is Whitehall’s connection to The Obelisk? We don’t know, but we really want to find out!
• Where is Ward (Brett Dalton) ? Where is Skye’s father? Who is Skye? Questions, questions questions!