TV Recap: Agents of SHIELD 1-11 - The Magical Place

So, it’s a magical place, huh?  I think Tahiti is not quite as magical and Coulson would have us believe.  But what and why is a whole different question.  Oh, and that cliffhanger?  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The majority of the episode is taken up with the search for Coulson after the cliffhanger back in December.  To that end, the plane has been overrun with other agents so they can go to some location as soon as they get a word on a potential holding site.  Caterpillar sites are being found and taken down around the globe, but Coulson isn’t in any of them.

Skye is doing her best to search given her bracelet and the other agents on the plane.  No one from our team is in charge, and when the new agent who is in charge realizes that Skye is doing her own search (as best she can), she wants this civilian thrown off the team.  Ward tries to keep her around, but May says, “I feel that Skye would be more useful not on the plane.”  And so Skye is scheduled to be taken to SHIELD headquarters and debriefed.  However, Ward gives her a 12 minute window and the tech team gives her a phone she can use once before her bracelet destroys it and she manages to escape.

Of course, that was May’s intent all along.  I don’t think I have the quote exactly right, but I knew from the way she worded it, this is what she had in mind.  Of course, I don’t think Skye got it.  Ward definitely had to have it explained to him later.

The search from the plane doesn’t yield much, although we do get a cool scene of Ward interrogating a prisoner.  When the prisoner doesn’t cooperate, Ward straps himself in and then has the techies open the roof so the guy almost gets sucked out of the plane.  He offers a location, and the plane starts to head there.

Meanwhile, Skye spends her time trying to find a way to get on a computer.  She manages to track down a real tech guy, but she needs a way to get him alone, so she buys a costume, steels and then wrecks his car to get towed home, and then lures him there.  When he arrives, she pretends to me May (in a costume May loves at the end) and then gets him to start using his computer to trace the money trail.

And that’s how Skye finds the old abandoned town that Caterpillar had just bought where they are holding Coulson.  She uses the phone to call, but the agent in charge isn’t willing to listen.  So it’s just our team that goes in to rescue their leader.

Speaking of Coulson, he’s spent much of the episode being tortured to reveal what really happened to him when he died.  He won’t give it up, however, mainly because he thinks he rehabbed in Tahiti.  Enter the Woman in the flowered dress.  The Clairvoyant calls, and turns the assignment over to the Woman, using the phone to kill the man who had been interrogating thus far.  She then sweet talks Coulson into undergoing a mind restore in a machine, and under that, he starts to remember things, like his brain being open on an operating table.

That’s when the team shows up to rescue him.  They have to fight a few guards, but they succeed and get to Coulson, unplugging the machine and capturing The Woman in the process.

As things wrap up, Coulson takes off Skye’s bracelet (by speaking to it, much to Skye’s dismay), and the team has their plane back.  Then Coulson goes to talk to the doctor who did his surgery.  Coulson learns he was dead for 8 days.  While they were doing the neurological work to revive him (under Fury’s wishes), he was begging to just let him die.  So they gave him the pleasant Tahiti memories.

So, the question is why?  Why did Fury want him alive so badly?  What does this all mean?

Oh, and the final scene?  Remember the guest star from the last episode who was killed trying to get to Coulson while his son watched?  He’s still alive.  He’s missing a leg and very beat up, but in the final scene, he wakes up.  As he takes stock, suddenly, a message flashes before his eyes.  Yep, he’s been turned into the controlled people we’ve met earlier.

End of episode.

I’m glad that guy is still alive, but how are we going to get him free now?  This can’t be good.  In fact, I bet he’ll infiltrate our team as the season progresses.

But next week, Skye is going to find out what really happened to her parents, and it looks bad.  I’ll be very interested to see what that is all about.

Were you glad that Agents of SHIELD was back last night?  Thoughts on where things are going as we ramp up for the second half of the season?