User Reviews

After an onslaught from Robert Gonzales and his desire to make SHIELD bureaucratic, team Coulson is back to giving us viewers the thrill. With awesome tricks to great backup, Coulson has mastered theatrics that would impress Ra'as Al Ghul. Equally interesting is to see Skye learning to embrace her powers in the new world she is living in. However, she needs to know that internet isn't her life anymore and shaking the ground is. Skye's father is ever the lunatic who is obsessed with seeing his daughter smile. His character has given no hint so far of what will he do for Skye after introducing her to transformation.

In the Coulson's HQ, there is another tussle which continues from previous episode: trust the earnest requests of Gonzales to set up a better SHIELD or to trust a man back from the dead.

So the story which was focused on Hydra and the alien city at one time has added another dimension with Gonzales and his cohorts. Hydra may still be out there, transformed people are surely going to dominate the landscape and SHIELD will have another battle for its ideals, vision and future.

9.5/10

Things are certainly heating up with this episode, I love all the discussions about what shield should be, Gonzales seems really earnest in his desire for adding accountability to the leadership of shield, not exactly ideal for a spy organization but who can really condemn democracy? Coulson too seems convinced that the conflict is more complicated than one side being wrong or the other being right, I love all the nuanced discussions this allows for, then again this is an action show so it won't take up much of the conversation. Loved the afterlife stuff, Lincoln is kinda cute, and that twist in the end! OMG! but Skye continues to annoy me by being way too dramatic, I understand where she's coming from but I don't have to enjoy it! And shoutout to Fitzsimmons who reminded me this episode why they are my favorite characters, their ability to communicate telepathically( even after all the bad blood between them this season) astounds me, in fact I think this episode is where I started shipping them because their chemistry is back and it's ten folds what it was in s1!

There are a lot of holes in the various plot lines that run through this series, but this is one of the worst written episodes. Sky is whisked away by Gordon to some location that no one knows where it exists except Gordon. She wakes up with what looks like acupuncture needles all over her body, and is greeted by Gordon and the young alien medical student who knows that she arrived two days ago, and has been unconscious until this very moment when he arrives in her room. From there the med student goes on to say several times "I thought you knew". Why in the world would he think that she knows anything. Surely to God, he spoke to Gordon about the patient he was treating and would've known that she didn't know anything about her transition or her powers, or how to control them yet the riders keep insisting that he be so stupid as to constantly assume she knows everything and his stand when she doesn't know who she is what she is and or what she can do. I don't know who the actor is I guess I could look him up but really I'd look back at this part in my career and think God I wish I hadn't had play such a stupid, poorly written character as this young alien medical student. Terrible writing.