My laptop's dead

Of course, on the very same day when Agent Maria Hill appeared on Agents of Shield, my laptop decided to be play dead :( 

I really have no idea when my review for Agents of Shield 1x20 Nothing Personal will be posted since I CAN'T EVEN WATCH IT. I'm pissed off I wanna see Agent Hill on my screen!!!! 

I think I need a new laptop. Someone buy me a new laptop please, I'll make you some pancakes in return thanks. 

Marvel's Agents of Shield 1x19 The Only Light in the Darkness review

The Only Light in the Darkness is the 19th episode of AoS season 1. A lot of things happened in this episode, and also some secrets being revealed. We finally met the cellist Coulson talked about! 

In my opinion, after the last 2 episodes focusing more on Hydra, this episode felt a bit more like the earlier episodes of AoS, with stories involving one individual with superpower each episode. Yes, Hydra story line was still continuing, but we kind of got a little side story as well this time.

--- SPOILER ALERT ---

The episode opened with a man named Marcus Daniels. As someone who never actually read Marvel's comicbooks, I had no idea who this man was. But it was shown that he's got some sort of a power of absorbing energy around him. Lamps turned off when he passed (at first it reminds me a bit to Dumbledore's Deluminator, haha), and also he killed a guy just by touching. How convenient is that power?

At the Providence, Ward told the team his version of what happened in the Fridge, you lying son of a bish, while being treated for his wounds. He even told the team that he killed Agent Garrett. Good acting, Ward.

One thing that bugged me during this scene was too much flashbacks. Why? That episode was only a week ago. To emphasize to audiences who didn't catch last week's episode that Ward was telling lies? Maybe. But still annoying.

From Ward, we knew that the prisoners from the Fridge were now freely roaming the world. Coulson seemed to pay extra attention to one Marcus Daniels, it looked like he got a special history with Coulson. In order to search for Daniels, Coulson insisted to split the team even though Skye and May told him it's not wise. Plus Agent Koenig didn't fully trust the whole team yet to let them leave the secret base.

Agent Koenig then decided to put the whole team except Coulson through a lie detector test. An ultimate lie detector, actually. Tbh this was more like a comedic bit of the episode, and some of it was actually funny. 

Agents who passed the test would get a lanyard which served a special purpose later in the episode. Also Ward managed to pass this test, although he was very close to being shot by Koenig. Damn, Ward was good at this whole acting thing.

After that, the team was split into 2.

• Coulson, Fitz, Simmons, and Agent Triplett went to get Daniels, this is the part I called the side story,
• while Skye, Ward, May and Koenig stayed at the base.

Turned out, Daniels was a stalker who's obsessed with a cellist named Audrey Nathan. YES, the same cellist who had a relationship with Coulson before the battle of New York. She still didn't know that Coulson's alive, and apparently Coulson didn't want to tell them either, because he couldn't stay with her anyway. awww. Also yes, Daniels' power was absorbing energy. 

The team managed to save Audrey before Daniels got her. They made a plan where Audrey would have to do an awesooooome solo cello on stage to trap Daniels and then the team would shoot him with gamma rays to make him overloaded with energy. Simply put, of course they did defeat Daniels. Typical. 

But the good part comes after this.

Back at the Providence, bigger and more exciting things were happening. 

• Turned out the lanyard given to each agent was a tracker, so Koenig knew their where about all the time, sneaky, but smart also useful later on.

• May left after fixing their plane. Since Coulson no longer trusted her, she decided to leave the team. Walking, on foot, alone, in the middle of Canadian nowhere, heavy snow, I mean, HOW BADASS IS THAT???

• Skye had an idea to hack NSA to get satellite footage of the Fridge breakout. Ward started to get panicked here, but he was still playing it cool, though.

• Ward killed Agent Koenig just before the footage Skye hacked got cleared up to reveal that Ward was there. I should've seen this coming, I mean it's clear that Ward was totally a Hydra, he'd do anything for his mission (which was to bring Skye to Garrett) like he said to May, so it should not be surprising that he killed Koenig. But still it's a nice surprise.

• Besides killing Koenig, it seemed that Ward also managed to edit the footage?? Since we could not see any sign of Ward and Garrett in the video after that. I don't really get this part.

• We also got Skye and Ward's intimate moment. All the kissing, the sweet talks, confession, whatever. Again, brilliant acting from Agent Ward. I really can't tell whether he had genuine feelings or not towards Skye. The intimate moment was stopped abruptly though, because Skye found a trace of blood on Ward and he got panicked.

• With Ward gone, Skye then went looking for Koenig with the help of the lanyard/tracker. See? Useful. She found him not long after that, in a closet, killed. oops. One thing, this scene played simultaneously with Audrey playing solo cello on stage, cross-cutting style, and also Ward started looking for Skye. And let me tell you, the music was perfect in building the suspense just before Skye sound Koenig's dead body, BRILLIANT BACKGROUND MUSIC TIMING.

• After finding out about Koenig, Skye realized that Ward was Hydra. Finally, Skye. She's also panicking though, since Ward was looking for her. There's a noticeable moment here, when Skye was looking for an escape plan, she/the camera focused on the modifiable window. Maybe she left a message for Coulson's team there? Idk. We will have to see next week.

• Skye played smart after that, pretending she's still in the intimate atmosphere with Ward, so he didn't notice anything. And then Ward managed to take her away from the Providence with their plane, saying the team needed their help. Skye found out about Ward's real purpose later on though.

Now, even from episode 1, we knew that Skye's smart. She always managed to send clues, coordinates, without being noticed. Maybe next episode we will see how Skye trying to reach Coulson and the rest of the team. We'll see.

A couple more things from this episode. 

It seems that Fitz-Simmons relationship was shifting towards romantic side, with Fitz being jealous of Triplett and all. Tbh I enjoy their sibling-like dynamic more than this. Their dynamic was unique, something we rarely see on tv between a male and a female character. Turning that into a triangle love relationship would be soooo boring.

Lastly, it's been confirmed that Cobie Smulders a.k.a Agent Maria Hill will guest star on AoS, and it's a nice surprise to know that May is the one who is gonna approach her. YES TO BADASS FEMALE HEROES.

--- SPOILER ENDS ---

I give this episode of AoS 4/5 noise. It's a nice combination of Hydra story line and AoS earlier type of story line. Less comedic lines, except for the lie detector part but still entertaining. Also that climax, solo cello scene / Skye's finding out about Ward, that was a big plus point. 

With only 3 episodes left this season, I guess AoS will have a high tension season finale. I hope so.

Marvel's Agents of Shield 1x18 Providence review

Providence was the 18th episode of AoS season 1. After a fantastic episode last week, viewers were left with so many questions. 

1. Is Agent Ward really a Hydra? 
2. Or is he actually a good guy, pretending to be the traitor but in the end he will be back as Coulson's team hero?
3. Or, perhaps his memory is compromised by Hydra just like The Winter Soldier?
4. Did he really kill Agent Hand? Or is it just some kind of, again, a staged act to deceive Garrett?
5. Is he the only bad guy in the team or should we suspect others too? 
6. SKYE's BACKUP HARD DRIVE!!!

--- SPOILER ALERT ---

The episode opened with Ward rescuing Raina, a.k.a "the girl in the flower dress", from her cell since Shield caught her. Turned out later Raina was needed by The Clairvoyant a.k.a Agent Garrett to continue their Centipede Project. So here we learned that the project was indeed a Hydra project. 

One thing I noticed about Raina in this episode was, FLOWERS. I mean yeah I get it, she is the girl in the flower dress, but still,

Garrett kept on calling her Flowers, even after Raina told him her name, to which he answered "a force of habit". Is there some back story to this? Perhaps something in Raina's past prior to her involvement with the Centipede that had something to do with flowers? Idk. I think there's much more to this, though.

Talking about back story, we got a bit of confrontation scene between Ward and Garrett. Ward was not happy about Skye getting near death shot a few episodes back. (I guess it means that Ward actually had genuine feelings for Skye). Ward insisted that his assignment was only to find out about Coulson's secret. But then Garrett said this,

It became clear here that Ward was a Hydra agent since the beginning. He got a specific assignment from a specific someone (Garrett?) even before Coulson's team was assembled. So yes we can cross the possibility of Ward's memory being compromised. But actually the part that intrigued me was the "don't forget why". Why? Why meaning there's a reason why Ward was chosen to be the traitor. 

Moreover, Ward told Raina about how he knew Garrett since he was a teenager, saying,

Well, whatever his past story was, this plot, especially his feelings towards Skye, still opens a possibility of Ward turning back to the good side. Although, to be completely honest, I kinda hope Ward stays as the bad guy. Because otherwise it will be too cliche, won't it?

Also, I really enjoy Brett Dalton's  performance as real Ward and fake Ward. Seriously, I could see how he literally switched between the two and it's very entertaining. The background music helped, but still kudos to you Brett.

Okay now let's move on to Coulson's team. 

After all the Shield vs Hydra chaos happened, Shield was now regarded as terrorist and the US government were going to take them down. Before that happened, Coulson decided to order his team to flee and vanish, and then asked Skye to erase any proof of their existence, making them ghosts. Skye put it in a simple term for all of us,

Agents of nothing would make a hilarious series title, though. 

Later Coulson got a set of coordinate sent to him through his badge, a form of communication which Coulson believed was Nick Fury's style. The rest of the team did not believe him though, since it was confirmed that Fury was dead already. 

But still they followed him to the coordinates, which lead them to somewhere in the Canadian wilderness. Which resulted in all of them bundled up in cute fluffy cold gears. CUTIES.

I mean, look at  how cute Fitz was. Also Agent May and Skye were wearing beanies.  

Back to the plot. Turned out, that coordinates lead to Fury's secret base there. A base with one agent there called Agent Koenig. Funny guy. Also later he told only Coulson about Fury being alive. But no one else could know about it. WHY?

Meanwhile, Ward and Garrett were hitting The Fridge, a Shield facility where all weird weapons and alien stuffs were kept, and bad guys were held captive. Simply put, now Hydra had all the weapons and all the bad guys. Not a good news for the world.

Oh, I almost forgot. Remember last week Skye gave Ward the back up drive of their plane? Well, Skye, our smart little hacker didn't disappoint at all.

Bow down to Skye, y'all!

One last thing I found kinda funny in this episode. Garrett and Ward's Hydra base was located in Cuba now, and this was the entrance:

What is this? Hogwarts??

--- SPOILER ENDS ---

I give this episode of AoS 4/5 noise. Not as amazing as last week's, but still intriguing. To me, the show succeeded in keeping the hype and rhythm go steadily ever since Captain America The Winter Soldier. Still with the team's awkward but funny one-liner, and now that the spotlight has moved above Agent Ward, I guess we will see further character development there. Interesting. 

Marvel's Agents of Shield 1x17 Turn, Turn, Turn review

Turn, turn, turn was the 17th episode of AoS season 1 and, in my opinion, the best episode so far. It correlated directly to the new Captain America movie, presumably the events in this episode took place simultaneously with the events in The Winter Soldier movie. 

--- SPOILER ALERT ---

Previously, we found out that Agent May was reporting on the team to someone through an encrypted line. This episode opened with Coulson, Skye, and Fitz confronting May about it, believing she was reporting to the Clairvoyant, or even she was the Clairvoyant herself. 

At the same time, their plane was being hijacked controlled by Agent Hand at The Hub, so here viewers were lead to think that Agent Hand was part of HYDRA. Not far from them, Agent Garrett was also attacked by rockets (?) ordered by SHIELD, so viewers were lead to think that he was a good guy.

The team then figured out that Hydra had members within SHIELD and that they were being brought to the Hub for unknown reason. Agent Garrett suggested they blew the plane and ran off, BUT the team insisted to save Simmons, who happened to be at the Hub. Thus the rescuing mission began.

At the Hub, Agent Hand was convinced that Coulson was actually a Hydra member. Really Hand, REALLY?? 

During the mission, we saw a bit romantic scene between SkyeWard. Boring, predictable, but I guess it will be significant for future episodes. The rest of the episode went pretty much action filled, bad guys being revealed and caught BUT if you think there's no more surprise, YOU ARE SO WRONG.

Now here are some surprises presented in this episode, some of them was totally unpredictable, in my opinion.

Plot twist #1 agent May was actually reporting to Nick Fury, OF COURSE, she's a total BAMF, of course she reported directly to the boss yo. Also she's actually the one who assembled the team, not Coulson

Plot twist #2 agent Hand was actually on their team, not a Hydra

Plot twist #3 of freaking course Coulson was not a Hydra. smh, Hand

Plot twist #4 agent Garrett a.k.a Ward's former S.O was actually a Hydra, I totally didn't see this one coming. Also he's the actual Clairvoyant. Well done, Agent, you fooled us all.

Plot twist #5 a.k.a the ultimate plot twist apparently Ward was also a Hydra, just like his SO. Plus he killed Agent Hand at the end of the episode. Damn it, I knew I couldn't trust this guy since the beginning.

Extra point for the actor who plays as Ward, Brett Dalton. He changed his twitter bio and pic after the episode into this:

Brett, you sneaky little shit lol, well done. Really good performance from Brett in this episode.

One seemingly unimportant part I noticed in this episode was this:

Skye backed up their whole data, all their secrets from the plane so far in that hard drive. Assuming that Ward was really a bad guy, that means now Hydra's got their hands on their secrets, right?? All about the 0-8-4, tesseract weaponry, GH 325, gosh I can't wait to find out how this will play out.

--- SPOILER ENDS ---

In Coulson's own word, now that SHIELD had fallen, I'm curious about what's next. Since we know that in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Nick Fury went to Europe (possibly related to future movie, The Avengers: Age of Ultron) which means there'll be no more Agents of Shield, right? So what will happen to this team?

I give this episode of AoS 5/5 noise. Totally twisted multiple times, complementing the Captain America movie really well. Kudos, Marvel.