14th Nov2014

‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 2×02: Heavy is the Head’ Review

by ApolloXL5

Written by Paul Zbyszewski | Directed by Jesse Bochco

heavy-is-the-head

PLOT:

With the mysterious Obelisk in Creel’s hands, SHIELD works against the clock to stop him from handing it to HYDRA.

VERDICT:

Season Two certainly does not look like it is about to lose any of what made the last quarter of the previous season good…and yeah, I do know it’s only the second episode. But when you compare this and ‘Shadows’ with the first two episodes of Season One, you can definitely see a big gap in the overall quality and that can only (hopefully) get bigger as this new season continues.

So we dive right back in where the last episode left us, with Hunter the only survivor of the car crash that killed Hartley and Idaho. Now May appears and offers to help him escape, but  he unselfishly tells her to leave him be and chase down Creel (which I found quite surprising considering he is Mercenary, who are generally seen as being not very honourable and in it only for the money).

This in turn gets him captured and taken directly to General Talbot where we get a little more information on the new character (sort of explaining his selfless act with May earlier), as well as having the obligatory ‘let’s make a deal’ scene where the General offers him a way out so long as Hunter gives him Coulson (why do I get the feeling that he won’t go through with it).

Back at the Playground, we have a troubled Fritz (still trying to deal with the brain-damage he suffered in last season’s finale) not getting any further with the cloaking technology and so Mac, the only other new character to survive the last episode (probably because he was not allowed off the base at the time) attempts to help the young man solve the problem that the team currently has with Creel. Now despite the fact that I am not overly fond of Fritz, I do have to give credit to Iain De Caestecker for how well he portrays the now damaged character, and knowing that Simmons is just a hallucination makes me want to know why she has gone and where too.

Now when Hunter got back to base, I was certainly not surprised that he confessed about his deal with Talbot to Coulson (though he didn’t mention the two million dollars, but Coulson finds it all out anyway) but he showed that the only reason he came back was to gain their help in getting revenge of Creel for Hartley’s death (surely that should ring alarm-bells in Coulson’s mind). And the Merc’s scene with Skye was a nice touch, though it is hard for me to feel sad about a character that was only in one episode before dying.

On the ‘Absorbing Man’ front, May spent the majority of the first half of the episode shadowing Creel, who (despite his attempt to protect himself from the Obelisk last episode) has been infected by the object and is slowly being taken over by it. He even kills an innocent waitress, though by accident. And it was not long after this that we are reintroduced to Raina, who is no longer working for Hydra but is interested in the alien object and gives Creel a mineral (though not freely) that can help him control the power that is threatening to take him over.

She though seems to be playing everyone in this episode though as she contacts Shield and lets them know exactly how to find Creel, so this leads us into the big action piece of the episode with Coulson allowing Hunter to join the team on the mission. But he betrays them so that he can get a shot at the man who killed his friends, (the scene with bullet hitting Creel in the face as he changes his skin to metal is a really cool and well made shot) which ends up with Coulson saving him with a device that Fritz (with Mac and ‘not real’ Simmons help) remembers making that neutralises Creel (with some more cool visuals).

Now the last ten minutes have Hunter accepted into the team (despite his betraying them, though he did it for the right reason…in a way), then we get to see some plot-threads from the last season get touched upon, like the new Director scribbling alien glyphs onto the walls again. We also see that Raina took the Obelisk and is working with Skye’s Father ’the Doctor’ (played by Kyle MacLachlan), who then makes her pick up the object which surprisingly does not kill her…interesting.

The very last scene has Coulson meeting Talbot once more, looking like Hunter had sold him out. But really it was just to show that Shield was back in business with a fully working ‘Bus‘ once more (though the rebuilding is in no way finished), though I really liked the line Coulson had about it running out of fuel (there was also the bathroom and George Foreman jokes too). Also Creel apparently is not dead, I hope that this is the case and that we get to see him again in the future.

Overall it was another strong instalment and continues a run of episodes that looks to be improving all the time (it is really good to see the team working with other people and not always isolated on the Bus), and I really hope they can keep it up.

**** 4/5

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