By: Brandon Wolfe
The terminal blandness of ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ continues in full force with no sign of stopping. And if the show’s stable of dull, lifeless characters weren’t already packed to capacity, we are gifted an additional stiff in the form of Lance Hunter, one of the mercenaries operating under Lucy Lawless’ dead-but-probably-not-because-c’mon Agent Hartley. Hunter is picked up by General Talbot and offered a deal to name his own price if he rolls over on Coulson. Hunter’s loyalties are kept murky, but ultimately he attempts to sell out our boring heroes. His reward for this is for Coulson to offer him a spot on the team, because the TV version of Coulson is a boob.
Hunter is the primary focus of “Heavy is the Head,” which is asinine because we were barely introduced to him last week and the show already has upwards of ten useless regular characters as it is. Devoting all this attention to this uninteresting new guy instead of attempting to improve all the works-in-progress we already have, thus increasing the number of yawn-inducing people on this show by one, doesn’t seem like the best course of action. In other words, classic ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’
The team is still tracking Creel, the Absorbing Man, and his stolen Obelisk of unknown origin. May stakes him out at a local diner, where he inadvertently infects an unfortunate waitress when she accidentally touches him and turns to stone. Creel is approached by Raina, the mysterious femme fatale from last season that you most likely don’t remember, because why should you? She is after the Obelisk and when she cannot obtain it from Creel directly, she contacts Coulson in a bid to use his resources to achieve her goals. Ultimately, Coulson’s team manages to subdue Creel, allowing Raina to grab to Obelisk in all the commotion. She’ll probably do something with it. It will probably be boring. Just playing the odds.
Fitz is still a brain-damaged cuckoo bird who talks to an imaginary Simmons and can’t finish simple sentences, yet he’s still puttering around the lab working on things because, again, Coulson is a boob. With the guiding hand of Agent Mack - who is a character on this show, it would appear - Fitz is able to come up with the genetic means to stop Creel. The lack of Simmons (at least as a person and not as the delusions of a mental patient) concerns me because they’re clearly building to some major revelation about where she has been off to, and there’s no outcome to that I can fathom that would be interesting. Also, the end result is that Simmons is still on this show. ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ is doing too much addition of dead weight when subtraction is painfully necessary.
Skye and May are concerned about Coulson because he is acting unusual, even though he isn’t at all. There is seriously no perceptible difference in his character whatsoever from where I’m sitting. But they sense it and I guess they’re right because Coulson is still doing that thing where he carves weird hieroglyphics all over the wall. Maybe that’s why he keeps that drooling mess Fitz on the team, because he’s a bag of hammers himself.
“Heavy is the Head” ends on an uncharacteristically hopeful note when Raina reports to her boss, who is played by none other than Kyle MacLachlan. Now we’re talking. MacLachlan probably can’t bless this mess, but as with Bill Paxton last season, he might be able to inject some crucially needed watchability into the proceedings. That’s character addition I can get behind.
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