I rather enjoyed this week’s episode of “Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD.” I felt like it dealt more with the relationships side of the story with a little X-Files-type mystery thrown in.
Skye is stuck on the plane in the best … jail … ever. She’s paying her penance for lying to the team, and she seems sincere about it. She’s a nerd at heart so she hangs out with Fitz and Simmons, who gleefully make fun of Agent Ward’s all-too-serious side, much to the delight of Skye.
Our team is tasked with solving the mystery of a troop leader found dead in the forest, floating in midair, a few minutes after he strayed away from his camp of young scouts. A ghost story for the ages, one might say. Simmons is slightly shocked when she gets near the body and it falls to the ground.
Soon after, another man dies in the same way, and it turns out the two were volunteer firefighters who were sent to New York to help out during the Battle of New York. On their way home, they picked up a Chitauri helmet as a souvenir. The helmet has been sitting in the firehouse since the battle, untouched until one particularly boring night when three firefighters working third shift start to clean it.
The rust on it? Not rust, but some alien virus they all contracted, causing an electromagnetic pulse to emanate from their body, basically frying their brains from the inside out.
As Jemma Simmons looks for a cure, Coulson reluctantly locks her in the lab when he realizes she contracted the virus also, when she was shocked when the first body fell. She has about two hours before she sends out a pulse that will disable the SuperStealthShield Plane and send them all to their deaths. Unfortunately, the plane is over the Atlantic and won’t be able to land for another three hours. Jemma has a dilemma!
She and Fitz figure out that whoever once wore the helmet must have the antibodies to the virus, and with it, they can create a cure. Fitz gets the contraband out of the interrogation room (?) and races back to the lab, locking himself and Simmons in. Where one goes, so does the other.
They create a new antiserum and test it on a poor lab rat, but the effects are the same. At this point, Simmons has given up and creates a diversion and knocks Fitz out so she can lower the hangar door to toss herself out. Fitz comes to and notices the rat is ok after all and see Simmons at the edge of the hangar door. He yells at her to stop (why did he not grab the rat and show her? Less dramatic, of course).
She tumbles out, he grabs the antiserum and the injection device and races to get a parachute. But clumsy him, he can barely tie his shoes together as he’s a heap of a mess. Ward comes to the rescue and grabs the chute and the 
antidote. Without hesitation, he jumps out of the plane after her. Never mind that Jemma disembarked a good 10 seconds or more before, Ward is able to catch up to her and save the day.
Coulson later dresses both of them down (“No TV for a month and you’ll hand wash the dishes for two weeks!”). May comes in and Phil confesses that he ordered his own physical because he’s felt different since his brush, nay, his brawl with death.
To that, May tells him to take his shirt off (cue stripper music – bow chicka wow wow). He unbuttons a few (but what a tease, he leaves his jacket AND his tie on) and shows her the nasty scar he got from his death.
Here’s where it gets interesting. There is definitely a hint of something-something going on or had gone on with May and Coulson, I think. She starts to say something like, “You know how long it’s taken me…” and he cuts in with, “I know.” Taken her to what? To accept his death, then realize he’s alive? Come on – I need some deets!
Action and adventure aside, this episode delved more into the relationship of Fitz and Simmons, Coulson and May, Skye and Fitz-Simmons. I enjoyed that aspect of it.
In some thrilling news (and some savvy marketing), the November 19 episode entitled “The Well” will take place in the aftermath of the most recent release of “Thor: The Dark World.” I wasn’t planning on rushing to theaters to see the film (I thought the first “Thor” was abysmally slow-paced), but now I may have to. I guess that is what Disney and Marvel are counting on.
What did you think of this episode of “Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD”? Will you be in theaters to see “Thor: The Dark World” prior to “The Well”?
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