Making Friends and Influencing People: Simmons Goes Undercover in HYDRA

The first two episodes of Season 2 showed how far Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has come since the start of Season 1. They offered a well told complete story while opening some intriguing teases about what to expect from the season, and the hopes I have for it are high so far. This episode promises to go deeper into the new world of the S.H.I.E.L.D. versus HYDRA battle for assets, and it does, though it takes a slightly more obvious route than I’d have liked.

It opens with a creepy Clockwork Orange style scene where Whitehall and Bakshi are preparing the former S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 33 for a future of compliance to HYDRA’s orders. Compliance is a key word for HYDRA, given its effect on the Absorbing Man in the last episode. The creepiness continues with Simmons (!) waking up to God Help the Girl by Belle and Sebastian. Guess what: she’s now working for HYDRA!

What makes the opening work is that it asks you to hold two ideas at once. Simmons is clearly in a HYDRA lab, doing HYDRA research, and the episode wants you to feel the full weight of that for a few minutes before it pulls the rug out. Then it tells you she’s a mole, and the rest of the hour is about how long she can keep up the act. It’s a twist that gets us to the interesting part quickly.

Simmons Behind Enemy Lines

Back to Simmons. As the last episode spent its time concentrating on Hunter, this one centres on her and her new life as an agent of HYDRA, and it doesn’t get any less creepy. After a disturbing discussion with her boss in the lab, Simmons realises she’s been researching a former friend, Donnie Gill, who we met last year on his way to becoming Blizzard. Getting home, and paranoid enough to pull her gun, she finds that Coulson has shown up to cook her dinner and debrief her, which is not as kinky as that might sound. Oh, of course, she’s a mole.

Over dinner Coulson discusses the requirements of being a successful undercover agent, which boil down to making friends. After that there’s a debriefing of the team, and they need to get a hold of Donnie before HYDRA does. It’s a neat inversion of the HYDRA story we saw earlier this year in The Winter Soldier, where the whole organisation had been sitting inside S.H.I.E.L.D. for decades. Now S.H.I.E.L.D. gets to play the same game from the other side, and it’s a lot more fun to watch when it’s our people being the infiltrators.

Simmons’ scenes are the heart of the episode. She’s sharp and scared and trying to act like neither, and every conversation she has with Bakshi on the 25th floor has the feeling of someone walking on a cracked floor. She gets a scare when she’s called up to see him regarding her S.H.I.E.L.D. past, her connection to Donnie and her loyalty to HYDRA, and the tension holds. Meanwhile Whitehall is chatting amiably about individuality and equality as only a Nazi can, while he continues to have Agent 33 brainwashed.

The brainwashing thread is the darkest part of the episode, and it runs underneath everything else. Agent 33 spends the hour being prepared for compliance, and Bakshi’s mantra is the tool he reaches for whenever somebody steps out of line, which is why it matters so much when he turns it on Simmons. We’ve seen what it did to Creel in the last episode. Watching it hang over a character we like, in a room full of people who treat it as routine paperwork, is what makes the HYDRA scenes feel properly threatening rather than cartoonish.

Donnie Gill and the Frozen Freighter

HYDRA, as usual, is several steps ahead and has already found Donnie, who has been hiding out in Marrakesh. A paranoid Donnie freezes his current employer, then one of the HYDRA agents comes to recruit him. He then heads off to the port to deal with the problem proactively, starting with icing up a freighter. You’d think someone would notice. The freighter scene is one of the better visual moments of the hour.

Simmons soon finds herself brought in to recruit him. However, Donnie has had enough of working for HYDRA, and he intends to take out any HYDRA agent coming after him. Despite Coulson’s advice, Simmons handles the re-recruitment badly, to the point that Bakshi has her begin the compliance mantra that he used on Creel. So the tension and the body count are both ratcheting up, and for a while it really does look as though her cover is gone.

Back at base, an angry and paranoid Fitz has figured out that someone is being kept downstairs, sees that it’s Ward, and uses the opportunity for some healthy expression of his continuing rage, if you consider cutting off Ward’s air supply healthy. Again, this offers more evidence that his current state is now primarily psychologically driven, and it shows how much Coulson, who has been through plenty since The Avengers, trusts the people around him. Thankfully, he takes what Fitz did about as well as could be expected.

We also get another interview between Skye and Ward, Silence of the Lambs style. Things veer dangerously personal before Skye brings it back to HYDRA, and Ward advises her that HYDRA has already won, because they don’t consider right or wrong in what they do. Coulson then learns from Ward, through Fitz, what we’d already guessed: HYDRA has made quality use of Donnie, who helped them take the Sandbox. That’s a sharp little piece of information, and it makes the race for him feel real.

Skye, the Sniper Rifle and a Heartbeat

All the foreshadowing starts to pay off here. We next move on to May offering some shooting lessons to Skye and introducing her to a sniper rifle. Pay attention, because this is all foreshadowing. It’s a little more obvious than we’re used to, but done with panache. Skye’s solidity as a field agent comes through her repeatedly checking the heartbeat reader on her wrist, and for the most part she keeps it low, at least until Ward mentions her dad and that he’s looking for her. Then it skyrockets.

Luckily for Simmons, May spots that she is the one talking to Donnie and shoots Hunter before he can take out Simmons, which preserves her cover. Bakshi orders Donnie to ice the ship, but HYDRA is thwarted from using him as a weapon in the future by a sniper shot from, yes, Skye. So maybe Ward is wrong about HYDRA having the upper hand over S.H.I.E.L.D. when it comes to morality.

Overall it’s a clear win for S.H.I.E.L.D., acknowledged by Bakshi and Whitehall, although they have only limited knowledge yet of what they’re dealing with, including who’s running it. It looks like Simmons is getting a promotion, but just to remind us what a promotion can end up as, we get a brief visit to the top HYDRA pair from the now “compliant” Agent 33. It’s a chilling little stinger, and it keeps the hour from feeling too triumphant. If you want a second opinion, Mynock Manor reviewed it when it aired.

Final Thoughts

The foreshadowing is the thing I keep coming back to. The shooting lesson, the sniper rifle, the heartbeat reader on Skye’s wrist and Ward’s remark about her father are all set up early and paid off before the credits, and nothing in that chain comes as a surprise once you’ve noticed the first link. That’s not a crime in a team show, where the pleasure is often watching the pieces click into place, but it does mean the episode spends most of its running time telling you what’s about to happen instead of leaving you to wonder.

It’s a bit of a weaker story compared to the previous two, having neither the intensity or pace of the opening, nor the deeper reflection shown in episode two. We get a chance to see more of how both Skye and Simmons have grown and changed, and we got a Fitz breakthrough, so things are still moving forward, which is always a good thing. If the episode has any major narrative fault, it’s that the heavy foreshadowing made it a fairly predictable hour, and one that spends much of its time pointing at what’s to come. Still, above average.

Which would you rather see, Simmons staying under cover or Coulson pulling her out, and did Skye make the right call with that shot? Tell me in the comments.