Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents of SHIELD - S02E16 - "AfterLife"

[TheVileOne]

Nu-SHIELD is paranoid. They've seen the damage aliens and other powered people have caused...so they've become VERY hardline and feel their extreme actions are vital to keeping the earth and normal humans safe from these people with abilities.

And yet their creation started in the fallout of the HYDRA infiltration being revealed. And they said, "We're not going to abandon our crewmates or leave them to die due to orders. We will be fair, democratic, and compassionate!" It doesn't hold water to me. This is the definition of contrived writing.

 

[Dr. Evil]

The Downfall of Gonzales' SHIELD will be their obsession in getting rid of Coulson instead of getting rid of HYDRA. Outside of the flashbacks, it seems to me that Gonzales has been ignoring HYDRA and instead seeing Coulson as a bigger threat.

 

[mr. peasant]

Completely loving the most recent episode. Anyone else finding themselves going back to the epic coded message exchange scene between Fitz and Simmons? It worked on so many levels and there are so many ways to interpret it:

When Fitz told Simmons that she might as well have PACKED his bags herself; was he telling her to hide it in his bag? And when he asked if she wanted him to leave, was he pissed at Simmons for separating them again; which gives a completely different interpretation to her response of "If we work for SHIELD, we have a duty to carry out our responsibilities. So, it's perhaps best if you do".

Thoughts?

 

[Human Torch]

I would like to think Simmons packed the cube. I can't see Fitz as this master illusionist who palmed the cube right in plain sight of a room full of highly skilled agents (half of which had weapons trained on him).

 

[mr. peasant]

I would like to think Simmons packed the cube. I can't see Fitz as this master illusionist who palmed the cube right in plain sight of a room full of highly skilled agents (half of which had weapons trained on him).

I think that goes without a doubt. The question was how they came up with it. I got the feeling - especially on rewatch - that Fitz had slipped Simmons the idea/instruction during their confrontation in front of Bobbi.

 

[WhiteWalker]

I think that goes without a doubt. The question was how they came up with it. I got the feeling - especially on rewatch - that Fitz had slipped Simmons the idea/instruction during their confrontation in front of Bobbi.

I have explained this a couple of times in this thread so I guess one more time wouldn't hurt. It was all Jemma's idea. Fitz didn't figure it out until the scene where him and Mack are talking. Mack tells fitz that Jemma is working on the toolbox. Then fitz goes over to the big computer screen to see what she was doing. The following is Fitz's dialog.

FITZ "She's scanning the surface dimensions. Routing the data through; Why would she do that? UNLESS!!!

This is the point where Fitz figures out that she was scanning the dimensions in order to make a copy. From this point on they were in sync.

FITZ "I saw everything Jemma! Did you really want me to find out this way?

JEMMA "Well I was hoping you would, so we could work together on this. Do you have any idea how valuable the information inside of this could be? You have to help me get it out! Get things back to normal."

Fitz then grabs the cube and say his little speech and puts it back. And that's when he tips Jemma off about packing his bag. By the end of the scene they were both on the same page. But make no mistake, getting the cube out was all Jemma's idea. Packing it in his bag was Fitz's idea.

 

[Uskok]

Calling Skye a "thing" doesn't qualify as being "extremely cautious".

She's a Kree weapon. Weapons are "things".

Right...I wouldn't say it's cautious. It's paranoia linked to a form of racism...or "powerism" I guess in the case of humans with powers.

It's clear they want all powered beings in prison or killed.

Just because they disagree with Coulson you think they're worse than Nazis.

The Downfall of Gonzales' SHIELD will be their obsession in getting rid of Coulson instead of getting rid of HYDRA. Outside of the flashbacks, it seems to me that Gonzales has been ignoring HYDRA and instead seeing Coulson as a bigger threat.

Just because we didn't see them fighting HYDRA doesn't mean that didn't happen.

 

[mr. peasant]

I have explained this a couple of times in this thread so I guess one more time wouldn't hurt. It was all Jemma's idea. Fitz didn't figure it out until the scene where him and Mack are talking. Mack tells fitz that Jemma is working on the toolbox. Then fitz goes over to the big computer screen to see what she was doing. The following is Fitz's dialog.

FITZ "She's scanning the surface dimensions. Routing the data through; Why would she do that? UNLESS!!!

This is the point where Fitz figures out that she was scanning the dimensions in order to make a copy. From this point on they were in sync.

FITZ "I saw everything Jemma! Did you really want me to find out this way?

JEMMA "Well I was hoping you would, so we could work together on this. Do you have any idea how valuable the information inside of this could be? You have to help me get it out! Get things back to normal."

Fitz then grabs the cube and say his little speech and puts it back. And that's when he tips Jemma off about packing his bag. By the end of the scene they were both on the same page. But make no mistake, getting the cube out was all Jemma's idea. Packing it in his bag was Fitz's idea.

No one doubted that first bit.I wasn't even talking about whose idea was it to get it out. The things I was raising were:

1. Did Fitz tell Simmons to hide it in his bag?

2. Were Simmons' last words to Fitz intended to remind him that he was a SHIELD agent and that was he should thus do his duty.

 

[Pokkle]

Synopsis 19 ? :

Spoiler

"The Dirty Half Dozen" - Gonzales and Coulson must find a way to put their differences aside and work together against Hydra, even if it means teaming up with someone they don't trust, on "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," Tuesday, April 28 (9:00-10:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network.

"Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." stars Clark Gregg as Director Phil Coulson, Ming-Na Wen as Agent Melinda May, Brett Dalton as Grant Ward, Chloe Bennet as Agent Skye, Iain De Caestecker as Agent Leo Fitz, Elizabeth Henstridge as Agent Jemma Simmons, Nick Blood as Lance Hunter and Adrianne Palicki as Bobbi Morse.

Guest starring are Henry Simmons as Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie, Ruth Negga as Raina, Henry Goodman as Dr. List, J. August Richards as Deathlok/Mike Peterson, Kyle Maclachlan as Cal, Edward James Olmos as Robert Gonzales, Jamie Harris as Gordon, Christine Adams as Agent Weaver, Mark Allan Stewart as Agent Oliver, Maya Stojan as Kara/Agent 33, Dichen Lachman as Jiaying, Luke Mitchell as Lincoln Campbell and Chad Cleven as Hydra tac agent.

"The Dirty Half Dozen" was written by Brent Fletcher & Drew Z. Greenberg and directed by Kevin Tancharoen.

 

[WhiteWalker]

No one doubted that first bit.I wasn't even talking about whose idea was it to get it out. The things I was raising were:

1. Did Fitz tell Simmons to hide it in his bag?

2. Were Simmons' last words to Fitz intended to remind him that he was a SHIELD agent and that was he should thus do his duty.

1. Asked and answered. Fitz asked her to "pack my bag yourself".

2. Open to interpretation, but since their entire discourse was a series of intimations, one can make the inference, "it's your job to see that Coulson gets the toolbox". Like May told Gonzales " Coulson and SHIELD are the same thing".

 

[Dregride]

She's a Kree weapon. Weapons are "things".

Just because they disagree with Coulson you think they're worse than Nazis.

Just because we didn't see them fighting HYDRA doesn't mean that didn't happen.

-I don't think its safe to say she's a weapon. An "abomination"(unnatural human kree hybrid) maybe. The kree wouldn't have just abanded the project if they got their desired affect of creating weapons. Look at the powers weve seen, vibration energy control, teleportation, static electricity, longevity(and healing massive injuries under specific conditions).
And we've seen the limits of at least two of them, skye and her moms. Jiaying said that she won't live forever and she was only able to heal herself after cal sti he'd her up(confirmed by writers), and skyes powers range seems to be limited.
In episode 12 May gets skye far enough away from the kree that during the fight the earthquake didn't reach them, and in episode 16 we get an overhead shot of Skye using her powers on Calderon and Bobbi her wave reaches like maybe 20 feet max.
At the most you could call them more useful solders given that their abilities could come in handy, but they are still sentient organisms (unnatural but viable hybrids) that have identical mental processes of humans.

-there's a very good reason why the inhumans have been hiding their existence for however long they've existed. Because of people loke gonzolas and Calderon. They don't consider them "human"( Calderon called skye an "it") and believe they should be killed( Calderon and his men brought guns when ICERs would have been just as fine). Xenophobia for the sake of xenophobia is a real thing and has never led to anything good.
This isn't abiut disagreeing with Coulson( even though Coulson can at least where they're coming from unlike vise-versa) this about them acting nazi-like, in the sense of their insistence of dehumanizing and killing people with powers regardless if they're dangerous or not just because theyre different.

-if they were fighting hydra at all than Hydra would've known about them. But according to what Whitehall said about shield, the only one they know about is Coulson and his team. They were too busy spying on Coulson instead of talking to him to do otherwise( however if a future episode contradicts this than I'll happily admit im wrong)

 

[Dregride]

And yet their creation started in the fallout of the HYDRA infiltration being revealed. And they said, "We're not going to abandon our crewmates or leave them to die due to orders. We will be fair, democratic, and compassionate!" It doesn't hold water to me. This is the definition of contrived writing.

Saving the ship was the best decision they've ever made, it all kinda went downhill after that.

 

[WhiteWalker]

Saving the ship was the best decision they've ever made, it all kinda went downhill after that.

No, it was a foolish decision that just happened to have a good outcome. It could have just as easily gone the other way.

 

[Lilbaz]

No, it was a foolish decision that just happened to have a good outcome. It could have just as easily gone the other way.

You could say the same about most of Shields decisions.

 

[WhiteWalker]

You could say the same about most of Shields decisions.

That's the truth!!

 

[Demileto]

Saving the ship was the best decision they've ever made, it all kinda went downhill after that.

Eh, I wouldn't go so far just yet. What if the season ends with Coulson delivering the ship's Chekrov's cargo to the Avengers and it is then revealed to be project Ultron? NuSHIELD would then be indirectly responsible for million more deaths.

Only by the season's end can we say that for sure.

 

[Uskok]

-I don't think its safe to say she's a weapon. An "abomination"(unnatural human kree hybrid) maybe. The kree wouldn't have just abanded the project if they got their desired affect of creating weapons. Look at the powers weve seen, vibration energy control, teleportation, static electricity, longevity(and healing massive injuries under specific conditions).
And we've seen the limits of at least two of them, skye and her moms. Jiaying said that she won't live forever and she was only able to heal herself after cal sti he'd her up(confirmed by writers), and skyes powers range seems to be limited.
In episode 12 May gets skye far enough away from the kree that during the fight the earthquake didn't reach them, and in episode 16 we get an overhead shot of Skye using her powers on Calderon and Bobbi her wave reaches like maybe 20 feet max.
At the most you could call them more useful solders given that their abilities could come in handy, but they are still sentient organisms (unnatural but viable hybrids) that have identical mental processes of humans.

The Kree abandoned the project because it failed on other planets. On Earth they didn't wait to see the final result. Had they waited a little longer, Skye would be a loyal brainless soldier of the Kree Empire.

-there's a very good reason why the inhumans have been hiding their existence for however long they've existed. Because of people loke gonzolas and Calderon. They don't consider them "human"( Calderon called skye an "it") and believe they should be killed( Calderon and his men brought guns when ICERs would have been just as fine). Xenophobia for the sake of xenophobia is a real thing and has never led to anything good.
This isn't abiut disagreeing with Coulson( even though Coulson can at least where they're coming from unlike vise-versa) this about them acting nazi-like, in the sense of their insistence of dehumanizing and killing people with powers regardless if they're dangerous or not just because theyre different.

Technically, they're not human. They're Inhumans. t: Ok, bad joke. But still, no one in Gonzales' S.H.I.E.L.D. said anything about killing Inhumans.

-if they were fighting hydra at all than Hydra would've known about them. But according to what Whitehall said about shield, the only one they know about is Coulson and his team. They were too busy spying on Coulson instead of talking to him to do otherwise( however if a future episode contradicts this than I'll happily admit im wrong)

There's a perfect explanation. Whitehall didn't know who was in charge of (Coulson's) S.H.I.E.L.D. until he met Ward because there were two S.H.I.E.L.D.s.

 

[Dregride]

The Kree abandoned the project because it failed on other planets. On Earth they didn't wait to see the final result. Had they waited a little longer, Skye would be a loyal brainless soldier of the Kree Empire.

Technically, they're not human. They're Inhumans. t: Ok, bad joke. But still, no one in Gonzales' S.H.I.E.L.D. said anything about killing Inhumans.

There's a perfect explanation. Whitehall didn't know who was in charge of (Coulson's) S.H.I.E.L.D. until he met Ward because there were two S.H.I.E.L.D.s.

-well technically she wouldn't been born if they knew, there would've been no chance for an inhuman to procreate with a regular human. But yeah good point. she isn't brainless though.

-with how Gonzales was speaking about powered people and how he defended calderons use of lethal weapons in the "retrieval" (*cough*) of skye I honestly believe that that's how they prefer to deal with powered people, to kill them.

-but if they were doing stuff that why did Nobody know about them, not talbot, not Coulson, not Whitehall or any of the other hydra heads. After talbot and Coulson got into good graces you'd think the actions of real shield would've come up at some point

 

[Chemistro]

-I don't think its safe to say she's a weapon. An "abomination"(unnatural human kree hybrid) maybe. The kree wouldn't have just abanded the project if they got their desired affect of creating weapons.

Vin-Tak also said they needed killers, and whether one calls it a weapon of a slave enhanced soldier, they have military use.
But that aside, the Kree didn't abandon the project. One faction of the Kree made them, and another faction (who considers them "abominations", etc.) decided to exterminate them, ending the project. Vin-Tak is from the latter faction, and he came to Earth to eliminate anyone changed by the mist and erase any memory of them. He also said that if the government of the Kree empire knew their experiments succeeded, they would likely resume them.

In episode 12 May gets skye far enough away from the kree that during the fight the earthquake didn't reach them, and in episode 16 we get an overhead shot of Skye using her powers on Calderon and Bobbi her wave reaches like maybe 20 feet max.

In episode 12, she was trying not to use her power, and was not using it at full power (e.g., she didn't bring down walls, like after the transformation, which may or may not be at full power). And in episode 16, she was weak to the damage caused by the gloves, plus she probably didn't intend to use as much power as she could; also, that was a single shot, not a sustained use of power.
So, I think we don't know how powerful she is.
Then again, I suspect (based on other Whedon's shows, though those were Joss Whedon's, but still, they seem to work together to a considerable extent), that either not much more, or we'll see a serious permanent loss of power due to permanent damage caused by the gloves. Or something.

At the most you could call them more useful solders given that their abilities could come in handy, but they are still sentient organisms (unnatural but viable hybrids) that have identical mental processes of humans.

While a few of their mental processes are somewhat different (e.g., they perceive the world around them differently, for instance Skye can feel the vibrations of everything around her. It's like having one or more extra senses), you hit the nail on the head, because the mental processes that they do share with humans (nearly all), include all of those relevant to make them "not a thing" in the sense Gonzales uses the word "thing". The differences in mental processes are comparable to the differences between, say, the mental processes of a blind person and most people. There are some differences, but those aren't relevant in this context.

They don't consider them "human"( Calderon called skye an "it") and believe they should be killed( Calderon and his men brought guns when ICERs would have been just as fine).

It seems icers wouldn't have been fine, either. They already had Skye in the Retreat. But supposed they iced her. Then what would they have done? Permanent sedation is horrific, and they have no other way to hold her.

The right course of action was not to do anything against her. Then again, the right course of action was not to attack the Playground in the first place, but even after they did, they shouldn't have attacked Skye.

This isn't abiut disagreeing with Coulson( even though Coulson can at least where they're coming from unlike vise-versa) this about them acting nazi-like, in the sense of their insistence of dehumanizing and killing people with powers regardless if they're dangerous or not just because theyre different.

Yes, and they shouldn't de-personalizing them even when they are dangerous, or even when they are justified in killing some of them.

Saving the ship was the best decision they've ever made, it all kinda went downhill after that.

For the most part, that decision was made by other people. Gonzales was against it. Weaver wasn't there. And neither was Calderon. Of the five members of NUShield's present-day executive, only two of them made that choice.

 

[Chemistro]

Eh, I wouldn't go so far just yet. What if the season ends with Coulson delivering the ship's Chekrov's cargo to the Avengers and it is then revealed to be project Ultron? NuSHIELD would then be indirectly responsible for million more deaths.

But whether it was a good decision to make at the time does not depend on future events, but on the information available to them when they made the decision.

 

[Humbugged]

But whether it was a good decision to make at the time does not depend on future events, but on the information available to them when they made the decision.

Yet they are condemning Coulson and crew for the exact same thing .

When the season started and they were trying to stop former agents hawking tech to the bidder Hartley got killed .But straight out of Gonzales mouth they blame her dying on some existential bs that it happened because of Coulson is being manipulated by aliens.
And they also blamed Coulson and Crew for Trip dying even though they thought they were stopping a WMD that had already killed US personnel .

 

[gerrym51]

It depends on the writers-if every decision they made was the correct one be an awful boring show

 

[Chemistro]

When the season started and they were trying to stop former agents hawking tech to the bidder Hartley got killed .But straight out of Gonzales mouth they blame her dying on some existential bs that it happened because of Coulson is being manipulated by aliens.

I don't remember that scene (i.e., when they blame Coulson for that), but granted, blaming her death on Coulson's perhaps being manipulated by aliens would make no sense. Btw, she chose to use the diviner as a weapon against Creel (granted, she didn't have another weapon).

And they also blamed Coulson and Crew for Trip dying even though they thought they were stopping a WMD that had already killed US personnel.

iirc, they think Coulson's actions lead to that because he was looking for the city because of what the alien blood did to his mind, and that's how Hydra found the city in the first place. But even though Coulson's mind was altered, they should have been investigating the symbols (and trying to find the city, if they realized it was a city) even if Coulson hadn't been affected. They first saw the symbols in "Eye-Spy", and then on the diviner (it had similar ones), so there were reasons based on that and the fact that Hydra was very interested in them.

 

[Mike5575]

Wait, are we actually having a debate on whether Skye is a person or a thing? Seriously? This is all a bit disturbing.

 

[ajmccarrell]

Did anyone else notice we never saw who the cab driver of the cab that Fitz was in?