Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Repairs (1x09)

It seems like we're going through and doing a character episode for each of our six leads. A few weeks back we had Simmons, then Fitz, then Ward, and now this week we get to look a bit closer at May. I'm happy that they're doing this, as slowly but surely I'm feeling a stronger connection to these characters. While I don't love them as much as I love some of Whedon's others, I think we're getting somewhere here. Hopefully the momentum continues to pick up over the rest of this first season. Let's look at the plot.

A woman name Hannah Hutchins is believed to have telekinetic powers, after an explosion killed some technicians at her company. The team brings Hannah aboard, but when the plane makes an unscheduled and very frightening landing, the team learns that Hannah isn't the one responsible for all of these accidents. Instead, one of the workers from Hannah's company, named Tobias, is trapped between this world and what he believes to be Hell. It turns out that he caused the first big accident by purposefully messing up the equipment so he could spend time with Hannah. Now, he is targeting people who are trying to hurt Hannah, which includes Coulson and the rest of the team. With May's help, Hannah tells Tobias to stop hurting people, and he disappears.

So, the plot was pretty tight and well contained, which I've found can only be a good thing with this show. Some of their problems often come from overstretching their narrative and trying to do too much all at once. When they stick to smaller stories, it generally works okay. That's not to say that there weren't some stumbles along the way... in the summary above, I really just stuck to the bare bones of the plot, which doesn't include much in the way of our main characters' involvement. And that's part of the problem - this story didn't actually have very much to do with the team. There was a lot of character development for May, and even for Ward and Skye as well, but the development didn't mesh very well with the case itself. This disconnect made it difficult to care about Hannah and her story while at the same time continuing to care about Coulson and the team.

The main subplot was that Fitzsimmons were trying to prank Skye, and they decided to tell her a made up story about May, and what the "Cavalry" really means. Later, Ward told Skye the "real" story, but of course that story ended up being false too. Fitz tries to prank the others by setting up something to jump out in a closet, but when the Bus suddenly lands, he gets stuck in there.

The other thing going on is that Skye has been helping out on the case, feeling a more emotional connection with Hannah than any of the others do. She uses her understanding of Hannah's emotional state to help figure out what is really going on, and thus is very helpful to the case. Coulson tells her that her input was very valuable, and he also shares with her a bit more about May's story. Apparently, before the incident, May was a kinder, softer person. Then, she had to go in and deal with some sort of special person with a dangerous ability. Nobody knows exactly what she did to take care of the problem, but she emerged having lost a big part of herself. Skye realizes that Coulson wanted May on his team because he has hope that he can still help her.

I didn't like the subplot with the pranks. It had potential to be very funny, especially given the end scene: Fitz comes in to confront the rest of the team. His face is covered in cream. Coulson, Skye, Ward, and Simmons all deny their involvement, and we then see May smiling to herself in the cockpit. That's a really funny moment, but overall the prank element to this episode was rather lost under the other things. If more time had been spent on it, or if maybe it could have been incorporated into another episode, I think I would have enjoyed it more.

Oddly, I really did like the stuff with Syke and Coulson. Skye still annoys me as a character, and I don't really care about her. However, I sort of got a better idea of how Coulson feels about Skye, and how he's trying to teach her and make her a better agent. So, despite my general ambivalence toward Skye, I actually enjoyed seeing this development.

I know I'm not saying a lot about this one, and I'm sorry about that... basically I think this episode did a good job in showing us a bit more about May, but the rest of it was just okay.

7/10