What I’m Watching: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D: Season 3, Episode 12 “The Inside Man” (B-)

In the three months that this show was off the air before its return last episode, a new series debuted on the CW from DC called “Legends of Tomorrow” which is very similar to this one in that it features a handful of fringe characters who never really got to be stars of their own comics or films, and a number of whom don’t even have powers. Obviously, the shows are different, with this one focusing on alien mutations and the other dealing in frequent time travel, but I can’t help but compare them. This show has just as many characters, and it’s hard to feel like it’s not a mess sometimes. Characters we’ve seen before, like Talbot, are being reintroduced, but there are still so many players out there and it’s getting hard to keep track of why they all need to be involved. The biggest new threat is the inhuman currently inhabiting Ward’s body, who made an allegiance with the freaky eye guy and regularly feasts on human hosts to essentially charge himself. He’s going to be impossible to stop, and the fact that he’s wearing Ward’s face is only going to further complicate matters once they learn of his existence. Where there are unknown enemies, there are also unexpected allies, and despite the abduction of Talbot’s son, it turns out that he and Creel are actually on the right side. It’s more complicated to determine how the government should be involved in this inhuman situation, as Lincoln thinks that a vaccine is a good thing while Skye claims the transformation is a birthright and Coulson pretended to be a scientist arguing about the need for one place to put all the inhumans for either their safeguarding or their extermination. On a lighter note, I enjoyed the response to the news that Hunter brought weapons: “I love you” from Bobbi and “I don’t hate you quite as much” from May.