Rejoice sycophants, slatterns, slobs and slores, your most humble and most exalted fearless leader Dane Barbados Jr. can finally declare that "Agent's of SHIELD" has finally, finally, produced an episode that one could designated as "good."
"The Girl in the Flower Dress" delivered on most fronts with only a scant few teeth-grindingly poor moments. A return to an overarching plot? Check. A villain with actual powers? Check. A massive cutback on Whedonspeak and snark? Good Lord Barbados Check. Muzzling Skye and putting a bullet in the back of her head? ...Not quite. Yet.
This was perhaps the first episode of SHIELD that managed to fully distract Dane Barbados Jr. from a spirited session of motorboating the supple buttocks of a comely young lass. To dispense with the bad first, yes unfortunately Skye still exists and draws breath, remaining the weakest link of the show, moving through her scenes with a palpable air of vapidity. Luckily for the viewers, and Dane Barbados Jr's kidney punching hand, her amount of dialogue and, most pointedly, the ridiculous outdated teenaged valleygirl snark of that dialogue were both dialed down in spite of her having a major part of the episode's storylines.
Skye's sideline activities with (ugh merely typing the following word causes your humble narrator a slight nosebleed of suppressed rage) "hacktivist" group The Rising Tide are finally exposed with our intrepid Agents pursuing a member of the group who turns out to be an associate of Skye's with a more personal connection. And by "personal connection" We mean "fuck buddy." A post-coitus scene between the two provides one of the episode's worst and best moments. The worst being Skye mentioning returning to her fellow Agents lest she be "screwed" with her smirking knob of a paramour replying "There's a joke here that I'm struggling not to make," which is a mildly amusing aside, before following up with "It involves the word 'screwed.'" Which is not only poor writing, but also serves to illustrate how feeble Skye really is that her crotch comrade felt that he had to explain such a simple concept to her. But we were saved from a shallow sea of mediocrity as, in a nice callback to the pilot episode, as fan favorite character Agent Melinda May popped up where Skye least expected (because she's a savant-like drooling idiot) in one of the episodes's best bits.
One would think that Agent Ward catching Skye nearly bare-assed and red-handed, collaborating (and, ugh, "screwing") with a cyber-terrorist, not yet having washed off the post-drilling musk of her traitorous escapades would completely extinguish the sophomoric, One Direction-fueled, romantic tension betwixt them but Dane Barbados Jr. has a sneaking suspicion that it will only increase it in the long run. Because that is what is most predictable.
The other half of the night's narrative centered on a young Chinese street performer, Chan Ho Yin, who possesses mild pyrokinetic abilities played well by Louis Changchien, endowing him with a sense of genuine wonder and enthusiasm about his aiblities and the potential that they possess and a certain Barbadian swagger (in the classic sense of the word cretins) and charm. Unfortunately, in another questionable bit of writing, he was also given one of most generic and least-interesting codenames imaginable with "Scorch."
The writers wisely used Chan and his storyline to shed light on a number of things including the villain group Centipede from the pilot episode, their plans and more workings of the extremis derives super-soldier serum that they are developing, name dropping Captain America himself; the way SHIELD handles the super-powered individuals that it discovers, and, rather bafflingly, confirming the seeming absence of mutants in the Avengersverse. Last episode the existence of psychic powers was treated as implausible and this week's episode states that SHIELD keeps and Index of super-powered individuals but that the list is small. How this will work with notable mutants Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch appearing in the next Avengers film is yet to be seen.
The episode also had some of the series' best special effects with some impressive work being done on Chan's fire abilities, including a graphic bit where a person is burned down to ash before our very eyes. On a character front Agents May and Coulson did most of the heavy lifting with Ward providing backup support and Fitz/Simmons wisely remaining on the ever-ridiculous plane. This benefited the episode hugely as May and Coulson are easily the most likeable and interesting characters on the show and the actors seemed to relish the opportunity for a little action giving great performances including Coulson amusingly delivering a bit of fisticuff action in his trademark gray suit. Ward, if not the third most interesting character then the third least annoying character, performs his usual action duties of any given episode but benefited from being less "goofy" and more serious, doing a lot of acting with his facial expressions when dealing with Skye after her duplicitous nature was exposed. The titular Girl in the Flower Dress and back-stabbing Centipede agent deserves mention for being played by Ruth Negga who was also Misfit's teleporting temptress Nikki, and anything that reminds Dane Barbados Jr. of Misfit's fantastic early seasons earns bonus points.
All in all The Girl in the Flower Dress marked a drastic improvement in Agents of SHIELD. By upping the level of drama and lowering the level of snarky dialogue and faux-wit the show managed to deliver genuine tension without trivializing the characters. Including a super-powered main villain and returning to the Centipede storyline played to the strengths of the Marvel Universe and separated it from scores of procedureals unlike last week's episode. The special effects and sets were much improved and characters who are clearly not combat oriented such as Skye and Fitz/Simmons are sagely kept out of combat situations, playing to their respective strengths of hacking and miscellaneous TV science tasks but forgoing the tritely named scanner-bots. For the first time in the series' run Dane Barbados Jr. can fully endorse an episode of Agents of SHIELD. Bask in it. Now, faithful readers, if you will excuse your immanence Dane Barbados Jr., there are a supple set of female buttocks in need of attention.
Post scriptum: Go watch Misfits. It's not only much better than Agents of SHIELD, or any other super-hero oriented show on your American broadcasts, it's also one of the best, most interesting and best looking shows that could be put into the genre with superior characters, drama, acting, directing and emotion than anything your networks have to offer. And there's ample profanity and some nudity so there is that as well. Series 5, the final season, premiers tomorrow but you would be best served stopping after Series 3.
Post post scriptum: Spoilers for tonight's episode of Agents of SHIELD.
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