Agents of SHIELD 1.16 “End of the Beginning”

So this episode was called “End of the Beginning” and serves as both a capstone to the first two thirds of the series and as a Prologue to Captain America: The Winter Soldier. What does all that mean? Well, it means we get some major drama and sudden surprises as the episode draws to a close – surprises that will resonate if you’ve see the new Cap film.

Plus we get a return of Deathlok (J. August Richards) and surprise guest-star Brad Dourif as Thomas Nash, the man who may or may not be the Clairvoyant. That stuff is all good, as are the surprise betrayals, the sudden lack of trust, and the fact that we get to see the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) attacking Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) scene from the new film as the final shot of the episode – firmly establishing where Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is playing out in the chronology (and it’s not even a spoiler, since everybody’s already seen it in the trailers!).

Add to that the return of Agents Garrett (Bill Paxton) and Triplett (B.J. Britt) and the episode is firing on all cylinders.

And yet…

As the final moments made abundantly clear, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a show that needs to up its game. The sudden violence of that car chase from Winter Soldier, the crashes and the obvious expense that went into making it eye-catching suddenly made the lack of budget for the rest of the show painfully obvious. I know, Agents isn’t able to look like a feature film every week, but surely Disney’s pockets are deep enough that they can throw some more money into the project?

Imagine what Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. could look like if Game of Thrones money or hell, 24 money, was added to the mix. Give it a shorter season if necessary and make those fewer episodes bigger and more impressive. Follow the comics’ cue and do six or seven-chapter stories, splitting a shorter season into two big events.

Maybe with more money, the Deathlok attacks this week wouldn’t have been so weak. I mean the costume is not working for me – he looks like he’s playing laser tag – and when he leaps through the ceiling to escape Garrett and Triplett at the beginning of the episode, the hole he left in the ceiling was a perfect circle?

Really?

Not a busted up hole, but a circle?

Like in a cartoon.

Creative decisions like these are why it’s hard to keep taking the show seriously, even when it has upped its game so hard that it no longer feels like they’re repurposing old Six Million Dollar Man or Knight Rider scripts.

Bringing in Victoria Hand (Saffron Burrows) and Agents Blake (Titus Welliver) and Sitwell (Maximiliano Hernández) helped provide some focus. Aside from Sam Jackson and Cobie Smulders, these are the faces of S.H.I.E.L.D. we know and have some history with. These are the main players and whenever we can get Titus Welliver on-screen it’s a win for everybody.

The final act of the episode was strong, as Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) discovered May’s (Ming-Na Wen) secret encrypted line and suddenly all the agents are wondering who to trust. Newly christened Agent Skye (Chloe Bennet) is the one who brings the big reveal to the climax, though. After combing through data trying to find a pattern that will reveal who the Clairvoyant really is (sorry, guys – Dourif was cool and creepy, but not the Clairvoyant), it is revealed that the Clairvoyant isn’t psychic, but has access to all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files on everything and everybody.

Yeah, that’s right. S.H.I.E.L.D. has been infiltrated.

Cue ominous music, a surprise reveal of who is in charge of the baddies, and then we get the clip from Winter Soldier!

All in all, it’s a great ending that hopefully will springboard our final six episodes into the stratosphere. They’re doing something right at least, by giving the next episode a subtitle: “Uprising.” And with the after-episode scene of Fury under attack being positioned at about a third of the way through the Winter Soldier runtime, I think we can safely assume that “Uprising” is going to take place at the same time as the rest of the film.

Now let’s see if they can make the most of that TV budget.

Be sure to check out our review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier as you’re getting ready for this week’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.!