'Agents of SHIELD' Recap of 'Fzzt': The Team Starts to Gel

It isn't a SHIELD episode without some kind of Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) reference to being skewered by Loki.  In this instance, it was his reference in the opening teaser about his aversion to being stuck.  Sigh.

Yes ABC, your viewing fans are idiots.  Keep reminding us about Coulson.

The Agents of SHIELD episode called "Fzzt" opens with Fitz (Iain De Caestecker), Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) and Skye (Chloe Bennet) mocking Ward's (Brett Dalton) military mindset.  And the crime of the week involves car batteries getting ripped out of engines and dead bodies floating in the air.

And with more non-subtle bickering amongst our straggling team members.

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While examining the first body, they detect another occurrence of this odd activity.  And it turns out these two victims were both first responders to the New York Chitari invasion.

And we see one man who seems to have himself a Chitari face mask/helmet.

As the team finds the source of the issue, Coulson finds one of the last men to touch the mask.  It turns out anyone who touched it have been zapping out, for lack of a better term for how they were dying.

Again we get a reference to Coulson dying, but this time around, there's no beating around the bush.

Coulson is trying to calm a scared firefighter who now realizes he's sick and will also die.  Coulson tells him that he died once, for 8 seconds.  But he knew he was gone, and where he went, was beautiful.

His words are soothing and helps the man face his end.  And we just learned much about the premise that Coulson is very, very aware of what ever it was that happened to him.

It's from this point on that the episode rises above anything else the show has produced, and is the glimmer of hope that this series could get better if the showrunners would quit getting desperate with their opening banter and "clues."

Simmons determines that these events are the result of a Chitari virus that's been lying dormant in the mask.

Then Simmons contracts the condition.  Fitz and Simmons work hard at finding a cure to the condition.

Coulson declines to follow orders from HQ.  They want to dump the problem, that being Simmons.  Nooo, not Simmons!

But she thinks none of her cures are working, and steps out of the plane, hoping to save everyone else.  Ward jumps after her and snags her.

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Another actual revelation about Coulson's condition came at us after everything was resolved in the episode, and that came from a conversation between Coulson and May (Ming-Na Wen).

Coulson:  "My physical results came back.  I'm perfectly normal, a little heavy on the iron.  I don't feel fine.  I feel different."

May:  "There's no way to go through a trauma like that (The Loki scar) and not be changed."

May:  "Do you know how long it took me..."

Coulson:  "I know."

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This was an insightful episode of Agents of SHIELD.  True the inter-character banters was a bit overboard in the opening act, but it came down to how Fitz and Simmons relate to each other.

And this time around, we also learn that May appears to have had her own death in the past.  This makes her connection with Coulson something we can now seem to understand as something deeper than just co-workers.

And there's a new found respect from Ward towards Simmons for her selfless act to remove herself from the plane when she thought she was going to die.

Slowly, this team is starting to gel.  Meanwhile, the HQ rep suggests to Coulson he should be more careful about ignoring orders, dropping a veiled threat about losing his team.  Coulson suggests that he'd like to see them try.

Marvel Cinematic Universe References:  We heard reference to Captain America and Iron Man in this episode.  We've heard references to Cap before in the show.

Supposedly there may be references to events from Thor: The Dark World in the show, as well as Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  But we'll see if these (movie) real-time references come to be.


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