I'm going to be honest, before I sat down to watch this episode I actually had to dance around the house in overenthusiastic glee because that's seriously how excited I was about this episode. I love Joss Whedon, seriously, so much, I might have to go and dance again. I think I've gotten it all out of my system now though, so let's begin.
We start out with a voiceover from someone who I know is Skye, because I've been obsessively following any and all news to do with this show, but for the sake of everyone who isn't a geek, I'll tell it like it is. We start out with a voiceover from a mysterious woman. She's talking about how heroes and monsters used to be hidden (actually she says "...your organisation... hiding the truth," so I guess she's talking to SHIELD (who will be referred to in capitals but without dots. Does that satisfy all the pedantic people out there?)) and the first few shots are entirely from the trailer so they're boring. Moving on! A little boy is standing in front of a shop window staring at action figures of the Avengers, and words down the bottom of the screen tell us it's East Los Angeles, CA. Behind the boy, some guy (J. August Richards) is buying... some kind of food. He gives it to the boy, who is called Ace. Ace is cute. I like Ace.
Nothing to see here, just an incredibly adorable boy. Move along.
Some Guy seems to be Ace's dad, and Ace has a birthday coming up but money is tight, so the extremely adorable boy (ok, last time, I promise) is happy to go without a present. His dad promises to try and find work soon. They're a team, and they're about to go and get... something... when the top of a building across the street explodes. Ahh! Crisis! Luckily, Ace (is that his actual name, or was that a nickname like 'sport' or 'champ'? I guess we'll find out. I will call him Ace) is not hurt, so his dad leaves him with a friendly street vendor and dashes towards the burning building. Is he insane? Does he have a death wish? Is he a superhero? I'm pretending that I haven't seen the trailer, I remember.
Ace's Dad runs around to the side of the burning building, and hears a woman screaming 'help me' in an increasingly hysterical voice. He pauses, checks to see that no one is watching, and then slams his hand and feet into the brick wall, creating instant handholds. So... superhero, then? Yeah. He reaches the window, uses his special hood to keep the smoke off his face (it doesn't look very effective) and jumps inside. Everything is burning in there (not surprising). Outside, hundreds of people are filming with their camera phones. Seriously? A building explodes and your first reaction is to stand there and film it? Ugh, losers. One specific woman (Chloe Bennet) who I know absolutely nothing about (that was a lie) is also watching and filming. Suddenly, Ace's Dad (when do we learn his name?) leaps from the window with the woman in his arms and lands on the road below. Instead of the tarmac breaking his legs, his legs break the tarmac. He puts the rescued woman down gently, but then he notices the woman filming with her phone, and secretively pulls his hood over his face and runs off. The woman who was filming who I totally don't know at all is torn between chasing after him for a good story or helping the injured lady in the middle of the road. She goes for the help the injured choice, which makes me respect her and her morals. Ace's Dad goes back for his son (who is adorable. I'm sorry, I just can't help it) and we get another brief voiceover from Mysterious Woman (who may or may not be filming with her camera phone. I know nothing). The title credits roll... or the title title flashes... or something. Whatever. It's a break in which the name of the show appears, ok?! Gosh.
Mysterious motorbike man...
In Paris, France (I know this because the words at the bottom of the screen told me so) a bunch of SHIELD cars (I know because the logo on their doors told me so... bit obvious for a secret agency, don't you think?) pull up and a man with a walkie talkie hops out. He warns someone called Agent Ward (Brett Dalton) (AKA mysterious motorbike man) about the Rising Tide. Whoever or whatever they are, they've posted the co-ordinates of 'the package' (whoever or whatever that may be) online, so Agent Ward has to be careful. He will be careful, but he thinks that his job is more fun when it's difficult, so he clearly has a huge ego and is an adrenaline junkie. He takes off his helmet and marches into a restaurant dressed as a waiter. He also brings his own metal platter with him. Hm. Directions through Agent Ward's earpiece (either that or he hears voices in his mind) send him to a man with a red tie. Ward takes the guy's empty glass, and as he carries it upstairs he rolls it across his napkin, which copies a perfect handprint. High-tech napkins! Nice. (Although I wonder why red-tie-guy plastered his entire hand over his very slim wine glass?)
Ward is letting himself into a house (or apartment) now. I don't know if the house (or apartment) is upstairs from the restaurant or somewhere completely different. Someone is singing. The metal platter that Ward brought with him is also high-tech! It's a metal-platter-x-ray-scanner! He uses it to check for a hidden space, which is behind the fireplace. Aha! Ward types a code into a... code-pad... for want of a better word. He also uses his high-tech-napkin to put the handprint onto the handprint scanner part of the code-pad. My lack of technical knowledge is becoming awkward. The fireplace lifts up with some flashing lights and Ward walks inside. His hand hovers over the pile of cash (yes!) but instead he goes for the small black bag (no!) which he pops into his pocket. Turning to walk out of the secret spot behind the fireplace, he is confronted by a woman in a dressing gown and a lacy black bra holding a spoon. She looks mildly irritated but not particularly surprised. Ward explains that her fireplace is broken.
Suddenly, more men arrive! I guess they're the bad guys, because Ward doesn't even give them a chance to say hello before throwing plates at their faces. A relatively short and interesting fight scene ensues, interspersed with images of the woman looking supremely bored and unimpressed.
Not this again. Men!
She actually takes the time to get dressed and leave while they fight. I like her. Ward's friendly voice in his head, meanwhile, is warning him about hostiles in the area (no kidding!) and the fight goes on. Eventually, Ward is victorious, but he's seriously destroyed the kitchen. That's gonna be a nuisance. He runs out of the apartment, presumably so that no one can charge him a bill for damages. On the roof of the building (or maybe another building, since this guy moves fast) he catches up with the waiting helicopter, grabs the rope they offer him and flies away in an incredibly dramatic moment. If I was that guy I would carry a small, portable stereo around and play intense music for moments such as those.
New scene! I dunno where we are. Someone asks Ward what SHIELD stands for. I am not going to remember this, but I will write it down in case you want to memorise it. Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Devision. Ward provides some exposition. SHIELD keeps the world safe from news they aren't ready to hear. He hands over the object he stole from the fireplace safe - it's a something neural link. Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) is the one asking him all the questions, BTW. Yay! I liked her a lot in the Avengers. Hill wants to know who the red-tie-guy was planning to sell the neural link to, but Ward is more interested in how the Rising Tide found out. Apparently they're just hackers. Oh! I know where we are now. We're in Agent Hill's Field Office. The location is classified though. Bummer. I'll just pretend it's Australia, because nothing is ever in Australia. Maria Hill appreciates Thor's arms. So do I. Ward wants to know why he was pulled out of Paris, and Hill says he'll have to ask Agent Coulson. Ward is not impressed, because he's clearance level 6 and knows that Coulson is dead. BOOM! Coulson (Clark Gregg) steps out of the shadows and says welcome to level 7. For a moment, everything is dramatic and shocking. Then Coulson grins like a little boy and says that the lightbulb was out in the dark corner he was hiding in and he just couldn't resist.
In... I guess LA again, Ace's Dad is walking down a street. The woman who was filming him earlier is hiding in a bus stop, waits until he walks past, and then follows him with her oversized handbag. Back in the secret location, Ward and Coulson run through some exposition for those who haven't seen the Avengers. Nick Fury faked Coulson's death to motivate the Avengers. He did stop breathing for eight seconds, though. The Avengers don't know because they're not level 7. Ha! Sucks to be them. Nick Fury his Coulson in Tahiti, but obviously he's back now. They walk into a computer room, where Coulson plays a bunch of videos from the Rising Tide and also shows Ace's Dad, AKA an unregistered superhero. The Rising Tide is good, so Coulson needs Ward (who is also good) to go and find them. Ward doesn't think it's the right job for him. Agent Hill did a detailed assessment of his last few missions, and rates his combat and espionage skills as impeccable. In people skills? She drew "...a little poop. With knives sticking out of it." Man, I want to write reports for SHIELD.
Yeeeeaaaah, it's awesome.
Coulson mentions Ward's family history (which makes Ward grit his teeth, so we'll probably learn more about that in a suitably soul-baring, daddy-issues kind of confession later) and says that he just wants Ward to try. If he fails, he can go back to doing... whatever it is he did before. A very familiar looking guy - OMG it's Shepherd Book! *cough* I mean it's some sort of SHIELD medical doctor and nothing to do with Firefly at all. No I am not a fangirl. Shut up. Anyway, the doctor (Ron Glass) says that the team is all healthy but Fitzsimmons isn't cleared for combat. Ward doesn't want to be on the team, but nobody cares what he wants. He is dismissed. Now that it's just the adults (snicker snicker), Hill wants to clarify that she drew a porcupine, not a poop. Coulson isn't buying it. The doctor says that maybe Coulson should rest more, but he doesn't want to rest more. Hill thinks his whole team is sketchy, and Coulson says she should go to Tahiti some time. He walks off, and the doctor says something ominous about how he really doesn't know what happened. Hill says he can never know. Um, uh oh? Drama looming. Tahiti wasn't really Tahiti. Tahiti was... death. Or maybe an alien mothership. They cloned a new Coulson and gave him fake memories of Tahiti so that he doesn't know he's a replacement? Something.
In a diner somewhere, Ace's Dad is circling potential jobs and watching news feed of the woman he saved. She wants to thank him. He smiles, and then the stalker woman appears (along with her ridiculously oversized handbag) and sits in the booth opposite him. Ace's Dad (now ALSO known as the Hooded Hero) is a pro at acting natural. The woman introduces herself as Skye, and also she has the same voice as Mysterious Woman who did the voiceovers for the Rising Tide. I don't know if we're supposed to know that yet, but I am good with voices. She warns him that he's in danger from SHIELD, but then says he should go public with his hero-ness. She also keeps playing with tea-bags or sugar sachets or something. I dunno why the camera thinks they are important. Anyway, Skye offers to help him get a new identity, because she's great with computers, but the Hooded Hero is kind of scared off by her enthusiastic approach. I don't know why. I like her. She says he can come to her office any time. Her office is a van, which she also lives in, but it's parked around the corner (free Wifi) so he can drop by. He runs away with a panicked expression, but Skye's already stolen his driver's licence.
Damn I'm good.
In a filing office back at SHIELD, Agent May (Ming-Na Wen) is stacking papers. Coulson approaches her, and she gives him a blunt refusal. She's not going back in the field. Ooh, why? Serious injury? PTSD? She has a secret baby to care for? She's secretly terrified of aliens, a fear which stems back to her childhood when she was abducted by them? Man, I'm good at this churning out theories thing. Rapid-fire theories, coming your way! Coulson convinces her to do it, and besides, he really just wants her to drive the bus. Of course, the bus is metaphorical. The bus is actually a giant obnoxious black plane. Agent Ward walks towards and inside the plane and... hang on. The plane has rooms. The plane has a car parked halfway inside. The plane has a spiral staircase. OMG are they going to live inside the plane?! I love it so much! (Also reminded of Firefly again. Way to go, Joss Whedon.) For some reason (probably a childhood spent watching The Sound of Music and not being allowed to share a room with my sister) I've always loved the idea of a team living and working in close quarters. It would make for lots of arguments, sure, but also a really awesome team atmosphere. So yay.
A man and a woman are moving luggage inside. They start arguing, and then the argument dissolves into a stream of unfollowable scientific babble (and they're talking at the same time, which doesn't help) and you realise these people are also unusual. Ward interrupts them. "Fitzsimmons?" he says, looking less than impressed. The man is Fitz and the woman is Simmons. Apparently they work so closely that people have just sort of melded their names into one. I love it. (I know, I love everything about this, but seriously. Just... okay? Gah.) Fitz is engineering and Simmons is biochem, which sounds awesome and incredibly fun. I love biology and chemistry (but when I did chemistry in high school I was sick, missed most of the lessons and ended up being appallingly bad at it. It was still awesome though). Simmons takes a swab of Ward's DNA to create some kind of com link. Cooler than earpieces, less bulky and less prone to electrical failure (we hope). I approve.
Coulson drives his bright red car into the plane. Her name is Lola. Does the plane have a name? The plane needs a name. Anyway, Ward is impressed with Melinda May, so obviously she was something special before she mysteriously quit. I'm impressed with the bed behind Ward because it looks cosy and it makes me happy again. I don't know why. I can't help it! Don't judge. We get another voiceover from Skye (and this time we see her van in the alley, so I guess we're supposed to know it's her) while the plane takes off. Skye's speech gets more and more dramatic, and then suddenly the door of her van slides open.
Hellooooooo.
Yep, it's Coulson and Ward (in full-on agent gear, including sunglasses). Skye is incredibly cool about it all (no, seriously) but they whip a bag over her head and take her away.
Back to the plane! (The plane needs a name.) Skye is frog-marched on board and into the interrogation room. (They have an interrogation room on the plane? Awesome.) An interrogation ensues, but it's quite a friendly one. Coulson has sent Fitzsimmons and May to investigate the building where the explosion originated. He tracked Skye through her mobile phone - also Ward doesn't think Skye is her real name. Why not? Skye mentions something called Centipede, which SHIELD doesn't know about. It sounds creepy. Centipedes creep me out. Meanwhile, the Hooded Hero is on the phone with some guy he keeps calling Doctor. The Doctor's product works great - there is a glowing orange thingo on the inside of Hooded Hero's forearm and it looks a) alien and b) like a mysterious thing which pumps you full of creepy steroids until you go completely and utterly insane and explode. Creepy. Doctor is being unhelpful, so Hooded Hero hangs up and throws the phone at a picture of him and a woman (his wife?) in a rage.
The exploded building was a lab - a secret lab. Simmons finds a body and goes to investigate with excitement, but Fitz is grossed out by the whole thing. Luckily he has little tiny robots to do his work for him, tee hee! No seriously, that's how gleeful he was. Back in interrogation, Skye is mentioning how she tracked something to the lab. That's not particularly informative, did I miss something? It sounded like she was in the middle of a sentence. She likes Ward's chest, and I can kind of see why. He is kind of tall... and vaguely handsome... sorry, got distracted. Anyway, Coulson pulls Ward out of the interrogation because he says he was screwing it up. Coulson thinks Skye is an asset, and Ward starts to agree but then stops. I'm guessing he thought Coulson said 'asshat' because that's the only insult that sounds remotely similar. Coulson says they need to know what Skye knows (they're still hung up on finding the Hooded Hero) and he grabs a hypodermic needle out of a case. Oh, no, no, no. If you hurt Skye I will hit you, you bully. I like her.
Whee, tiny robot!
Back at the pseudo-lab, Simmons is explaining the tiny robot to Melinda May. They all have slightly different functions - and apparently they're all named after the seven dwarves, because tiny robot 'Bashful' finds a camera. Fitz says he can probably get some images from before the blast off it, even though it's seriously burnt. Tiny robot 'Snow', meanwhile, has found a mysterious alien thingamajiggy. It looks a helluva lot like the one on Hooded Hero's arm. (Oh hey, Hooded Hero has a name, doesn't he? We saw it on his licence. My bad. His name is Mike, guys. Sorry.)
Back on the plane (the plane needs a name) and in interrogation, Coulson is explaining how the drug works. It's a new and improved version of sodium pentathol, and the effects last for about an hour. Skye looks scared, but abruptly Coulson turns and plunges the needle into Agent Ward. WTF? Ward's thinking along the same lines as me, and he claims it didn't hurt but then does a full 180 and admits it did hurt, but he tries not to show pain in front of beautiful women because he thinks it makes him seem more masculine. Ahahahaha! I want one of those truth serums to give to people! Effective! Ward looks betrayed and I feel sad for him. Coulson says that Skye can have an hour with him to learn everything she wants to know, and then he leaves. He wants Skye to trust them, I assume? Skye is a pro at interrogation. They should definitely hire her - only she might need lessons about staying on topic, because she starts asking Ward about his grandmother. Hmm.
In a factory somewhere, Hooded Hero Mike is talking to some guy who I guess is the foreman. He wants his job back, but the foreman is being rude and unhelpful. Mike injured his back and couldn't work, so he can't have his job back. He protests, and tries to tell the foreman that he's stronger now. When the foreman doesn't listen, he suddenly shoves a crate of stuff across the room. And then he shoves the foreman's face away and the foreman lands on a pile of metal rods. Remember what I said about the armband looking like one of those things which pump you full of steroids that make you insane? Yeah. This is clearly Mike going absolutely ape crazy. The foreman lies on the floor and Mike suddenly has an epiphany. The foreman is the bad guy, and Mike is the hero. He picks up a metal rod and smashes the foreman's face in. Awkward.
'Roid rage? Me? Pfft, no way.
Back at the plane (the plane needs a name), Ward is asleep and Coulson shows Skye the news footage (already?) of Mike demolishing the factory. He asks her again to tell them what she knows, and next second we see the licence being scanned, so clearly she did. Coulson lays it out for us. Mike got injured, got laid off, and his wife left him. Coulson guesses that someone told Mike they could make him strong again - but May wants to know who has the tech to do that. Fitz pulls up the camera footage from the explosion he managed to recover. They can't tell what's going on (not really) but then Skye says that she has the audio footage (is that a thing? audio footage? or is it audio coverage?) from the lab at the same time. Fitzsimmons have to talk about it (adorably) but Fitz thinks that he could work something out. All Skye needs to do is get her van back to the alley to recover the files (because the encryption is encoded to the GPS? Or something?) so Agent May goes with.
At a hospital, Mike is visiting the woman he saved. Her nurse is not remotely nosy enough to be a real nurse. When I was in hospital, my nurses watched the comings and goings in my room with an eagle eye. They were also very obnoxious and bratty and really rather rude. The woman is at first really kind, and very happy to recieve her flowers - but clearly she also suspects the nurse, because as soon as the woman closes the door the woman drops the act. She wants to know why Mike is here. Not only do they know each other, but she is the 'Doctor' he was talking to on the phone earlier! Which probably makes her a villain. DUN DUN DUN. She wants Mike to keep it together, and reminds him that their first patient walked into the lab with a bomb. Aha! She also knows about his foreman in the ICU and she's angry that he saved her because it also meant he exposed her. Uhm, awkward. She says that Mike has to disappear, and he has another epiphany. This is actually an origin story! And then he jumps out the hospital window and into the night. Lovely. (I wanted to do that so many times when I was in hospital but the windows were nailed shut. Probably because other patients had the same idea.)
Skye, in her van, sends Fitz the audio file. He sort-of-but-not-really flirts with her, gets embarrassed and hangs up. She looks incredibly puzzled. Simmons is sawing through the alien thingy she found and it's dripping with knowledge and weird orange good. Fitz hooks something to something else and voila! Instant hologram.
Sure, the hologram is cool and everything, but check out that spiral staircase!
In the hologram world, a man is yelling at a scientist because he wants more drug. He wants to know where the Doctor is, too, and he smashes a chair. Fitz spots the same device on his arm that Mike has, and Simmons adds that the substance leaking from the centipede thingy is similar to what they used in 1940 or whatever to create the super soldiers, aka Captain America. I don't know much about him because his film was too obnoxiously patriotic for me to see, but Simmons says it's like every known cause for superpowers has been chucked in a blender. Hm. Yeah, that does sound emotionally unstable.
In the van, Skye is grabbing what looks like an SD card or small microchip or something and stuffing it in her bra, so we know it needs to be secret. I used to think that it was a) weird and b) unrealistic when girls on TV did that, but then I actually got my own bra, and I realised that it's just convenient. Seriously. It's like a pocket... in your chest. And only pervs are gonna look for things there! Genius. Melinda May is standing by the door of the van when suddenly someone jumps on her and throws her against the wall. It's Mike. Surprised? I wasn't either. He's brought Ace (who is adorable) and they hop into Skye's van as Mike announces that he's saved her from the men in black, and now she has to help him.
Back at the plane (the plane needs a name) Fitz is running the holographic explosion back frame-by-frame - and suddenly they all realise that the first test subject didn't bring an explosive, he was an explosive. He just... exploded, abruptly and without warning. They quickly realise that the same thing is going to happen to Mike, and Simmons says he'll take out anyone within a two-block radius. Yikes! Fitzsimmons have to come up with a way to stop it, but the only options they can give Coulson are to get Mike away from people or kill him - when he's dead, the explosive process stops. Coulson insists they find a third option and save Mike's life.
Tough job...
May is angry with Coulson because she got hurt in the field and he promised she wouldn't. I kind of agree with her. She lets him know that Mike took Skye, so they start searching for her. Meanwhile, Skye's van is parked outside Union Station - I guess for the free wifi again? She's deleting Mike's identity from the world, and says she's done it before, which is followed by a meaningful image of her eyes reflected in the blank profile page, so we can assume she's done it to herself, and Ward was right when he said Skye was a fake name.
Back on the plane (the plane needs a name) Fitzsimmons are working hard and... pretending it's an exam? Since when has that ever helped anyone concentrate? Anyway, they're abruptly stopped in their tracks by Skye, who hacks the system to send them her location. I'm surprised she didn't do this earlier, because hacking is her special skill. Back at the van, Mike is telling his son about the new life they will have. Coulson and Ward arrive, and try to get him to come out peacefully. Instead, he throws the door of the van at them and runs off, dragging Skye and Ace. So that backfired. Into the station they go, and Skye, who is clearly very sensible in times of crisis, spots a group of thug-like men and kicks one of them in the crotch, insinuating that Mike called him names. All the thug-like men decide to gang up on Mike, but obviously it won't slow him down for long. Skye runs off, and Mike chucks the men around a little bit. Outside, the mysterious Doctor gives the nod to a guy with a gun.
Coulson finds Ace, and gets a couple of police officers to take him away. Ward catches up with Mike, and tries to explain the situation, but Mike isn't listening. He throws Ward around too, then sees Skye trying to get out a door and runs to... help her? Stop her? I'm not sure. The guy with the gun (the Doctor's guy, that is) takes aim at Mike but misses. Mike kicks the door down and runs off, with Skye (again). Coulson has figured out that it was a third party who tries to shoot Mike, and warns Agent May. Skye and Mike seem to be on an upper level of the station. Skye tries to convince him to let SHIELD help him, but he doesn't believe her. They stare over a massive drop to the floor very far below and obviously someone is going to fall down there. The bad guy with the gun shows up again and takes another potshot at Mike, who throws Skye to the ground. Unfortunately, Mike gets hit in the side and my prediction comes true - he falls over the edge.
Union Station: Down ↓
He smashes into a ticket booth, but awesomely survived. Upstairs, guy with gun is getting ready for another shot when Melinda May takes him down in the fastest and most epic way imaginable. She's awesome. Skye thinks so too. Everyone gathers downstairs, where an epic conversation about the meaning of life ensues between Coulson and Mike. Someone should just tell them it's 42 already! Ward is waiting on an upstairs balcony, ready to take a shot, but the conversation continues. Coulson slowly talks Mike down, and finally Mike sort of admits defeat, and seems about ready to go with them. Abruptly, his head makes a 'thunkety-thunk' sound and he falls backwards. It looks like he's been shot in the head. Everyone looks angry and sad and makes to stare at Ward - but then Simmons runs in from nowhere, and Fitz is up with Ward with the 'night-night gun', a sort of stunner/paralysis gun that they were arguing about in their very first scene.
Simmons bends over him, and for a moment we're not sure, but then she looks up and smiles and everyone else makes relieved faces, so we know he's going to be okay. The team all look at each other happily and we get several expressive close-ups on each of them. Back at the secret SHIELD HQ, Coulson updates the situation to Maria Hill - it's all good - and she looks pleased.
I think it's a couple of days later, and Skye and Coulson have gone to tell Ace, at his aunt's house, that his father will be coming home soon. Coulson offers Skye a place on the team, but she's not sure about it. Ward calls, and he and Fitzsimmons are all very excited about something called an 0-8-4, which incidentally is the name of the next episode. Also Simmons is drinking beer straight from the bottle. How very not-at-all-English of her! Coulson gives Skye ten minutes to decide if she'll join the team, and I think we all know that she will. Yay! The episode has ended, the plane needs a name, and I am already unbelievably excited for next week! But really. I may have to run around my house again.
Oh, and Lola flies.