Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 3.19: "Failed Experiments"

“Sometimes the world’s greatest miracles happen by accident.”
- Hive

As an episode, “Failed Experiments” gave us a small step forward in Hive’s end game and what SHIELD is going to have to do to take him down, although it admittedly still felt a bit like filler. I suppose we did get a little backstory on Hive which was interesting and at least explained its motivations. We begin the episode with Hive’s origin. Long ago we was a Mayan hunter who was captured by Kree Reapers who experimented on him, turning him into Hive. Hive doesn’t blame him torturers for what they did, in fact it wants to do the same thing to other humans. The rationale appears to be that he can eradicate humanity but just turning them all into swayed Inhumans. Good thing he’s got some random people to test it on. Too bad the first experiment goes horribly wrong and Dr. Radcliffe narrowly avoids getting killed by explaining that Hive’s blood is too diluted and that what they need is Kree blood. Well Kree blood from a preferably living Kree.

While the bad guys are trying to sort out their blood issue, Director Coulson has FitzSimmons working on trying to find an anti-toxin so that they could potentially save Daisy from Hive’s sway. As they previously learned, the effects of the parasites can be reversed (they won’t kill her). The pair (who is now officially a couple and are just so damn adorable) think they might be close to something but they would need a test subject to be sure. Lincoln, who feels super upset over the whole Daisy situation, offer himself up as a lab rat but Coulson nixes that idea. After all, they might still need Lincoln to be able to fight. Not being one to follow orders, Lincoln goes against the Director and injects himself with the anti-toxin anyway. Sure, it could work or it could kill him. And either way, now his immune system is severely comprised so he won’t be going into the field anyway. The guy just can’t win can he? He joins up to help Daisy and then when he tries to make advances to save his girl, he gets screwed over again. I just want to give him a big old hug and tell him everything is going to be okay.

Thanks to Daisy being lazy with surveillance avoidance techniques, the team is able to locate Hive and his gang of swayed Inhumans. They think they have the element of surprise so May and Mack lead a heavy tactical team to take out the base. They’ll try their best to leave Daisy alive but they can’t make any promises. Mack, like Lincoln, is taking Daisy’s betrayal hard still. He keeps insisting that he was her partner and should have realized she was compromise. May points out (and rightly so) that they all should have realized but they can’t keep kicking themselves for what happened.

Somewhere along the line, Hive realizes that the device James was hiding in his house is the key to getting the living Kree blood they need. It apparently is a distress beacon that can get the Reapers there in no time. So he fires it up and lo and behold, a couple of big blue aliens crash into town (quite literally) and start killing Inhumans, including Alisha (replicating chick). Around the time that the Kree land and start kicking ass, May leads her team in (Mack tries to go talk some sense into Daisy). May realizes they need some more information and so she sweet talks James into giving her what she needs. That scene cracked me up so hard. He had no idea who she was and that she was going to kick his ass so hard. Personally, I wish the Kree had killed him because while he’s mildly amusing, he serves about the same amount of purpose as Alisha. And we had more of a connection to her.

With the information about what’s going down in hand, May leads her team to where Hive is battling it out with one of the Kree. The Reaper says Hive was a failed experiment that needs to be eradicated but that just pushes Hive to fight harder and he ends up killing the Reaper (the team doesn’t have time to take Hive on because they know they aren’t going to win). So much for keeping the Kree alive for the blood supply. Maybe Daisy will have better luck with the one she’s fighting. Nope, turns out she breaks its spine with her powers (girl has seriously been learning all kinds of creepy new tricks). While that wouldn’t kill it necessarily, Mack shows up to try and get his partner back and shoots the alien, thus rendering its blood useless. Then perhaps the saddest scene of the episode unfolds as Daisy uses her powers on Mack, breaking a lot of bones (including the fingers on one hands. I’m pretty sure she would have killed him if she didn’t stop. A part of her still doesn’t want to hurt her former team. So Mack is rescued in the nick of time and Daisy must now face an unhappy Hive. Sure the Kree are both dead but she points out that Coulson use Kree blood to save her life so she’s got blood in her that they can use. She’ll let Hive drain her if it means getting his plan to fruition. I didn’t think Hive’s parasites made you stupid but I guess they do. Or maybe euphoria makes you do dumb things because you think you are invincible. Either way, it turned my stomach to see Daisy willing to let Hive kill her to advance his creepy plan of creating more Inhumans, regardless of whether they were meant to change or not.

Here’s hoping SHIELD is able to find a way to stop Hive before it’s too late. And honestly, I know I’ve probably said this before but I am so done with Brett Dalton and his myriad of characters. Ward/Hive needs to go and go soon. For good.

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