Episode Title: "The Well"
Episode Grade: B
Agent Drywall displayed an emotion!
Granted, the emotion was "inchoate rage" and it was only brought out by the presence of an Asgardian rage staff left behind by Peter MacNicol a thousand years ago, but congratulations to Brett Dalton for getting a chance to do something besides look damn good in a suit (damn good). In honor of this august occasion, I'll refer to Dalton's character by his real name in this review. Checking IMDB, that appears to be "Grant Ward," which is only slightly less boring than the character himself.
OK, OK, this is a little unfair. In fact, Dalton got a chance to flash a little emotion and even humor in "F.Z.Z.T.," one of two consecutive episodes I was unable to review in this space as a result of other commitments.
Ward has been something of a cipher throughout the early run of Agents of SHIELD, a character type who would be more appropriate in a setting full of heroes instead of other non-supers. But "The Well" is very much a Ward episode, our first such phenomenon, and it works well enough. So far, "works well enough" qualifies as pretty high praise for this show.
The plot here borders on the hackneyed: a thousand years ago, an Asgardian warrior fell in love with life on Earth and broke his staff into three pieces, hiding them across the globe. The staff gives its holder great power, but at the cost of summoning his or her inner rage and consuming them with hatred. Bad guys (Norwegian white supremacists in this case) find part of the staff and go searching for the other two parts, while SHIELD tries to stop them.
So, yeah, this is the plot of basically every action movie ever.
It works for two reasons. First, Peter MacNicol is always a treat, and there's something undeniably awesome about casting this famously nebbishy actor as an all-powerful Norse god, even if we never actually see him kick ass (missed opportunity, Agents of SHIELD). MacNicol's enthusiasm and dorky charm help sell his character's backstory; it's easy to believe that this guy fell in love with life, as it's apparent that MacNicol loves life just by looking at him.
When Ward grabs part of the staff (MacNicol, posing as an expert on Norse mythology, having tracked it down in an effort to keep it away from the bad guys), he's filled with the rage and hatred of a Viking berserker, which takes "The Well" to interesting places.
The staff, according to MacNicol, "shines a light on your dark places," presumably meaning that it doesn't so much change Ward as it does discover and intensify the anger within him. So the frustrations he reveals here, lashing out at Skye and Fitzsimmons for their talkativeness and general physical uselessness, ring true, as does Ward's recognition of what's going on.
The Ward in "The Well" is a man of discipline faced with the uncomfortable surfacing of emotions he makes a point of smothering (he rather baldly spells this out to Coulson). There's an interesting parallel here between Ward and the superheroes who exist on the periphery of Agents of SHIELD, in that it can be hard for him not to look down on the other members of his team, none of whom share his physical gifts and outlook.
Except for Melinda May. Ming-Na Wen has been one of the stronger elements of Agents of SHIELD, providing a kind of steadying force for the viewers to turn to in the face of Fitzsimmons' oft-insufferable banter and Skye's hacker babbling. As such, she's a good fit with Ward, and I like both the decision to have them end up together at the end of the episode and the execution of that decision (an open door, a bottle of high-end booze and a knowing look).
"The Well" does an excellent job of smoothly using the events of an episode to tie together larger, multi-episode elements. May ends up joining the three parts of the berserker staff in the final battle with the white supremacists and uses it to finish them off; the shared experience of holding the staff brings Ward and May together, but it also reflects a larger attraction that's defined by their underlying character dynamics.
Agents of SHIELD has earned a healthy measure of skepticism from its viewers, and I'm not going out on a limb to predict a dramatic uptick in quality and longer, serialized story arcs. In fact, I'm pretty confident predicting that May and Ward's hook-up will be efficiently disposed of in the next episode.
But a quality episode is a quality episode, and considered on its own "The Well" certainly qualifies.
Notes
- The episode's title refers to the flashbacks Ward experiences after grabbing the staff, which involve a young boy trapped in a well. We're meant to think it's either Ward or his brother, and it turns out to be the latter. The "twist" is that a young, somewhat pudgy Ward is outside the well, debating whether to help his brother, only to be threatened into submission by another kid. The revelation that Ward was something of a loser and a coward as a kid is interesting.
- The episode ends with Coulson waking with a start from a dream of Tahiti. Would really like to know what's going on there.
- The villains here are really lame, undefined and meaningless.
- Coulson recommends MacNicol try living in Portland, Oregon for a while.
- "The Well" takes place in the aftermath of the events of Thor: The Dark World, which I won't spoil here (though if you're the type to watch Agents of SHIELD every week you're probably the type to see the new Thor movie pretty soon after release). Aside from an opening scene in the rubble of Greenwich University, this doesn't play a huge role in the episode.
- "It would be nice if, just once, Thor and his people sent down the god of cleaning up staff. Probably has a magic broom."
- As mentioned in the text, I was unable to review "F.Z.Z.T." and "The Hub," the previous two episodes. Both were decent, unexceptional episodes that resided on the border between a B- and a B. Some nice character work for Elizabeth Henstridge in "F.Z.Z.T." and some interesting questions of secrecy and duty in "The Hub."
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