Agents of SHIELD rewatch: S1E7 ‘The Hub’

I always looked back on this episode fondly.  In my memory, this was the one where we force a couple unique pairings amongst the team to get some new and dynamic interactions between characters.  But having to focus on the whole episode in order to do this recap, I was annoyed by a lot more than I expected.  The ‘trust the system’ stuff seems pretty flimsy. I didn’t follow a lot of the character motivations.  But hey, the parts I already loved are still great and worth going back for.  This episode is rife with band-name ideas:  Dogless Dog Sleds,  Fitzward and the World’s Most Dangerous Sandwich, Skimmons and the Bad Girl Shenanigans.  Let’s tune in.

The footnotes are SPOILERS.   I am playing around with mentioning future events from AoS in the footnotes.                            

Coulson is cuffed with a bag over his head.  He’s still quipping.   Two men speaking…. Russian (?) sit him down and call in ‘the interrogator.’  Looks like Coulson is in trouble until he tells the interrogator he’s been made.  This guy is actually undercover Agent Shaw.  They have 2 minutes to get out with the ‘intel’ that Agent Shaw has on him.   Ward and May bust in and beat some people up.  They climb to a snowy surface and ride sleds to the Bus. (They have dogsleds on the Bus? )

Simmons sticks a little robot claw up Shaw’s nose to extract a capsule with some intel in it. [1]oh wait! His name is agent Shaw!  I know another Agent Shaw… that shows up later…. like 80 years later… Wow reusing names in a network show. Changing the game.  
When the team offers their assistance in getting the information out of the nose chip, Coulson tells them this mission is classified Level 8.  The agents on the team turn to leave, but Skye is annoyed that they aren’t allowed to know.  Skye has been dealing with missions that Coulson has been running, but for this mission, they have to follow the rules of the Hub. Wait what’s the Hub?

They are going to The Hub to drop off the info and the Agent Shaw.  This seems like a place where stuff Goes Down.  Where missions are organized, and secrets are kept.  Skye wants to search for information on the redacted SHIELD files on her parents.  Coulson says he’ll look into it, but there are more pressing matters.  Skye seems peeved ( I mean yeah no duh.  She CRIED to him a couple episodes ago about how she knows nothing about her parents and that she has been searching for years and he told her he would help, but now he’s just brushing her off like its not important.  I suppose he is trying to keep himself at a distance here. He doesn’t want to seem personally invested in her. I’m just not used to my dad Coulson being so cold).  They are met by Agent Sitwell who seems important.  He says the level 7s can go into the briefing room with Victoria Hand who seems more important.  FitzSimmons is starstruck by the mention of Victoria Hand, but they are only level 5 so they run off to look at tech stuff.  Skye isn’t really allowed anywhere.

Victoria Hand meets and briefs.  The nose intel tells us that a separatist group from south Ossetia (yeah I had to turn on subtitles for this bit to follow it)  has built a weapon called the Overkill Device. They plan to use it in the next 24 hours to declare independence.  This device will destroy weapons and machinery over a great distance.  She wants a two-man team to sneak in and disable the device.  But one of them will have to be able to identify and dismantle the overkill device onsite…. Only one person on our team would be able to do that.  Fitz is going into the field!   

Perfect adorably goofy scene of Fitz having trouble getting through an automatic door.  This scene is here to illustrate that he is just too darn goofy to go out on a mission!

Simmons is worrying over Fitz as he is packing.  She made him a sandwich! Prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella with just a hint of pesto aioli. (damn that sounds good. a sandwich where the ONLY meat is Prosciutto? fanCY)

Coulson tells Ward to take care of Fitz.  The team sends them off.   They all seem pretty sketched by this.  Skye puts words to this feeling.  Coulson says the people who put this op together are the best of the best; they know what they are doing.

Fitz and Ward stop by some bar to meet up with Ward’s contact Uri who will help them get across the border.  But uh oh.  Uri isn’t there.  And the people who are there did not like Uri.  FitzWard just started this mission and they are immediately in peril.

A bunch of Hub folk are moving stuff around the Bus.  I don’t know why .  They are knocking stuff around so Simmons puts the night-night gun in her purse to get it out of the way.  Chekov’s night-night gun.

Coulson and Hand are watching the bigo situation screen looking at important ops stuff. There is a moment when Victoria Hand mentions Tahiti and Coulson automatically responds “it’s a magical place” but stops himself as if unsure why he is saying it.

FitzWard is tied up.  Whoever these enemies of Uri are – they’re waiting for they’re boss to show up.  The boss lady shows up and she is worried that the boys are with the separatists.  She doesn’t trust them. Her man points a gun AH! and then YAY! the power goes out.

In the Hub, Skye and Coulson are walking and talking.  Skye tries to press Coulson for information about the FitzWard mission. She has been seeing squads of people running around and she is scared for them.  Coulson says ‘trust the system’ (okay Coulson knows Skye well enough now that he would have to know that she would go against his orders and look into this. I though maybe that’s what he wanted all along and he was playing coy, but it really doesn’t seem to play out that way by the end. Plus he knows Skye would have to get help from Simmons or May because of her bracelet and we see what a disaster that turns out to be…. so surely that’s not what Phil wanted… but he should have seen it coming). 
Skye tells Simmons the two of them need to get answers on their own.  Simmons protests to being roped into Skye’s bad girl shenanigans, but is ultimately convinced when Skye suggests that something bad could be happening to Fitz – like torture! (I don’t know. I identify as a hardcore rule-follower myself and I know in this situation, I – as Simmons – would not go against dad Coulson’s orders.  But in the show, the ensuing Skimmons content is worth it)

Cut to Fitz being held upside down in sweaty darkness! But it’s okay, he is just helping them reset the power.  Boss Marta has warmed up to Fitz (yeah I’m with you, Marta).  Ward gives him a little smirk of approval and has Fitz do the talking.    He gets the job done even though he lowballs the negotiation.
They’re being driven across the border in a truck and Fitz reveals that he shorted out the power with an EMP while they were tied up.  Clever boy.  Uh oh they are attacked by border patrol and must run away. 

May is silently doing tai chi on the Bus.  Coulson talks at her about his conflicted feelings regarding the Hub.  He doesn’t like keeping things from the team.  But he resigns to trust the system. hm

Skye sends Simmons in toward some security panel with a decoy flash drive to help them hack into the system.  Simmons opens the panel, but she is approached by Agent Sitwell!  Skye tries to talk Simmons through lying to him to get him to go away.  Simmons does a very terrible job trying to flirt with him.  When Sitwell makes it clear he is on to her, she shoots him with the night night gun! Oh my goodness. At Skye’s insistence, Simmons goes to get May to help fix this situation while Skye uses the flash drive to get info.

FitzWard is now hiding in a big pipe.  Fitz pulls out the special Simmons sandwich, but Ward throws it into the water so the dogs hunting them don’t sniff it out.   I suppose it is a good point, but that sandwich was surely worth the risk.

Skye does some hacking. She finds her redacted file but chooses to look into the fitzward mission instead.  She finds out that there is no extraction plan… it seems they were sent in to die!

Fitzward is laying in the middle of the road in a mag pouch – its like a big, camouflaged sleeping bag that magnifies to the bottom of a vehicle as it drives over them.  Feels like that could be disastrous if the truck is a couple of inches off to one side but no matter, it works out here.

Coulson and Skye argue again about trusting the system or not.  He defends the Hub. She still mad.  She asks if he knew that Fitzward was sent in without an extraction in place. Coulson says “that’s classified.”  … girl…

Ward ‘signals for extraction’ but looks confused by whatever he sees.   They get into the building that holds the overkill device.  A dumb joke landed for me here;  Fitz looks at the internal mechanism and says “this is going to take a while” Ward says “you have ten minutes”  Fitz replies “oh I thought you’d say five.” What a good nerd. 

Hand is like ‘Sitwell is in the infirmary…. Wtf bro’  but Coulson deflects by saying ‘hun you should have told me there was no extraction plan for my guys’  Hand’s reasoning is that if Fitz had known, he would have freaked and failed in the field.  Coulson’s like ‘are you serious, woman? You should have at least told me”  but SHE says she wasn’t sure he would comply because he has a recent history of going against orders oooooooooooo.  (okay so that is true. But like this is all a bit flimsy.  She’s claiming she believes Fitz wouldn’t be able to take it if he knew there was no extraction …so she is basically admitting that she also thinks he would definitely fail at getting himself out of there. So she really did send these guys in to die… that’s wild)

Ward tells Fitz that the extraction plan is a bust and they will be on their own now. Ward tries to get Fitz to leave but Fitz is like ‘bitch I’m a hero just like you.  Coulson told me to take care of you too.’ Ward once again looks at lil Fitz with a bit more respect.  Cute [2]ugh okay big spoiler. watching all this back with a close eye just makes Ward’s actions at the end of s1e21 so much more painful than on first watch. The bond thats growing! This is really … Continue reading

The ladies start coming up with an extraction plan on their own.  Coulson joins in! they’re all going rogue together!

Fitz disables the device and then repowers it back up to turn it into a weapon for themselves that will take out weapons nearby.  So now Ward goes into hand-to-hand combat.  And Fitz even manages to knock one guy out by kicking him.  Ward is impressed again.  They run out into the open facing many guys with many guns. Oh no they’re dun for! Naw they good because May flies the Bus overhead and saves them yay. Teamwork makes the extraction work.  (but damn… without the Cavalry…. What would have happened to these dudes…) there is a moment just before they are saved when Fitzward is staring down certain death and Fitz says “they said they needed a guy like you and a guy like me, right?”  So I think a generous way to interpret that moment is that Hand wanted to send in those two specifically because she knew that the rest of the Coulson team left behind would be the right people to help get them out…  … … .. … I’ll just go with that to make it work for me

Sitwell approaches Hand asking how they were extracted without a plan.  Hand smiles and says “agent Coulson’s team didn’t need one”…. Sure… Are we supposed to believe she knew this would happen the whole time? Then why be so aggressive toward Coulson?   Maybe because she was mad that his team straight up tranquilized her man.  Sitwell does seem pretty put off about it all.

Fitz lies and tells Simmons that the sandwich was delicious.  Aw. 
Skye gets a little flirty with Ward to let him know she’s glad he’s safe.  Ward says “I was in good hands” and gives Fitz a nod.  Aw friends!  [3]
Simmons says she shot a superior officer in the chest.   Man for real good thing she didn’t face literally any consequences for that.

Turns out Coulson actually found the redacted file.  It was about the woman – a shield agent – who dropped Skye off at the orphanage.  She was unidentified.  He put in a request to dig further.    Skye is very grateful. Aw daddy daughter vibes.

The file also says why she was left at the orphanage, but he doesn’t tell her that.  The audience can’t know yet either. But we do see a picture from the file of what looks like a murdered woman. Yikes

Final stinger. Coulson makes a call to request a restricted file regarding a ‘death and recovery’ report for an agent that recovered in Tahiti.  But the man on the other line says Coulson does not have access to that file.  Oooh  Coulson doesn’t have access to his own file! Ooo intrigue

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** Spoilery footnotes below **

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Spoilers

Spoilers
1 oh wait! His name is agent Shaw!  I know another Agent Shaw… that shows up later…. like 80 years later… Wow reusing names in a network show. Changing the game.  
2 ugh okay big spoiler. watching all this back with a close eye just makes Ward’s actions at the end of s1e21 so much more painful than on first watch. The bond thats growing! This is really gonna hurt
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