This Week in Superhero TV: Closing The Book on TAHITI

By Craig Wack | TV | November 15, 2014 |

By Craig Wack | TV | November 15, 2014 |

With “The Writing on the Wall,” Agents of SHIELD severed one of the last ties to its inconsistent first season by revealing the final details about the TAHITI project and the whole connection to the compulsive carving for those with the alien blood in them.

All season long, SHIELD has been shedding its freshman flaws to round into the kind of show Marvel fans anticipated seeing from the start. Since about Episode 13 last season the show had completed a near 180 degree pivot by telling a serialized story, improving the fight scenes, making Skye competent and useful, making the wooden Agent Sudden Heelturn interesting and totally shaking up the FitzSimmons dynamic. The excellent use of guest stars and the addition of a whole crew of new supporting players - led by Adrianne Palicki’s Mockingbird — left one big thread still dangling: Coulson’s resurrection.

After this week’s episode, that arc has been scratched off the list too, but the Director put himself and most of the team through hell to get it done. Thanks to another session with Raina’s magic memory machine, Coulson remembered he was actually one of a handful of dead and/or dying SHIELD operatives who were given the alien miracle cure.

Everybody suffered the same side effect, a madding, unquenchable desire to find the secret meaning of these strange symbols they couldn’t stop making. The only way to save these people from themselves was to wipe their memories clean, implant new ones and send them to quiet corners of the world.

Even that was a temporary solution. Any exposure to the symbols started the whole downward spiral over again. It all came to a head in barn of a TAHITI program survivor. After Coulson easily duped Skye into the basement cell, he winds up in a showdown with an inked-up former agency assassin. Luckily for them all, the barn owner figured out the crucial detail of the alien symbols: they weren’t a map, they were a blueprint. Every drawing was another layer of a rendering of a city the alien wanted to desperately return to and the barn owner built a 3-D scale model. After seeing the drawings in their proper form, both Coulson and the assassin snapped back to reality.

This might not have been the most action-packed chapter of the season, but it was a crucial resetting of the game board. On the other side of TAHITI, there’s a new destination, higher stakes and a race against Hydra where Coulson’s rag-tag band of loyal operatives are the underdogs against the better organized, superiorly financed Hydra.

We built this city: The introduction of this alien mystery city adds fire to the speculation that Skye, Raina and Skye’s father, The Doctor, are all going to be tied to The Inhumans in some way.

It makes sense because Marvel recently announced an Inhumans feature film as part of its next slate movies. The TV show is a good place to do the heavy lifting on the origins of the group, allowing the movie to jump right into action.

Is this mystery city Attilan, the Inhuman home base on the moon? My gut is saying no, because Marvel will want to introduce that locale in the movies. This city here will be a terrestrial outpost and maybe the legendary Shangri-La. It’s also a good bet that the Obelisk is going to be the literal key to this city.

On the hunt: While the nerds were dealing with Coulson, jocks of the team were in pursuit of Ward as he retrieved a bug-out bag, strapped on a suicide vest and ventured from bus station to bus station along the Eastern seaboard before reuniting with Hydra.

Ward is going to be the wild card for the foreseeable future. He’s doing his best at feeding both Hydra and SHIELD enough info (and prisoners) to keep them distracted, which will allow him time to kill his Senator brother.

Salon quality: Mockingbird’s hair has honeyed up since her introduction a few episodes back, so she’s either spending a lot of down time in the salon or Billy Koenig is not only an organizational master and expert gamer, he’s also a fabulous colorist.

Brain games: It doesn’t look like we’ve seen the last of the magic memory machine. Mack and Fitz are brewing up a plan to modify the thing to restore Fitz to his old self (or a psycho crazypants, you know whichever.)

Meanwhile in Starling City…

Three words: Boxing Glove Arrow.

If you were even slightly considering leaving Arrow for greener pastures, this week might be the perfect time to abandon ship. You got to see Ollie’s signature trick arrow in action and not have your retinas burned out by the sight of Laaaawrl in the blond wig and buckles of full Black Canary regalia. It’s a win-win.

The main plot of “Guilty” inched Laurel ever closer to her comic book dictated destiny (sigh). Her trainer, Ted Grant, briefly donned the mask and brass knuckles of Wildcat in order to keep The Glades safe for regular folks back in the day. He had a sidekick who was too angry, overzealous and who eventually killed a gang-related drug dealer.

It was all too much for Grant and he abandoned his trainee, who was subsequently tortured for years by the gang.

Flash forward six years and gang bangers are getting strung up like sides of beef in fully stocked abandoned warehouses all over town with “Guilty” written in blood underneath them.

Surprise, surprise it’s Wildcat’s kitten back to exact revenge on his former teacher. He kidnaps Laurel and Grant before taking them to parts unknown. Thanks to some fast and furious moves behind the wheel, the sidekick and dumped out of the speeding car so he can fulfill his purpose in this episode.

The side story this week produced tensions between Red Ranger Roy and Ollie. Roy gets to Grant’s ward and they duke it out. In mid-fight, the sidekick gives Roy a long spiel about how Roy is just a pawn in Arrow’s game of life - sowing the seeds of distrust, blah blah blah.

For a show that spent two seasons borrowing heavily from other comic histories or just flat out making stuff up, Arrow is all about sticking to canon now.

Roy on borrowed time: The show didn’t drag out the mystery about Roy’s bad dreams for very long. He went to Felicity and admitted to her he thought he killed Sara. The virtual forensics seemed to back up the idea, before blood evidence and guided meditation proved otherwise. Roy’s subconscious merely merged two traumatic events together: Sara’s death and Roy murdering a cop during the Mirakuru riots. The latter throws some shade on Ollie and Roy’s relationship and will ultimately lead to Roy’s leaving in a huff just in time to make room for Black Canary - just like in the comics!.

Turrible Laaawrl watch: The prize this week goes to her driving. The show runners just don’t know how they want to get us to like Laurel. They give her a nice “hell yeah” stunt driving moment then totally undermine it by making her crash into the only two parked cars on the block immediately after just to put her in peril so Ollie and Diggle have to save her.

If you want us to buy that Laurel can be a hero, you’re going to have to let her be successfully heroic from time to time.

Who’s that girl?: You might have recognized Rila Fukshima, who played the punk rock Samurai bodyguard in The Wolverine, teaching Ollie guided meditation during the Hong Kong flashbacks. If she doesn’t grab a sword and start kicking ass in the next few episodes, the whole Hong Kong storyline will be a total bust.

Meanwhile in Gotham City …