The Breakdown
A boycott leader heard a strange buzzing sound and goes to the woods to see what it was. The rest of the troupe goes and find him and find him suspended in mid-air. The team is in the BUS where Ward complains about the night night gun, saying that its an ounce too heavy. Fitz and Simmons mock him behind his back, Simmons says it’s fixed without doing nothing to it and he likes it. The team goes to look at Adam Cross which is still suspended in mid-air. Coulson asks what could this be no one has any answers. Simmons goes up to the corpse and the body falls from it’s suspended state unto the ground.
Skye pulls everything she can find about the man, His name is Adam Cross and was a firefighter. He is also clean as a whistle and Coulson asks her to keep digging. When she leaves Coulson asks Ward isn’t he being a little too hard on her. Wards says that she lied. Fitz and Simmons give us hilarious banter because Fitz is scared to be in the lab with Simmons while she is inspecting the corpse of Cross. Fitz gets another reading of an electrolytic signal 20 meters away from them.
Coulson, Ward and May go to a farm-house and May kicks down the door. Another man is suspended in mid-air although he is a lot higher. Coulson has Skye run the owner of the farm she finds out that this victim along with the first were both fire fighters that worked at the same station and were 1st respondents to the event in New York. Skye feels that they are looking for a killer. A man is polishing a mask that has an electric charge around it.
The team heads to the firehouse that stationed the two firefighters. While there they find another man who was in New York. Coulson ask the man is he feeling OK and he says no and leaves the room. Coulson goes to the room with the man and a frying pan starts floating in mid-air. Simmons is talking to Coulson while Coulson has his gun drawn thinking the man is doing something. Simmons starts to explain that the man isn’t the weapon he touched the weapon. (Which was the chitauri helmet from earlier) The man says that he and his co workers cleaned the helmet. The man realizes that he is going to have the same fate as his co-workers and die. Coulson orders May to clear the station and Coulson starts to talk to the man.
Simmons tells Coulson to get out of the room. Coulson takes out his headset and puts it on the table. Coulson starts talking about he died for 8 seconds but says it felt like it was more. The man asks what was it like Coulson responds beautiful. The man tells him it’s OK to leave. Coulson does and the teams sees a big electric shock indicating the man died. S.H.I.E.L.D. men take the helmet on the BUS, they are sending it to the sandbox, feeling the other firefighters may be infected and they will need a cure. May has heard everything that Coulson was telling the firefighter and is prying to see what Coulson remembers on the BUS. Simmons calls Coulson to the lab to check something out. It turns out Simmons has found that this infection doesn’t act like a normal disease it can jump from person to person. A hook shaped object starts floating behind Simmons (which she doesn’t see) Coulson backs out of the lab and closes the door saying sorry Jemma.
Fitz and Simmons are both sitting on opposite sides of the doors to the lab. Coulson feels that the only one capable of finding a cure is Simmons. Fitz is making a tool for Simmons to try to create an antidote. Simmons is testing on rats and is having no luck. Orders come from Agent Blake at S.H.I.E.L.D. that if Coulson has an infected party he needs to drop the cargo (Simmons). Fitz and Simmons are arguing again because this antidote isn’t working. While fighting they finally figure out what is wrong. The only person or thing that could cure this disease is someone who is immune to it or carrying it meaning the chitauri. Fitz gets the helmet and runs into the lab (where Simmons is) so they can scrape particles off of the helmet from the chitauri to create a cure. Blake from S.H.I.E.L.D. tries to contact the BUS again wondering what is their status. Coulson tells them it is unchanged.
Fitz and Simmons antidote is ready and they test it on the rat and it seemingly works. The rat the floats up in space and Simmons figures all hope is lost. Simmons asks the team to leave so she can have a moment with Fitz. Simmons also tells Coulson she knows protocol and to tell her dad what happened first because her mom would take it better coming from him. When the team leaves, Simmons hits Fitz over the head with a fire extinguisher. When Fitz comes to he sees a spark and the last rat they tested has come down to the ground. He looks up to see that Simmons is on the open deck of the ship and she jumps off.
Fitz grabs a parachute and is about to jump. Ward runs up, takes it from him with the cure (antidote) and jumps out. In his best James Bond impersonation Ward grabs Simmons out the sky, hits her with the serum and pulls the chute. Coulson hammers Simmons for pulling that stunt, saying that they have no idea what they had to go through just to get them out of the water. But he is glad that she is back. When they leave, Simmons tells Ward she has to come clean about something. She tells him that the knock out gun wasn’t fixed it’s still and ounce off. He tells her that he knew it wasn’t fixed and does her impression of him. Fitz tries to tell Simmons that he was going to jump out of the BUS to get her. I guess she believes him and kisses him on the cheek.
Coulson tells May that he got test results back that he asked for not his physical therapist. He tells her that he doesn’t feel right. May tells him to open his shirt. The scar is shown. May tells Coulson that no matter if it was 8 or 40 seconds he died that what happened changed him because you don’t come out of a trauma like that and not be changed as a person. She ask him does he know how long it took her. Coulson cuts her off saying he knows. May tells him the point of these things is to not go back but to only go forward.
The Analyst
We all owe Marvel and apology. I am sorry for the doubt marvel, masters of the unforeseen. OK I got mine out-of-the-way. This was by far the best episode ever. I watched it twice before I finished this. It had everything we wanted, a tie in (Thor and the Avengers), a questionable tie in (because I thought this was a Gravitron episode), the lovable humor between Fitz and Simmons came back and even a death or almost death. This episode made every character likable even Ward with his last-minute Hail Mary saving Simmons. Reading this article I read about the Captain America tie in at the end of this season and I heard the rumor about a possible Thor: The Dark World tie in this week but completely forgot about it. (because I was sunk into the notion that this was a Gravitron episode) but as the episode played out I remembered why we are all here. We are all here because Marvel really are the masters at cross marketing and this story gave us what we wanted all season. It also gave it to us 3 days before Thor: The Dark World comes out. Last week we wondered why with Halloween being the next day why did ABC and Marvel ditch this episode for a rerun of the pilot. It’s because true to form a “holiday” shallows in comparison to a Marvel event, proving they are a true Marvel when it comes to Marketing.
