Recap / Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2 E14 "Love in the Time of HYDRA"

"Real S.H.I.E.L.D.", assemble!

Hunter learns about the "real S.H.I.E.L.D.", Coulson makes a decision regarding Skye, and Ward helps Agent 33 get revenge on Bakshi.

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Tropes in the Time of Hydra:

• Above the Influence: Agent 33 tries to seduce Ward while disguised as Skye. Ward flat-out tells her that if she really wants that, she should do it as herself.
• Acting for Two: In-Universe with Agent 33's nano-mask repaired but still stuck to her face, this trope is fully in play. Notably, Agent 33 disguises herself as May, Skye, Talbot's wife, and several other military personnel throughout the episode (though all are dubbed by Ming-Na Wen as her voice modulator is still broken).
• Acting Unnatural: It's really no surprise May doesn't believe Mack's story; he wouldn't sound convincing to a normal person, let alone a trained agent.
• Affably Evil: Ward is personable, courteous, and exhibits concern over Agent 33's mental well-being ... while still running around cold-bloodedly murdering people and planning to abduct Bakshi just so 33 can torture him.
• Analogy Backfire: Simmons compares Skye's out-of-control powers to The Hulk. Fitz promptly reminds her that the world should be very grateful for the Hulk's existence.
• Badass Boast: Given a 12-hour window before Hunter probably exposes them, Bobbi boasts that she can finish the issue with Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D. in half that time.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Ward and Agent 33 kidnap a scientist, force him to repair 33's facemask, then murder him to keep it a secret. Afterwards, they infiltrate Talbot's base, murder two soldiers, abduct Bakshi, and start to brainwash him. They accomplished everything they set out to do.
• Bluff the Imposter: Talbot tries it while interrogating the female personnel to find Agent 33. His efforts show that none of them is Agent 33.
• Body Horror: We finally get to see the full extent of the damage to Kara's face. It's far more than what we saw under the mask.
• Broken Masquerade: Coulson and May know that Bobbi and Mack are hiding things from them, since they failed to bring Lance back to base.
• Broken Pedestal: Fitz notes that the scariest change that has happened around doesn't involve him or Skye, but Simmons.
• Butt-Monkey: Talbot gets run through the wringer on this one.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Skye's new home is a cabin where Steve Rogers spent awhile getting acclimated to the present day.
  • Skye's poor handle on her powers gets her a comparison with the Hulk.
• Cool Boat: "Real" S.H.I.E.L.D. is based on an aircraft carrier.
• Cursed with Awesome: This is Fitz' opinion of Skye's powers; if she could learn to control them, she could be on the same level as the Avengers.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • When Hunter questions the logic of Bobbi recommending him to Coulson, thus setting him on the path to the crossroads they now find themselves at, Bobbi admits that she never considered Hunter would stick around long enough for it to happen and concedes that it was a terrible idea.
  • Mack's knee-jerk decision to kidnap Hunter has its consequences in this episode, as his attempt to convince May that Hunter just left falls flat. Both she and Coulson know he's hiding something.
  • Bobbi doesn't try to stop Hunter from leaving, though she notes that everyone else will. Not ten seconds later Hunter has beat up two guards and Bobbi immediately regrets the decision.
• Double Entendre: After Kara turns her mask off in front of a mirror, she tells Ward "this will be a long night", making it sound like they will have a Sexy Discretion Shot, right? Cut to Bakshi in the process of being brainwashed.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Ward doesn't respond well when 33 imitates Skye and tries to seduce him.
• Exact Words: Bobbi tells Hunter she will make no effort to stop his escape.
• Fantastic Racism: Gonzales and his S.H.I.E.L.D. distrust Coulson on the premise that the Kree blood inside him has been compromising his judgement. When they hear about Skye being moved, they jump to the conclusion that Coulson is stockpiling enhanced people until Bobbi calmly corrects them.
• Foreshadowing: The first face Agent 33 replicates when her mask is fixed is that of a man, indicating she isn't limited to female faces and setting up her escape from Talbot's rounding-up of female personnel.
• For Your Own Good: Skye is taken off active duty and left in an isolated cabin safehouse so she can attempt to learn control without endangering the team. Skye actively wonders if this is just a more comfortable prison, at which point Coulson sheepishly admits that there's an active laser fence around the perimeter. At the end of the episode, Coulson expresses his doubts to May that he did the right thing by leaving her there.
• He Knows Too Much: Once the technician they've kidnapped repairs Agent 33's nanomask, Ward doesn't need him anymore. He disposes of him to prevent anyone finding out that it has been repaired.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Bakshi ends up undergoing the same brainwashing process that Agent 33 underwent when he captured her.
• Hufflepuff House: Hunter lampshades this of the "real" S.H.I.E.L.D. — for all their claims of transparency and accountability, this is literally the first anyone's heard of them and the only ones doing any work are their moles in Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D.
• Hypocrite: The "real" S.H.I.E.L.D. insists on transparency among its leadership and blames the whole HYDRA debacle on Fury's secret-keeping. This comes from an organization even more unknown than the above-ground S.H.I.E.L.D. that Coulson is running, and which is actively trying to undermine Coulson without having to confront him personally. They also criticize Coulson for how he has been running things and feel like he hasn't been doing his job properly, when as far as we know they've done nothing to help fight HYDRA (their moles notwithstanding) and seem more concerned with reining Coulson in than actually helping the world. The fact that they call themselves the real S.H.I.E.L.D. is also fairly hypocritical when they more or less acknowledge that Fury turned over power to Coulson (they may not know Fury's alive, but they know Fury gave Coulson the Toolbox). Hunter is quick to lampshade all of this.
• Idiot Ball:
  • The "real" S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to have neglected how important it is for members to keep secrets, since they claim to be an intelligence organization in their own right; the fact the original organization was infiltrated by Hydra moles really should emphasize that.
  • Bobbi and Mack think they can return to Coulson's base without bringing Hunter back, and nobody will suspect a thing. Oh, how wrong they are. The fact that they sent Mack first only makes matters worse, as he's nowhere near as competent a liar as Bobbi.
  • Talbot assumes that whoever infiltrated the base is only using a female disguise even though he himself warns his subordinate to be on the alert in case someone tries to pass themselves off as Talbot. Though, to be fair, last time he was impersonated it was by Bakshi, who is in his custody at this very moment. It's a reasonable assumption that a woman would only be able to properly impersonate other women, though it still makes his previous declaration somewhat odd.
• Insistent Terminology: it's "SHIELD. The 'Real' SHIELD", thank you very much. They never refer to their organization as merely 'SHIELD', always it's "the 'Real' SHIELD".
• Laser-Guided Karma: Bakshi is subjected to the same torture and loss of identity Agent 33 went through.
• Loss of Identity: Agent 33 is desperately trying to seek meaning in her life and find out who she is after Whitehall was killed.
• Master of Disguise: The repaired nanomask allows Agent 33 to duplicate a person's face simply by looking at them, though she can only hold three faces at a time and she notes that the people she's pretending to be have to be similar in stature to her.
• Memento MacGuffin: Lola is revealed to be the car Coulson worked on with his father; in spite of all her awesome modifications, she's still the car they rebuilt together.
• Misplaced Retribution: The "real" SHIELD blames Fury for HYDRA taking over SHIELD thanks to his secrecy, when he inherited an organization already thoroughly riddled with HYDRA parasites, a SHIELD that was run by HYDRA before he even joined (Alexander Pierce). Then they blame Coulson for leading HYDRA to the Diviner and the Kree Temple because of his "alien DNA", when Whitehall was the one to first discover it back in the day, was already hunting its source and purpose, and already had Raina well in hand. On top of that, both Ward and Cal were determined to get Skye to HYDRA and the Temple independent of Coulson's actions. In short, the "real" SHIELD is acting on incredibly limited information and self-serving rationalizations, and using all of that to justify tearing apart Coulson's organization, which just decimated HYDRA's leadership while the "real" SHIELD sat on their hands.
• More than Mind Control: Hunter accuses the members of the "real" S.H.I.E.L.D. of "drinking the conspiracy Kool-Aid", though they're quick to deny that. For her part, Bobbi tells Hunter that she can't walk away from Gonzales when he asks her to.
• Mundane Solution: Hunter suggests that, instead of all the cloak and dagger, Gonzales could just talk to Coulson like a normal person. Gonzales only cryptically replies that they're gathering intel first, and it's made clear later that talking to Coulson was never on the table.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Skye receives a couple of enhancements to her gauntlets meant to help suppress her powers.
  • Fitz suggests that Skye could develop Avengers-level powers. Her comics counterpart, Quake, eventually does become an Avenger.
• Noodle Incident: Bobbi mentions a roadtrip with Hunter that he'd rather not remember, and he still can't listen to the Eagles without getting the chills.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Lance steals a ship from "real" S.H.I.E.L.D. and makes an escape, having somehow made it from atop the control tower where he exited to the flight deck in the time it took the agents to locate his initial escape route.
• Oh, Crap!: The mask causes a few.
  • Talbot gets a call from his wife ... after he's already gotten a call from his wife.
  • Agent 33 walks into Bakshi's prison cell and he's initially pleased to see her... until Ward walks in.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Despite the threat he poses, Bobbi allows Hunter to make his escape with only a token admonishment that he has nowhere to go. She's called on this by Thomas, though Gonzales decides she's still trustworthy.
  • Ward's interactions with Agent 33 as he helps her cope with her identity crisis. It has yet to be seen though if he is doing this for ulterior motives. If nothing else, he's not looking for a quick hook up.
• Power Limiter: Simmons engineers some for Skye. They have some sort of side effect, though, so Coulson leaves the choice of using them up to her.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Fitz gives a doozie to Simmons
  Fitz: You want to change her, is that it?
  Simmons: Stop it! I don't want to change Skye! The Diviner did that, I'm trying to fix her!
  Fitz: You never used to be this scared, you know that?
  Simmons: Trip died, Fitz, all because we didn't take the necessary precautions!
  Fitz: No, it's not that. You're afraid... because of what happened to me and Skye, how we both changed. But you know what the scariest change is, Jemma? It's you.
• The Reveal:
  • Agent 33 finally gives her name as Kara, confirming she's the MCU version of Kara Palamas.
  • "Real" S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone into detail here, described as a second offshoot attempting to be more accountable than it was under Fury and Coulson.
  • Agent Anne Weaver survived her implied death in "Turn, Turn, Turn" and has hooked up with the splinter cell calling itself the "real" S.H.I.E.L.D., alongside Bobbi and Mack.
• Ship Sinking: Ward has taken Skye's shooting him In the Back as definitive evidence that their relationship is over/doesn't exist.
• Ship Tease: Agent 33 wants to start a relationship with Ward, which he is open to, as long as it's the real her and not a Replacement Goldfish of Skye or May.
• Shout-Out:
  • The opening scene is quite reminiscent of Pulp Fiction, with Ward and Agent 33 pulling out guns in a diner after an unrelated conversation.
  • Hunter calls "Real" S.H.I.E.L.D. "House Hufflepuff."
  • The episode's title itself is a reference to Love in the Time of Cholera.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!:
  • Hunter just snarks at Gonzales's attempts to convince him that Coulson can't be trusted.
  • When Agent 33 breaks Bakshi out of prison, Bakshi tries to reactivate her brainwashing with his Trigger Phrase. She quickly knocks him out before he can finish.
• Something Only They Would Say: Invoked by Talbot while looking for Agent 33.
• Spot the Imposter: Talbot attempts to do so when he realizes Agent 33 has infiltrated his base. His efforts fall rather short.
• Stalker with a Crush: Defied by Ward when Agent 33 tries to have hanky panky with him while wearing Skye's face. He says "I'm not crazy"; because he'd have to be delusional to think he and Skye still have a future after she shot him in the back in "What They Become".
• Through His Stomach:
  • After learning that Ward likes pumpkin pancakes (even for dinner!), Agent 33 learns how to make them.
  • Talbot says that his mistaking his wife for Agent 33 has damaged his marriage, and it will take a lot of Edible Arrangements fruit baskets to buy his way back into his wife's good graces.
• To the Pain: Agent 33's plan of action with Bakshi involves brainwashing and no possibility of reward for "compliance".
• Undying Loyalty:
  • Surprisingly, Hunter, the mercenary who originally joined S.H.I.E.L.D. for a quick paycheck, shows this to Coulson, in stark contrast to the veterans Bobbi and Mack.
  • Agent 33 has completely switched her allegiances from Whitehall to Ward, though for Ward's part, he seems to see themselves as independent equals.
• Unreliable Narrator:
  • Bobbi and Mack have been giving Gonzales very biased accounts of Team Coulson's encounters with alien artifacts, clearly colored by Mack's Fantastic Racism. Not only does HYDRA go completely unmentioned, thus painting it as Coulson pursuing these things for his own sake rather than for the greater good (whatever Coulson's problems with the GH serum, HYDRA was absolutely going after the same target), but a lot of it is 'Hindsight in 20/20' rationale, such as Agent Hartley's death.
  • Ward's version of how he dealt with his family issues are a bit misleading. He says they "dug deep" and "expressed how they really feel".
• Villain Has a Point: When Gonzales highlights previous questionable decisions Coulson has made as an attempt to sway Hunter to their side, Hunter concedes that Coulson has his problems. Then he immediately says that he also firmly believes Coulson to be a good man, and isn't about to switch sides at the drop of a hat.

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