1x03 Divide and Conquer

[7.0/10] Hey! This was downright decent! It didn’t exactly knock my socks off or anything, but this was at the level of a fair-to-average episode of Agents of Shield which, after the first two episodes of the show, is a big improvement. We do a multi-pack of stories once more, so let’s take them in sequence.

It turns out that the key to making Black Bolt interesting, or at least not dull, in his portions of the story is to pair him with someone who can do the talking/emoting for him. BB himself is still sort of inert as a character, but setting up a local inside the jail as an antagonist and them revealing him as an ally is trite but effective. The reveal that he himself is a human-turned-Inhuman who helps Black Bolt for that reason is a little easy, but it works.

The same sort of easy life lesson style is at play when Gorgon teams up with the surfers to fight Auron and her troops. There’s a lot of the usual “we’re not so different you and I” material, with the respectful nod when he learns that the surfers are former soldiers, but it’s enough to give a patina of meaning to the action that follows.

And that action is actually good! I don’t know if they changed fight choreographers between the first two episodes and this one or it’s just the direction, but the skirmish between Gorgon and Auron and company had actual impact to it. The use of powers seemed to fit and there was an urgency to the confrontation. (Though that Mortis guy looks like a total goof/bad Scarecrow cosplay, which takes away his ability to seem like the badass wildcard Casey Jones type the show seems to want him to be.)

That extends to Black Bolt’s part of the story as well. His charge through the fight between the police and the inmates has an intensity to it that similar sequences from prior episodes has lacked. While both the guards and the inmates are portrayed pretty cartoonishly, both at least make good fodder for a fight scene.

We also see Karnak on the wrong side of a Breaking Bad-type situation, where he stumbles on some randos’ pot farm and gets tied up and threatened for his trouble. As watered down as that scenario feels here, and as silly as the “bump on the noggin’” plotting for Karnak feels, I like the emotional layers the episode gives him. He’s used to be able to look out for the people he cares about, and taking that away from him makes him feels incomplete. It’s not much, but it’s a well acted scene that gives us a reason to care about the character.

Medusa has less to do in this one than she did in the prior one, but there’s some nice understated work from her too. First off, her ordering an ATM machine to give her money is a broad joke, but a funny one. But I particularly like the scene where she wanders around an opulent beach house, surveying this different world, taking it in, and then taking in her new appearance, seeing it with a little bit more satisfaction and acceptance. It’s a scene told through the talent of the actress rather than the clunkiness of the script, and it works well.

What doesn’t work well is more distance covered in the Maximus/Crystal part of the storyline. Her pretending to go along with Maximus’s plan and then bolting was silly and predictable, and makes it feel like the show was spinning its wheels until it could get Crystal and Lockjaw to Earth. It’s also coupled with some on-the-nose flashbacks about Maximus and Black Bolt’s childhood, which doesn’t help.

Still, on the whole, this was a major improvement from the prior episodes, which doesn’t necessarily suggest that Inhumans can be great, but at least confirms that it can hit the level of “pretty good.”