The promos for this week’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. feature an Asian guy with firestarter powers.  Marvel comics fans wouldn’t be wrong to think it was Sunfire, a Japanese hero who’s been around since 1970.  But no, it’s Scorch, a Chinese villain — the show’s first genuine super villain — created for the series.  Is this a letdown?  A little, but that’s only because Marvel comics have decades of characters to choose from, so it seems like a waste to create new ones.  Not to mention a lot of work.

Hey, showrunners, do yourselves a favor and shorten your work day by using what you legally have access to anyway — the vast Marvel comics universe as owned by Marvel Entertainment.  Even without heroes currently owned by other studios (Spider-Man at Sony, X-Men at Fox), that still leaves hundreds of characters that fans would love to see.  But I digress.  Let’s get to Ron Burgundy’s favorite baddie — Scorchy Scorch Scorch.

Fire power, not firepower.

Chan (played to the hilt by Louis Changchien) is a down-on-his-luck Hong Kong magician who longs for something more.  The fact that he already has something more – pyrokinetic power – but can’t use it due to being on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s superhuman no-fly list, only serves to strengthen his need for recognition, as well as fan his flames of resentment toward S.H.I.E.L.D.

The girl in the flower dress, for whom the episode is named, promises Chan fame in exchange for experimenting with his flame (after kidnapping him of course).  Agent Coulson’s team discovers that The Rising Tide leaked the information that got Chan abducted.  Naturally, the team’s resident Rising Tide member, Skye, takes the blame — the flame fame blame (say that 5 times fast).

The Girl in the Flower Dress
(without the dragon tattoo)

Skye declares her innocence and says she knows another hacker extraordinaire who may have released the info.  We learn that she’s not only correct about the other hacker’s involvement, but that she was once involved with him.

Spy Skye and her ex-boyfriend are outed, which triggers understandable feelings of betrayal in the team members who were just coming around to trusting her.  This leads to a fiery showdown between Coulson and Chan, now known as the villainous Scorch (if you can’t be famous, be infamous).

Skye confesses her real reason for infiltrating Coulson’s team — she wants to find her parents who went missing due to a S.H.I.E.L.D. connection.  Coulson promises to help, but he still can’t fully trust her, hence the Lindsay Lohan LoJack that he fits her with.  Meanwhile, the flower dress girl asks a mysterious prisoner to contact “the clairvoyant”.  Cue “dum dum dum” music sting.

This episode features things that we should get used to, such as more great special effects.  Scorch’s superpowers are equal in quality to the Human “pre-Captain America Chris Evans” Torch in the Fantastic Four flicks.  Impressive in general, but particularly on a television budget.

Scorch and Flower Dress Girl

The script was penned by Brent Fletcher and not a Whedon, which is more proof that the series is at its best when Jed and Mrs. Jed serve as overseers rather than screenwriters.  This worked for George Lucas on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  It’s working here too.

Fletcher does a solid job of tracking ongoing subplots.  He reveals Skye’s true motivation for penetrating S.H.I.E.L.D.  He deepens Coulson’s Lazarus-style resurrection by having Melinda May ask if he’s having trouble sleeping.  Just the opposite.  Coulson feels better than ever with energy to burn.  He questions this physical change, in addition to trust issues that have lightened since “that alien staff went through my heart.”  And then there’s the Centipede storyline that began in the pilot episode with residual Extremis from Iron Man 3.

As good as the writing is this time around, it suffers from one cliché — the ol’ techno-babble/English translation request.  You’ve seen it used before.  An Einstein-like character (or, in the Marvel Universe, an Erskine) spouts an explanation in techno-speak that only he/she understands.  The non-Erskine folks (proxies for audience members not named Stephen Hawking) then impatiently request a simplified version.  Back to The Future did this with Doc Brown and Marty McFly.  Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. does it with Fitz, Simmons, and everyone else.

EPISODE 2

FITZ: “…this device has a high frequency fluctuating sub-routine compression –”

WARD: “Fitz.  In English.”

EPISODE 3

FITZ-SIMMONS: “…much less a theory that an isolated positive charge would turn the flow from isotropic – “

SKYE: “Guys.  High school drop-out here.  How does the device work again?”

AND IN THE LATEST EPISODE WE GET:

FITZ-SIMMONS: “…the remote access trojan and the infected endpoint is searching for a T.C.P. to correlate the hypertext with signature information, and then voila!  Bob is your uncle!”

COULSON (to Ward): “Did you get any of that?”

WARD: “Only the uncle part.” *

That’s 3 requests in 5 episodes.  Viewers may not notice it now since they have a week between shows to forget the last use of the cliché, but they’ll definitely notice when binge watching the Blu-Rays.

Now let’s talk about the gratuitous post-coital scene between Skye and her reunited ex.  Actress Chloe Bennet spends the entire scene searching for her clothes, giving us a prolonged view of her in underwear (and a great way to distract viewers from [Basil] Exposition dialog).  There’s nothing wrong with showing some skin, particularly when it’s sexy (Kathy Bates in About Schmidt need not apply), but here it’s for such a long time that it feels gratuitously gratuitous.  Thankfully the missing clothes pay off in a way that downgrades gratuitously gratuitous to just plain gratuitous.

In closing, what would a S.H.I.E.L.D. episode be without a Coulson comedy soundbyte?  This time it’s “So we’re good, right?” That may make no sense in the confines of this critique, but in the context of the show, it’s hysterical.  If you don’t believe it now, then you will when you binge the season.

*  “Bob is your uncle.”  W.T.F.?!  Unlike Ward, I have no idea what that means.  Do any of you?

NEXT EPISODE: Fzzt