Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: “The Writing on the Wall”
(Episode 2.07)

Previously on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. we met a very large man who enjoyed tattooing himself with Coulson’s alien symbols. Putting aside for a moment that this guy looks just enough like Whitehall to make last episode’s stinger that much more confusing, the man is a tank. Not exactly the type of guy you let into your… okay never mind. Apparently he is the sort of guy you let into your home, especially if you’re a memory-erased S.H.I.E.L.D. operative.
Okay, so we don’t know that the character we will later call Janice Robbins (and later after that, Rebecca Stephens) is a memory wiped ex-agent, but the moral ambiguity and possible karmic punishment inherent in messing with people’s minds pretty much makes up the heart of this week’s episode. I won’t break down the plot too much except to say that it’s divided into two storylines, both of which build a great deal of tension, but are still somewhat inert. These are the types of plots that tend to frustrate me with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. This show often mistakes building tension with meandering around a plot point, until the reveal becomes about as obvious as the fact that you’re not going on a second date with a lady who calls herself the Black Widow. But the tension in tonight’s episode sidestepped this pitfall with a fair amount of grace.
I have to attribute this carefully-crafted balance to how personal every issue discussed in this episode was. Tonight marked the return of the memory recovery/cat scan/existence and soul-crushing medical bed from last season. While the excuse to use it is so Coulson can remember more about T.A.H.I.T.I., not much of his time being “tortured” (his word, not mine) actually focuses on finding the information our team is trying to pull out. Instead we see Coulson interact with other GH-325 patients. We see them recovering from the various diseases and disorders that ail them, but we also watch as all six descend into alien scribbling madness. It gets positively Lovecraftian, especially once we’re reintroduced to Tank Man and find that he is carving the symbols into his own skin.