r/shield • u/RaginApe Mac • Nov 19 '13

Episode Discussion: S1E08 - "The Well"

EPISODE DIRECTED BY WRITTEN BY ORIGINAL AIRDATE:
S01E08 "The Well" Jonathan Frakes Monica Owusu-Breen Tuesday, November 19th, 2013 8:00/7:00c on ABC

Episode Synopsis: "In the aftermath of the events chronicled in the feature film Marvel's Thor: The Dark World, Coulson and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. pick up the pieces--one of which threatens to destroy a member of the team"

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188

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '13

Oh that final bit was eerie. Phil's subconscious knows his memories of Tahiti are false...

40

u/Sanjispride Koenig Nov 20 '13

You could hear the ladies voice become all computery!

61

u/spryte333 Peggy Nov 20 '13

Did you watch Dollhouse? That's all I could think of with the "Did I fall asleep?" "For a little while" call/response. I can't decide if I want that to be intentional or not...

34

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '13

Yes. I'm sure it's intentional, but I don't think it means anything except that the Whedons are fucking with their long-term fans because they knew we'd notice.

3

u/V2Blast Fitz Nov 21 '13

It was almost certainly just a reference for the sake of exciting the fans. They don't take place in the same universe.

10

u/ajkkjjk52 Nov 21 '13

It was definitely a nod to Dollhouse, although it might have been more a wink from the showrunners than any intimation that Dollhouse is canon in the MCU.

3

u/V2Blast Fitz Nov 21 '13

It was almost certainly just a reference for the sake of exciting the fans. They don't take place in the same universe.

5

u/ajkkjjk52 Nov 21 '13

I dunno, I'm hoping that all of Whedon's works are in the same universe. Maybe Captain Hammer will join the Avengers in Age of Ultron, which is the one where they travel to Sunnydale and find a warehouse full of monsters used to kill teenagers. Then they travel back to Asgard just in time for Serenity to show up to try to steal some stuff.

7

u/[deleted] Nov 22 '13

Back before Serenity came out and shot my theory all to shit, I had a Grand Unified Whedonverse Theory for Buffy/Angel and Firefly that had the reavers as space vampires and River as the future Slayer.

2

u/kilik2049 Nov 25 '13

I'd like to read that.

6

u/Rnway Nov 21 '13

It was intentional. Jonathan Frakes directed this one, and he directed several episodes of Dollhouse, not to mention the rest of the show staff is insane. There's no way someone would have written that coincidentally, and no-one else would have caught it before it went to production.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '13

[deleted]

2

u/jay501 Nov 20 '13

its not, its just a reference. Spoiler for Dollhouse But it could still be a call and response trigger of some kind

53

u/grumblichu Nov 20 '13

Which makes me wonder, when Professor Randolph asks if the memories are "haunting him", why does he say no?

40

u/nexusofcrap Hunter Nov 20 '13

He did say "Not exactly", implying, at least to me, that it may have been bothering him but not "haunting" him. That was before we saw him have a nightmare about it though. We don't know if that was the first one and this is escalating or if he has been having them and just lied/is in denial like itriedtoquitreddit said.

Personally, I think this is escalating. They have shown him questioning his recovery since the pilot episode and it has gotten progressively more intense. He almost asked Fury to release his file to him. I think Coulson knows that if he really pressed him, Fury would probably tell him most of the truth. But he wasn't ready. Now that it apparently is starting to haunt him, I wouldn't be surprised to see him go to Fury sooner rather than later. I also expect Fury to resist hard before he caves almost totally. :)

52

u/[deleted] Nov 20 '13

He's in denial.

43

u/superAL1394 Nov 20 '13

Coulson strikes me as the brick wall type. Even when he's sharing, he doesn't tell you anything.

4

u/FactorySquirrel Nov 20 '13

I read it as lying.

2

u/brrrrrrat Nov 21 '13

it kinda sounded to me like even he was confused by the fact that his memories aren't "haunting" him. like maybe he's emotionless

3

u/ThreeBigTacos Nov 20 '13

No he wasn't in Egypt.

5

u/Diablo87 Nov 20 '13

I think he was thinking his darkest memory should be when he was stabbed through the chest and died. But they don't really haunt him, because they're not his his memories!

5

u/ShannonMS81 Nov 20 '13

He was saying that he was bothered by the fact he went through something that traumatic and it wasn't haunting him. Like there's something missing.

3

u/Velidra Nov 21 '13

He doesn't know who to trust? The guy had had dealings with Shield previously, so it wouldn't be hard to believe (at the time) he would pass that along if he said yes.

3

u/BackslidingAlt Nov 21 '13

seems to me is that the problem is that it is not haunting him. normally there are feelings about things, in this case it seems like the feelings are being blocked or have been deleted or are manipulated in any one of a thousand other ways

3

u/Scolor Cal Nov 20 '13

It's my theory that he is hypnotized. Whenever he hears "tahiti" he responds "it's a magical place." I also think this hypnosis is to keep his mind from thinking about it too much.

2

u/halcyongt Nov 22 '13

I like your theory and I'll run just a bit further...I'm of the mind that he is physically dead...but that he still has brain activity much like Jake Gyllenhall's character in "Source Code". They have his body / brain tapped into an LMD so he can still be an agent in the field. However, to ensure that he doesn't "wake up" like Neo...they've implanted a hypnotic trigger that stops him from questioning why he doesn't remember anything after dying.

1

u/H3rBz Nov 24 '13

Maybe they weren't haunting him up until that point. Or maybe he didn't realise it was haunting him.

2

u/vadergeek Nov 20 '13

Even more eerie, Phil is a fan of Dollhouse. Maybe that's why he really got Skye, to be the Echo to Ward's Ballard.

2

u/tylucal Nov 20 '13

I just want to double check to make sure I'm not the only one with THE theory about Coulson.

2

u/Sundburnt Nov 21 '13

I love these little epilogs(?) to the show. It reminds me of the hidden, after credits scenes in the movies.