Goodsmudge

"Pilot"
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 1
Directed by	Joss Whedon
Written by	Joss Whedon Jed Whedon Maurissa Tancharoen
Original air date	September 24, 2013 (2013-09-24)
Guest appearances
J. August Richards as Mike Peterson Shannon Lucio as Doctor Ron Glass as Dr. Streiten Bob Stephenson as Gary Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill

"Turn, Turn, Turn" is the seventeenth episode of the first season of the American television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It originally aired on ABC on April 8, 2014. The episode was written by series co-executive producers Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, and directed by Vincent Misiano. The episode is a tie-in with the 2014 film Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the episode is set during and after the events of the film.

The series follows S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and his team, Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), Grant Ward (Brett Dalton), Skye (Chloe Bennet), and Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge). At the end of the previous episode, May was revealed to be spying on and reporting on the team and recurring character agent Victoria Hand remotely hijacked the team's plane, ordering for all onboard to be killed except Coulson. In "Pilot", the team investigates a human implanted with a biotechnological device and the hacktivist group Rising Tide. The episode guest stars J. August Richards as Mike Peterson and Cobie Smulders as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill.

According to Nielsen Media Research, "Pilot" was watched by 12.12 million viewers in its original airing.

Plot

Mike Peterson (J. August Richards) is out with his son Ace (Ajani Wrighster), when an explosion erupts from the top floor of a nearby building. He climbs up the outside of the building by punching holes in the brickwork and enters through a flaming window. As the crowd looks on, Peterson jumps from the top floor whilst holding a woman (Shannon Lucio) in his arms. Watching him is Skye (Chloe Bennet), who films him on her smart phone. Meanwhile, Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) is interviewing Grant Ward (Brett Dalton) for a new S.H.I.E.L.D. team alongside Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), who is officially dead. Coulson steps from the shadows and welcomes Ward to "level 7", explaining that the Avengers only have level 6 clearance and that the team's mission is to investigate a hacker group called the Rising Tide. Coulson visits Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), who had retired from field duty, and convinces her to join the team.

Skye meets with Peterson and warns him about S.H.I.E.L.D., saying that they cover up superhero based events. Later as she broadcasts alone from her van as the Rising Tide, Coulson opens the door and arrests her. He takes her back to the S.H.I.E.L.D. team's plane, their mobile base of operations. He and Ward question her, but she is uncooperative and mentions Project Centipede which neither of the agents had heard of. In order to gain her trust, Coulson injects Ward with a truth serum and allows Skye to question him. With her trust gained, she reveals where she filmed Peterson and Coulson sends Agents Leo Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) and Jemma Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) to investigate the scene of the explosion. They discover a strange device in the debris and take it back to the base to investigate. Peterson returns to the factory he used to work at, and angrily injures his former boss Gary (Bob Stephenson), saying that he was the "bad guy" and Peterson was the "hero".

Peterson visits the woman he saved in the hospital, and it is revealed that she was the doctor who implanted the Centipede device into his left forearm. He wants to go public, but she says that her backers wouldn't like that. He claims this is all his origin story and jumps from the hospital window. Fitz and Simmons investigate the device and find that it is a combination of all known causes of super powers including: alien metal (as seen in The Avengers), gamma radiation (as seen in The Incredible Hulk), a formula similar to Captain America's (as seen in Captain America: The First Avenger), and Extremis (as seen in Iron Man 3). Meanwhile they reproduce footage from the crime scene using the flash memory of a video camera and the audio recorded by Skye who had bugged the lab. They discover that the explosion was caused by an angry man (Aaron Behr) exploding due to Extremis. The man had the device implanted in his forearm, which they recognize on Peterson due to video footage of his attack at the factory.

Skye returns to her van to send the audio as the encryption was tied to the geolocation. Peterson abducts her and makes her delete his information from the government's systems. At the same time she hacks into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s systems to inform them. Peterson and Skye are tracked down to a train station by Coulson's team and a gunman sent by Peterson's doctor. May takes out the gunman, and Coulson talks Peterson down long enough for Ward to shoot him with an advanced stun gun developed by Fitz and Simmons. Afterwards, Coulson offers Skye a place on his team when a call for a "0-8-4" comes in.

Reception

External links

• "Pilot" at ABC
• "Pilot" at IMDb

Category:Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Category:2013 television episodes