Agent Coulson is still carving at the "Crazy wall" , the writing is coming every day, he can no longer sleep and he's worried.
Not as worried as the young artist who has also been drawing the symbols and has found a third person who knows about them. This mysterious man wants her to remember why she's painting, and he knows how to make her. Apparently this involves filletting her.
Skye and Coulson investigate and find dozens of pictures in the victim's apartment that have extra detail that makes the pattern in his head bigger.
An autopsy reveals a connection between killer, victim, Skye and Coulson, the TAHITI project and the resurrection blood.
Only one way to explore the connections beetween everyone...
It's this season's solution to everything...
TORTURE. YAY!
Did I just type that?
I'm beginning to think that the almost weekly resorting to torture is desensitising me!
It certainly seems to be a lesser issue for Coulson who VOLUNTEERS for it!
Coulson goes into the memory machine to recover his memories of the project that restored him to life,and to get the names of the other subjects, since the murdered woman was a level 6 agent.
This rather unpleasant treatment works so well that Coulson goes bonkers, locks up Skye and sets out after the remaining subjects.
While all of this is going on, May, Hunter, Morse and Trip are following a tricksy Ward across America. Ward is well aware and leads them exactly where he wants them to be. He leaves them a present...
It's all getting exciting isnt it.
The Coulson side of this is fairly gruesome, but isnt gratuitous, there's a desperation to Coulson and the mystery man. Coulson is desperate to find out what the symbols in his head want, and to avoid changing from a wall mutilator into a people carver. The mystery man isn't any happier. He's full on nuts and can't stop his vision of the symbols from driving him ...somewhere.
Ward shows us how proficient he is at cat and mouse, in this case he's a heavily armed, highly trained mouse , who's read the Advanced Cat manual from end to end and found it a bit simplistic.
You can tell this is leading us up to the mid-season finalé, the pace is quickening and the plot threads are starting to be pulled together.
It's tense and disturbing, the scenes inside Coulson's head are an insight into the ruthlessness of S.H.I.E.L.D., the subjects in his memories are genuinely sympathetic cases caught up in a bad process, Coulson included.So when Coulson does something unexpected you can see genuine mania in his actions.
The symbols plot reaches a climax here, and leaves us with a new direction for the team.
They aren't however the only people moving in that direction, and they know it.
Another cracking episode, lots of action, some exposition and some excellent performances.
The running away seems to have stopped. Now we're running towards...