The local ABC affiliate decided to preempt this week’s Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, which left me with some time to watch the first big turning point in the series’ seven season run.  So after a nice walk down the hill and back, I settled in for “Turn, Turn, Turn,” the episode of SHIELD where the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier totally changed the set-up for the fledgling show.  And it wasn’t enough that the system of SHIELD was compromised by HYDRA.  It was also the fact that one of Coulson’s own agents was a plant the whole time.

I hadn’t really intended to start a SHIELD re-watch.  But it was on my mind after watching a couple of Captain American movies and two seasons of Agent Carter.  I’ve seen every episode of the show, but I’d never really thought of it as one to watch a second time through.  I remember feeling like the first season was disjointed and sorely lacking in real Marvel Cinematic Universe connections.  It holds up surprisingly well, though.  Granted, six seasons later we have a sense of how little the show will connect to the MCU, but we also know that it does a good job of creating its own complicated little world.  It’s also nice to revisit so many long-standing characters during their earliest year.  And even though it took a while for the show to adopt its “three short seasons in one” approach, the first season “binges” nicely with some great twists and turns.

Here’s the scene where Coulson figures it out.  Most of the first season was spent trying to make sense of a character known as the Clairvoyant.  I’ll have to admit that I had forgotten who it was (just like I had forgotten that Skye almost dies and Coulson has a difficult time trusting Agent May).

The episode afterwards, of course, is where the team starts to pick up the pieces.  It’s an odd one: lots of threads are in knots and Coulson leads the remaining team on a wild goose chase.  A chase that comes to an end when he throws that badge into the air.  Here’s Coulson’s big speech, which sums things up nicely, just before the fatal throw (which brings its own twisty reveal or two).