The Dirty Half Dozen

"The Dirty Half Dozen"
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode
"The Art of Evolution" poster for the episode.
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 19
Directed by	Kevin Tancharoen
Written by	Brent Fletcher Drew Z. Greenberg
Produced by	Jed Whedon Maurissa Tancharoen Jeffrey Bell
Editing by	Joshua Charson
Original air date	April 28, 2015 (2015-04-28)
Running time	41 minutes
Guest actors
Kyle MacLachlan as Calvin Zabo Henry Simmons as Alphonso "Mack" MacKenzie J. August Richards as Mike Peterson / Deathlok Dichen Lachman as Jiaying Ruth Negga as Raina Jamie Harris as Gordon Maya Stojan as Kara Palamas / Agent 33 Simon Kassianides as Sunil Bakshi Luke Mitchell as Lincoln Campbell Henry Goodman as List Christine Adams as Anne Weaver Edward James Olmos as Robert Gonzales Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill

"The Dirty Half Dozen" is the nineteenth episode of the second season of the American television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., based on the Marvel Comics organization S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division), revolving around the character of Phil Coulson and his team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents as they infiltrate a Hydra base to rescue two of their kidnapped allies. It is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), sharing continuity with the films of the franchise. The episode was written by Brent Fletcher and Drew Z. Greenberg, and directed by Kevin Tancharoen.

Clark Gregg reprises his role as Coulson from the film series, and is joined by series regulars Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge, Nick Blood, and Adrianne Palicki. Recurring guest stars Luke Mitchell and J. August Richards portray Lincoln Campbell and Deathlok, respectively, kidnapped allies of S.H.I.E.L.D., while Henry Goodman and Cobie Smulders play Hydra doctor List and former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill, also reprising their roles from the films. The latter two appear due to the episode tying into the film Avengers: Age of Ultron, with easter eggs and plot threads leading into the opening scene of that film.

"The Dirty Half Dozen" originally aired on ABC on April 28, 2015, and according to Nielsen Media Research, was watched by 4.57 million viewers. It was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for its visual effects.

Plot

Following the events of "The Frenemy of My Enemy", Gordon fails to rescue Lincoln from Hydra, and Raina recognises his injuries from her dreams, realising she has precognitive powers. Coulson offers Gonzales a truce to fight Hydra, agreeing to unlock the toolbox for him, and tells May that Andrew was counselling him for his hypergraphia, but refuses to explain Theta Protocol to her. Alerted by Bakshi to the location of Hydra's Arctic base, where Mike and Lincoln are being experimented on, Coulson devises a plan to rescue them, after which SHIELD will bomb the base.

When Jiaying refuses to let anyone try to rescue Lincoln, as Afterlife's safety is more important, Raina, receiving a vision of Skye saving Lincoln, convinces Gordon to take Skye to the Playground. Coulson reforms his original team of May, Ward, Skye, Fitz and Simmons, and they head to the Arctic in the Bus. Their approach is detected by Hydra, who destroy the Bus with missiles, but the team escape in a quinjet and infiltrate the base with Bakshi's help. Coulson, May and Fitz break into the base's control rooms to steal information about Wolfgang von Strucker's primary headquarters from their computers, and Skye, Ward, Bakshi and Simmons rescue Mike, whose cybernetic implants have been removed, including his leg and his camera eye. While Skye finds Lincoln in cardiac arrest and restarts his heart with her powers, Simmons tries to kill Ward with a Hydra splinter bomb as she once promised, but Bakshi tackles her and is killed instead, while Ward flees, unable to bring himself to shoot Simmons.

The team depart with Mike and Lincoln as the base is destroyed, while List escapes and rejoins Strucker. Ward calls Coulson and asks him to look after Palamas, insisting she is an innocent and deserves clemency, while Mike is taken to a specialist laboratory to have his cybernetic implants replaced. Coulson contacts Maria Hill to inform her that Strucker's headquarters is in the small eastern European nation of Sokovia, as is Loki's sceptre. He suggests that Hill pass this information to the Avengers. At Afterlife, Cal forgives Jiaying for trying to banish him, and warns her that Raina may attempt a coup. Raina has a vision of the sceptre and the consequences if the Avengers retrieve it, witnessing men made of metal tearing cities apart.

Production

Development

In March 2015, Marvel announced that the nineteenth episode of the season would be titled "The Dirty Half Dozen", to be written by Brent Fletcher and Drew Z. Greenberg, with Kevin Tancharoen directing.

Casting

Further information: List of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. characters

In July 2014, the executive producers stated that they had plans to incorporate Cobie Smulders' Maria Hill into the second season, leading to a cameo appearance at the end of this episode.

In March 2015, Marvel revealed that main cast members Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge, Nick Blood, and Adrianne Palicki would star as Phil Coulson, Melinda May, Grant Ward, Skye, Leo Fitz, Jemma Simmons, Lance Hunter, and Bobbi Morse, respectively. It was also revealed that the guest cast for the episode would include Henry Simmons as Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie, Ruth Negga as Raina, Henry Goodman as Dr. List, J. August Richards as Deathlok/Mike Peterson, Kyle Maclachlan as Cal, Edward James Olmos as Robert Gonzales, Jamie Harris as Gordon, Christine Adams as Agent Weaver, Mark Allan Stewart as Agent Oliver, Maya Stojan as Kara/Agent 33, Dichen Lachman as Jiaying, Luke Mitchell as Lincoln Campbell and Chad Cleven as a Hydra tactical agent. Stewart and Cleven did not receive guest star credit in the episode. Simon Kassianides also guest stars. Simmons, Negga, Goodman, Richards, MacLachlan, Olmos, Harris, Adams, Stewart, Stojan, Lachman, Mitchell, and Kassianides reprise their roles from earlier in the series.

Filming

Tancharoen and the series' stunt team, lead by stunt coordinator Tanner Gill and fight choreographer Matt Mullins, created a previsualization of a fight sequence between the character Skye and several Hydra agents in which it would be filmed in a single take. Tancharoen and Mullins conceived the idea while looking for a way to top the 'May vs. May' fight in "Face My Enemy". The executive producers were enthusiastic about the idea being used, and the actors, including Bennet, rehearsed the sequence on the prior weekend, for "a couple of hours" at a "gymnastics place". Because the series' production doesn't build sets till "a couple of days before the shoot or even the day before the shoot or, sometimes even the morning of the shoot" the stunt team was not able to coordinate with the art department and set decorators in the construction of the set, so the fight sequence had to be slightly reconfigured on the day of the shoot to fit the set. A steam effect in the sequence proved difficult due to the special effects operator having to time it with Bennet's shooting, working around a delay in the air canister system of several seconds. Tancharoen used a handheld camera, with the operator having to "run all over the place with this really heavy camera on his shoulder", but wanted to move away from the Jason Bourne, shaky-cam style of filming, saying that because of his background in choreography, "It’s drilled in my head that the camera has to complement the movement of the action." The shot took four takes to get right, with Bennet breaking her arm during the filming of the final take, and having to carry out the rest of her fight scenes for the season with the injury.

Visual effects

For the destruction of the Bus, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s plane that serves as a mobile command center, series lead visual effects provider FuseFX were able to storyboard and plot out the sequence earlier than usual, before creating a completely computer generated sequence in which the plane is hit by a missile while flying in the arctic. As the plane is brought down, "pieces of wreckage catch fire and burn as they fall to earth. There is also a smaller plane that flies through the airborne debris. It’s a very complex sequence, combining CG, effects simulations and pyrotechnics." Series visual effects supervisor Mark Kolpack elaborated that "Doing fire realistically on television is a tall order. You don’t get the representation of what a real fire element looks like using software, but the guys at FuseFX, those FX animators are amazing. It takes a long time and a lot of set up to get things right. And it wasn’t just the fire, it was the smoke and the debris, and then it was the cloaking device, and May [show star Ming-Na Wen] in the cockpit and it was May on bluescreen. Between Houdini and the particles we had to create for that one shot — a big giant virtual shot where we had a QuinJet come down and all the debris is falling all around and there’s fire and smoke, that sequence was what that episode was about. It was a big scene to pull off."

For Bakshi's death-by-splinter bomb, the visual effects team had created the effect before for earlier episodes, so they had that "pretty much dialed in". Kolpack explained that Kassianides "was shot against greenscreen and background plates, and we added several layers of different erosion techniques, taking his body away, and then having all the actual particles dynamically coming off of him as he moved."

Marvel Cinematic Universe tie-ins

"The Dirty Half Dozen" features "Easter eggs, plot threads and other connective tissue leading into the opening scene of Avengers: Age of Ultron", including the appearance of Goodman as List and Smulders as Hill, reprising their roles from the films. Executive producer Jed Whedon described the tie-in as more "nuanced" than the previous one, which connected the series to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, given that the crossover has relatively little impact on the ongoing storylines of the season.

Release

Broadcast

"The Dirty Half Dozen" was first aired in the United States on ABC on April 28, 2015.

Marketing

For the final twelve episodes of the season Marvel once again ran the "Art of..." initiative, in which an image was released the Thursday before the episode aired, depicting a first look at a key event from the upcoming episode, with the season's title being "The Art of Evolution". The different artists were once again chosen to create the teaser posters, based on their previous work and how it connected to the themes and emotion of the intended episode. The poster for "The Dirty Half Dozen", with art by Jake Wyatt, sees the original recruits to Coulson's S.H.I.E.L.D. team from the first season (May, Ward, Fitz, Simmons and Skye), along with Coulson, together once again, suiting up for a mission together; it is also the first poster of the "Art of..." series to feature the episode title on the poster.

Home media

The episode began streaming on Netflix on June 11, 2015, and was released along with the rest of the second season on September 18, 2015, on Blu-ray and DVD.

Reception

Ratings

In the United States the episode received a 1.5/5 percent share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49, meaning that it was seen by 1.5 percent of all households, and 5 percent of all of those watching television at the time of the broadcast. It was watched by 4.57 million viewers.

Accolades

The episode was nominated for Outstanding Special and Visual Effects at the 67th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

External links

• "The Dirty Half Dozen" at ABC
• "The Dirty Half Dozen" at IMDb
• "The Dirty Half Dozen" at TV.com