Girl in the Flower Dress

Plot

In Hong Kong, street performer Chan Ho Yin is convinced by the mysterious Raina to reveal his secret pyrokinetic abilities. When his S.H.I.E.L.D. monitor, Agent Quan Chen, discovers him missing the next day, Agent Phil Coulson and his team of agents are tasked with finding him. Quan reveals that Chan's location and abilities were leaked by the hacktivist group Rising Tide. Skye, a new civilian recruit and S.H.I.E.L.D. trainee, was once a member of the Rising Tide. She traces the hack that released the information back to Miles Lydon, her secret boyfriend and Rising Tide contact. The team goes to confront Lydon, but Skye reaches him first; the two are caught together by Agent Melinda May and are taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.

Skye tries to defend them both, but when the team finds evidence that Lydon was paid substantially for the information, she turns on him and cooperates with the agents. The team tracks the buyer, Raina, to a Project Centipede facility in Hong Kong, where they are draining Chan's fire-resistant platelets against his will, to use as stabilizers for the extremis serum within their super-soldiers. Chan, angry with this betrayal and with S.H.I.E.L.D. for constricting him, attacks both. He kills, among others, Quan and the Centipede head doctor Debbie. Realizing that Chan can't be reasoned with, Coulson and May inject him with a large dose of extremis, causing him to explode. Lydon, convinced that what he did is harming people, helps by using his hacking skills to direct the blast through the ventilation and out the top of the building, while the others escape to safety.

Coulson gives Lydon an irremovable S.H.I.E.L.D. bracelet that will prevent him from using technology for a time, and then releases him. Coulson then confronts Skye about her true motivation for joining S.H.I.E.L.D., and she explains that she is searching for information on her parents, who she believes are tied to S.H.I.E.L.D. in some way. Coulson agrees to let her stay on the team and to help her in her search, but makes her wear a bracelet like Lydon's. In an end tag, Raina visits a member of Centipede in prison and asks him to contact the "Clairvoyant".

Development and casting

In October 2013, Marvel announced the fifth episode as "Girl in the Flower Dress", written by Brent Fletcher and directed by Jesse Bochco. Main cast members Clark Gregg, Ming-Na Wen, Brett Dalton, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, and Elizabeth Henstridge star as Phil Coulson, Melinda May, Grant Ward, Skye, Leo Fitz, and Jemma Simmons, respectively. The guest cast of the episode was revealed to include Louis Changchien, Ruth Negga, Austin Nichols, Shannon Lucio, Tzi Ma, and Cullen Douglas as Renshu Tseng, Raina, Miles Lydon, Debbie, Agent Quan Chen, and Po, respectively. The name of Changchien's character was later revealed to actually be Chan Ho Yin. Ma previously guest starred on another Joss Whedon-created series, Dollhouse. Lucio reprises her role from "Pilot", appearing again as the Centipede doctor, Debbie.

Music

Composer Bear McCreary found the Hong Kong setting of the episode to be "the perfect opportunity to introduce Chinese instrumentation into [the] score", collaborating with composer Jeremy Zuckerman, who played the gu zheng throughout the episode. McCreary found "the nearly ten-minute long action scene" at the climax of the episode to be "the real beast of this episode" and "one of the most challenging pieces [he had] composed yet for the series", calling it "pretty chaotic" and noting the difficulty the orchestra had in recording it.

The episode also saw the return of several major themes, most notably the Centipede theme from "Pilot". McCreary "refrained from using the theme before we realize that Raina is working for Centipede", but "once we realize that Chan is in the clutches of Centipede, I rely on the Centipede theme for the rest of the episode. Scenes with Debbie and Raina are underscored with deep, ominous low strings quoting the theme while the creepy bells state it more quickly above." He also noted that the Centipede theme was 'dramatically transformed' when Chan kills Agent Quan; "the low brass blast out a huge statement of the Centipede Theme ... The heavy, brassy orchestration offers a completely new take on the theme, which used to exist only in creepy bells."

Marvel Cinematic Universe tie-ins

The Extremis virus from Iron Man 3 and "Pilot" reappears in this episode; Chan's platelets stabilize it to prevent subjects injected with it from exploding, which is how Chan is killed after all of his platelets are removed. The explosive that Coulson uses during the episode to enter the Centipede facility is similar to the one he used in Iron Man, and he strikes a similar pose when using it.

Broadcast

"Girl in the Flower Dress" was first aired in the United States on ABC on October 22, 2013. It was aired alongside the US broadcast in Canada on CTV, while it was first aired in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 on October 25, 2013. It premiered on the Seven Network in Australia on October 23, 2013.

Home media

The episode, along with the rest of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s first season, was released on Blu-ray and DVD on September 9, 2014. Bonus features include behind-the-scenes featurettes, audio commentary, deleted scenes, and a blooper reel. On November 20, 2014, the episode became available for streaming on Netflix.

Ratings

In the United States the episode received a 2.7/8 percent share among adults between the ages of 18 and 49, meaning that it was seen by 2.7 percent of all households, and 8 percent of all of those watching television at the time of the broadcast. It was watched by 7.39 million viewers. The Canadian broadcast gained 1.76 million viewers, the third highest for that day and the ninth highest for the week. The United Kingdom premiere had 2.52 million viewers and in Australia, the premiere had 1.6 million viewers, including 0.7 million timeshifted viewers. Within a week of its release, the episode was watched by 11.16 million U.S. viewers, above the season average of 8.31.

Following the episode's release, ScreenRant's Andre Dyce reviewed the series' ratings performance up to that point, noting that over 7 million viewers is "still a far cry from trouble on their own", but as the show "continues to slip in both viewers and demographics, the trend could become problematic." He noted that the drop in viewers from the series premiere, which had "some of the highest ratings in recent history" for ABC, to the second episode was to be expected, but "the fact that [Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.] can’t seem to hold steady in its fifth week is a sign that it may be charting troubled waters ... A rocky start is to be expected, but by this point in the season, most procedural dramas tend to have hit their pace both in structure and audience." He remembered that much of the MCU films' large fanbase had been expected to watch the series and provide "a healthy viewership", and how, if this was going to happen, "enthusiasm seems to be waning" among those fans now.

Critical response

Eric Goldman of IGN graded the episode 8.1 out of 10, calling it "pretty damn busy and quite fun", highlighting Skye's character development and the drama it caused, as well as the connections to "Pilot", as high points of the episode. He praised the "dark, but also necessary" deaths depicted, and concluded that the series "is beginning to build its story in an intriguing way." James Hunt at Den of Geek found the episode to be "mostly, quite good," praising Skye's story, the idea that S.H.I.E.L.D. "might actually be as bad as the people they're trying to fight", and the character of Raina, who he called "the closest thing this series has yet had to an original, interesting idea". Hunt criticized the dialogue, and found the character of Chan Ho Yin to be unrealistic, stating "while I loved the fact that they kind of, sort of, dredged up an actual Marvel character to use in this episode ... it was a shame that he too bore almost no resemblance to an actual person". The Guardian's Graeme Virtue also criticized some of the dialogue, but enjoyed the character of Raina and the potential for her to return. He hoped that now Skye's secret has been revealed, "perhaps some of the other agents will get their time in the spotlight." Marc Bernardin of The Hollywood Reporter decided that the "episode wasn't as good as "Eye Spy"—by the time we got to the last two segments, I really didn’t care what happened to “Scorch,”—but it was still better than the first three. It was all just so very ... perfunctory."

David Sims of The A.V. Club graded the episode a 'B-', stating "I've defended this show against complaints that it’s terminally bland, but formulaic material like this really does expose its flaws. It’s definitely not an unwatchably bad show ... In short: don’t be shy, Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Show us what you can do." He did praise the visual effects in the episode though, saying, "This week’s episode had a couple of very nicely-staged set pieces and, especially for broadcast TV, some excellent special effects. Fire is hard to pull off, even in a blockbuster movie, but this episode revolved around a character ... who can generate and manipulate fire, and everything he did looked pretty cool." Morgan Jeffrey at Digital Spy scored the episode 3 stars out of 5, calling it a "slow burn", and concluding that "Skye's arc is easily the weakest aspect of "Girl in the Flower Dress" but there's a decent villain and a strong climax to help compensate." Will Salmon of SFX also scored the episode 3 stars out of 5, stating "a shade more mature than the initial installments. It’s a welcome growth, and it does feel like Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. is getting itself together. They found the right levels of warmth and humanity last week, and humour and drama this time around. Now they just need to start going on some genuinely compelling missions against decent enemies." Jim Steranko, known for his work on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., felt the series "has settled into a pragmatic, if sometimes predictable comfort zone", and said that the episode "delivered enough premise, pace, and patter to get its audience through a mellow hour — and set the bar higher for the rest of the season."