BWW Recaps: S.H.I.E.L.D. Unearths 'The Things We Bury'

S.H.I.E.L.D.'S original agent Peggy Carter cameos and the secret origins of Hydra bad guy Daniel Whitehall (Reed Diamond) as well as a few other skeletons come to the surface this week in "The Things We Bury." Let's declassify this ep, shall we?

We open with a flashback to the final days of World War II. Hydra baddie Daniel Whitehall plays the "here, touch this" game with the alien artifiact (aka the oblisk) with several POWs. It does not end well for most (ABC seems to be getting their money's worth with the charcoal briquette crumb CGI effect). One asian woman touches it and survives. Before Whitehall can investigat further, he recieves the news that the Red Skull is dead.

Flash to the present. Whitehall looks the same (what is his beauty regiment). He's quizzing the Doctor (aka Skye's father, played by Kyle MacLachlan) about the object's origins. It's not a weapon (as Hydra theorized), but rather a key. The death touch stuff is just security protection. Sort of like Lojack, but, you know, deadlier. The Doctor refers to it as the Diviner.

Coulson (Clark Gregg) and some of S.H.I.E.L.D are bound for Hawaii, still chasing rogue turncoat agent Ward (Grant Douglas) and searching for the alien city from last week. Morse (Adrianne Palicki) interrogates Hydra agent Bakshi (Simon Kassianides), but the only Intel we get is that Whitehall is a disciple of the Red Skull. May (Ming-Na Wen) figures Whitehall must have known Red Skull. It's frustrating as the team seems to be playing catch up with the audience (who already know that Whitehall was in World War II and hasn't aged a day for some reason).

The team searches through Agent Carter's files from Whitehall's commanding officer --a German named Reinhart. We flash back to Carter (Haley Atwell) interrogating Reinhart. It turns out he and Whitehall are one and the same. Next the writers will tell us Nixon resigned.

In present day, the Doctor continues to fill Whitehall in. Yes, the device kills most people. It's also a key to possibly a temple in the mythical city that Coulson and crew are searching for. Whitehall isn't sure he can trust the good Doctor, though.

The audience does something the Agents can't: we catch up with Ward. He's taking his brother the Senator hostage. They argue over who pushed their other brother into the well. Family, am I right? Ward is able to extract a confession from his brother. Ward tells his bro "it's time to go home."

He uses that confession later as a "suicide note" left for the police. The Senator is fingered for killing his parents and then himself. I wonder where Ward will spend Thanksgiving now that he's killed his whole family.

In our final flashback, an aged Whitehall/Reinhart has caught up with the woman from the first flashback. He's dissecting her to try and see why she hasn't aged. As he does this, he gets younger and younger.

Final scene: Whitehall is gone and the woman is dying in her husband's arms. It's the Doctor, who vows revenge. This leaves me wondering why the Doctor hates S.H.I.E.L.D. when it was Hydra (and specifically Whitehall) that killed his wife. Guess we'll have to wait to find out.

And with that, a ho-hum ep comes to a close. Did it drag or was it me? Comment below. And follow me on Twitter @triggercritic and follow @BWWTVWorld for all the latest updates, scoops and recaps.