Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Character Highlight: Antoine Triplett (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)


(Spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

I don’t feel I got as much of a chance to know Trip as I would’ve liked to, and I’m not quite sure why.  In general, I think it’s tough to be the first new member brought into the team of an already-established ensemble, so I may have been less inclined to get to know him than later newcomers like Bobbi, Mack, and Hunter.  Is that the whole reason, or is he also somewhat less-defined than many of the other characters on the show?  Unfortunately, although I do enjoy him, I lean toward the latter answer. 

Trip is brought in during the second half of season 1, just before the post-Winter Soldier blowup with the team learning of the big Hydra reveal and, more important to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the show revealing Ward’s double-agent status.  Trip serves a few useful plot purposes here.  First, Simmons’s obvious appreciation for him highlights Fitz’s growing attraction to his best friend and colleague, using Fitz’s jealousy of Trip to prime the engine for his end-of-season declaration of love.  When the Hydra hits the fan, Trip – the recent sort-of addition to the team who’s been working alongside our trusted ensemble – seems set up to be the perfect candidate for a secret Hydra member.  We the audience haven’t known him long enough to get attached to him, but Ward knows him from past assignments and Simmons has taken a liking to him, so it’s reasonable enough to think the team would be shaken by the revelation that he’s Hydra.  When the real bombshell drops, though, and it comes out that it’s Ward who’s Hydra, then it works out nicely that Trip has the same “specialist” training as Ward and can fulfill much the same function when he steps forward to fill the gap left in the team.

This is a lot about what Trip is for rather than who he is, and I think this is kind of how Trip is regarded, at least from a writing standpoint, for much of his time on the show.  The reveal that his grandfather was a Howling Commando (and that Trip kept it a secret so as not to be treated like a “legacy”) is interesting, but we really don’t explore that much.  More than anything, it facilitates a way for the team to have access to cool Marvel spy gadgets when they’re on the run without resources late in season 1, since Trip is able to get a trunk of his grandpa’s old S.S.R. toys.  Even his death in the Temple in mid-season 2 is less about him and more about a) Skye blaming herself for it and b) Simmons having an inciting reason to be so freaked out about alien biology and enhanced people, just in time for Skye’s Inhuman transformation.

Obviously, every character on a TV show is there for a reason, but with Trip, it can feel like the show is more interested in the reason than the person, and as a result, I have less of a feel for him than I do for, say, Fitz or May or Bobbi.  What I do know of him, though, I like.  During his time on the show, he often feels like the most low-drama person on the team.  With the exception of his early episodes, with Fitz’s jealousy and people questioning his loyalty in the wake of the Hydra discovery, he doesn’t really clash with anybody on the team.  He’s a dedicated agent who rarely questions his orders, he generally meets intense situations with an easy unflappability, he jokes and gets along with pretty much everyone, and despite everything he’s seen working for S.H.I.E.L.D., he’s still a mild-to-moderate skeptic when it comes to the really crazy stuff.  In season 2, he and Skye seem on their way to forming a good working relationship, but she’s probably the closest he has to a significant connection with someone on the team (from a narrative standpoint, anyway.)  What’s there is all good, but it feels a little flat, and that disappoints me, because I think there was a lot of potential in this character that could have been better explored.

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