After how messed up last week’s Agents of SHIELD turned out to be, and how perfectly mediocre it was the week before that, I’m not even sure what I want from this show anymore. It’s difficult to feel invested in a piece of media that seems to be completely unaware of the world in which we’re consuming it. Almost like it’s in active denial, which is never a good thing. Especially now.
As truly disgusting as Discount Bruce Wayne’s reveal felt to me, and I’m sure to many others, the fact that Agents of SHIELD actually had a chance to own up to it and do something interesting with Daisy putting him through a verbal wood chipper only for them to squander it was just—why? Why have Daisy sign the Sokovia Accords, and put her in front of a Senate committee so she can sorta kinda mention that racism is bad for half a second?
What is the overall point to any of this? Oh wait. There isn’t any! This would have been that point for the thing to happen but it didn’t. And Jeffrey, for the love of God, “playing the part” isn’t the same as actually being an oppressed minority! Is that what some people think? That it’s all some ploy for attention? “Oh, take pity on us for we are different and ever so scared!” said no one, ever. If I’m gonna play a part, I’ll go for the one that doesn’t involve being shot for little more than breathing.
Does the writing staff realize how damn perfect the timing is right now to exploit the hell out of their built-in minority expy? Sure, normally it’s the X-Men who get this meta-textual duty, but they can’t use them so I’m failing to see—I’m sorry, this is almost painful to watch. It really is. It’s not even so bad it’s good; it’s still somehow mediocre.
But back to the whole “the last five days have been utterly terrifying” part of real life: there’s this huge surge of white supremacy roaring through a big part of the West right now. In case you didn’t somehow know that. Nazis, and the like. So what does it say about a television show based around the organization originally founded to fight the Nazis that were so hardcore they thought Hitler wasn’t Nazi enough when even they can’t see the probably literal writing on the walls?
A lot. It says a lot. They could have made a big statement here. It wouldn’t have been great, because Agents of SHIELD isn’t nearly that consistent, but it would have been something. It would have been an honest effort to speak out against the sheer lunacy of life’s terribly written Cold War thriller.
Good lord, we have people debating the morality of punching Nazis (as if you need a source on this) and Agents of SHIELD can’t take two seconds to weigh in and say, oh, I don’t know: PUNCH ALL THE NAZIS.
Seriously, are we sure SHIELD still isn’t Hydra? Because they’re kinda acting like it. What with the lying and the sabotaging their own government and the evil science and the black magic. And not telling us to Punch All The Nazis. Peggy Carter would punch all the Nazis. She did punch all the Nazis. We saw it.
Right. Okay. Anyway, back to the actual plot. Or, rather, time to actually talk about it. It was simple, and not terrible. Which is sort of the problem I mentioned above: I can’t even enjoy this ironically. Not yet, at least.
The Team wants to plant bugs in Nadir’s office during a Senate hearing, and Talbot is understandably not okay with this. Because spying on his own government, even though she’s pretty clearly hiring terrorists to hunt and exterminate a group of people, isn’t a thing that should be taken lightly. But, he agrees to go along with it anyway, except everything goes to hell because Doctor Exposition leaks the op to Nadir who he has been working with to get the Darkhold apparently.
Yoyo and Phil get caught just in time to be dragged into the hearing in super dramatic fashion to help prove Senator Nadir’s point about the evils of robbing banks and legal immunity. So she could have a legitimate excuse to demand a top-to-bottom investigation into our good ol’ agents of SHIELD. Which I’m sure will be covered extremely comprehensively!
Either that or the Sex Robots will murder them when they stop by. Probably that, to be honest.
Anyway, Yoyo and Mack are now officially a thing and Mack’s a sad grieving father. Interesting that this never came up when we met his brother, but whatever. Also, can people just…sort of request personal time off in an organization like SHIELD? With maybe half a day’s notice before a big op? Guessing no. At least, I hope not. I’d like to think intelligence agencies acted intelligently.
Fitz and Simmons also have relationship troubles! Except they don’t because Fitz is a smart person once more and figures out that a magic book was probably not the reason the Sex Robot went insane. They confront Radcliffe at his apartment, where he had just finished speaking to RobotMay about how it’s so super cool to want to bang Phil because that’s what May wants deep down in her heart.
Except it turns out that that wasn’t Doctor Exposition, but rather another Replicant, so…the Replicant was well made enough to advise another Replicant just as it gained self-awareness and redirect it back to—wait so Radcliffe went out of his way to program a subroutine into RobotMay that she couldn’t hurt him or any duplicates he may or may not create?! I—what?!
I can’t even begin to track the logic there since he didn’t know he’d be making another Sex Robot when he had to make the May one—or did he? Did he explicitly plan to get caught, have Fitz discover that and…okay, yeah, lost the train of thought there. Doesn’t make sense.
Oh, and also May found inner peace thanks to altered memories of that time she killed that little Inhuman girl with mind control powers. At least, I think she was Inhuman. Either way, this time she didn’t kill the girl. Just the mom! And she got to share the good news with her husband who she, if memory serves, hadn’t divorced at the time since that was sort of the catalyst there!
Huzzah for Mind Control Therapy!
So, tune in next week for everyone’s favorite ship to set sail: RobotMay/Phil. Because that is a thing that everyone wanted.
