Stil mostly AoS TV rundown
Jane the Virgin 5x12
Well, this one was kind of rough for me. Mostly because I thought this and the previous episode had been very strong evidence that Jane and Rafael are much better as friends (with a complicated relationship) than they are as romantic partners. I know I’m supposed to be happy in the end, but I’m not. In fact I’m grasping at straws now because they had the show itself spell out the format they follow a few episodes back, and this makes them getting together into the cliffhanger, and to my admittedly biased view that seems...like it might be saying something.
I like a lot of the stuff with Jane and Petra in this one, but the ending left such a wrong taste in my mouth that I’m having a hard time reflecting on the former decent stuff.
They do still have a handful of episodes left in the series, and obviously I’m not going anywhere at this point, but if it wasn’t the last season (and I have so few things I’m watching right now) I kind of think this would at least have me put it on the back burner and catch up down the line. I’ve never liked this ship, but I don’t remember being this angry about it the last couple seasons (maybe I was in s1 but back then I at least felt like the show knew there were problems with the ship).
Agents of SHIELD 6x05
I’m pretty close to crying over this one; I might get over it faster if the damn tears would just come out, as is I’m lingering in ‘kind of want to cry’ territory. And it’s not even like it’s a surprise that this episode hit me hard, I expected it to get me just knowing what was set to happen; then this morning they put out the teaser clip with May’s dreamland back in Tahiti and that definitely said this was going to hurt. Still, it definitely hurt.
And it’s not as if the space plot wasn’t emotionally charged either. Yeah they threw in a couple fun moments with Davis and Piper bickering (I am getting a little tired of them just being comic relief, but I’m still this side of okay with it), but aside from that it’s still hostages, betrayal, and genocide. Well, it’s also funny how ridiculous it is that they just happened to grab a Remorath ship; they already had the set, no need to make anything to show these guys as a different culture.
While I’m still not over how dumb their portrayal of Space has been, at least this time I don’t have nearly as much to complain about or add to this list of reasons why this shouldn’t be real because of how badly done it is. I buy that chronracoms (and I’m probably spelling that wrong, but it’s what I’m using) speak English atleast. Although I less buy this lady’s portrayal of a chronacom and take some issue with the characterization of her and Enoch’s relationship. For that matter, if chronacoms have no gender (which was established last season), what does Enoch being programmed for sexual gratification mean? Granted, I’d be happy enough to pretend that line didn’t happen, but it did. I guess I always did assume that Enoch’s statements about not being a man meant that whatever skinsuit he was wearing didn’t really enter into is, but there are different programs for sexual satisfaction depending on what that skinsuit can do; really I’m just mostly mad that they used a male and female performer to be chronacoms having an implied relationship when chronacoms’ skinsuits shouldn’t enter into it.
I can’t quite blame Enoch here either; his world is gone and his people on the verge of being wiped out; we know the kind of things our heroes will do when their world is in the balance, so how can we blame Enoch for that kind of choice? I’d like to think Jemma does see that and that’s part of why she goes the way she does in the end. Jemma betrayed her friends to get to Fitz (not that there were any consequences for that), and he’s one person.
Small question though, did the chronacoms fix the Zephyr and give them some fuel? Because they were still pretty broken down when they got captured, and when they made the unplanned jump to such deep space they weren’t sure they could get back even beside the side trip to Kitson. Or it is more evidence that they don’t really think about how Space works.
This was the best space plot they’ve done so far, but my heart is still back on Earth.
I feel for Mack and Yoyo. Yoyo is a lot like May, pressing on and not really dealing with what happened last episode and getting on with things. And Mack doesn’t know how to cross the distance between them; it’s no longer enough for him to open the door (and he’s not even really doing that). There’s not a lot of forward movement on that front this episode, but enough to make me kind of sad for them, they kind of need May around, and they also needed some good news. And while I don’t really want Daisy in my preferred plot because she’s just going to annoy me, they want her around; although it also wasn’t as much a win as they had hoped.
(For example, it now goes back to seeming like the line about ‘that’s not the man you loved’ will be directed at May which means I’m back to wanting someone to slap Daisy for thinking that needs to be said. May knows, that’s basically the point of this episode; why would she ever need Daisy to point out something that she’s already beaten the shit out of Sarge over? So let’s get in a preemptive ‘shut the fuck up Daisy;’ go back to space where I was at least tolerating you. If May starts saying it is Coulson there’s going to be some good reason for it.)
On one hand getting forward movement on what we’re dealing with is good; on the other, connecting it to the monoliths feels a little odd. Not quite enough to push me to think this is in-character lack of creativity the way I with the space plot at times; more that it feels like a consequence of a short season that is crowded by necessity already. It’s not like they ever knew that much about the monoliths in the past, yet now they have enough knowledge that Yoyo can recognize the similarity on sight? I think this could lead to some interesting ways to handle the problems at hand, especially since it seems at first glance that these elements are going to connect up with what’s going on in space; but it feels a little rushed to get us to this understanding.
I have so many thoughts and feelings about May and Sarge’s scenes as well as the flashbacks with Coulson. Let’s tackle a couple practical bits first; on one hand I want to mock how they clearly filmed all those flashbacks in about ten square feet of space, but in this case...it kind of makes sense. We’re in May’s memory, which isn’t about the backgrounds, it’s just him.
Also, I’m not quite sure where they’re going with the lines being echoed, but it’s way too significant for it not to be a clue. Going into this episode I had wondered if they had some tech that would mess with your head, but we don’t see that at work, so I don’t think Sarge is picking up lines from May’s memories. And while the head catching on fire thing made complete sense in context, it is also a Coulson thing. The script even has her comment on the same lines showing up, but he doesn’t respond when she asks. I guess maybe there’s a chance we’re even further in her head than the obvious and she’s imaging him using Coulson’s words, that would explain why he doesn’t respond to comment on it, but that’s not how this show usually works. Even with the flashbacks, I don’t think we’re getting imaginings, we’re seeing what she’s remembering of things that happened.
So assuming this isn’t something extra weird, it seems like further evidence that there is some connection between our Coulson and Sarge, we just don’t know what it is yet. Sarge assumes there has to be a connection, that it’s too big a coincidence to happen without cause. But as he points out (for his own reasons), there’s no guarantee that time works the same way everywhere they go, and if the monoliths are involved they might not be traveling in a straight line through time; maybe he does remember a hundred years of this, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t leave this planet a year ago.
Because as May points out, we know Coulson was real. Sure, in the line of wild speculation, it’s possible that Coulson was somehow an echo of the longer lived Sarge, but I’m disinclined to go for that. There are things I would have added to her speech about how well she knew Coulson; maybe locked in how long they’d known each other, and that having known each other so long, they grew old together so she *knows* he was a real person. And, if I’m right and it is Coulson, then some of the things she mentions are things Sarge maybe doesn’t know about himself, his parents and where he was born. But among the sad things about that gut-punch of a scene, is that she’s the only one who could have said most of what’s said. She knows everything, and right now she knows he has to be stopped (even if I imagine they may want to pull the memory machine out just to be sure).
And small thing, very small because this is entirely explainable even though we just didn’t see it, but we never see May introduce herself to Sarge, but he manages to guess that she’s the May that Deke mentioned. It may have just been an obvious leap, or since she’s been there long enough there may have been some generic prisoner info like names exchanged, but it also could be that he just knows that she’s the person who wouldn’t leave his side.
I may be getting a lot of thing wrong in what I assume between episodes this season, but I think they put my feelings about May’s feelings toward Sarge into the show. She hates him, because he is walking around wear the face of the man she loves. She hates him, proportional to how much she loved, and still loves, Coulson. And since she loved Coulson more than anything (up to and debatably including the world itself), that’s a lot of hate being directed Sarge’s way, I’m surprised his head doesn’t catch on fire. She may be able to see that he and his gang aren’t the big bads here, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to join his band; she followed Coulson out of love, she sure as hell doesn’t follow that which she hates.
Also, small note, but we know from Sarge’s failure to read the name Dana that they don’t fully connect to English words; so where do things like Sargent and Snowflake come from? An even smaller thing that occurred to me rethinking the previous episodes, until now SHIELD just assumed not-Coulson was in charge of these guys; they’re right, but they didn’t know that he was the leader. There’s probably nothing more to that than them just naturally assuming ‘Coulson’ would be the commander, probably why it took so long to occur to me.
A thing that only occurred to me once I saw the title of the episode again, but that episode name is itself a stab it the heart. The phrase ‘the other thing’ is used twice, once regarding May’s love for Coulson, and once about his then-impending death. The former actually gets a lot more significance, so this episode is basically named Love, as if I needed another gut punch.
I would say that watching this makes it very clear that the writers know they can’t keep Sarge around, that that’s too much angst for the show to deal with beyond this season. Which, as I’ve said before, pretty much means by the end of the season he has to Coulson again, or they have to let it go. And I really need him to be Phil again, at the minimum for there to be hope that he will be; and of course if the writers can have that happen sooner than the end of the season that would be great. I may love angst, but I don’t love angst as much as May loves Phil.
The trailer for next week’s episode is all space and FitzSimmons stuff, which could be really good, but I hope it isn’t all that. I don’t dislike that, but it’s not what I’m here for. This as an excellent episode, I hope they can keep it up.
Side note, when did Deke even get hurt last time? A little banged up maybe, but to the point of needing surgery?
Agents of SHIELD 6x06
I’m sort of torn on this episode. I quite liked it, I thought it was good, I often wish we could take more time to really dive into the characters and for once we got to. On the other hand, this is shortened season and this isn’t what I want to spend an entire episode on. If this was a normal 22 episode season I’d be singing this episode’s praises but I’m starting to sense that they had a plot for a normal 22 episode season that they’re trying to cram into 13, and this is just the kind of thing that should be cut in those circumstances. It’s a really good episode, that I kind of don’t like because I feel sure that something else is going to get short-changed by giving this the time is deserves.
As much as I’ve been complaining about the way this show has handled Space, and I still it was badly done and that these people are not real sci-fi writers, I do like the structure of having multiple plotlines going on, and I kind of really dislike the rapid collapse of things back into one line. I didn’t like the Zephyr group getting back to Earth so easily last time, admittedly mostly because I don’t want Daisy around hogging the spotlight in a plot I’ve been loving (this season has been nicely Daisy light, I would like to keep it that way), but now you’re going to try and deal with all these threads simultaneously and I feel like what was working about the season is going to be lost. And even when this episode starts getting to the bigger plot concerns, it wastes its time talking about FitzSimmons when they could have gotten through the necessary bit of Daisy finding out what they’re dealing with.
It’s not as if I don’t like FitzSimmons; and like I said, if we had more time to spend on something like this I would be a lot happier with it. I think part of it is that last week was such a great balance of character and plot, that this week going fully to character with basically not advancing the plot feels like at some point we’re going to lose out on character to make up for the plot lapse, and it will come at the expense of characters I would rather have more time with; mainly May, because she’s my favorite but always gets the short end of the stick, even though now she’s the voice of the show.
Because I’m me, and this is the kind of thing I pay attention to, they did avoid contradicting themselves on who assembled the original team. The powers that be may have recommended FitzSimmons as far as Coulson knew (probably as far as tFitzSimmons still know), but in this case TPTB are May; and I will maintain until given absolute reason not to that it was because they were working on an effective stun gun, at the time she was looking for any option that would never including having to actually take Coulson down, no matter what happened.
I just don’t pull FitzSimmons as characters or their scenes, apart the way I do with Philinda fun times. So for once, you get a shorter reaction to this show.
...Okay, so I thought I was going to leave it there, but there are a lot of things I feel like I left out; either because it slipped my mind because I wasn’t pulling anything apart the way I have been, or because I was trying to focus on what the episode was rather than focusing in my normal way I let a few things slip; and maybe a little bit because I liked what it was and I was only touching on my fears for what it might lead to but those have settled in since my initial thoughts.
Small thing I thought but just didn’t mention, they are totally going to drag to memory machine back into this, which I think I mentioned last time since it seems a logical option to me when trying to work out what’s up with Sarge-Coulson. There’s very little reason to include it in this episode except to remind us of its existence (here we’re just putting someone inside a mind-bending machine inside a different mind-bending machine). I’ll be curious if they even explain how SHIELD has that thing, they’ve never really explained how or why they continued to have it in the past. I will probably forgive this episode every bad vibe I have for it if we get a similar Philinda episode down the line.
Of course, this does kind of add to the possibility that all this is a simulation. I didn’t quite want to bring that up at first because that’s almost too obvious to bother pointing out. But outside of the obvious of introducing even more detailed simulation tech, it also is further screwing with the timeline relative to the movie events. The last few episodes of s5 were very much working around Infinity War, but this season has failed to acknowledge anything. And the implication in the end of s5 was that all the events happened fairly quickly to somehow allow at least a brief optimistic ending before the Snap, but now they’re adding more events in between Chicago and Tahiti that stretch out the timeline even further. And yet still no mention of the events since then. At least the flashbacks last time were consistent with the way we’ve seen things on the show until now, but this bothers me more. Yeah, it might be more internally realistic that it took some time between the events, but last season tried so hard to keep events in line (didn’t always succeed, by the show’s timeline it was at least a few days between the beginning and end of the movie), that abandoning it doesn’t feel right.
I think the flashbacks here have a lot to do with my worries for May’s role in the series being downgraded with everyone converging. I don’t actually have a problem with FitsSimmons’ minds calling up Mack and Daisy as their strong fighters; I would pick May, but Fitz picking Mack and Simmons Daisy makes sense. But the flashbacks show very little care for May or Phiinda. And I’m not saying they should have been in sharp focus, Simmons had other things on her mind in those moments and Fitz is likewise focused on what happened to him first and foremost. But from a writing level, I think we should have had just a bit more.
I mean May at that point is estimated to be a week away from being in the same position as Simmons, except without hope of her love coming back. The scene as written requires May to be there before Coulson walks in, but if it was reworked so they arrived together, her standing at his side until the end; whether or not Fitz in the present asked something about ‘Did they finally...’ and Simmons saying that ‘Yeah, at the end.’ Or if when Daisy was talking to Yoyo (btw, I guess I was wrong, the return last episode made me think Daisy and Yoyo hadn’t made up since last season, but I guess they did) something had been said about ‘We don’t know when or if May is coming back’ as part of Yoyo’s reasons for staying.
It feeds into what I’ve been thinking most of this season, and at times even before; the Bus kids don’t really get May. I’ve loved watching the relationship May has with Mack and Elena, and to some extent Benson this season, because they treat her with respect and compassion that I don’t see from the others; and I feel like that’s been a factor in us seeing her so much more open and emotional this season. This is not the point in the Earth storyline to set aside May’s development in favor of the older characters treating her like she’s still s1-May (not that s1-May didn’t deserve respect and compassion, but she was more closed off and as long as they weren’t jerks about it I could accept them not really getting her).
I definitely have some growing concerns about the writing this season. Granted, I thought the writing in the premier was a little weird at the time, but I feel like the further we go, the less it seems they really thought about what they were doing. What they set up with Simmons’ dark side in that episode does get referenced here, but it doesn’t lead to any actual growth or change. In fact, the idea that she was letting her inner darkness out is almost a joke here; and I don’t like that. I fully buy that she’s gotten to a point after all the crap she’s gone through that she actually is that willing to get in the darkness, I’ve been commenting for a couple seasons that these two are not little puppies anymore; but this episode doesn’t seem to get that she actually is that darkened, that ruthless, seems to think it can be packed away again and I don’t think that’s as interesting as other choices.
And since I decided to just ramble, and we’re about halfway through the season; a few other thoughts on the season overall. I’m glad they finally turned the lights on, and film outside occasionally (obviously fake Tahiti not withstanding); the last couple seasons have been so dim and monotonous. The Lighthouse even looks like a better set than it did last season since it’s not just grey, shadowed grey, and dark grey. Until now I’ve been encouraged by them making May the voice of the show (the ‘previously on’ and ‘will return’ voice), I just wish I had more confidence that they would keep to the promise I took from that. May also seems to be the only person with good hair this season; I hate Simmons’ bangs, I hate Daisy’s weird coloring, Fitz’s look doesn’t suit him; Mack is still bald so doesn’t count, and Yoyo is okay most of the time but nothing that great. And this episode specifically, the flashbacks to pre-s1 looked terrible, the show clearly doesn’t have access to the magic de-aging tech.
Jane the Virgin 5x15
I may want to give some thought to waiting until the show is over before watching any more of this. I do want to see how the story ends, and since I’m only watching a couple of shows right now it seems weird to move one to catching up on later, but I’m just not happy with this show. I want to be happy with it, but I’m not and I can’t quite pin down why.
I didn’t dislike anything about this episode; even the Jane/Raf stuff was fine (as it goes), it just left me pretty hollow when it was done. I may not have disliked it, but I didn’t like it, and I kind of wish there was anything I felt passionate enough about to spend any more time thinking on. I probably wouldn’t have even bothered with this minimal comment if I’d spent last week bitching about Jane/Raf the way I probably would have.
Well, this one was kind of rough for me. Mostly because I thought this and the previous episode had been very strong evidence that Jane and Rafael are much better as friends (with a complicated relationship) than they are as romantic partners. I know I’m supposed to be happy in the end, but I’m not. In fact I’m grasping at straws now because they had the show itself spell out the format they follow a few episodes back, and this makes them getting together into the cliffhanger, and to my admittedly biased view that seems...like it might be saying something.
I like a lot of the stuff with Jane and Petra in this one, but the ending left such a wrong taste in my mouth that I’m having a hard time reflecting on the former decent stuff.
They do still have a handful of episodes left in the series, and obviously I’m not going anywhere at this point, but if it wasn’t the last season (and I have so few things I’m watching right now) I kind of think this would at least have me put it on the back burner and catch up down the line. I’ve never liked this ship, but I don’t remember being this angry about it the last couple seasons (maybe I was in s1 but back then I at least felt like the show knew there were problems with the ship).
Agents of SHIELD 6x05
I’m pretty close to crying over this one; I might get over it faster if the damn tears would just come out, as is I’m lingering in ‘kind of want to cry’ territory. And it’s not even like it’s a surprise that this episode hit me hard, I expected it to get me just knowing what was set to happen; then this morning they put out the teaser clip with May’s dreamland back in Tahiti and that definitely said this was going to hurt. Still, it definitely hurt.
And it’s not as if the space plot wasn’t emotionally charged either. Yeah they threw in a couple fun moments with Davis and Piper bickering (I am getting a little tired of them just being comic relief, but I’m still this side of okay with it), but aside from that it’s still hostages, betrayal, and genocide. Well, it’s also funny how ridiculous it is that they just happened to grab a Remorath ship; they already had the set, no need to make anything to show these guys as a different culture.
While I’m still not over how dumb their portrayal of Space has been, at least this time I don’t have nearly as much to complain about or add to this list of reasons why this shouldn’t be real because of how badly done it is. I buy that chronracoms (and I’m probably spelling that wrong, but it’s what I’m using) speak English atleast. Although I less buy this lady’s portrayal of a chronacom and take some issue with the characterization of her and Enoch’s relationship. For that matter, if chronacoms have no gender (which was established last season), what does Enoch being programmed for sexual gratification mean? Granted, I’d be happy enough to pretend that line didn’t happen, but it did. I guess I always did assume that Enoch’s statements about not being a man meant that whatever skinsuit he was wearing didn’t really enter into is, but there are different programs for sexual satisfaction depending on what that skinsuit can do; really I’m just mostly mad that they used a male and female performer to be chronacoms having an implied relationship when chronacoms’ skinsuits shouldn’t enter into it.
I can’t quite blame Enoch here either; his world is gone and his people on the verge of being wiped out; we know the kind of things our heroes will do when their world is in the balance, so how can we blame Enoch for that kind of choice? I’d like to think Jemma does see that and that’s part of why she goes the way she does in the end. Jemma betrayed her friends to get to Fitz (not that there were any consequences for that), and he’s one person.
Small question though, did the chronacoms fix the Zephyr and give them some fuel? Because they were still pretty broken down when they got captured, and when they made the unplanned jump to such deep space they weren’t sure they could get back even beside the side trip to Kitson. Or it is more evidence that they don’t really think about how Space works.
This was the best space plot they’ve done so far, but my heart is still back on Earth.
I feel for Mack and Yoyo. Yoyo is a lot like May, pressing on and not really dealing with what happened last episode and getting on with things. And Mack doesn’t know how to cross the distance between them; it’s no longer enough for him to open the door (and he’s not even really doing that). There’s not a lot of forward movement on that front this episode, but enough to make me kind of sad for them, they kind of need May around, and they also needed some good news. And while I don’t really want Daisy in my preferred plot because she’s just going to annoy me, they want her around; although it also wasn’t as much a win as they had hoped.
(For example, it now goes back to seeming like the line about ‘that’s not the man you loved’ will be directed at May which means I’m back to wanting someone to slap Daisy for thinking that needs to be said. May knows, that’s basically the point of this episode; why would she ever need Daisy to point out something that she’s already beaten the shit out of Sarge over? So let’s get in a preemptive ‘shut the fuck up Daisy;’ go back to space where I was at least tolerating you. If May starts saying it is Coulson there’s going to be some good reason for it.)
On one hand getting forward movement on what we’re dealing with is good; on the other, connecting it to the monoliths feels a little odd. Not quite enough to push me to think this is in-character lack of creativity the way I with the space plot at times; more that it feels like a consequence of a short season that is crowded by necessity already. It’s not like they ever knew that much about the monoliths in the past, yet now they have enough knowledge that Yoyo can recognize the similarity on sight? I think this could lead to some interesting ways to handle the problems at hand, especially since it seems at first glance that these elements are going to connect up with what’s going on in space; but it feels a little rushed to get us to this understanding.
I have so many thoughts and feelings about May and Sarge’s scenes as well as the flashbacks with Coulson. Let’s tackle a couple practical bits first; on one hand I want to mock how they clearly filmed all those flashbacks in about ten square feet of space, but in this case...it kind of makes sense. We’re in May’s memory, which isn’t about the backgrounds, it’s just him.
Also, I’m not quite sure where they’re going with the lines being echoed, but it’s way too significant for it not to be a clue. Going into this episode I had wondered if they had some tech that would mess with your head, but we don’t see that at work, so I don’t think Sarge is picking up lines from May’s memories. And while the head catching on fire thing made complete sense in context, it is also a Coulson thing. The script even has her comment on the same lines showing up, but he doesn’t respond when she asks. I guess maybe there’s a chance we’re even further in her head than the obvious and she’s imaging him using Coulson’s words, that would explain why he doesn’t respond to comment on it, but that’s not how this show usually works. Even with the flashbacks, I don’t think we’re getting imaginings, we’re seeing what she’s remembering of things that happened.
So assuming this isn’t something extra weird, it seems like further evidence that there is some connection between our Coulson and Sarge, we just don’t know what it is yet. Sarge assumes there has to be a connection, that it’s too big a coincidence to happen without cause. But as he points out (for his own reasons), there’s no guarantee that time works the same way everywhere they go, and if the monoliths are involved they might not be traveling in a straight line through time; maybe he does remember a hundred years of this, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t leave this planet a year ago.
Because as May points out, we know Coulson was real. Sure, in the line of wild speculation, it’s possible that Coulson was somehow an echo of the longer lived Sarge, but I’m disinclined to go for that. There are things I would have added to her speech about how well she knew Coulson; maybe locked in how long they’d known each other, and that having known each other so long, they grew old together so she *knows* he was a real person. And, if I’m right and it is Coulson, then some of the things she mentions are things Sarge maybe doesn’t know about himself, his parents and where he was born. But among the sad things about that gut-punch of a scene, is that she’s the only one who could have said most of what’s said. She knows everything, and right now she knows he has to be stopped (even if I imagine they may want to pull the memory machine out just to be sure).
And small thing, very small because this is entirely explainable even though we just didn’t see it, but we never see May introduce herself to Sarge, but he manages to guess that she’s the May that Deke mentioned. It may have just been an obvious leap, or since she’s been there long enough there may have been some generic prisoner info like names exchanged, but it also could be that he just knows that she’s the person who wouldn’t leave his side.
I may be getting a lot of thing wrong in what I assume between episodes this season, but I think they put my feelings about May’s feelings toward Sarge into the show. She hates him, because he is walking around wear the face of the man she loves. She hates him, proportional to how much she loved, and still loves, Coulson. And since she loved Coulson more than anything (up to and debatably including the world itself), that’s a lot of hate being directed Sarge’s way, I’m surprised his head doesn’t catch on fire. She may be able to see that he and his gang aren’t the big bads here, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to join his band; she followed Coulson out of love, she sure as hell doesn’t follow that which she hates.
Also, small note, but we know from Sarge’s failure to read the name Dana that they don’t fully connect to English words; so where do things like Sargent and Snowflake come from? An even smaller thing that occurred to me rethinking the previous episodes, until now SHIELD just assumed not-Coulson was in charge of these guys; they’re right, but they didn’t know that he was the leader. There’s probably nothing more to that than them just naturally assuming ‘Coulson’ would be the commander, probably why it took so long to occur to me.
A thing that only occurred to me once I saw the title of the episode again, but that episode name is itself a stab it the heart. The phrase ‘the other thing’ is used twice, once regarding May’s love for Coulson, and once about his then-impending death. The former actually gets a lot more significance, so this episode is basically named Love, as if I needed another gut punch.
I would say that watching this makes it very clear that the writers know they can’t keep Sarge around, that that’s too much angst for the show to deal with beyond this season. Which, as I’ve said before, pretty much means by the end of the season he has to Coulson again, or they have to let it go. And I really need him to be Phil again, at the minimum for there to be hope that he will be; and of course if the writers can have that happen sooner than the end of the season that would be great. I may love angst, but I don’t love angst as much as May loves Phil.
The trailer for next week’s episode is all space and FitzSimmons stuff, which could be really good, but I hope it isn’t all that. I don’t dislike that, but it’s not what I’m here for. This as an excellent episode, I hope they can keep it up.
Side note, when did Deke even get hurt last time? A little banged up maybe, but to the point of needing surgery?
Agents of SHIELD 6x06
I’m sort of torn on this episode. I quite liked it, I thought it was good, I often wish we could take more time to really dive into the characters and for once we got to. On the other hand, this is shortened season and this isn’t what I want to spend an entire episode on. If this was a normal 22 episode season I’d be singing this episode’s praises but I’m starting to sense that they had a plot for a normal 22 episode season that they’re trying to cram into 13, and this is just the kind of thing that should be cut in those circumstances. It’s a really good episode, that I kind of don’t like because I feel sure that something else is going to get short-changed by giving this the time is deserves.
As much as I’ve been complaining about the way this show has handled Space, and I still it was badly done and that these people are not real sci-fi writers, I do like the structure of having multiple plotlines going on, and I kind of really dislike the rapid collapse of things back into one line. I didn’t like the Zephyr group getting back to Earth so easily last time, admittedly mostly because I don’t want Daisy around hogging the spotlight in a plot I’ve been loving (this season has been nicely Daisy light, I would like to keep it that way), but now you’re going to try and deal with all these threads simultaneously and I feel like what was working about the season is going to be lost. And even when this episode starts getting to the bigger plot concerns, it wastes its time talking about FitzSimmons when they could have gotten through the necessary bit of Daisy finding out what they’re dealing with.
It’s not as if I don’t like FitzSimmons; and like I said, if we had more time to spend on something like this I would be a lot happier with it. I think part of it is that last week was such a great balance of character and plot, that this week going fully to character with basically not advancing the plot feels like at some point we’re going to lose out on character to make up for the plot lapse, and it will come at the expense of characters I would rather have more time with; mainly May, because she’s my favorite but always gets the short end of the stick, even though now she’s the voice of the show.
Because I’m me, and this is the kind of thing I pay attention to, they did avoid contradicting themselves on who assembled the original team. The powers that be may have recommended FitzSimmons as far as Coulson knew (probably as far as tFitzSimmons still know), but in this case TPTB are May; and I will maintain until given absolute reason not to that it was because they were working on an effective stun gun, at the time she was looking for any option that would never including having to actually take Coulson down, no matter what happened.
I just don’t pull FitzSimmons as characters or their scenes, apart the way I do with Philinda fun times. So for once, you get a shorter reaction to this show.
...Okay, so I thought I was going to leave it there, but there are a lot of things I feel like I left out; either because it slipped my mind because I wasn’t pulling anything apart the way I have been, or because I was trying to focus on what the episode was rather than focusing in my normal way I let a few things slip; and maybe a little bit because I liked what it was and I was only touching on my fears for what it might lead to but those have settled in since my initial thoughts.
Small thing I thought but just didn’t mention, they are totally going to drag to memory machine back into this, which I think I mentioned last time since it seems a logical option to me when trying to work out what’s up with Sarge-Coulson. There’s very little reason to include it in this episode except to remind us of its existence (here we’re just putting someone inside a mind-bending machine inside a different mind-bending machine). I’ll be curious if they even explain how SHIELD has that thing, they’ve never really explained how or why they continued to have it in the past. I will probably forgive this episode every bad vibe I have for it if we get a similar Philinda episode down the line.
Of course, this does kind of add to the possibility that all this is a simulation. I didn’t quite want to bring that up at first because that’s almost too obvious to bother pointing out. But outside of the obvious of introducing even more detailed simulation tech, it also is further screwing with the timeline relative to the movie events. The last few episodes of s5 were very much working around Infinity War, but this season has failed to acknowledge anything. And the implication in the end of s5 was that all the events happened fairly quickly to somehow allow at least a brief optimistic ending before the Snap, but now they’re adding more events in between Chicago and Tahiti that stretch out the timeline even further. And yet still no mention of the events since then. At least the flashbacks last time were consistent with the way we’ve seen things on the show until now, but this bothers me more. Yeah, it might be more internally realistic that it took some time between the events, but last season tried so hard to keep events in line (didn’t always succeed, by the show’s timeline it was at least a few days between the beginning and end of the movie), that abandoning it doesn’t feel right.
I think the flashbacks here have a lot to do with my worries for May’s role in the series being downgraded with everyone converging. I don’t actually have a problem with FitsSimmons’ minds calling up Mack and Daisy as their strong fighters; I would pick May, but Fitz picking Mack and Simmons Daisy makes sense. But the flashbacks show very little care for May or Phiinda. And I’m not saying they should have been in sharp focus, Simmons had other things on her mind in those moments and Fitz is likewise focused on what happened to him first and foremost. But from a writing level, I think we should have had just a bit more.
I mean May at that point is estimated to be a week away from being in the same position as Simmons, except without hope of her love coming back. The scene as written requires May to be there before Coulson walks in, but if it was reworked so they arrived together, her standing at his side until the end; whether or not Fitz in the present asked something about ‘Did they finally...’ and Simmons saying that ‘Yeah, at the end.’ Or if when Daisy was talking to Yoyo (btw, I guess I was wrong, the return last episode made me think Daisy and Yoyo hadn’t made up since last season, but I guess they did) something had been said about ‘We don’t know when or if May is coming back’ as part of Yoyo’s reasons for staying.
It feeds into what I’ve been thinking most of this season, and at times even before; the Bus kids don’t really get May. I’ve loved watching the relationship May has with Mack and Elena, and to some extent Benson this season, because they treat her with respect and compassion that I don’t see from the others; and I feel like that’s been a factor in us seeing her so much more open and emotional this season. This is not the point in the Earth storyline to set aside May’s development in favor of the older characters treating her like she’s still s1-May (not that s1-May didn’t deserve respect and compassion, but she was more closed off and as long as they weren’t jerks about it I could accept them not really getting her).
I definitely have some growing concerns about the writing this season. Granted, I thought the writing in the premier was a little weird at the time, but I feel like the further we go, the less it seems they really thought about what they were doing. What they set up with Simmons’ dark side in that episode does get referenced here, but it doesn’t lead to any actual growth or change. In fact, the idea that she was letting her inner darkness out is almost a joke here; and I don’t like that. I fully buy that she’s gotten to a point after all the crap she’s gone through that she actually is that willing to get in the darkness, I’ve been commenting for a couple seasons that these two are not little puppies anymore; but this episode doesn’t seem to get that she actually is that darkened, that ruthless, seems to think it can be packed away again and I don’t think that’s as interesting as other choices.
And since I decided to just ramble, and we’re about halfway through the season; a few other thoughts on the season overall. I’m glad they finally turned the lights on, and film outside occasionally (obviously fake Tahiti not withstanding); the last couple seasons have been so dim and monotonous. The Lighthouse even looks like a better set than it did last season since it’s not just grey, shadowed grey, and dark grey. Until now I’ve been encouraged by them making May the voice of the show (the ‘previously on’ and ‘will return’ voice), I just wish I had more confidence that they would keep to the promise I took from that. May also seems to be the only person with good hair this season; I hate Simmons’ bangs, I hate Daisy’s weird coloring, Fitz’s look doesn’t suit him; Mack is still bald so doesn’t count, and Yoyo is okay most of the time but nothing that great. And this episode specifically, the flashbacks to pre-s1 looked terrible, the show clearly doesn’t have access to the magic de-aging tech.
Jane the Virgin 5x15
I may want to give some thought to waiting until the show is over before watching any more of this. I do want to see how the story ends, and since I’m only watching a couple of shows right now it seems weird to move one to catching up on later, but I’m just not happy with this show. I want to be happy with it, but I’m not and I can’t quite pin down why.
I didn’t dislike anything about this episode; even the Jane/Raf stuff was fine (as it goes), it just left me pretty hollow when it was done. I may not have disliked it, but I didn’t like it, and I kind of wish there was anything I felt passionate enough about to spend any more time thinking on. I probably wouldn’t have even bothered with this minimal comment if I’d spent last week bitching about Jane/Raf the way I probably would have.