Mostly long form thoughts on AoS s6 finale, minor JtV considered
What happened to Jane the Virgin?
I’m not saying I’ll never watch the final episodes of this show, but I found I really didn’t care about seeing them as they aired. Now, I have often watched this show in post-season marathon form, and maybe I really shouldn’t have tried to watch it week to week this season after all, and if that’s part of the problem, I guess that’s on me...and a little on them if the show can’t ultimately hold my attention when there’s any more competition than ‘sure I’ll just watch the next episode now.’
But I also just don’t care about the ending. I can’t see it ending in a way that I like (and what little I’ve checked on the last few episodes, I still think that), but this is a show that clearly believes what it’s aiming for is happily ever after. It’s not going to do anything super dramatic in the last few episodes that would get in the way of that, nor is it going to take a right turn and give us a surprise different happily ever after that wasn’t set up at all. What we’re getting isn’t earned, but the pieces are set for it, so they’re not going to upend that.
Walking away (effectively) at this late stage in the show might seem weird, but it’s not unheard of for me. To this day I haven’t seen the last few episodes of Buffy because I just lost interest in seeing how it ended. I watched Angel s5, I read some very nice post s7 fanfic, including a very well done virtual season 8 that I still love, but I couldn’t work up the energy to see or care how it ended. Now this didn’t piss me off the way Buffy did leading into my not caring all those years ago but I just don’t care anymore.
Agents of SHIELD 6x12-13
Strap in folks, this is going to be a long one, as I’m not just reviewing a two part episode that had a lot going on, but I have a lot still to say on the season as a whole. And a lot of that’s important to my view of the finale so I can’t split it off into a separate post that I may or may not get to (like I did with my overall season thoughts on Arrow for example).
The more I think about it, the more I have to conclude that I did not like this episode. It had some good moments, but I didn’t like it. I have a feeling a lot of people are going to like it and I’m going to be in the minority, but I have to own my own thoughts and feeling about this.
To back up though, in preparation for what I expected to be a blowout finale, I rewatched this season. One advantage of a shorter season is that I feel like I can do that. But the more I watched the season to date, the more this nagging feeling kept coming up; something I had wondered all the way back when we got the announcement on season 6&7 being approved at the same time. I kind of feel like this was the first half of a normal season; including that it only had enough material for about 10 episodes. This season has been a weird combination of overly stuffed, but also padded and stretched. It had so many things it needed to do, but character arcs were incredibly haphazard and a whole lot of things were really lazy. Plot-wise, episodes 3 and 6 could have been cut entirely; 8&9 could have been condensed into one episode with maybe a few scenes moved to episodes on either side; the last three episodes could have been condensed to two without losing much. And I’m all for adding things to a story that flesh out the characters or further explore the world, or just take their time to fully establish something, but this didn’t. The only thing above that would have been lost in the restructure would have been ep 6 which did do some good things for FitzSimmons...kind of. It pushed aside the character arcs that had been started before that and didn’t really replace them with anything, but it was a good deep dive into them, so it would have been a loss to lose.
Even as I was watching it I noticed a difference now that I’m not kind of expecting it to turn out this is all a lie somehow. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but where did the Space rock come from? It was destroyed back in early s3. When it showed up last season I didn’t have to think about it too hard, maybe there was another one or maybe it just looked like the original monolith; but now we have to accept that this was the one and only Space rock, and that doesn’t make sense. Plus, that rock was locked into moving things between Earth and Planet Day-For-Night (aka Maveth); maybe it could be reprogrammed, I would have accepted that (if I could accept that it still existed) but you didn’t say anything.
The Space stuff is still really lazy. I’m sure their budget for alien makeup wasn’t huge, but then find a way to work with that limitation instead of just having everyone they meet look human, and yet everyone knows our crew are Terran. Plus maybe explain why anyone knows what humans are out in the galaxy. Maybe you could also have your main ‘alien’ set of Kitson look like it was at some expansive location, like an actual casino, instead of a backroom bar with a couple games that basically look like slightly altered versions of games you could play in Vegas. In the main Kitson episode, I thought it was one of many casinos and kind of a low end one, but if this is the main deal, it should look it. Maybe all the chronocoms shouldn’t look human, since they’re supposed to be able to infiltrate other cultures too. It’s just so lazy.
The chronocoms are a lot of what makes this feel like the first half of a split season. This season mostly kept them in the background for them to ascend to primary antagonists next season, but that means they basically come out of just-shy-of-nowhere in the last part of this season to set that up; with no real explanation why they came to Earth at all. They are not exactly a well-established culture where we know much about them. Hopefully this will be better next season, but...well, we’ll talk about my concerns for next season once we cover this one.
Also, by what logic is SHIELD the greatest threat to the chronocoms’ conquest? Where on Mack’s God’s green Earth are the Avengers? But then I got thinking, like with the randomly reappearing monolith, is there a continuity break after s4? Because I’m not sure the Avengers have gotten much mention since then. The 100th episode mentioned Tony and the events in Avengers movie, but more because it was part of Coulson’s death story; and there were a couple references in the lead-up to Infinity War (all of which has been ignored this season), and Fury may have gotten a few mentions over the last couple seasons, but we really don’t feel like we’re in that universe any more. Except that the references last season make it impossible to say the time travel somehow sent them to different universe without the Avengers; and the characters would still remember them anyway.
They introduced a whole host of background SHIELD agents this season, and in a way that’s good, there should be recurring background characters who don’t really have much to do in the stories, but are familiar to us; it’s how Davis and Piper started out after all. But these new characters are so disposable that the only one with any character was Keller and even he’s forgotten as soon as he died. I suppose there’s Benson, who did actually have a character, but he’s almost at the other end of the spectrum, that they spent quite a bit of time building him up but with no payoff; they just needed someone to carry to tech ball until FitzSimmons got back and then he was put on quinjet. And by making him *the* tech guy they undercut SHIELD as an organization by saying they got by without a tech guy for a year and they don’t even have a proper medical staff on base when they really should. If you’re going to introduce someone who has a connection to May, including being in kind of the same place in life, you damn well should use it, but they don’t even talk after episode 2 (aside from being in the same group scene in ep 4).
And as for May, her attitude randomly shifts somewhere off screen a few times. I still think her characterization in the premier was off, even though I could always see the meta reason for it to show her doing well before having her crash down when Sarge appears (there will be a lot to say about the resolution of Sarge’s arc as we get to the finale talk). Between episodes she goes from ‘I’m going to kill you and make it hurt’ to ‘Somehow I feel like I can trust him’ and there’s no reason for that change of heart. I spend a lot of time trying to work out what’s up in May’s head, and I can just about make it work, but I do it by acknowledging her emotions being all over the place dealing with him. Then she goes from ‘I should have killed him when I had the chance, I knew it wasn’t Coulson’ to ‘I know there’s good in you;’ and that one at least happens after he starts acting a bit more like Coulson; all of her real struggles with this idea happen off screen if we assume they happen at all and the writers aren’t just having her attitude be whatever they need it to be each episode.
Also, if the first word out of her mouth next season isn’t ‘Phil’ then I will have to throw things. I noted as early as episode 4 (and some people noted in episode 2) that she wasn’t using his first name, and I kept telling myself (and anyone actually reading these reviews) that it was for a reason. When even in the flashbacks we never hear her use his name I figured it had to be a writing choice so that the payoff would be that much more powerful. But this episode would have us believe that even dying she’d ask for Coulson rather than Phil and just...no. Again, setup without payoff, as if this was still the same season and the payoff can come later in the story.
Now, those of you that know my devotion to Babylon 5 may point out that that was a show where setup and payoff didn’t always come in the same seasons; sometimes ultimate payoff would come years down the line. But different time, different show, and effectively a single writer that I trusted way more than I trust this entire writing staff. This show has consistently ditched plot and character points kind of at a whim. I’m still pissed that Simmons concerns about Inhumans/enhanced people just disappeared between season 2&3, I guess because it no longer served the story even though it would something interesting in s3. Nobody thought to call and see if Robin was seeing anything about the plot of s6? Did they ever find Ivanov’s brain, and remember how there were other people Aida made LMDs of? Qunijets can’t fly in space, it was kind of a plot point in s3, but now they can go anywhere. Where are the Koenigs? It took them three and a half seasons to remember that Quinn was supposedly out there and the Team would never have had reason to assume he wasn’t. Where is Agent Weaver? Does SHIELD still worry about helping Inhumans or deal with the fact that Inhumans were supposed to be cropping up everywhere by this point since the terrogin was just in the water cycle now? Where did Joey go, especially with the Sokovia Accords going into effect? Are the Sokovia Accords still something they worry about, they never got mentioned when the team were fugitives last season? How about the Framework having a lasting effect on anyone but Fitz? And where the fuck are the events of IW/EG in all this?
Okay, calm down. Let’s just focus on the problems with this episode for a bit.
The existence of the zombie mob makes sense, that was Izel’s goal after all, but random zombie hordes just aren’t interesting. And the fact that Yoyo was saved in the end, after being taken over leaves kind of an icky taste to the way it’s been handled all season. Also it doesn’t make sense that she could be; I was prepared to let them have that it took time for a person to be completely taken over, that was what we saw with Keller, though not so much anyone else; but we also saw inside a person that had been taken over and they get hollowed out by the Shrike taking over and apparently consuming them from the inside. Also I’m pretty sure just from the basis of something that big forcing its way down someone’s throat would cause some big health problems. And while I buy that Mack and Daisy would be unwilling to put Yoyo down, I feel like there should have been some real consequences for that instead of them being rewarded for letting it happen.
This may be surprising for me to say, but I think Mack’s anger at Daisy over Sarge is misplaced. To make up for saying that, I do think this is all her fault for unleashing Pach last episode, but Mack doesn’t know about that. As far as he knows, things are in the situation they were when he left base, and trusting that version of Sarge to kill Izel is as much or more on May as it is on Daisy, and Mack should suspect that. Mack doesn’t even know the bits about Izel trying to wake up Pach and whether Coulson may or may not be waking up too, or even the talk of how Sarge was created. Also, again I say that Mack’s attitude towards Sarge doesn’t make that much sense to me. No, they shouldn’t trust him, but that’s not what they’re doing (not exactly), they’re using the resource Sarge offers; knowledge, experience, tools, drive, power, etc. Are Daisy and May perhaps not the people that should be making the call as to how much they trust him going in? Yeah, probably, but getting mad about bringing him along on a mission that has been his life’s work is kind of a weird angle.
Oh, and rewatching the season was a clear reminder that they should not have taken that long to realize harmonics were involved in Izel’s powers. Sarge tells them that that’s how they keep the Shrike from attacking the truck. I bring this up because I assumed that the bracelet devices also kept the Shrike away, but it turns out they don’t or Yoyo wouldn’t have been taken over. Why don’t the bracelets do that too, since Deke was familiar with that element of Sarge’s tech?
On one hand it felt fitting to bring Deke’s workers back into the story for the end; that was a plot thread that was introduced that it would make sense to bring into play when calling on all resources for a final showdown. On the other hand, that raises a lot of questions. How did he get them into a secure base? Okay so he probably knows the layout better than anyone (although there have been alterations made in the past year or not made that would have been there in his time; and it’s not as if he would know much about the doors out to River’s End and I would think SHIELD would have guards or monitors (plus it’s not like his company was in River’s End, so all these people had to come here). And have they been there the whole time? Like last week when Sarge was tearing up the place or before that when Izel was going around possessing people and announcements would have kept coming on the speaker about the weird shit going on? And none of them have comments on the family fight going on? I kind of get the joke about how ‘they identify as [his] grandparents’ as a way for this hype-modernist group to ignore a few weird comments, but that wouldn’t be enough for the extent that things went to. Also, do they all die in the end?
I have a hell of a lot of questions about what Enoch was doing on Kitson while he waited for people to show up. He should still be banned from the casino, especially without his new owner, and it’s not like the bouncers wouldn’t recognize him. He has a drink in front of him, which means he’s paying for things, and they definitely wouldn’t let him gamble. Is he back at the brothels? Do I want the answer to that? Not that that explains why he’s allowed in the casino. Of course the real answer is that it’s the only set they have that looks remotely non-human (and it really doesn’t look all that non-human); but again, people not putting much thought into this.
This extends to Izel too. I didn’t bring it up in the appropriate review, but if she can phase through people, why can’t she phase through walls? The only possible explanation for that would be that she can’t take things with her when she does it, but this episode reveals that her clothes aren’t just an illusion, so she’s phasing them into people too. She has to take them off and then put her ceremonial robes on here; and where the literal hell did those come from? What was her plan for constructing the monoliths if Mack and Yoyo hadn’t dreamed up Flint? If all it took was being able to envision them at let the Creation energy do the work, then she could have done that herself. And I know this is pretty, but I really wish her song couldn’t have been sung by a human. Unless what we here as accompaniment was actually diegeticly also part of her song, what we hear of her voice is too human. If they had kept it entirely out of our hearing but had Sarge react to it like it was beyond us but still powerful, that could have worked too. As is, it’s just another very human thing in the very human behavior of supposed aliens on this show.
Plus, how does killing Sarge close the portal at the end. If it had closed when Izel died, it might still have ben a touch makes it easy, but I could probably have let them have it as some version of it being because she opened it or always connected to her power. Maybe she was keeping the monoliths harmonized to maintain the portal, but we’re never told or shown that Pach has that ability.
I’m mostly ignoring the chronocom plot because it’s so random and so there for the next plot rather than this one that I don’t have a lot to say on it. I would like to point out that I thought the mention that ‘oh we have Coulson’s brain scans’ stood out like a sore thumb as being dropped in for future relevance. I don’t know if what we’re getting in the end is s4 Coulson with a software update, but again raises a lot of questions about identity and the soul (I’ve been wondering for weeks why the religious members of the team didn’t wonder what the state of Sarge’s soul was relative to Coulson) that I don’t know if I can count on them to deal with that question; if this were s4 maybe, but after this season I can’t say.
Simmons does actually have two of my biggest Philinda lines, before I actually dive into talking about the Sarge plot. After Sarge stabs May, Simmons says “Not like this. Not by him,” and that definitely got me. Because May dying would be bad enough; May being their only real chance to stop the end of the world at that point and failing would be bad enough; all of SHIELD seemed stunned at the idea of May losing, which is harsh enough; but watching May betrayed and killed by someone wearing the face of the man she loved and lost...well at least somebody in text got how messed up that was. And then at the end her first consideration is that “I would ask May’s opinion but...” as if May obviously should have the first right to weigh in on the new Coulson question; which is true, de facto wife should get to weigh in.
To start the Sarge discussion with another illogic bit, though this more on the characters than lazy writing; why not give May the sword from the start? Yes Sarge was going to have to fight Izel, he had the strength to go toe to toe with her. But he could have worked to fight her to a position where May could deliver the killing blow; and if he lost control she would have had the sword to try and complete the mission. Which is what Sarge would have wanted. Now he’s also go Pach influence on him, and a healthy dose of pride, so it’s not terrible that they didn’t think of it, just hindsight being 20-20.
Now, with the fact that I, several pages ago, said I didn’t like this episode, you might think that I don’t like what they did with Sarge here; having him not be Coulson, and any good in him (and I do think Sarge was a well-meaning anti-hero) lose out the monster that was within, and my objection a while ago about not paying off things between him and May. And I am a little upset by that; and I was definitely upset in the moment because ‘nonononono, did not want that,’ but I don’t hate it as a story. I dislike that we’re not really told why Sarge was so set on stopping and killing Izel if Pach was still on her side; if Pach had had his own plans and so when he’s Sarge stopping Izel’s plans was still important, and the Coulson in him framed it in terms of saving the world, that would have been fine. But Pach was still with her to the end, and that doesn’t feel right to me.
Until a while into part 2 I really thought that was still the case. Izel even has a line about how Pach either underestimated May or there was something else going on. I didn’t realize at first that apparently she just couldn’t die there, so her still being up meant maybe he stabbed her somewhere non-vital, in which case he had some other plan or reason. But even if death doesn’t exist in their realm, then Pach would have known that, so why toss May in with the sword? He’s been living in Sarge/Coulson’s head long enough not underestimate May, so what was going on? Apparently nothing. Even going with full on pettiness about Izel ditching him centuries ago and so he wants to spoil things for her, would be motivation, but that doesn’t seem to be it.
The other option was that Sarge/Coulson still had a hand on the wheel and Pach didn’t realize it consciously. It would still be a betrayal by Sarge to have used her that way, but I can see him realizing a chance to end it completely so he sent her in there to do so. But after that, aside from the occasional pettiness. all we see is Pach; not Sarge and definitely not Coulson getting to weigh in on what happened.
So the fact that there’s so much I still don’t understand bugs me, but as narrative itself...I don’t mind it. Subverting expectations is getting a bad name these days, but I think this works as a tragedy. There isn’t a happy ending, Sarge lost the moment he couldn’t drive the sword into Izel; and any of Coulson that was left died when he did stab May (which was his goal). The staging rather plays into the idea that it’s a choice between May and Izel; Izel even comments later that Sarge’s internal war was between Coulson’s devotion to May and Pach’s devotion to Izel; and that being a battle that is ultimately lost, partly because Sarge was only willing to be driven by hate and not love, there’s value in that story. Though again, Izel’s line comes after the battle has already been decided and the idea doesn’t come up again in the final round of the conflict.
I remained convinced up to pretty darn near the end that May was going to come out of there, stab Pach and then Coulson would reemerge. With a scar similar to the one he used to have from Loki’s staff. Thus returning us to a status quo that if he showed up in the movies they wouldn’t have to explain that it was a different sort of scar than he technically should have in movie canon. Even though what was going on back at the Lighthouse had me convinced pretty early that we were headed for another round of time travel to undo the destruction we had there.
But if you think I didn’t cry when it looked like May was dying...it’s probably because I’ve seemed a little heartless in these reviews at times. But my favorite character, dying asking for the man she loved, not being able to see him again, but concluding that she would soon, was very effective for me. I even forgot for a moment that we already knew they would both show up next season, and was kind of upset when Simmons’ team showed up; May was done, she was ready to go be with Phil, because she does believe that she’ll see him on the other side, and you’re taking her away from that for whatever dark future Simmons was from. When I say the first word out of her mouth next season should be Phil, it’s not just because for some reason she doesn’t use it in that scene (she does reference Phil Coulson with Sarge, but that’s not what I’ve been waiting for) but because he’s all she wants in the world. It might be better if he’s not there when she wakes up, the shock might kill her, or she’ll think she’s dead and heaven looks like the Zephyr instead of Tahiti; and they do probably need to see how she feels about this before putting them together, between Sarge and this being a high-end LMD she might have some issues to work through. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have him talking to her while she’s unconscious (maybe practicing what he’s going to say later) and her half-awake saying his name before we get down to the hard stuff.
As for the setup for next season...I really want to see it, but I also don’t know that I expect it to be very good. It’s using so many things the last couple seasons have shown they don’t know how to do; high concept sci-fi, time travel, questions of identity and memory. It did the last better back in s4 with Maylon than with Sarge this season. And people are already speculating about a crossover with Agent Carter, and I’ll be a little curious how they would do that considering Steve Rogers fucked up that story too (I never did an Endgame reaction post did I? Well short version is; fuck you, Steve Rogers). I guess Deke did make it out, but I’m curious what happened to Piper and Flint (who I remind you was made of thought and Creation energy), and a variety of other MIA characters (could Simmons have recruited Bobbi and Hunter for this mission? Or other old characters across time? They’re already jacking up time).
I am expecting a lot of interesting fanfic from this, but I bet no one is actually able to explain what’s going on (including the writers). But I really expected to want to write more of it myself. I need to work out a few thoughts in fic form that I’ll probably never actually finish, but after that I feel no shame in going back to my post s4 AU idea I want to write instead of trying to go forward. Right now, I really want to see what comes next, but will that last? Again, this feels like a mid-season break of a month or two rather than most of a year.
Oh well, watch this space if I decide to post some pretty terrible reaction fic, then I’m off to rewatch s4 and get my proper muses going. Maybe I’ll review a few more old eps along the way, we’ll see.
I’m not saying I’ll never watch the final episodes of this show, but I found I really didn’t care about seeing them as they aired. Now, I have often watched this show in post-season marathon form, and maybe I really shouldn’t have tried to watch it week to week this season after all, and if that’s part of the problem, I guess that’s on me...and a little on them if the show can’t ultimately hold my attention when there’s any more competition than ‘sure I’ll just watch the next episode now.’
But I also just don’t care about the ending. I can’t see it ending in a way that I like (and what little I’ve checked on the last few episodes, I still think that), but this is a show that clearly believes what it’s aiming for is happily ever after. It’s not going to do anything super dramatic in the last few episodes that would get in the way of that, nor is it going to take a right turn and give us a surprise different happily ever after that wasn’t set up at all. What we’re getting isn’t earned, but the pieces are set for it, so they’re not going to upend that.
Walking away (effectively) at this late stage in the show might seem weird, but it’s not unheard of for me. To this day I haven’t seen the last few episodes of Buffy because I just lost interest in seeing how it ended. I watched Angel s5, I read some very nice post s7 fanfic, including a very well done virtual season 8 that I still love, but I couldn’t work up the energy to see or care how it ended. Now this didn’t piss me off the way Buffy did leading into my not caring all those years ago but I just don’t care anymore.
Agents of SHIELD 6x12-13
Strap in folks, this is going to be a long one, as I’m not just reviewing a two part episode that had a lot going on, but I have a lot still to say on the season as a whole. And a lot of that’s important to my view of the finale so I can’t split it off into a separate post that I may or may not get to (like I did with my overall season thoughts on Arrow for example).
The more I think about it, the more I have to conclude that I did not like this episode. It had some good moments, but I didn’t like it. I have a feeling a lot of people are going to like it and I’m going to be in the minority, but I have to own my own thoughts and feeling about this.
To back up though, in preparation for what I expected to be a blowout finale, I rewatched this season. One advantage of a shorter season is that I feel like I can do that. But the more I watched the season to date, the more this nagging feeling kept coming up; something I had wondered all the way back when we got the announcement on season 6&7 being approved at the same time. I kind of feel like this was the first half of a normal season; including that it only had enough material for about 10 episodes. This season has been a weird combination of overly stuffed, but also padded and stretched. It had so many things it needed to do, but character arcs were incredibly haphazard and a whole lot of things were really lazy. Plot-wise, episodes 3 and 6 could have been cut entirely; 8&9 could have been condensed into one episode with maybe a few scenes moved to episodes on either side; the last three episodes could have been condensed to two without losing much. And I’m all for adding things to a story that flesh out the characters or further explore the world, or just take their time to fully establish something, but this didn’t. The only thing above that would have been lost in the restructure would have been ep 6 which did do some good things for FitzSimmons...kind of. It pushed aside the character arcs that had been started before that and didn’t really replace them with anything, but it was a good deep dive into them, so it would have been a loss to lose.
Even as I was watching it I noticed a difference now that I’m not kind of expecting it to turn out this is all a lie somehow. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but where did the Space rock come from? It was destroyed back in early s3. When it showed up last season I didn’t have to think about it too hard, maybe there was another one or maybe it just looked like the original monolith; but now we have to accept that this was the one and only Space rock, and that doesn’t make sense. Plus, that rock was locked into moving things between Earth and Planet Day-For-Night (aka Maveth); maybe it could be reprogrammed, I would have accepted that (if I could accept that it still existed) but you didn’t say anything.
The Space stuff is still really lazy. I’m sure their budget for alien makeup wasn’t huge, but then find a way to work with that limitation instead of just having everyone they meet look human, and yet everyone knows our crew are Terran. Plus maybe explain why anyone knows what humans are out in the galaxy. Maybe you could also have your main ‘alien’ set of Kitson look like it was at some expansive location, like an actual casino, instead of a backroom bar with a couple games that basically look like slightly altered versions of games you could play in Vegas. In the main Kitson episode, I thought it was one of many casinos and kind of a low end one, but if this is the main deal, it should look it. Maybe all the chronocoms shouldn’t look human, since they’re supposed to be able to infiltrate other cultures too. It’s just so lazy.
The chronocoms are a lot of what makes this feel like the first half of a split season. This season mostly kept them in the background for them to ascend to primary antagonists next season, but that means they basically come out of just-shy-of-nowhere in the last part of this season to set that up; with no real explanation why they came to Earth at all. They are not exactly a well-established culture where we know much about them. Hopefully this will be better next season, but...well, we’ll talk about my concerns for next season once we cover this one.
Also, by what logic is SHIELD the greatest threat to the chronocoms’ conquest? Where on Mack’s God’s green Earth are the Avengers? But then I got thinking, like with the randomly reappearing monolith, is there a continuity break after s4? Because I’m not sure the Avengers have gotten much mention since then. The 100th episode mentioned Tony and the events in Avengers movie, but more because it was part of Coulson’s death story; and there were a couple references in the lead-up to Infinity War (all of which has been ignored this season), and Fury may have gotten a few mentions over the last couple seasons, but we really don’t feel like we’re in that universe any more. Except that the references last season make it impossible to say the time travel somehow sent them to different universe without the Avengers; and the characters would still remember them anyway.
They introduced a whole host of background SHIELD agents this season, and in a way that’s good, there should be recurring background characters who don’t really have much to do in the stories, but are familiar to us; it’s how Davis and Piper started out after all. But these new characters are so disposable that the only one with any character was Keller and even he’s forgotten as soon as he died. I suppose there’s Benson, who did actually have a character, but he’s almost at the other end of the spectrum, that they spent quite a bit of time building him up but with no payoff; they just needed someone to carry to tech ball until FitzSimmons got back and then he was put on quinjet. And by making him *the* tech guy they undercut SHIELD as an organization by saying they got by without a tech guy for a year and they don’t even have a proper medical staff on base when they really should. If you’re going to introduce someone who has a connection to May, including being in kind of the same place in life, you damn well should use it, but they don’t even talk after episode 2 (aside from being in the same group scene in ep 4).
And as for May, her attitude randomly shifts somewhere off screen a few times. I still think her characterization in the premier was off, even though I could always see the meta reason for it to show her doing well before having her crash down when Sarge appears (there will be a lot to say about the resolution of Sarge’s arc as we get to the finale talk). Between episodes she goes from ‘I’m going to kill you and make it hurt’ to ‘Somehow I feel like I can trust him’ and there’s no reason for that change of heart. I spend a lot of time trying to work out what’s up in May’s head, and I can just about make it work, but I do it by acknowledging her emotions being all over the place dealing with him. Then she goes from ‘I should have killed him when I had the chance, I knew it wasn’t Coulson’ to ‘I know there’s good in you;’ and that one at least happens after he starts acting a bit more like Coulson; all of her real struggles with this idea happen off screen if we assume they happen at all and the writers aren’t just having her attitude be whatever they need it to be each episode.
Also, if the first word out of her mouth next season isn’t ‘Phil’ then I will have to throw things. I noted as early as episode 4 (and some people noted in episode 2) that she wasn’t using his first name, and I kept telling myself (and anyone actually reading these reviews) that it was for a reason. When even in the flashbacks we never hear her use his name I figured it had to be a writing choice so that the payoff would be that much more powerful. But this episode would have us believe that even dying she’d ask for Coulson rather than Phil and just...no. Again, setup without payoff, as if this was still the same season and the payoff can come later in the story.
Now, those of you that know my devotion to Babylon 5 may point out that that was a show where setup and payoff didn’t always come in the same seasons; sometimes ultimate payoff would come years down the line. But different time, different show, and effectively a single writer that I trusted way more than I trust this entire writing staff. This show has consistently ditched plot and character points kind of at a whim. I’m still pissed that Simmons concerns about Inhumans/enhanced people just disappeared between season 2&3, I guess because it no longer served the story even though it would something interesting in s3. Nobody thought to call and see if Robin was seeing anything about the plot of s6? Did they ever find Ivanov’s brain, and remember how there were other people Aida made LMDs of? Qunijets can’t fly in space, it was kind of a plot point in s3, but now they can go anywhere. Where are the Koenigs? It took them three and a half seasons to remember that Quinn was supposedly out there and the Team would never have had reason to assume he wasn’t. Where is Agent Weaver? Does SHIELD still worry about helping Inhumans or deal with the fact that Inhumans were supposed to be cropping up everywhere by this point since the terrogin was just in the water cycle now? Where did Joey go, especially with the Sokovia Accords going into effect? Are the Sokovia Accords still something they worry about, they never got mentioned when the team were fugitives last season? How about the Framework having a lasting effect on anyone but Fitz? And where the fuck are the events of IW/EG in all this?
Okay, calm down. Let’s just focus on the problems with this episode for a bit.
The existence of the zombie mob makes sense, that was Izel’s goal after all, but random zombie hordes just aren’t interesting. And the fact that Yoyo was saved in the end, after being taken over leaves kind of an icky taste to the way it’s been handled all season. Also it doesn’t make sense that she could be; I was prepared to let them have that it took time for a person to be completely taken over, that was what we saw with Keller, though not so much anyone else; but we also saw inside a person that had been taken over and they get hollowed out by the Shrike taking over and apparently consuming them from the inside. Also I’m pretty sure just from the basis of something that big forcing its way down someone’s throat would cause some big health problems. And while I buy that Mack and Daisy would be unwilling to put Yoyo down, I feel like there should have been some real consequences for that instead of them being rewarded for letting it happen.
This may be surprising for me to say, but I think Mack’s anger at Daisy over Sarge is misplaced. To make up for saying that, I do think this is all her fault for unleashing Pach last episode, but Mack doesn’t know about that. As far as he knows, things are in the situation they were when he left base, and trusting that version of Sarge to kill Izel is as much or more on May as it is on Daisy, and Mack should suspect that. Mack doesn’t even know the bits about Izel trying to wake up Pach and whether Coulson may or may not be waking up too, or even the talk of how Sarge was created. Also, again I say that Mack’s attitude towards Sarge doesn’t make that much sense to me. No, they shouldn’t trust him, but that’s not what they’re doing (not exactly), they’re using the resource Sarge offers; knowledge, experience, tools, drive, power, etc. Are Daisy and May perhaps not the people that should be making the call as to how much they trust him going in? Yeah, probably, but getting mad about bringing him along on a mission that has been his life’s work is kind of a weird angle.
Oh, and rewatching the season was a clear reminder that they should not have taken that long to realize harmonics were involved in Izel’s powers. Sarge tells them that that’s how they keep the Shrike from attacking the truck. I bring this up because I assumed that the bracelet devices also kept the Shrike away, but it turns out they don’t or Yoyo wouldn’t have been taken over. Why don’t the bracelets do that too, since Deke was familiar with that element of Sarge’s tech?
On one hand it felt fitting to bring Deke’s workers back into the story for the end; that was a plot thread that was introduced that it would make sense to bring into play when calling on all resources for a final showdown. On the other hand, that raises a lot of questions. How did he get them into a secure base? Okay so he probably knows the layout better than anyone (although there have been alterations made in the past year or not made that would have been there in his time; and it’s not as if he would know much about the doors out to River’s End and I would think SHIELD would have guards or monitors (plus it’s not like his company was in River’s End, so all these people had to come here). And have they been there the whole time? Like last week when Sarge was tearing up the place or before that when Izel was going around possessing people and announcements would have kept coming on the speaker about the weird shit going on? And none of them have comments on the family fight going on? I kind of get the joke about how ‘they identify as [his] grandparents’ as a way for this hype-modernist group to ignore a few weird comments, but that wouldn’t be enough for the extent that things went to. Also, do they all die in the end?
I have a hell of a lot of questions about what Enoch was doing on Kitson while he waited for people to show up. He should still be banned from the casino, especially without his new owner, and it’s not like the bouncers wouldn’t recognize him. He has a drink in front of him, which means he’s paying for things, and they definitely wouldn’t let him gamble. Is he back at the brothels? Do I want the answer to that? Not that that explains why he’s allowed in the casino. Of course the real answer is that it’s the only set they have that looks remotely non-human (and it really doesn’t look all that non-human); but again, people not putting much thought into this.
This extends to Izel too. I didn’t bring it up in the appropriate review, but if she can phase through people, why can’t she phase through walls? The only possible explanation for that would be that she can’t take things with her when she does it, but this episode reveals that her clothes aren’t just an illusion, so she’s phasing them into people too. She has to take them off and then put her ceremonial robes on here; and where the literal hell did those come from? What was her plan for constructing the monoliths if Mack and Yoyo hadn’t dreamed up Flint? If all it took was being able to envision them at let the Creation energy do the work, then she could have done that herself. And I know this is pretty, but I really wish her song couldn’t have been sung by a human. Unless what we here as accompaniment was actually diegeticly also part of her song, what we hear of her voice is too human. If they had kept it entirely out of our hearing but had Sarge react to it like it was beyond us but still powerful, that could have worked too. As is, it’s just another very human thing in the very human behavior of supposed aliens on this show.
Plus, how does killing Sarge close the portal at the end. If it had closed when Izel died, it might still have ben a touch makes it easy, but I could probably have let them have it as some version of it being because she opened it or always connected to her power. Maybe she was keeping the monoliths harmonized to maintain the portal, but we’re never told or shown that Pach has that ability.
I’m mostly ignoring the chronocom plot because it’s so random and so there for the next plot rather than this one that I don’t have a lot to say on it. I would like to point out that I thought the mention that ‘oh we have Coulson’s brain scans’ stood out like a sore thumb as being dropped in for future relevance. I don’t know if what we’re getting in the end is s4 Coulson with a software update, but again raises a lot of questions about identity and the soul (I’ve been wondering for weeks why the religious members of the team didn’t wonder what the state of Sarge’s soul was relative to Coulson) that I don’t know if I can count on them to deal with that question; if this were s4 maybe, but after this season I can’t say.
Simmons does actually have two of my biggest Philinda lines, before I actually dive into talking about the Sarge plot. After Sarge stabs May, Simmons says “Not like this. Not by him,” and that definitely got me. Because May dying would be bad enough; May being their only real chance to stop the end of the world at that point and failing would be bad enough; all of SHIELD seemed stunned at the idea of May losing, which is harsh enough; but watching May betrayed and killed by someone wearing the face of the man she loved and lost...well at least somebody in text got how messed up that was. And then at the end her first consideration is that “I would ask May’s opinion but...” as if May obviously should have the first right to weigh in on the new Coulson question; which is true, de facto wife should get to weigh in.
To start the Sarge discussion with another illogic bit, though this more on the characters than lazy writing; why not give May the sword from the start? Yes Sarge was going to have to fight Izel, he had the strength to go toe to toe with her. But he could have worked to fight her to a position where May could deliver the killing blow; and if he lost control she would have had the sword to try and complete the mission. Which is what Sarge would have wanted. Now he’s also go Pach influence on him, and a healthy dose of pride, so it’s not terrible that they didn’t think of it, just hindsight being 20-20.
Now, with the fact that I, several pages ago, said I didn’t like this episode, you might think that I don’t like what they did with Sarge here; having him not be Coulson, and any good in him (and I do think Sarge was a well-meaning anti-hero) lose out the monster that was within, and my objection a while ago about not paying off things between him and May. And I am a little upset by that; and I was definitely upset in the moment because ‘nonononono, did not want that,’ but I don’t hate it as a story. I dislike that we’re not really told why Sarge was so set on stopping and killing Izel if Pach was still on her side; if Pach had had his own plans and so when he’s Sarge stopping Izel’s plans was still important, and the Coulson in him framed it in terms of saving the world, that would have been fine. But Pach was still with her to the end, and that doesn’t feel right to me.
Until a while into part 2 I really thought that was still the case. Izel even has a line about how Pach either underestimated May or there was something else going on. I didn’t realize at first that apparently she just couldn’t die there, so her still being up meant maybe he stabbed her somewhere non-vital, in which case he had some other plan or reason. But even if death doesn’t exist in their realm, then Pach would have known that, so why toss May in with the sword? He’s been living in Sarge/Coulson’s head long enough not underestimate May, so what was going on? Apparently nothing. Even going with full on pettiness about Izel ditching him centuries ago and so he wants to spoil things for her, would be motivation, but that doesn’t seem to be it.
The other option was that Sarge/Coulson still had a hand on the wheel and Pach didn’t realize it consciously. It would still be a betrayal by Sarge to have used her that way, but I can see him realizing a chance to end it completely so he sent her in there to do so. But after that, aside from the occasional pettiness. all we see is Pach; not Sarge and definitely not Coulson getting to weigh in on what happened.
So the fact that there’s so much I still don’t understand bugs me, but as narrative itself...I don’t mind it. Subverting expectations is getting a bad name these days, but I think this works as a tragedy. There isn’t a happy ending, Sarge lost the moment he couldn’t drive the sword into Izel; and any of Coulson that was left died when he did stab May (which was his goal). The staging rather plays into the idea that it’s a choice between May and Izel; Izel even comments later that Sarge’s internal war was between Coulson’s devotion to May and Pach’s devotion to Izel; and that being a battle that is ultimately lost, partly because Sarge was only willing to be driven by hate and not love, there’s value in that story. Though again, Izel’s line comes after the battle has already been decided and the idea doesn’t come up again in the final round of the conflict.
I remained convinced up to pretty darn near the end that May was going to come out of there, stab Pach and then Coulson would reemerge. With a scar similar to the one he used to have from Loki’s staff. Thus returning us to a status quo that if he showed up in the movies they wouldn’t have to explain that it was a different sort of scar than he technically should have in movie canon. Even though what was going on back at the Lighthouse had me convinced pretty early that we were headed for another round of time travel to undo the destruction we had there.
But if you think I didn’t cry when it looked like May was dying...it’s probably because I’ve seemed a little heartless in these reviews at times. But my favorite character, dying asking for the man she loved, not being able to see him again, but concluding that she would soon, was very effective for me. I even forgot for a moment that we already knew they would both show up next season, and was kind of upset when Simmons’ team showed up; May was done, she was ready to go be with Phil, because she does believe that she’ll see him on the other side, and you’re taking her away from that for whatever dark future Simmons was from. When I say the first word out of her mouth next season should be Phil, it’s not just because for some reason she doesn’t use it in that scene (she does reference Phil Coulson with Sarge, but that’s not what I’ve been waiting for) but because he’s all she wants in the world. It might be better if he’s not there when she wakes up, the shock might kill her, or she’ll think she’s dead and heaven looks like the Zephyr instead of Tahiti; and they do probably need to see how she feels about this before putting them together, between Sarge and this being a high-end LMD she might have some issues to work through. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have him talking to her while she’s unconscious (maybe practicing what he’s going to say later) and her half-awake saying his name before we get down to the hard stuff.
As for the setup for next season...I really want to see it, but I also don’t know that I expect it to be very good. It’s using so many things the last couple seasons have shown they don’t know how to do; high concept sci-fi, time travel, questions of identity and memory. It did the last better back in s4 with Maylon than with Sarge this season. And people are already speculating about a crossover with Agent Carter, and I’ll be a little curious how they would do that considering Steve Rogers fucked up that story too (I never did an Endgame reaction post did I? Well short version is; fuck you, Steve Rogers). I guess Deke did make it out, but I’m curious what happened to Piper and Flint (who I remind you was made of thought and Creation energy), and a variety of other MIA characters (could Simmons have recruited Bobbi and Hunter for this mission? Or other old characters across time? They’re already jacking up time).
I am expecting a lot of interesting fanfic from this, but I bet no one is actually able to explain what’s going on (including the writers). But I really expected to want to write more of it myself. I need to work out a few thoughts in fic form that I’ll probably never actually finish, but after that I feel no shame in going back to my post s4 AU idea I want to write instead of trying to go forward. Right now, I really want to see what comes next, but will that last? Again, this feels like a mid-season break of a month or two rather than most of a year.
Oh well, watch this space if I decide to post some pretty terrible reaction fic, then I’m off to rewatch s4 and get my proper muses going. Maybe I’ll review a few more old eps along the way, we’ll see.