Agents of SHIELD S06E03: Fear and Loathing on the Planet of Kitson

© ABC

The Agents of SHIELD get high and gamble in a silly and homage driven outing.

by Brandon Coulson

This week’s SHIELD was a strange hodgepodge of tributes to some pop culture icons. The episodes title 'Fear and Loathing on the Planet of Kitson' was a strange one that only pays off its Hunter S. Thompson link in one scene where Daisy starts channeling Johnny Depp as Thompson. Though this came very late into the episode.

The top of the episode started with music that could only be described as a Stranger Things  sound-alike. From there we got a look at what seems to be a Terminator rip off, again with similar accompanying music cues. We later find this 'man' is actually one of the Chronicoms like Enoch though this one is a hunter. The Chronicoms seem to be a race of deus ex machinas seeing as their different types and abilities of those types ebbs and flows to be whatever the current situation requires. Need to teleport? They have a crazy spinning disc for that! Cuffed to something? Well apparently they can stretch their bones and slide right out.

I’m hoping we get a clearer picture of their race and abilities, and even more so their limitations. Enoch gets shut off remotely so one can assume some link between all of them exists but is it two way? Does communication and location tracking come with that?

The biggest question will be what their role is. As they seem hell bent on killing Fitz, supposedly since he already technically died his current self is a glitch in the timeline. Of course that asks how all this time travel stuff works in this world since the rules on the series and the movies seem to be completely at odds.

The episode itself was actually a ton of fun. Completely ignoring events on Earth, we just went all in on the search for Fitz. Now one thing that is going to be annoying is they did find Fitz proving Gemma to be right even though her actions last week were deplorable and this week she basically threatens her entire team. She was still on the wrong risking their lives and I don’t find her dedication bordering on obsession endearing, it’s actually quite dangerous.

© ABC

What I did like, actually loved, was everything else once they got to the Planet Kitson. With a very Star Wars vibe to the casino and not a terribly big set, it still felt very lived in and managed to do a lot with very little. Fitz and Enoch cheating at games with the inevitable big loss was entertaining and it gave the pair some time to just interact rather than always be expositing. We got a little more insight into Enoch and how he views humans in general which is a very naive perspective. I do find it strange how foreign the concept of lying is for a being who is hundreds of years old, someone must’ve lied to him before.

But the whole gambling, and cheating, sequences were just very fun to watch. It was nice to see a sort of smaller story that just kind of meanders. Quake using her powers to break fingers was a new and interesting use of her abilities and while her fight sequence wasn’t anywhere near May’s from last week, it was still a well choreographed and shot fight.

Of course then we got to the Fear and Loathing part when Quake, Gemma, and Davis all got high as a kite. This was one of the silliest and funniest things the series has ever done. To take the time and have the girls just chilling under a table and having a giggly moment to themselves, plus all the tripiness leading up to that. The only thing that could have made it perfect would have been to have a giant lizard person confront them only to have them be a real alien instead of an hallucination.

The quick reunion and almost immediate removal of Fitz was incredibly frustrating but overall I loved this episode. I am curious to see if the two storylines come together somehow on Earth and in space, but either way I’m having fun. This week might have been a ridiculous and ultimately mostly pointless outing but it brought the fun and plenty of it.

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