Agents of SHIELD S06E07: Toldja

Sarge gets to say Toldja! On SHIELD

© ABC

Holy Shrike!
by Brandon Coulson

Following last week’s incredible episode was going to be hard but 'Toldja' did a pretty good job of it. Picking up from the end of last week, FitzSimmons and Enoch found themselves transported back to Kitson and of course immediately lost their teleportation disc. While this beat was very funny, it also should be pointed out that by setting their story there, and the Earth side mostly on base, this was a very cost efficient episode as well.

The space side of things was definitely much lighter than last week. With Gemma reminiscing about her high times on Kitson to a cameo from Anthony Michael Hall as Mister Kitson himself. This whole visit to Kitson, while not quite as fun as the first go round, still managed to hold some charm and surprises. Little things like sending Enoch away to the brothels and having a guillotine test of strength, all made for a great entertainment.

They also managed to nicely tie up all the loose ends and send our team home finally as a mysterious woman named Izel wants them to help her find artifacts buried on Earth. These turn out to be the troublesome Monoliths and perhaps we’ll finally get an answer as to what they are and where they came from!

I can’t say I was sad to see Enoch go. His role had become superfluous and mostly he just screwed things up. I hope the pager he gives them is more to leave the door open in the future and not for the end of the season. If anything I’d like to see them streamline things by the season’s end and regain a bit more focus to the series.

Back on Earth it was the Sarge show as, even in captivity, Sarge seemed to be calling the shots. It was nice to flesh out Jaco’s character a bit. Hearing his story of a large family of Bakers humanized him some, which helped once he started hacking and coughing until he went full on dragonfire mode. I could see the whole escape from within coming so I was relieved when Quake easily put him down.

Some really good mind games here with Sarge and Mack too. Their whole god talk and the way they both tried to play each other worked very well. My only gripe would be when Mack sends his teams to capture the two Shrike and they put them both in the same containment cell. I know there was no way to know how crazy two together would get but you would think Mack is smart enough to keep any captives separate much less an interdimensional doomsday creature. The whole sequence of the creatures bonding and ripping through their cell and threatening to kill the entire plane of agents was well laid out. Though the series is starting to rival Star Trek for the number of 'red shirts' that get taken out. I swear every time one of our main cast says 'agent so and so, follow me,' I just start chuckling 'cause we all know what’s going to happen. Of course the same here as Agent, lets call him Rando, gets a spike to the head and another comes close if not for Yoyo’s quick hands.

We got an answer to whether Deke knew about Fitz (he didn’t) and he actually showed some genuine emotion for once. Of course this came after getting hilariously blown off by Daisy and acting like a hurt puppy dog as a result. I’m still not Team Deke but he was fairly entertaining here.

© ABC

By the episode’s end Sarge, as he predicted, has basically taken control. I know the affect they were going for by having the entire room turn to Sarge for answers but it did feel a bit too quick for this team to just say okay we’ll listen to this nut now. It was just a bit abrupt.

My biggest fear is that Sarge will end up staying on this Earth and taking over SHIELD, basically replacing Coulson. I hope against my instincts that he will leave at the end of the season and Coulson will finally and truly be gone. We got this sort of fake out multiple times with Ward and it wears very thin very fast. Otherwise still a very good time.

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