Agents of SHIELD S06E11: From the Ashes

SHIELD tries to rise From the Ashes

© ABC

Let's get to it already!
by Brandon Coulson

Was anyone else checking their phone through this one? After last week had such a strong bulk of an episode only to trip at the end, I expected things to really fly this week. Instead we got a slow plodding episode that barely moved the needle. All we really did this week was put the pieces into place for next week’s double sized finale.

It was nice that they remember about Benson and gave him something to do this week, though after having sidelined and basically forgotten him for so long, having him confronted with his dead husband just didn’t resonate with me. We never really got to know much about him or their relationship aside from the surface details.

This whole series of manipulation from Izel felt weak and obvious. The early trick where she was in Mack was so easy to see and Yoyo should have been smarter. Then while I did like Yoyo signalling Benson the threat from Izel, to kill his husband over and over in front of him, sounds like a horrible threat but I never felt it in the performances that this was enough to theoretically help her destroy the world.

Everything about Izel’s plan also feels a bit simple. A magic temple, a portal to another realm, needing Mack and Yoyo’s memories of the monoliths to rebuild them, it all seems a bit cheesy. Not to mention Izel has to be by far the worst big bad SHIELD has ever had. For someone who threatens to destroy everything in the universe, I couldn’t care less about her as a character. We’ve had Nazis and alien monsters, rogue agents and virtual gods, and while Izel is said to be the greatest threat of them all I find her utterly boring.

There were a few moments that made me sit up, mind you. Mack, possessed, killing an agent brutally was shocking. The way Benson gets dropped from the plane was a smart and well executed plan, but why didn’t Yoyo just hit the drop button with all three of them and the device in the cargo hold together? Perfect escape plan right?

© ABC

On the other side of things, the team mulls over Sarge and whether or not he contains some vestige of Coulson. May as the hopeful side and Daisy sure he is only a monster but one they can use. Daisy pushing Sarge to use his power, and eventually killing him again seemed a bit extreme for her but I bought into it. I also really liked the way his power manifests with his skin sort of pulling away to reveal some other self underneath. The limits of his power are yet to be seen but he demolishes a steel door with ease so the inevitable battle for the finale should be fun.

Deke continued to become tolerable and even fun character as he and Fitz/Simmons figured out the whole harmonic resonance things and started designing a device to use against Izel. Tying the harmonics into the sword and knives was a nice touch.

I will say I called the Coulson resurgence as it seems Sarge is fully aware of Coulson’s memories as he calls Daisy Skye. Now while the scene itself was very nicely acted, the whole cheat to get Coulson back was my worst fear realized. He will definitely be sticking around next season.

This whole episode should have taken ten minutes tops but instead we were treading water and killing time until the finale. While I’m sure there will be some fun action, I don’t have the highest hopes for the finale blowing me away. The lack of focus and weakness of the villain are really wearing thin now.

Agents of SHIELD S06E10: Leap

SHIELD takes a Leap towards the end

© ABC

A lot of good and a little bad...
by Brandon Coulson

So here we sit, two weeks and three episodes from the end of the season and with confirmation of next year being the final one there's much to be set up moving forward.

This week’s outing, 'Leap', asked us to take a leap in logic and give the writers a whole lot of leeway. It was fairly obvious what caused May to kill Sarge last week and I was happy to see that the team quickly and very smartly tracked the path of possession and figured out what had happened. It would have been so easy to drag the distrust and confusion angle of a body-hopping alien out for an entire episode, or even a few. Something I imagine in a twenty-two episode season would easily have become a much longer plot point.

But in a show, and a world, in which LMD’s, virtual worlds and people/aliens can fly, fire energy beams and even travel through time, the idea of body-hopping not only can seem plausible, literally every SHIELD team member buys into the theory as valid immediately.

Everything leading up to their confrontation with Izel was beautifully executed. Showing the path she took body to body, building tension, seeing the team put the pieces together, it all works. I was frankly set to be frustrated by a long May interrogation with no one believing her, which would have been irritating seeing how long this group has fought side-by-side, so color me impressed when every single person basically says 'this makes no sense, something made her do it.'

Deke and Fitz sorta kinda preemptively figured out what Sarge is (more on that later) but what I really enjoyed was their back and forth. Deke’s yearning for approval and flip-flopping on priorities in response to whatever Fitz says. I am actually looking forward to Deke now, I even want Snow to come back in the mix, have the whole weird family together.

Continuing the smartly written trend, Mack really showed good leadership and forward thinking. As soon as he gets what is happening, he locks down the lighthouse. Now of course we don’t see any other agents except our main crew *cough* No budget! *cough* but locking in Izel is the best thing to do. Then they immediately think of testing everyone with secrets that can be verified by other team members, this gives us a few funny beats and some character insight like Davis’s pen theft and Daisy sending money to Lincoln’s sister while serving to move the narrative forward.

Then the smartest thing Mack does is after clearing Daisy and Yoyo, separating them from the group and locking them up, preventing Izel from getting their powers. Just really good writing that shows he’s deserving of leadership.

Following that we got a pretty amazing sequence of Izel hopping from body to body showing how in control she is. The self harm angle played very well and built tension beautifully. Hitting two real heart-stopping moments as Piper shoots a giant hole in her hand, which was a bit more gruesome looking than I expect from this series, and then eventually making Davis dive to his death. I had a few thoughts on this moment. First, that it explains why Davis who has barely had lines in past seasons suddenly got promoted to the forefront, of course they were building him up so this would hurt more, it worked a little but I still wasn't devastated or anything. Also, while I know that falling on his head/neck directly is what killed him, the fact that it was just a one story drop kind of made it look a little silly, like no one could have tried and catch him? Maybe break his fall a bit?

That little bit aside, up until this point I was riveted. Just a fantastic episode …

But then we got more answers.

So as this was happening we got little looks into Sarge’s recovery, from death, as Simmons looks on in wonder and basically sidelined from anything interesting. We see Sarge survived the shooting and losing all of his blood, and as the episode wore on, fully heals without a scratch. Quick question: where is Dr. Benson during all this? You remember, that character they added like he had something important to add who is supposed to help with the weird science stuff. Yeah, dude disappeared quick, didn't he?

But back to Sarge, as he eventually escapes and meets up with Izel, who is going after the remnants of the monolith’s power that got locked up last year. This is where we finally get answers to all of our questions, and frankly it was the most disappointing part of the episode. After a quick Fitz explanation that we didn't see a fear dimension at all because he’s the smarter Fitz, and some loose tying of Izel and Sarge as beings like Ghost Rider, we found out the truth of Sarge … he’s in a duplicate body of Coulson because when Coulson went in that realm it xeroxed him? So he’s just another body-hopper who got in an empty copy but its trace memories confused him, though he didn’t actually have access to those memories for the last hundred years or whatever but now he suddenly does.

Damn it guys, this week was so good for eighty percent of it. Now this bull is what we’re going with heading into the final three? It feels so thrown together and half-baked. So you know what’s going to happen: Sarge will fully remember Coulson’s life, somehow tap into whatever his powers are and take down Izel. In the process burning out all but a few of his abilities and setting him up as an alien who will have parts of Coulson’s personality and memories  but will need to learn to live in the human world, at least that’s my bet for the plans heading into next season. For you Whedon fans this is basically the Illyria storyline from Angel.

I hope I get surprised, but this seems to be an obvious path for the last episodes of the season and it's a shame to have such an underwhelming reveal in such an otherwise stellar episode. First 80%  A+, last 20% C-.

Agents of SHIELD S06E09: Collision Course (Part 2)

SHIELD’s Collision Course comes to a crashing conclusion

© ABC

Surprises abound!
by Brandon Coulson

There certainly was a lot to take in this week as 'Collision Course Part 2' was jam-packed with, well, just about everything! Sarge wasted no time in trying to take over the Zephyr and if I have one complaint this week it would be the sharp turn in character Sarge takes. After being a measured and seemingly always in control type he quickly unraveled through the episode.

You could argue being so close to Izel and completion of his mission drove him there but I just felt a couple of the outbursts and loss of composure felt very out of character for him. The biggest of course and what is likely what turns the tide for him was the coldblooded murder of his crew member Pax. The scene leading to this was actually quite clever though, as they actually do have a plan to keep Yoyo from stopping them in the form of a force field. The back and forth of their force field and then Yoyo baiting Jaco to lower it, however briefly, giving her the window to sneak Mack a key, all of that was very nicely laid out. It felt logical. Sarge realizing Pax was bait and executing him made no sense as the force field was already down and all he actually did was reduce his own team and in the end turned Jaco against him.

© ABC

On the ground, the atom bomb diffusion scenes played very funny, with Deke’s failure to diffuse and Snow finally realizing her own mortality, but Daisy has easily become the deus ex machina of this series. First vibrating the bomb to keep it stable and later when inundated by countless Shrike she dusts them with little effort. It’s like why don’t they just have Daisy handle every problem to start? Yes, I know the bomb could have gone off, it was a last resort, blah blah blah. I just want to have a clear picture of what her powers are and their limitations. Oh and the 'are all women this powerful on your planet' line … a little on the nose but cute.

I did actually enjoy all of these scenes even with my gripes. I actually really enjoyed the whole episode and I loved some of the smaller touches throughout. The two two six code sequence made me very happy as of course SHIELD would have a trouble code, that’s a basic security protocol. The sequence itself was very tense with the code being delivered in both directions and both teams realizing they’re in the same frying pan. Oh and yes I did notice that in addition to the Truck’s 'Collision Course', we also get another with Sarge flying the Zephyr straight at the ship in orbit. You’re very clever, good for you.

Sarge and Mack fighting was a pretty entertaining fight even though the thought of any Coulson lookalike beating Mack is pretty laughable. But it was an appropriately sloppy dirty kind of fight. The back half of the episode was just sprinkled with lots of great moments. Jaco and Yoyo’s heart to heart, the attempt to take down Izel and then escape through Jaco’s coat portal was a great callback, and  his eventual sacrifice (in vain) actually made me sad to see him go.  For a character that started as a silent brute, Jaco ended up as someone I could have seen joining the cast.

© ABC

Of course we all knew Izel wasn’t really killed as there was no final confrontation or reveal of her plan. What did shock me was May unloading a clip into Sarge’s chest, seemingly killing him. Now while he does appear dead, and we all but know Izel controlled May to do it, I feel like whatever Sarge is will be revealed with a resurrection or a cloning, and in some way, shape or form we aren’t done with Sarge yet. Especially since Izel teases that the reason he has no memories is because he never did. A lot of questions still to answer.

And our fake out ending also wrapped up the threads of Mack and Yoyo's obvious, eventual reconciliation though it still was very sweet. Almost as adorable as Deke and Fitz, or Bobo as he calls him, wanting his grandpa’s approval so badly. Deke was actually kind of endearing here and I’d love to see this dynamic continue on.

With four episodes left we certainly seem primed to run full steam to the finish and I honestly have no clue where things are heading, in the best way! I only hope the final reveal of Izel and Sarge’s true natures are worth the mystique they’ve built up so far.

Agents of SHIELD S06E08: Collision Course (Part I)

SHIELD is on a Collision Course!

© ABC

Snowbunny?!
by Brandon Coulson

So our storylines merged, quite suddenly, into one this week. As 'Collision Course (Part I)' wasted no time in getting everyone back into the same orbit, literally as we start with FitzSimmons, Izel, and crew arguing over the safety of making a jump back to Earth with wonky equipment. Though they barely have time to argue how bad the odds are before the jump is made and goes off without a hitch, like with zero bad side effects.

The space side of things got the short end of the stick in general this week, as they spend the episode slowly floating towards Earth and complaining that communications are not working which, let's be frank, is just lazy writing so their arrival is a surprise. It would have been easy to show Izel sabotage the comms or something, anything to make it seem reasonable. Instead it’s just bad equipment and Fitz can’t fix it.

Throughout the episode we get little visits back to the ship peppered in to show us Izel is actually the monster Sarge has been hunting. Which confuses me a great deal as to how everything ties together this year. Like was he just from another planet entirely, not another Earth? Also we seem to find out she destroyed the Chronicoms' world so I assume they will be involved soon too but apparently she’s been searching the universe for the monoliths for awhile and only now decided to check Earth. Umm, later on we get told she shows up in ancient Incan legends so she lived on this planet for a while yet never thought about checking it until now … I just found there to be one too many coincidences and the logic seemed thin at best.

Luckily on other areas we saw much more reason than before as Mack had some damn sense this week and while he let Sarge lead the way going forward, he only gave him one of his crew, Snow, and kept the other two as insurance that Sarge would come back. Also choosing to follow behind was wise as we found out Sarge is a big fat liar.

© ABC

Sarge’s scenes with May and Daisy worked pretty well. Watching Daisy play coy and not let on about her powers was smart and Sarge wisely sensed something was up and tested her, well actually baited her into outing herself. There were still many more questions raised about Sarge’s origins. Izel ominously says she knows his secrets while Sarge shows he’s never heard of DNA before, very odd details like this and his animosity when anyone questions his past give a very Tahiti type feel to things. On top of this, Izel paints Sarge as the monster and herself as an innocent, which of course we know is not true. The real question is whether Sarge is misguided or truly evil.

As part one of two, this episode was mainly setting up the pieces for next week to pay things off. Sarge’s cool teleportation through Jaco’s coat was a highlight and got his team minus Snow together and on the loose, though having them escape only for Yoyo to immediately recapture them, to getting broken out again was a bit much, but it was still fun. Meanwhile Deke finds a bomb in Sarge’s rig set to ram a Shrike tower and explode, taking out two hundred square miles or so. Oh and this comes after we find Snow and Deke’s gross hook up so I guess between that and Sarge leaving her she will be on SHIELD’s side now. You take that along with Izel speeding towards them and possibly the Chronicoms coming too and you would think next week was the finale.

While there are four more episodes to come, I do think next week should shed a lot of light on just who or what everyone is and give us a clear path for the last string of episodes. While not the highs of earlier this season, overall it was still a fun time to be had.

What did you think of this episode? Tell us in the comments section below!

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Agents of SHIELD S06E04: Code Yellow

© ABC

SHIELD calls a Code Yellow
by Brandon Coulson

I’m mad at Agents of SHIELD. No, more than just mad, I also am confused. These feelings and several others ran through my mind while watching 'Code Yellow'. Though this time it wasn't because of a bad plot choice or a terrible set piece. No my anger and confusion stemmed from the fact they made me actually like Deke!

Alright, like is far too strong a word. The amazing feat that occurred was the writers seemed to hear the collective gnashing of teeth from fans over just how annoying and unlikable Deke was and they found the perfect modern day occupation for him: a Boba tea drinking tech giant with a girlfriend named Sequoia (yeesh), who is an Instagram influencer. As a couple they are basically Millennial Yahtzee.

Deke as a weasley and kind of thieving game developer was thoroughly interesting and my biggest hope is that we get to see much more of his professional world. Starting off with an obvious simulation (Deke would never be that cool) that is tagged with what I’m sure is already a meme with a sexy damsel version of Quake in love with Deke. The joke was pretty funny the first time and when Mack sees it later on and gets offered two percent of the company to keep quiet I literally laughed out loud.

As we find out, Deke is using a stripped down version of The Framework as a new VR gaming system with basically all of its contents inspired by SHIELD tech and agents. Great writing, to me, is subtly introducing logical questions in the viewers' minds and then answering those questions. In this episode, a great example of that would be that as we see Deke and what he’s been doing, the logical question is number one: why isn’t he mourning Fitz? And number two: why would SHIELD let him develop all this tech without supervision? Well they make sure to have Mack address that he doesn’t even know Fitz is dead(ish), and then we get the great reveal that Deke’s best bro and coworker is an undercover SHIELD agent in case of a Code Yellow, which is in itself a very funny throwaway gag that they hit on just enough to be funny without being too heavy handed.

I would say about ninety-nine percent of the Deke related material was fantastic to watch, funny, quick moving and kept me engaged. Even the inevitable 'trick the bad guy into a VR simulation' was well played though I saw it coming a mile away. I do have questions as to how Deke reads similar to the creatures Sarge and company are hunting. On the surface, having him being not from this world sounds like a legit reason but he’s still human, just a human from a possible dystopian future. I’ll give them a pass though since we got to see Sarge pumping him for info and thankfully Deke still having a brain and tricking Sarge into revealing he’s not Coulson.

© ABC

Oh and Sequoia’s Instagram story in the post credits may be a close second to Michael Pena’s Ant-Man rants as funniest ways to see the MCU.

On the slightly more boring side, we also followed Yoyo and her boytoy with Dr Benson investigating a supposed murder victim of Sarge which turns out to be a parasite. I found it a little frustrating that they couldn’t figure out Sarge had killed the thing and not implanted it, and even more annoyed they did the autopsy in a room the parasite easily escaped. The way this thing takes its hosts out was pretty crazy though, basically turning them into a suicide bomber of spikes growing out of them. Of course Yoyo’s new beau, who we don’t know or care about at all, gets infected and while his death at Yoyo’s hands looks cool, it had zero emotional impact.

But over all, the episode was another great outing that completely surprised me. With May being taken by Coulson in the end after another badass fight we have a lot of pieces set up moving forward. Also from the previews it looks like the mystery of Sarge will be learned next and I’m all for not dragging out a misdirection as his 'evil' motivations seem to be.

Agents of SHIELD airs Fridays at 8:00 PM on ABC.

What did you think of this episode? Tell us in the comments section below!

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Agents of SHIELD’s premiere is missing pieces

ABC

 Agents of SHIELD S06E01: 'Missing Pieces'

Don’t worry about 'Endgame' spoilers! There isn’t a one!

by Brandon Coulson

Agents of SHIELD has finally returned. After nearly a year since the last new episode, it’s felt like a lifetime and there was certainly a lot to unpack.

First off though before we get to everything that DID happen, let's address something that they most certainly did not: Endgame. That’s right, Marvel is owning this summer, this year, and nearly every box office record imaginable yet they decided to completely sever any ties to the greater MCU from this series. Without spoiling Endgame it can be said that nothing that happened in that or last years Infinity War have any repercussions, or even a mention in SHIELD.

After years of fans complaining about the one-sided shared universe, it seems the whole idea has just been given up, especially ironic considering Coulson’s featured role in Captain Marvel. Now I’ve heard many theories saying this is a pocket dimension or altered timeline as a result of last year's time travel shenanigans but regardless of that and barring any unseen explanations coming down the line it seems that Agents of SHIELD is officially annexed from the MCU. Personally, as someone who has invested a ton of hours into all of this content of the MCU shared universe, having them completely drop it is like a slap in the face.

Moving on from that though, how was this season’s premiere? It was decent, there were some interesting moments, but I have to say compared to previous season openers I wasn’t over the moon this time round.

The episode, 'Missing Pieces', started strong, with Fitz’s ship getting sliced in half by an unknown armada and jumping a year later where we find Gemma, Quake, and you know, those two agents whose names you hear and immediately forget, Davis and Piper, all searching deep space for Fitz.

It became very clear what the forward thrusts of our two storylines will be for at least the first half of the season. One side is the search for Fitz and a struggle between Gemma who acted selfishly to an extreme, and Daisy/Quake who has become a feared violent force in space. Back on Earth we see Mack adjusting to being in charge post-Coulson and dealing with a new threat to Earth. We’ll get to that in a bit.

Focusing on our space story for now, I will say I didn’t like a lot of what Quake and Gemma did but I appreciate the drama it’s setting up for later this season. Quake was a total badass, vibrating guns apart and just mopping the floor with her opponents, while Gemma took a page from Fitz’s book. During the interrogation scene she came across very Nazi-esque much like Fitz was in the Hydra world sim.

We got hints that Quake has done some atrocious things while in space which I’m sure will be explored more later but I hope they don’t try and make Quake into a monster. After the fear of her destroying Earth last season, we don’t need another 'Is Quake evil?' plotline. Gemma was frustratingly self-involved this week, after her team had been searching space for a year only to find Fitz’s ship destroyed and his hibernation pod empty. Gemma leaps at a thin and frankly stupid idea that he must’ve seen the manufacturer’s label inside the pod and surely went to that world, in much deeper space mind you. During her scene inside the pod I thought for sure her breath on the glass was going to reveal a message Fitz left or something to that effect, an intentional message he would leave for anyone looking for him. Instead we get this gut feeling theory and after being confronted by some kind of Space Confederacy, Gemma makes the decision to jump to deep space in a half busted, and low on fuel ship. Dragging the others along to a possible bad end, even after they point out Davis has a wife and kid he hasn’t seen in a year. So right now Team Space has me very irritated.

ABC

Back home we find out a lot has changed. Mack and Yoyo have split, Yoyo is already seeing another agent which feels like just a setup for her and Mack to get back together. There are portals opening around Earth letting in some Mad Max looking guys to do who knows what, including the 'not a surprise because he was in the trailers' evil Phil Coulson. Or at least a guy who looks like him.

Seeing how they made such a big thing about Phil is really dead and upcoming previews show him not recognizing the name Coulson, I’m putting my money on a Skrull impersonation. In fact any alien or Inhuman face stealer is preferable to any sort of clone/alternate timeline versions of a doppelgänger story. I want Phil to really be dead and this guy to be something or someone else entirely.

Also while the freaky girl who is with these mysterious villains was creepy as hell, with her talk of becoming a butterfly and general weirdness, it was really hard for me to see Clark Gregg as a badass. I mean he did a decent job of being a cold hardass but I just kept thinking he seemed out of place. Even when he shoots a SHIELD agent in cold blood it felt like they were trying to sell his evilness too hard.

Another moment that felt like it was trying too hard was the new recruit to the team, a drunken professor. Mack and May have plans, which I like, to start a new SHIELD academy. To do so they approach a professor who May’s ex knew and the actor himself feels like a good addition to the mix. Older, kinda grumpy but in a funny way, it's a good juxtaposition to everyone else. But we all have seen the genius who drinks too much and is self destructive before. Add to that they made sure to let us know he lost his male partner and that’s part of why he’s so bitter.

It just felt like they were delivering us his bio rather than introducing his character. Like a hat on a hat it was just so many traits given in I want to say four lines of dialog. From here on out let's hope he gets to grow and develop a little more naturally, maybe give him some students to play off of.         

Even with some of those complaints, the episode as a whole was entertaining, had some good action, and re-established our heroes and where they stand. While by no means a great episode, it was very 'Okay'. I found myself getting burned out last season and I’m hoping this year will help reignite my love for the show again.

Agents of SHIELD airs Fridays at 8:00 PM on ABC.

What did you think of the season premiere? Tell us in the comments section below!

Read more of Brandon's reviews at HOTCHKA.com