Agents of SHIELD 7x06
Jul. 7th, 2020 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsAgents of SHIELD 7x06
This time we're back to something more normal. You're getting the fresh raw thoughts, but I did get to the episode late so that did kind of shake up the viewing experience. I like to throw these things out there in case it comes through in the review.
Also, I'm not quite sure where to start with this episode. It was good, but I feel like 'like' isn't the right word for how I felt about it. Not because I disliked it, but because I was going through it more as an emotional experience than as either a critical or thoughtful way. Because this episode is basically about traumatizing all the major characters and I have a hard time saying I liked that. It was well done, I definitely was getting the emotions of it, I just can't say I like it for that.
Let's address one concern with this ep, how old is Mack supposed to be? Prior to this episode I would have said he's around 40, maybe 45 at the outside, if only because he's treated as being closer to the younger generation of the characters that Coulson and May, but he was also old enough to have kind of had a 10 year old in s4. A quick IMDB check though says that Henry Simmons is 50, making him a damn good looking 50 year old; and mean Mack should probably be treated more in the older peer group than the younger one. It also means that just based on experience her should always have been an early pick for Director. But I can then allow that if Mack is the approximately the same age as the actor (allowing for the fact the show's timeline is hard to follow) that's old enough for him to have memories of the bicentennial. Then I'm still left with whether Reuben would be old enough to have been born by this point. He certainly didn't seem 40 in his one appearance in the show, but I guess this is showing once again that I'm bad at judging ages; so if we say he was a baby I guess I'll roll with it.
However, that they went after Mack's parents as opposed to anyone else on the team kind of makes sense. They know Coulsoid is a Chronicom so trying to emotionally manipulate him isn't a great choice; Fitz often serves as the emotional pressure point for the team, but I suspect the Chronicoms know he's not with them; Deke doesn't have anyone to pressure who isn't on the plane; there are decent odds that the parent-unit isn't together for most of the younger team members, and Daisy's mom at least is well defended (though there would have been some narrative value in using the parents that the audience does know; and not everyone hates them the way I do); plus this way does contain an implicit threat to Mack's younger self that wouldn't be there for the unborn members of the team; May's sort of a wild card (moreso if they don't know about her emotional situation), because there are decent odds of her just making whatever call she deems right in the moment and not intending to bring anyone else into it though it would have a (less predictable) knock-on effect on the others; but not the same way it would and does with Mack who is both an emotionally driven person and the Director. I would also say that of all of them he's the most likely to forget to double check once they know the Chronicoms have stepped up their game (to be fair, it wasn't expected that the team would figure that out).
Something about this ep prompted me to realize something that probably should have occurred to me earlier, but now that the Chronicoms have time travel...why don't they go back and save their homeworld instead of trying to conquer Earth? Their initial interest in our guys was because they had used time travel, and the Chronicoms got fussy when SHIELD couldn't and wouldn't just give them that ability; but the cat's out of the bag on time travel and I don't think SHIELD had any objections to having or even helping helping the Chronicoms just go and secure their world that still existed 100 years ago (one assumes). If this was building on last season, and they thought Coulson and SHIELD had somehow been involved because of Sarge's role there could be some reason why the Chronicoms still perceived SHIELD as the enemy and there needed to not be a SHIELD that might one day be a problem for them; but they clearly know that's not the case. And I kind of think the team might jump at the chance to go after Izel before she ever came to Earth.
(This is the kind of thing that separates the B5 arc from so much modern arc television, and why I still hold B5 as the gold standard. In B5 the various major conflicts were all entwined with and built from other arcs; but like so many other things, this treats the different arcs as discreet things, at most doing some setup for the second arc of a season in the first arc, or later picking up on a dangling plot hook...but see my list in 7x02* for a list of some of the plot hooks that they never went back to.)
The Daisy and Daniel part of the episode wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be after watching last week's ep. They just get thrown in a cell, Daisy gets torn up, Nate kills himself being incompatible with the powers, and they leave. We get a little of Daniel's backstory, but nothing special. I wonder if there's going to be fallout for Daisy in the next eps; one would expect, but I'm not counting on it at the pace they're moving.
What it did do was turn me off of the potential of shipping them. I still think they have decent chemistry, but it definitely didn't read like romantic chemistry to me. Companions in arms is fine, and I'm more comfortable with it for shipping reasons, and seems to suit them better. But he's very much treating her as a fellow soldier in this one; even the end doesn't read to me as interest but as not disappearing on her the way the other guy did when he had been wounded (implicitly died, and him being there means she won't have to go through that). Pay it forward, and improve where it came be done better. So while I say the backstory wasn't anything special, it does provide important context for what he does in this ep. Sure, ships built on respect and care are usually my jam, but there isn't time to build very much in the time remaining.
Though, I suppose I have to remind myself that I've disliked all of Daisy's canon relationships and mostly shipped her (such as I ever bothered to) with non-canon options like Mike and Trip and Robbie. So the fact that I'm writing off seeing this as shippy might means I'm supposed to...then again I could see what the writing was doing with Ward and Lincoln and Deke, I just didn't like it (mostly because I didn't like them, especially with her). Also, show keep in mind how much I hate Steve partly for getting between Peggy and Daniel, you don't need to give me another reason to dislike Daisy (at least it's not her fault the way it is Steve's)
But the weirder thing here is, I expected this to be more about Daisy confronting the demons of her backstory. This is basically reliving the story that destroyed (will destroy) her family, and she has more personal dislike for the Malicks than anyone else (as shown in the first adventure this season), plus this is rather reminiscent of what she went through with Hive-Ward; but she has nothing to do in this one. It ends up still being Daniel's story of accepting (at least for now) where he is and that he's going to be part of this team and worry about getting home later (because don't tell me he's given up on it yet). And while I like Daniel and always have, and while I don't care about Daisy and never have, that focus is a bit weird I have to admit. Daisy is treated as the second or third biggest character in the show (she's usually the face of it after Coulson, but still third billed) and yet she has possibly the least arc of anyone in this episode...or a lot of other ones.
I'd say the only other contender in Yoyo, and that's because she spends her time (reasonably) in Mack's arc which is probably the biggest one. And I'd argue Yoyo is more of a character as a supporting player in that one that Daisy is as a prop in that plot. Yoyo is at least an active player, insisting on going along with Mack and getting to enjoy meeting his parents in such an odd way, even smoothing over a few bumps in the road he would have tripped over on his own (and maybe still would have if the Chroni-parents hadn't been so willing to play along).
Mack gets the hardest hit this episode, making a lie of my statement early in the season about the show rarely giving Mack a deep arc or character focus (or at least stretching rare). But I don't really have a lot to say about it; I get why he makes the choices he does even if objectively it's debatable they're the right ones; I get why he's so flustered during a lot of this, but is still capable when he gets past being flustered; I get why he doesn't want to hear the truth, and respect that he'll listen even when it's something he doesn't want to hear. I'm not sure just going off on his own at the end was bright, but I get that too; he didn't go far and expected to have time and contact to get back to the plane or the job when needed. I get why we see him with Yoyo after the fact and that's probably the right choice for the character to make, though I do find myself thinking if Yoyo hadn't been around we could have gotten an interesting interaction with May, because this is very Cavalry; and being the Cavalry can break a person.
I think by the end of this, any of them who weren't already in the Cavalry will probably have joined.
Before I go back to the Coulsoid and May part of the plot (which you know I have thoughts about), I want to talk a bit about Coulsoid's Sam Gamgee speech about sacrifice. It's poetic and appropriate and very Coulson...but by the end of it something about it wasn't working for me. And I think the problem is it reminds me that has learned NOTHING. This isn't the culmination of a character arc, this is what Coulson has been ever since Avengers; sacrifice and dying for a cause, that's easy for Coulson and therefore Coulsoid. But he still focuses on what sacrifice means to the person who chooses to make it, instead of the sacrifices then demanded of those who didn't choose it.
This thought is pretty jumbled, but this was a consistent problem with Coulson during s5; or maybe more-so that the show didn't show that he changed his mind once the crisis was over. He saw -his- death as -his- sacrifice that -he- was prepared to make; not in terms of what he was asking others to sacrifice by letting him die. Searching out a cure would have meant sacrificing his...comfort, principles, certainty (especially if they found a cure that came with uncertainty); but he put more value on those things, than the pain he could spare the people who love him; even if it didn't work they would know they tried everything to save him. Even though he would say in s5 that he wasn't in a hurry to die it seemed like he was more willing to accept dying than the struggle to live.
I'm reminded of two quotes from B5 and ASOIAF (quoting the gist so I don't have to look up the exact quotes)
-Finding something worth dying for easy; do you have anything worth living for?
-We pledge our lives and honor to the Night's Watch, but why do so many think sacrificing their lives is more important that their honor?
(The second is a quote that suspiciously did not make it into GoT the show, and even at the time I wondered why, as it's why the circumstances around Qhorin's death make so much less sense in the show; should have taken more warning from it's absence.)
Or, if you want to come a little closer to home for the writers here, there's also Buffy:
“The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.”
During s5 mostly what I wanted was for him to really realize what he was putting others through when he decided dying was an okay end, I didn't exactly disagree with some of his position though. There was enough going on that making his survival not a priority was a more or less valid choice, they needed to focus on the big picture. In the line of work these people have, the capacity for self sacrifice for a greater cause is important; and even willing to accept his death isn't what makes me think he was actually pretty selfish. That comes in how willfully ignorant he has always been to the value others put on his life. It's one thing for him to (mostly rightly) not make himself the center of the world, not to put his life or happiness over the good of the world or team or May; but at least one of those was saying 'fuck that noise' because he is the gods-damned center of her world. She sacrifices plenty for him, but she's not going to sacrifice him for anything.
(And just so we're clear, May's love can be pretty reckless at times. But I also don't think Coulson ever understood it; by the end he did know she loved him, but I don't think he ever quite got what that meant (and if he did during the Tahiti trip we don't see it). And I suspect he never quite understood the sacrifice he asked of her when he asked her to accept him dying without fighting against it.)
In the end, we're right back in that scene where May has made every plan to stay with him and keep him safe, and he still asks her to kill him and carry on. He's not afraid of dying, he's willing to make the sacrifice so he never hurts anyone directly, it's his life on the line so he treats it as if that's all it is; never seeing, even as she begged him not to do this to her, that it would as good as kill her; he won't see that the sacrifice he's asking of her is bigger than what he's giving up in his.
And for most of seven seasons, I've never understood how he doesn't get it and waited for the day he would. How many lives does he have to live before he realizes his life has value, not just his death?
Cynically I'm now wondering if this is why the show dropped Audrey after s1, along with not having any further discussion of May's mission from Fury; because Audrey's grief and the way Fury took advantage of May's would change what Coulson saw as the cost of his sacrifice, in what others sacrificed because of it. And also maybe why they weren't willing to have May actually grieving in s6 after the role of partner and lover had been settled on one person. I'd always put it down to showing contrast once Sarge showed up and still keeping her reserved in characterization; but the show has most often wanted us to see Coulson's various sacrifices as noble and right, not costly and selfish. And while most of those times probably have been honorable, when you act like all of them are entirely on the right side I start to question more of them than I might if they would acknowledge that some were misguided.
While I'm not sure this counts as evidence for or against the Coulson Swap, maybe this is part of why I want it. I want Coulsoid to tell Coulson to for once in his damned many lives, choose life and choose to live it.
Anyway, I think part of why I went off on such a long rant about that, is it's not even the main time in the episode I think Coulsoid is pretty selfish even if I do think he's completely in love with May. The idea that on some level he's upset about her being emotionally unavailable because he would have come to her for some kind of validation is just...no. Look, Phil-nocchio, do you even think about what she would be feeling is she was feeling things? Maybe being cut off from her emotions is what allows her to be around you without being caught up in confusion and grief every time she looks at you. Maybe her initial assessment of 'you're not Sarge but not Coulson either, because Coulson's still dead,' was simply a less emotional version of what she would have had with her emotions.
But at least this episode points back towards the s1 issue, even though it doesn't quite address it. This at least remembers that May's probably never gotten over losing him the first time much less the second (and that's not counting the time he and Fitz got trapped in the spirit realm, she hadn't even started to deal with her grief that time before she all but threw the Darkhold at Radcliffe and Aida). And I think it kind of hints towards some of her thought process with Sarge last year; she hated Sarge for going around killing people while having Coulson's face, but on some level she did expect that Coulson wouldn't just stay dead and they just had to find a way to find him behind the Sarge stuff that had brought him back.
I did mostly like their argument scene, it was very in character and said some things I've been wanting said either this season or longer. But it was almost too in character as I had a moment when I was worried the show was going to throw out a season and a half of delayed gratification and have her call him Phil. Outside of that waiting, her doing that has not been set up or earned at this stage. Because if it isn't going to happen post Swap with real Phil, it is going to be used to signal her acceptance of Coulsoid as Coulson, and she clearly hasn't yet. Plus, when she finally does, it had better be with all the emotion in the world that she can't get to yet. Then again, I'm not even sure she's called him Coulson, I'd have to pay even closer attention than I do on Phil-watch.
I maintain that there is something off with May's portrayal through this, which is why I keep reaching for an in-universe reason for it rather than blame it on a meta problem with the acting, directing, or writing. I think maybe I should watch some of her scenes with the music off and see if I have the same problem though, because I've thought for years that Bear McCreary was definitely playing for the Philinda ship and adds even more feeling than the acting sometimes. There are a few of their early scenes where if you turn off the music, the shippy implications are not there nearly as strongly as they are with the music but with the music you get the feeling that the world makes sense when they're together
(The specific one I'm most thinking of is om 1x13 where May finds Coulson and Ward frozen after jumping off the train. There's little to no dialog anyway, but in context you can practically hear her heart stop as she runs to him, until she checks his pulse and knows he's alive and then she can breathe again. Turn the sound off and just watch the performance, you can tell she's concerned when she finds them and relieved to realize he/they're alive, but even her smile of relief as she finds Phil's pulse doesn't seem quite as signposted without the sweet, loving music on the soundtrack at that moment.)
But right now, I really don't buy her as not having emotions aside from what she picks up from others. If my Simmons suspicion isn't right, and I haven't entirely given it up yet, I have another possible read on it. That it's as if her emotions were shut away in a thousand little rooms as she was dying, which we can say is what opened her sensitivity to others, and that would be the key to unlocking those feelings again. As she encounters others' emotions it's letting little bits of her own out, opening the corresponding door perhaps (selfishly I think this points to Coulson Swap, she needs to be reconnected with that kind of love, even all the pain that comes with it). It would explain something of why frustration and annoyance are returning more easily than other things, we've heard she's encountered those more often. And I get a sense that she picked up some regret if not exactly sadness in her goodbye to Stoner, which would map onto her reaction to Coulsoid possibly dying. It's not creating or bringing back grief or worry, or even hope that she had it right and he always comes back, but she doesn't come across as unaffected by losing him, and she's definitely managing sympathy for Mack even before she touches him to read his emotions.
The Chronicom-lady touching May so that we could have her use her Chronicom emotional void detection ability (question, what would she get of her own feelings if she could use her new powers on herself?) didn't seem terribly contrived, but fake-Mack-daddy didn't seem very natural. Perhaps it's as simple as the staging didn't allow it to work naturally, but it seemed pretty forced. But then I don't see why the Chronicoms would be testing her ability to sniff them out (the only reason I can think of for them to force physical contact), how would they even know about it, since she didn't until this episode? Though by that token, has May explained this to Mack before she springs it on him with this?
So many thousand words in and I haven't even gotten to the family drama on the plane. Kind of wish I hadn't gone on that rant about Coulson's selfish sacrificing before getting to my thoughts on Simmons. This is more what I expected was going on instead of her being another Chronicom; though I still think there's more she's forcing out of her mind than Fitz's location, like certain elements of the plan that she knows on a subconscious level so she's never surprised but can't divulge how much she knows until they're done.
But in general I am glad we've gotten more of her and Deke these last couple eps. I actually found myself seeing them as much more related here than I usually do; to the point where I was thinking that I weirdly find myself finally seeing them and grandmother and grandson. I think because it's actually played for drama a bit more here than the comedy the situation naturally lends itself to; which in the past has been heightened by Fitz's distaste for Deke. Here Simmons and Deke share a bond of deeper concern for Fitz than the others are in on; they all love him, they're all family, but Deke and Simmons have the cards on the table now and can connect in a different way about that fear.
The last scene with Enoch I have a hard time to get a solid read on. On one hand, I have a hard time seeing Deke's words as genuine as opposed to something Simmons made her errant grandson say as an apology. But Enoch response is hard to read on whether he takes them seriously or if he's being sarcastic. Enoch loves Fitz, probably loves Simmons by this point too, so being called part of the family would mean a lot to him; but since Deke's line is so obviously forced I'm not sure how Enoch takes it exactly.
I didn't really comment on it last week, but I have a bit of interest in Stoner's mindset regarding May. Because they met for an hour if we're being generous and then he never heard from her again because she literally disappeared off the face of the Earth, but he still remembers her and is a bit infatuated. I'm not saying she couldn't have made that much of an impression (I mean, I love May), but it's a lot. And he's still kind of into her through all this, probably more into her by the end than he was Chastity all this time (because May is awesome). It's also hard not to feel a bit sorry for him; May doesn't have the capacity for feelings right now (supposedly), and if she did she's already dealing with a robotic version of the man she loves, she still wouldn't have the capacity to deal with Stoner kinda sorta having feelings for her. I also wouldn't have been opposed to Coulsoid getting a little jealous (the way he calls her Melinda in the argument almost seems like he's calling her out by using her first name, something Coulson rarely did in the first place. If Stoner had been getting away with addressing her that way then Coulsoid's attitude would have come from somewhere), but I think that comes back to wanting him (any version of him) to stop taking her love and devotion for granted.
...I think I lost my point about Stoner. I'm just kind of sad we probably won't see him again I guess.
This time we're back to something more normal. You're getting the fresh raw thoughts, but I did get to the episode late so that did kind of shake up the viewing experience. I like to throw these things out there in case it comes through in the review.
Also, I'm not quite sure where to start with this episode. It was good, but I feel like 'like' isn't the right word for how I felt about it. Not because I disliked it, but because I was going through it more as an emotional experience than as either a critical or thoughtful way. Because this episode is basically about traumatizing all the major characters and I have a hard time saying I liked that. It was well done, I definitely was getting the emotions of it, I just can't say I like it for that.
Let's address one concern with this ep, how old is Mack supposed to be? Prior to this episode I would have said he's around 40, maybe 45 at the outside, if only because he's treated as being closer to the younger generation of the characters that Coulson and May, but he was also old enough to have kind of had a 10 year old in s4. A quick IMDB check though says that Henry Simmons is 50, making him a damn good looking 50 year old; and mean Mack should probably be treated more in the older peer group than the younger one. It also means that just based on experience her should always have been an early pick for Director. But I can then allow that if Mack is the approximately the same age as the actor (allowing for the fact the show's timeline is hard to follow) that's old enough for him to have memories of the bicentennial. Then I'm still left with whether Reuben would be old enough to have been born by this point. He certainly didn't seem 40 in his one appearance in the show, but I guess this is showing once again that I'm bad at judging ages; so if we say he was a baby I guess I'll roll with it.
However, that they went after Mack's parents as opposed to anyone else on the team kind of makes sense. They know Coulsoid is a Chronicom so trying to emotionally manipulate him isn't a great choice; Fitz often serves as the emotional pressure point for the team, but I suspect the Chronicoms know he's not with them; Deke doesn't have anyone to pressure who isn't on the plane; there are decent odds that the parent-unit isn't together for most of the younger team members, and Daisy's mom at least is well defended (though there would have been some narrative value in using the parents that the audience does know; and not everyone hates them the way I do); plus this way does contain an implicit threat to Mack's younger self that wouldn't be there for the unborn members of the team; May's sort of a wild card (moreso if they don't know about her emotional situation), because there are decent odds of her just making whatever call she deems right in the moment and not intending to bring anyone else into it though it would have a (less predictable) knock-on effect on the others; but not the same way it would and does with Mack who is both an emotionally driven person and the Director. I would also say that of all of them he's the most likely to forget to double check once they know the Chronicoms have stepped up their game (to be fair, it wasn't expected that the team would figure that out).
Something about this ep prompted me to realize something that probably should have occurred to me earlier, but now that the Chronicoms have time travel...why don't they go back and save their homeworld instead of trying to conquer Earth? Their initial interest in our guys was because they had used time travel, and the Chronicoms got fussy when SHIELD couldn't and wouldn't just give them that ability; but the cat's out of the bag on time travel and I don't think SHIELD had any objections to having or even helping helping the Chronicoms just go and secure their world that still existed 100 years ago (one assumes). If this was building on last season, and they thought Coulson and SHIELD had somehow been involved because of Sarge's role there could be some reason why the Chronicoms still perceived SHIELD as the enemy and there needed to not be a SHIELD that might one day be a problem for them; but they clearly know that's not the case. And I kind of think the team might jump at the chance to go after Izel before she ever came to Earth.
(This is the kind of thing that separates the B5 arc from so much modern arc television, and why I still hold B5 as the gold standard. In B5 the various major conflicts were all entwined with and built from other arcs; but like so many other things, this treats the different arcs as discreet things, at most doing some setup for the second arc of a season in the first arc, or later picking up on a dangling plot hook...but see my list in 7x02* for a list of some of the plot hooks that they never went back to.)
The Daisy and Daniel part of the episode wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be after watching last week's ep. They just get thrown in a cell, Daisy gets torn up, Nate kills himself being incompatible with the powers, and they leave. We get a little of Daniel's backstory, but nothing special. I wonder if there's going to be fallout for Daisy in the next eps; one would expect, but I'm not counting on it at the pace they're moving.
What it did do was turn me off of the potential of shipping them. I still think they have decent chemistry, but it definitely didn't read like romantic chemistry to me. Companions in arms is fine, and I'm more comfortable with it for shipping reasons, and seems to suit them better. But he's very much treating her as a fellow soldier in this one; even the end doesn't read to me as interest but as not disappearing on her the way the other guy did when he had been wounded (implicitly died, and him being there means she won't have to go through that). Pay it forward, and improve where it came be done better. So while I say the backstory wasn't anything special, it does provide important context for what he does in this ep. Sure, ships built on respect and care are usually my jam, but there isn't time to build very much in the time remaining.
Though, I suppose I have to remind myself that I've disliked all of Daisy's canon relationships and mostly shipped her (such as I ever bothered to) with non-canon options like Mike and Trip and Robbie. So the fact that I'm writing off seeing this as shippy might means I'm supposed to...then again I could see what the writing was doing with Ward and Lincoln and Deke, I just didn't like it (mostly because I didn't like them, especially with her). Also, show keep in mind how much I hate Steve partly for getting between Peggy and Daniel, you don't need to give me another reason to dislike Daisy (at least it's not her fault the way it is Steve's)
But the weirder thing here is, I expected this to be more about Daisy confronting the demons of her backstory. This is basically reliving the story that destroyed (will destroy) her family, and she has more personal dislike for the Malicks than anyone else (as shown in the first adventure this season), plus this is rather reminiscent of what she went through with Hive-Ward; but she has nothing to do in this one. It ends up still being Daniel's story of accepting (at least for now) where he is and that he's going to be part of this team and worry about getting home later (because don't tell me he's given up on it yet). And while I like Daniel and always have, and while I don't care about Daisy and never have, that focus is a bit weird I have to admit. Daisy is treated as the second or third biggest character in the show (she's usually the face of it after Coulson, but still third billed) and yet she has possibly the least arc of anyone in this episode...or a lot of other ones.
I'd say the only other contender in Yoyo, and that's because she spends her time (reasonably) in Mack's arc which is probably the biggest one. And I'd argue Yoyo is more of a character as a supporting player in that one that Daisy is as a prop in that plot. Yoyo is at least an active player, insisting on going along with Mack and getting to enjoy meeting his parents in such an odd way, even smoothing over a few bumps in the road he would have tripped over on his own (and maybe still would have if the Chroni-parents hadn't been so willing to play along).
Mack gets the hardest hit this episode, making a lie of my statement early in the season about the show rarely giving Mack a deep arc or character focus (or at least stretching rare). But I don't really have a lot to say about it; I get why he makes the choices he does even if objectively it's debatable they're the right ones; I get why he's so flustered during a lot of this, but is still capable when he gets past being flustered; I get why he doesn't want to hear the truth, and respect that he'll listen even when it's something he doesn't want to hear. I'm not sure just going off on his own at the end was bright, but I get that too; he didn't go far and expected to have time and contact to get back to the plane or the job when needed. I get why we see him with Yoyo after the fact and that's probably the right choice for the character to make, though I do find myself thinking if Yoyo hadn't been around we could have gotten an interesting interaction with May, because this is very Cavalry; and being the Cavalry can break a person.
I think by the end of this, any of them who weren't already in the Cavalry will probably have joined.
Before I go back to the Coulsoid and May part of the plot (which you know I have thoughts about), I want to talk a bit about Coulsoid's Sam Gamgee speech about sacrifice. It's poetic and appropriate and very Coulson...but by the end of it something about it wasn't working for me. And I think the problem is it reminds me that has learned NOTHING. This isn't the culmination of a character arc, this is what Coulson has been ever since Avengers; sacrifice and dying for a cause, that's easy for Coulson and therefore Coulsoid. But he still focuses on what sacrifice means to the person who chooses to make it, instead of the sacrifices then demanded of those who didn't choose it.
This thought is pretty jumbled, but this was a consistent problem with Coulson during s5; or maybe more-so that the show didn't show that he changed his mind once the crisis was over. He saw -his- death as -his- sacrifice that -he- was prepared to make; not in terms of what he was asking others to sacrifice by letting him die. Searching out a cure would have meant sacrificing his...comfort, principles, certainty (especially if they found a cure that came with uncertainty); but he put more value on those things, than the pain he could spare the people who love him; even if it didn't work they would know they tried everything to save him. Even though he would say in s5 that he wasn't in a hurry to die it seemed like he was more willing to accept dying than the struggle to live.
I'm reminded of two quotes from B5 and ASOIAF (quoting the gist so I don't have to look up the exact quotes)
-Finding something worth dying for easy; do you have anything worth living for?
-We pledge our lives and honor to the Night's Watch, but why do so many think sacrificing their lives is more important that their honor?
(The second is a quote that suspiciously did not make it into GoT the show, and even at the time I wondered why, as it's why the circumstances around Qhorin's death make so much less sense in the show; should have taken more warning from it's absence.)
Or, if you want to come a little closer to home for the writers here, there's also Buffy:
“The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.”
During s5 mostly what I wanted was for him to really realize what he was putting others through when he decided dying was an okay end, I didn't exactly disagree with some of his position though. There was enough going on that making his survival not a priority was a more or less valid choice, they needed to focus on the big picture. In the line of work these people have, the capacity for self sacrifice for a greater cause is important; and even willing to accept his death isn't what makes me think he was actually pretty selfish. That comes in how willfully ignorant he has always been to the value others put on his life. It's one thing for him to (mostly rightly) not make himself the center of the world, not to put his life or happiness over the good of the world or team or May; but at least one of those was saying 'fuck that noise' because he is the gods-damned center of her world. She sacrifices plenty for him, but she's not going to sacrifice him for anything.
(And just so we're clear, May's love can be pretty reckless at times. But I also don't think Coulson ever understood it; by the end he did know she loved him, but I don't think he ever quite got what that meant (and if he did during the Tahiti trip we don't see it). And I suspect he never quite understood the sacrifice he asked of her when he asked her to accept him dying without fighting against it.)
In the end, we're right back in that scene where May has made every plan to stay with him and keep him safe, and he still asks her to kill him and carry on. He's not afraid of dying, he's willing to make the sacrifice so he never hurts anyone directly, it's his life on the line so he treats it as if that's all it is; never seeing, even as she begged him not to do this to her, that it would as good as kill her; he won't see that the sacrifice he's asking of her is bigger than what he's giving up in his.
And for most of seven seasons, I've never understood how he doesn't get it and waited for the day he would. How many lives does he have to live before he realizes his life has value, not just his death?
Cynically I'm now wondering if this is why the show dropped Audrey after s1, along with not having any further discussion of May's mission from Fury; because Audrey's grief and the way Fury took advantage of May's would change what Coulson saw as the cost of his sacrifice, in what others sacrificed because of it. And also maybe why they weren't willing to have May actually grieving in s6 after the role of partner and lover had been settled on one person. I'd always put it down to showing contrast once Sarge showed up and still keeping her reserved in characterization; but the show has most often wanted us to see Coulson's various sacrifices as noble and right, not costly and selfish. And while most of those times probably have been honorable, when you act like all of them are entirely on the right side I start to question more of them than I might if they would acknowledge that some were misguided.
While I'm not sure this counts as evidence for or against the Coulson Swap, maybe this is part of why I want it. I want Coulsoid to tell Coulson to for once in his damned many lives, choose life and choose to live it.
Anyway, I think part of why I went off on such a long rant about that, is it's not even the main time in the episode I think Coulsoid is pretty selfish even if I do think he's completely in love with May. The idea that on some level he's upset about her being emotionally unavailable because he would have come to her for some kind of validation is just...no. Look, Phil-nocchio, do you even think about what she would be feeling is she was feeling things? Maybe being cut off from her emotions is what allows her to be around you without being caught up in confusion and grief every time she looks at you. Maybe her initial assessment of 'you're not Sarge but not Coulson either, because Coulson's still dead,' was simply a less emotional version of what she would have had with her emotions.
But at least this episode points back towards the s1 issue, even though it doesn't quite address it. This at least remembers that May's probably never gotten over losing him the first time much less the second (and that's not counting the time he and Fitz got trapped in the spirit realm, she hadn't even started to deal with her grief that time before she all but threw the Darkhold at Radcliffe and Aida). And I think it kind of hints towards some of her thought process with Sarge last year; she hated Sarge for going around killing people while having Coulson's face, but on some level she did expect that Coulson wouldn't just stay dead and they just had to find a way to find him behind the Sarge stuff that had brought him back.
I did mostly like their argument scene, it was very in character and said some things I've been wanting said either this season or longer. But it was almost too in character as I had a moment when I was worried the show was going to throw out a season and a half of delayed gratification and have her call him Phil. Outside of that waiting, her doing that has not been set up or earned at this stage. Because if it isn't going to happen post Swap with real Phil, it is going to be used to signal her acceptance of Coulsoid as Coulson, and she clearly hasn't yet. Plus, when she finally does, it had better be with all the emotion in the world that she can't get to yet. Then again, I'm not even sure she's called him Coulson, I'd have to pay even closer attention than I do on Phil-watch.
I maintain that there is something off with May's portrayal through this, which is why I keep reaching for an in-universe reason for it rather than blame it on a meta problem with the acting, directing, or writing. I think maybe I should watch some of her scenes with the music off and see if I have the same problem though, because I've thought for years that Bear McCreary was definitely playing for the Philinda ship and adds even more feeling than the acting sometimes. There are a few of their early scenes where if you turn off the music, the shippy implications are not there nearly as strongly as they are with the music but with the music you get the feeling that the world makes sense when they're together
(The specific one I'm most thinking of is om 1x13 where May finds Coulson and Ward frozen after jumping off the train. There's little to no dialog anyway, but in context you can practically hear her heart stop as she runs to him, until she checks his pulse and knows he's alive and then she can breathe again. Turn the sound off and just watch the performance, you can tell she's concerned when she finds them and relieved to realize he/they're alive, but even her smile of relief as she finds Phil's pulse doesn't seem quite as signposted without the sweet, loving music on the soundtrack at that moment.)
But right now, I really don't buy her as not having emotions aside from what she picks up from others. If my Simmons suspicion isn't right, and I haven't entirely given it up yet, I have another possible read on it. That it's as if her emotions were shut away in a thousand little rooms as she was dying, which we can say is what opened her sensitivity to others, and that would be the key to unlocking those feelings again. As she encounters others' emotions it's letting little bits of her own out, opening the corresponding door perhaps (selfishly I think this points to Coulson Swap, she needs to be reconnected with that kind of love, even all the pain that comes with it). It would explain something of why frustration and annoyance are returning more easily than other things, we've heard she's encountered those more often. And I get a sense that she picked up some regret if not exactly sadness in her goodbye to Stoner, which would map onto her reaction to Coulsoid possibly dying. It's not creating or bringing back grief or worry, or even hope that she had it right and he always comes back, but she doesn't come across as unaffected by losing him, and she's definitely managing sympathy for Mack even before she touches him to read his emotions.
The Chronicom-lady touching May so that we could have her use her Chronicom emotional void detection ability (question, what would she get of her own feelings if she could use her new powers on herself?) didn't seem terribly contrived, but fake-Mack-daddy didn't seem very natural. Perhaps it's as simple as the staging didn't allow it to work naturally, but it seemed pretty forced. But then I don't see why the Chronicoms would be testing her ability to sniff them out (the only reason I can think of for them to force physical contact), how would they even know about it, since she didn't until this episode? Though by that token, has May explained this to Mack before she springs it on him with this?
So many thousand words in and I haven't even gotten to the family drama on the plane. Kind of wish I hadn't gone on that rant about Coulson's selfish sacrificing before getting to my thoughts on Simmons. This is more what I expected was going on instead of her being another Chronicom; though I still think there's more she's forcing out of her mind than Fitz's location, like certain elements of the plan that she knows on a subconscious level so she's never surprised but can't divulge how much she knows until they're done.
But in general I am glad we've gotten more of her and Deke these last couple eps. I actually found myself seeing them as much more related here than I usually do; to the point where I was thinking that I weirdly find myself finally seeing them and grandmother and grandson. I think because it's actually played for drama a bit more here than the comedy the situation naturally lends itself to; which in the past has been heightened by Fitz's distaste for Deke. Here Simmons and Deke share a bond of deeper concern for Fitz than the others are in on; they all love him, they're all family, but Deke and Simmons have the cards on the table now and can connect in a different way about that fear.
The last scene with Enoch I have a hard time to get a solid read on. On one hand, I have a hard time seeing Deke's words as genuine as opposed to something Simmons made her errant grandson say as an apology. But Enoch response is hard to read on whether he takes them seriously or if he's being sarcastic. Enoch loves Fitz, probably loves Simmons by this point too, so being called part of the family would mean a lot to him; but since Deke's line is so obviously forced I'm not sure how Enoch takes it exactly.
I didn't really comment on it last week, but I have a bit of interest in Stoner's mindset regarding May. Because they met for an hour if we're being generous and then he never heard from her again because she literally disappeared off the face of the Earth, but he still remembers her and is a bit infatuated. I'm not saying she couldn't have made that much of an impression (I mean, I love May), but it's a lot. And he's still kind of into her through all this, probably more into her by the end than he was Chastity all this time (because May is awesome). It's also hard not to feel a bit sorry for him; May doesn't have the capacity for feelings right now (supposedly), and if she did she's already dealing with a robotic version of the man she loves, she still wouldn't have the capacity to deal with Stoner kinda sorta having feelings for her. I also wouldn't have been opposed to Coulsoid getting a little jealous (the way he calls her Melinda in the argument almost seems like he's calling her out by using her first name, something Coulson rarely did in the first place. If Stoner had been getting away with addressing her that way then Coulsoid's attitude would have come from somewhere), but I think that comes back to wanting him (any version of him) to stop taking her love and devotion for granted.
...I think I lost my point about Stoner. I'm just kind of sad we probably won't see him again I guess.
