Agents of SHIELD 7x10
Aug. 4th, 2020 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsAgents of SHIELD 7x10
This episode is kind of the epitome of fine; there's nothing wrong with it, but I also don't really care about anything in it. And early in the season I was more okay with fine than this late in the game. I should have feelings about how this is going and how it could end, but I don't; whether it ends well or badly I'm going to go off and write AU fic (or try to, as I have for a while) and this season hasn't even given me any bits and pieces that I'd pick up and use in that construction.
I suppose if I gave a damn about Daisy this section of the season has given some elements in that story; but if anything this episode proved just how little I care about that. I normally say that I don't actually hate this character, I just don't care and I get bothered when the show focuses on her too much. But this episode, I was laughing at her pain. Haha, you were just the replacement child after Cora died. Haha, May is still more badass than you. Haha, if this timeline holds, you don't exist (though a. I don't see that happening but b. if it sticks I might actually feel even more bitter about this show wasting so much time over the years on a person who won't ever have existed in the end).
It also turns out that I do still hate Jaiying just as much as I did before.. The show tried to make me care about the less murderous Jaiying, but I apparently still think she's an asshole that I was perfectly fine with her dying. And since I've committed myself to not pulling this show apart on time travel, I'm not going to make a list of all the ways that would screw up the time line; I mean the show starts because of Centipede and apparently that included her genetic material.
Also, Daniel is 100% still thinking about Peggy. I have for years thought there was a strict dichotomy in the writing of this show with the left hand and the right hand never really working in concert with how plots should go or be framed (it starts showing up pretty clearly by midway through s2; I'll always maintain that the introduction to Andrew had very different ideas for what he represented than they used him for even later in the season. And don't even get me started on how there are at least two versions of Simmons the writers use). And now with one hand this show clearly wants us to be into Daisy/Daniel, but the other hand has him constantly making veiled references to Peggy, almost like that's the ship I should root for. And I do still root for them.
Let me try and relate my reaction to the opening scene.
-Is that supposed to be Nathaniel, he looks really different but I don't know when this is and he could have changed his look; also the style could be him.
-Nah can't be Nathaniel. But I do feel like it's going to be someone we know.
-Who did we know that might be at Swordfish at this time?
-It's Garrett isn't it?
-Oh there's Nathaniel.
-Come on, just tell us it's Garrett.
-Yep, that sounds like Garrett's backstory.
-Yeah, definitely Garrett's backstory.
-Come on, just call him Garrett already, it's boring now.
-Finally.
Then again, I am perhaps one of the few who actually still remembers and kind of cares about Garrett. But mostly I remember being really disappointed in his death because I wanted to know more about his history with Coulson, and one presumes May. For me Garrett represented something that Ward only actually was on occasion, an enemy who knew their moves before they made them. Because Garrett knew Coulson, supposedly had for years, so Coulson as head of SHIELD vs. Garrett leading Hydra or at least a cell of it, would have been a natural storyline if they had asked me. Old friends turned enemies (long ago really, but only recently realized by Coulson), betrayal, knowing each other's weak spots (of which Coulson has a lot more); Ward tried to be that at times, but he was too much out for himself instead of trying to outplay Coulson on a higher level.
Also, Garrett is the source of the line “I know you'd follow him to the grave,” so he clearly knows May's weak spot too.
But here, the show jumps through hoops to give 80s Garrett that kind of personal knowledge, and yet doesn't have him be a version of Garrett that Coulson knows. I expected Coulson to recognize Garrett of sight, that this wasn't too many years before they met (...maybe, we really don't have a lot of dates to go on with Coulson's history...
Wait this is a timing thing I will talk about, and it's still confusing even before I try and make it make sense in the messed up timeline. Even in s1 we were given some contradictory ideas on when in their relative careers Coulson and Garrett met; sometimes they would say they were trained together by Fury, and that Fury had taken Coulson at least his wing early on; but it it did also seem like Coulson hadn't been around during the time Garrett became Deathlock, we certainly never get a comment about him remembering Garrett being injured on that mission.
Here we are in 1983, showing Garrett as an active SHIELD agent, and in the know enough to be at Swordfish (not that we quite know who could use the clubhouse by that point); but he isn't Hyrda (if Malick made it a Hyrda bar) because that doesn't happen until 1990. We don't know Coulson's age, but we do know that he was recruited for SHIELD out of high school and was a field agent in 1995 when Captain Marvel is set. They do however call him 'Rookie' in that movie; but it's not very clear what they mean by that. If CM-Coulson is meant to be in his early 20s and fresh out of the Academy, then yeah there's a lot of time before he's likely going to meet Garrett. There is a potential stretch to say Coulson had been out of the Academy for a while but not in the field/on Fury's team, I just think that would be stretching the Rookie descriptor (especially the latter); but it would keep somewhat intact if he didn't meet Garrett until then and be several years after this.
However, May's description in 2x04 implies that agents went from the Academy to field work; certainly that she was rushing to finish at the Academy to get out in the field, and that Coulson was already there when she joined whatever team he was on. The lingering confusion about whether or not they knew each other from the Academy isn't even a factor in this calculation, the implication is that he was already a field agent when she finally graduated.
My point is that they're working their way to making Coulson and May the same age as Mack. Mack did eventually clear up that he was four in 1976, so he was born in 72, maybe 71. If Coulson was meant to be even 25 in 1995, and May is apparently slightly younger than him they would have also been born in the 70-72 range. And there is a super generous option where they're actually younger; if Coulson was a true rookie fresh out of the Academy in 95, then he could have been born in 72-73, with May possibly even younger.
I guarantee the writers did not lay out the time line this much. But I kind of needed something to discuss.)
In most of those ideas, it's still reasonable that May doesn't know Garrett on sight, or that he doesn't has much future history to throw in her face when them do meet. She should have known him at some point in the past, and better than they were written in s1 (but he knew one thing about her that I'm still not sure Coulson ever got).
Also, this is the second time they've referenced the events in Avengers, so I'm expecting something to happen there by the end of the season, and we're getting short on time.
This episode brought something else into focus for me. It kind of makes some sense of why I get so annoyed that the show keeps up this Coulson and Daisy stuff that I do not care about. Because the show only takes the time to give focus to a very limited number of relationships, so when one of them is one I have so little connection to it's annoying. But it wasn't that which brought this into focus. It's that even if the plot is heading towards Fitz, the writing doesn't seem to care about his relationships with most of the team. Yes, the relationship between FitzSimmons is one of the big relationships of the show and it should get a large level of focus, but it's hard to really get into the team as family when so few of the B-tier contributing relationships seem to matter. Remember when Fitz and Mack were best friends? Remember how we haven't actually had Fitz and Daisy interact one on one since the other Fitz tortured her (and there isn't really time to pretend it happened off screen)? Remember how Jemma said they built Coulsoid because they missed Coulson and yet she doesn't interact with him hardly?
Also, remember how we did get Fitz on the coms at the end of last season? Now, I'll be the first to admit that it could have been faked as a way of faking normality at first. But the fact that I don't know if the writers remember is a problem. I'll bring up all the people with Simmons at the temple one more time as evidence that it's either a mistake or just doing a very good job convincing us that is it so it will seem brilliant when it all has a point.
Basically, I have a weird feeling about the gang on the plane. I can see exactly how it's going to go, since Jemma legitimately doesn't 'know' anything about where Fitz is at the moment, but Deke knows about the implant and isn't going to let her die to keep Fitz safe. Enoch would have. And because that plot component is so obvious I can't work up a lot of caring about it.
I kind of do have to commend Daniel for just deciding that time is well and truly fucked at this point, so they might as well do what they want with it. I don't think it will be long before everyone decides they might as well take that attitude.
If I remember to (so I better make at least this note of it), after this season is done I kind of want to line up my feelings about this season and last and see if they follow a similar pattern. In both seasons we had a premier that gave us Simmons on a dark path and then that got ignored by the rest of the season each time. Episode seven was discouraging both seasons, though it was 6x06 where I started to point out the season was too short for that kind of episode. But as I recall last season, ep10 was one of my favorites and I was excited to see how things would wrap up. That is definitely not where I'm at with this season.
And a theory/plot bunny shamelessly stolen from Legends. What if in preparation for this time travel mess, FitzSimmons had to steal a prior version of each team member out of the timeline to keep them safe. So where the plane is going will have a version of the team to help out/keep the actors involved. And it perhaps would actually allow them to do some series-ending fanservice (something that has been shockingly absent from this season) and revisit the characters as they were in the early days.
Another theory, for some reason Fitz is stationed around 2012 so these Avengers references are leading to something. Honestly I kind of expect the next episode's action to be some on the plane and some killing time at the Lighthouse but them all somehow ending up at the same place for the final showdown.
If it was up to me, next episode would have one of the other rescued Inhumans able to help May regain her actual personality and sense of self. Because there's surely not enough time to deal with that in the finale (even if they do go for the reveal that FitzSimmons intentionally nerfed her emotions, that would require some followup), and if the show doesn't resolve what's going on with May's emotions then they can go fuck themselves. This season has not been good for any of the characters and I think May is the only one left that they can even attempt to salvage an arc out what they've done to her; it'll still be mostly bad on that front since they made this choice so they didn't have to write her as a full character this season, but it could still be something.
I am sort of pre-drafting a post-season bitch fest if they can't pull this out of the fire in the last few eps. I hope to be proved wrong, but right now they seem to be heading for a cliff. I might feel a little differently if they hadn't made it so clear this was the end, because I could still hope there was time to do something with what this season has done to the characters; but without even the thought of that time I'm not giving them much benefit of the doubt.
This episode is kind of the epitome of fine; there's nothing wrong with it, but I also don't really care about anything in it. And early in the season I was more okay with fine than this late in the game. I should have feelings about how this is going and how it could end, but I don't; whether it ends well or badly I'm going to go off and write AU fic (or try to, as I have for a while) and this season hasn't even given me any bits and pieces that I'd pick up and use in that construction.
I suppose if I gave a damn about Daisy this section of the season has given some elements in that story; but if anything this episode proved just how little I care about that. I normally say that I don't actually hate this character, I just don't care and I get bothered when the show focuses on her too much. But this episode, I was laughing at her pain. Haha, you were just the replacement child after Cora died. Haha, May is still more badass than you. Haha, if this timeline holds, you don't exist (though a. I don't see that happening but b. if it sticks I might actually feel even more bitter about this show wasting so much time over the years on a person who won't ever have existed in the end).
It also turns out that I do still hate Jaiying just as much as I did before.. The show tried to make me care about the less murderous Jaiying, but I apparently still think she's an asshole that I was perfectly fine with her dying. And since I've committed myself to not pulling this show apart on time travel, I'm not going to make a list of all the ways that would screw up the time line; I mean the show starts because of Centipede and apparently that included her genetic material.
Also, Daniel is 100% still thinking about Peggy. I have for years thought there was a strict dichotomy in the writing of this show with the left hand and the right hand never really working in concert with how plots should go or be framed (it starts showing up pretty clearly by midway through s2; I'll always maintain that the introduction to Andrew had very different ideas for what he represented than they used him for even later in the season. And don't even get me started on how there are at least two versions of Simmons the writers use). And now with one hand this show clearly wants us to be into Daisy/Daniel, but the other hand has him constantly making veiled references to Peggy, almost like that's the ship I should root for. And I do still root for them.
Let me try and relate my reaction to the opening scene.
-Is that supposed to be Nathaniel, he looks really different but I don't know when this is and he could have changed his look; also the style could be him.
-Nah can't be Nathaniel. But I do feel like it's going to be someone we know.
-Who did we know that might be at Swordfish at this time?
-It's Garrett isn't it?
-Oh there's Nathaniel.
-Come on, just tell us it's Garrett.
-Yep, that sounds like Garrett's backstory.
-Yeah, definitely Garrett's backstory.
-Come on, just call him Garrett already, it's boring now.
-Finally.
Then again, I am perhaps one of the few who actually still remembers and kind of cares about Garrett. But mostly I remember being really disappointed in his death because I wanted to know more about his history with Coulson, and one presumes May. For me Garrett represented something that Ward only actually was on occasion, an enemy who knew their moves before they made them. Because Garrett knew Coulson, supposedly had for years, so Coulson as head of SHIELD vs. Garrett leading Hydra or at least a cell of it, would have been a natural storyline if they had asked me. Old friends turned enemies (long ago really, but only recently realized by Coulson), betrayal, knowing each other's weak spots (of which Coulson has a lot more); Ward tried to be that at times, but he was too much out for himself instead of trying to outplay Coulson on a higher level.
Also, Garrett is the source of the line “I know you'd follow him to the grave,” so he clearly knows May's weak spot too.
But here, the show jumps through hoops to give 80s Garrett that kind of personal knowledge, and yet doesn't have him be a version of Garrett that Coulson knows. I expected Coulson to recognize Garrett of sight, that this wasn't too many years before they met (...maybe, we really don't have a lot of dates to go on with Coulson's history...
Wait this is a timing thing I will talk about, and it's still confusing even before I try and make it make sense in the messed up timeline. Even in s1 we were given some contradictory ideas on when in their relative careers Coulson and Garrett met; sometimes they would say they were trained together by Fury, and that Fury had taken Coulson at least his wing early on; but it it did also seem like Coulson hadn't been around during the time Garrett became Deathlock, we certainly never get a comment about him remembering Garrett being injured on that mission.
Here we are in 1983, showing Garrett as an active SHIELD agent, and in the know enough to be at Swordfish (not that we quite know who could use the clubhouse by that point); but he isn't Hyrda (if Malick made it a Hyrda bar) because that doesn't happen until 1990. We don't know Coulson's age, but we do know that he was recruited for SHIELD out of high school and was a field agent in 1995 when Captain Marvel is set. They do however call him 'Rookie' in that movie; but it's not very clear what they mean by that. If CM-Coulson is meant to be in his early 20s and fresh out of the Academy, then yeah there's a lot of time before he's likely going to meet Garrett. There is a potential stretch to say Coulson had been out of the Academy for a while but not in the field/on Fury's team, I just think that would be stretching the Rookie descriptor (especially the latter); but it would keep somewhat intact if he didn't meet Garrett until then and be several years after this.
However, May's description in 2x04 implies that agents went from the Academy to field work; certainly that she was rushing to finish at the Academy to get out in the field, and that Coulson was already there when she joined whatever team he was on. The lingering confusion about whether or not they knew each other from the Academy isn't even a factor in this calculation, the implication is that he was already a field agent when she finally graduated.
My point is that they're working their way to making Coulson and May the same age as Mack. Mack did eventually clear up that he was four in 1976, so he was born in 72, maybe 71. If Coulson was meant to be even 25 in 1995, and May is apparently slightly younger than him they would have also been born in the 70-72 range. And there is a super generous option where they're actually younger; if Coulson was a true rookie fresh out of the Academy in 95, then he could have been born in 72-73, with May possibly even younger.
I guarantee the writers did not lay out the time line this much. But I kind of needed something to discuss.)
In most of those ideas, it's still reasonable that May doesn't know Garrett on sight, or that he doesn't has much future history to throw in her face when them do meet. She should have known him at some point in the past, and better than they were written in s1 (but he knew one thing about her that I'm still not sure Coulson ever got).
Also, this is the second time they've referenced the events in Avengers, so I'm expecting something to happen there by the end of the season, and we're getting short on time.
This episode brought something else into focus for me. It kind of makes some sense of why I get so annoyed that the show keeps up this Coulson and Daisy stuff that I do not care about. Because the show only takes the time to give focus to a very limited number of relationships, so when one of them is one I have so little connection to it's annoying. But it wasn't that which brought this into focus. It's that even if the plot is heading towards Fitz, the writing doesn't seem to care about his relationships with most of the team. Yes, the relationship between FitzSimmons is one of the big relationships of the show and it should get a large level of focus, but it's hard to really get into the team as family when so few of the B-tier contributing relationships seem to matter. Remember when Fitz and Mack were best friends? Remember how we haven't actually had Fitz and Daisy interact one on one since the other Fitz tortured her (and there isn't really time to pretend it happened off screen)? Remember how Jemma said they built Coulsoid because they missed Coulson and yet she doesn't interact with him hardly?
Also, remember how we did get Fitz on the coms at the end of last season? Now, I'll be the first to admit that it could have been faked as a way of faking normality at first. But the fact that I don't know if the writers remember is a problem. I'll bring up all the people with Simmons at the temple one more time as evidence that it's either a mistake or just doing a very good job convincing us that is it so it will seem brilliant when it all has a point.
Basically, I have a weird feeling about the gang on the plane. I can see exactly how it's going to go, since Jemma legitimately doesn't 'know' anything about where Fitz is at the moment, but Deke knows about the implant and isn't going to let her die to keep Fitz safe. Enoch would have. And because that plot component is so obvious I can't work up a lot of caring about it.
I kind of do have to commend Daniel for just deciding that time is well and truly fucked at this point, so they might as well do what they want with it. I don't think it will be long before everyone decides they might as well take that attitude.
If I remember to (so I better make at least this note of it), after this season is done I kind of want to line up my feelings about this season and last and see if they follow a similar pattern. In both seasons we had a premier that gave us Simmons on a dark path and then that got ignored by the rest of the season each time. Episode seven was discouraging both seasons, though it was 6x06 where I started to point out the season was too short for that kind of episode. But as I recall last season, ep10 was one of my favorites and I was excited to see how things would wrap up. That is definitely not where I'm at with this season.
And a theory/plot bunny shamelessly stolen from Legends. What if in preparation for this time travel mess, FitzSimmons had to steal a prior version of each team member out of the timeline to keep them safe. So where the plane is going will have a version of the team to help out/keep the actors involved. And it perhaps would actually allow them to do some series-ending fanservice (something that has been shockingly absent from this season) and revisit the characters as they were in the early days.
Another theory, for some reason Fitz is stationed around 2012 so these Avengers references are leading to something. Honestly I kind of expect the next episode's action to be some on the plane and some killing time at the Lighthouse but them all somehow ending up at the same place for the final showdown.
If it was up to me, next episode would have one of the other rescued Inhumans able to help May regain her actual personality and sense of self. Because there's surely not enough time to deal with that in the finale (even if they do go for the reveal that FitzSimmons intentionally nerfed her emotions, that would require some followup), and if the show doesn't resolve what's going on with May's emotions then they can go fuck themselves. This season has not been good for any of the characters and I think May is the only one left that they can even attempt to salvage an arc out what they've done to her; it'll still be mostly bad on that front since they made this choice so they didn't have to write her as a full character this season, but it could still be something.
I am sort of pre-drafting a post-season bitch fest if they can't pull this out of the fire in the last few eps. I hope to be proved wrong, but right now they seem to be heading for a cliff. I might feel a little differently if they hadn't made it so clear this was the end, because I could still hope there was time to do something with what this season has done to the characters; but without even the thought of that time I'm not giving them much benefit of the doubt.
