Agents of SHIELD 7x12-13 reaction (B)
Aug. 20th, 2020 10:14 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_reviewsSo, having done my initial reactions and feeling like that was not nearly enough to cover my feelings about this show ending, now we move on the the (somewhat) more thoughtful part of my attitudes. I remain very wordy at every turn but have tried to break up my thoughts into categories (episode specific, season specific (plot and character), series overall). I'm sure this won't be my last word on the subject of the series, but I don't know if or when I'll retry it as a review series and if I ever actually finish a fanfic it might be a miracle. For now, let's start the walk through a variety of my own takes on how it ended and how we got there.
Agents of SHIELD 7x12-13 reaction
As I said last time, I didn't want to lose my initial, unfiltered disappointment in the finale, but having slept on it, I want to try reviewing it again. I stand by what I said as a first reaction, this finale was not good, but I want to at least try and approach it more calmly (but there may be some repetition).
However, in the need to come back to it, I have something to say. In the prior post, I loosely compared this with the Arrow finale and said this came up wanting. I didn't really explain that much, but it turns out to have been an apt comparison. Because the Arrow finale wasn't good, I said that at the time, it was a bad episode and what plot it had was weak and pointless; and yet I came out of it feeling like it had done its job and left me feeling...sad but alright with it.
Because the Arrow finale succeeded at something this episode failed at: catharsis. The last 5-10 minutes were clearly going for something like that, giving us an epilog of sorts with knowledge of where each of the characters ended up and that they were doing okay; it just didn't work for me in the slightest. I'll take some of the blame for that, the writers don't have to cater to my specific desires and expectations; and I'm sure this ending worked for some people, but it really didn't for me.
And after spewing my fresh disappointment in the first reaction post, I still felt out of sorts, and it took me a while to identify by name the lack of catharsis I got from the ending. I had expected to cry over the finale; considering the season I didn't expect to like it that much or think the writing was very good, but I expected saying goodbye to these characters to still be sad enough to make me cry. Only I didn't, and so I had all this pent up emotion that hadn't gotten released in reaction to the show itself.
In some ways that did spill out in the previous post; I actually almost made myself cry a couple times thinking about bittersweet moments we didn't get, but that still wasn't the show itself giving me a chance to work through my emotions about it ending. And I still don't really know what to do with the feelings I have about it being over because I'm so annoyed at it ending so badly and that I find almost nothing satisfying about where we left it, but not even in a way where I want to write fanfic about how to fix it (editing note: I had one idea, but it's not a fix for a happy end, but it would be cathartic if my crying over the first few pages is any indication).
Because this isn't a problem with a few dangling plot threads that I'm just 'not quite satisfied' in how they ended. This whole season was flawed to its core and I don't know how to fix it from the ending. If I was feeling ambitious and wanted to rewrite the whole season to get to even a similar ending but built on a foundation that could stand the slightest bit of scrutiny, I might be able to do it; but the writers should have and I don't really want to do their job for them this time out.
And yes, as I alluded to in the other post, I do think there were mandates and restrictions on what they could do with the finale and how they had to leave the characters and the world. Some of that is understandable, they do at least in theory want this to possibly fit into the MCU so they couldn't exactly do a whole universe rewrite and leave it to fic writers to decide how they wanted it to work after we said goodbye. But some of it is really contrived; almost specifically contrived to make it so nothing matters or to let them not give answers.
I'm going to leave a lot of that for when I delve into why none of this season's character arcs work; plus what I've already said about it stinking of contrivance around Coulsoid.
Another thing I sort of glossed over in the middle of a bigger rant was how this plot and resolution don't work. They don't even give the paper thin excuse that Fitz knew everything that had to be done though the Time Stream, I'm just creating that because it's the closest I have to an explanation for how this could have ever worked.
To start with, no really, where did the Time Stream come from? Was this tech the Chronicoms always had? If so, why hadn't they used it before? How would Enoch have it? Why wouldn't it have come into play in s5? Or in the aftermath when they thought humans messing with the timeline had been a bad move? I thought about saying there was a possible read that claiming the hunt for Fitz was because he should have died was always just a cover and the Chronicoms were always looking to get their hands on time travel, but I don't think that works either...
My questions about how and when the Chronicoms developed time travel remain; we never hear about them having access to the monolith the way the Zephyr needs to have it, so that implies they always could have figured it out and they just hadn't before for...reasons. And I will never understand the thought process once they had time travel. 'So we wanted to kidnap some humans to show us how to time travel so we could go back and save Chronica 2; now we have time travel but instead of saving Chronica 2 we're going to make it easier to conquer Earth to be Chronica 3; and also getting petty vengeance on the humans who said they couldn't help us invent time travel in the first place (which was true and we now know that).' Maybe, and this is me doing the writing for them which I said I wasn't going to do too much of, they had already invented time travel and the Time Stream before they came to Earth (in the week and a half since FitzSimmons had escaped) and the Hunters who had taken command by then really were just petty enough for this course of action to make sense.
But back to why FitzSimmons' plan doesn't work. Because Simmons didn't know what the plan was. The team makes no effort to save Cora, because they don't know that they should. They stumble into the Inhuman plot by accident but at just the right time for it to have made a difference if only they knew they should; but they didn't so they don't. It was Daisy's idea for them to go to Afterlife, not Simmons (as if Simmons had at least a subconscious knowledge that they needed to go there) or Enoch (who should have known the plan anyway); then they sent May and Yoyo, arguably the two team members most likely to help take Cora out once they saw how dangerous she was (you know what might have made May more inclined to help Cora, if anyone had tried to help her regain her emotions which would have included her guilt over Bahrain, but no one cared).
It sure seems in the end that FitzSimmons (+Enoch) did have time travel under control, so they weren't just riding in the Chronicoms' wake. I guess earlier on Simmons talked about how much more energy it took to make their own jumps as opposed to surfing in the Chronicoms' wake; but why couldn't they just have Flint make them more monolith pieces? There was also a lot of monolith left in the Temple when they left. And even making some allowance (though I'm not sure I should) that they couldn't just jump back in their own timeline and pick up Cora, but instead did have to make multiple stops in another timeline to try and keep Cora alive so they could rescue her; the only reason it ended up happening was because of Nathaniel actually doing what apparently was supposed to be FitzSimmons' goal.
This is how I end up with conclusions that turn characters into fourth dimensional chess players and by extension assholes. It made sense when I was reviewing TSCC, partly because I was putting that onus on future-John, and because future-John could well be such a game player and had been twisted and broken by being tied to the wheel of fate his whole life; plus in that theory he was working to play out the timeline as it was, not set things up for a different future. But here we'd have to assume it of Fitz certainly, and while Simmons may have forgotten she did sign off on this plan initially. Saying that FitzSimmons could have created the conditions by which a trip to Afterlife would have been necessary (either because of Yoyo's lost powers or May struggling with her own feelings/powers) only works if someone who knew the plan was actually steering things in that direction. Alternately, and even more of an asshole move, this way of thinking could say there was some kind of contingency plan in case the team failed to do what they had no idea they were supposed to do; that Fitz knew that the Chronicoms would also be interested in Cora/her powers...except they're not, Nate is. So that pushes the contingency plan back to saving Nate who they somehow know would be the one Sybil turned to and they'd go kill off people at Afterlife but save Cora...yeah I think this alternate plan is even worse than the first.
Also, why is Enoch so surprised and annoyed when he's left behind, if he had to be in order to build the quantum portal machine? If we hadn't seen some of his other stuff in that episode, I'd have been willing to say he got himself left behind to accomplish that; he didn't need to hang out with Koenig as long as he did when the time was counting down on them. He wasn't that far away from the plane especially at the buzzer, but he could have been faking missing his ride if he was in on the plan. But when it's just him and Koenig he still acts like he's making the best of a bad situation. And also, when did he finish building the thing? If he had finished by 1955 (and could be considering he seems to have dispersed the parts after WW2) I guess that could explain his readiness to leave. But I also have to wonder how Hydra (or SHIELD) never smashed into that side room if it was left unattended all this time and the bars been redone a few times.
But all of this hypothetical ability to have planned what needed to be done flies in the face of needing Coulsoid to put the final pieces together and find a way to save them. It would be one thing if the problem was that the intended plan just didn't work, or if things had gotten too far out of wack for the original plan to work and Coulson/oid's ability to take disparate parts and put them together was a backup plan. But that's not what we get either.
Besides, if anyone is going to reference Coulson being necessary for putting the pieces together it should be May; sure as hell shouldn't be this Fitz who definitely never heard that argument.
And have I mentioned the fact that Fitz doesn't react to Enoch's death at all and how that's a total travesty and that I'm glad Enoch isn't here to see how his 'best friend' doesn't care a damn about him. Although, to be fair, there are a few points this episode where I swear characters were meant to have reactions to things, but it never actually happened.
Then we get to the question of, if it was always intended that they'd create and alternate time line from which they could rescue Cora, then why bother trying to preserve it as they knew it? Especially after the 50s. There's a case to be made that if they let things go down a different path earlier, then Cora wouldn't be born for them to...you know, I don't want to say 'use her,' but they really are; but at some point, if the need was for Cora and her power then why not go to Afterlife? Did FitzSimmons decide it was okay to wipe out the Inhumans of this universe in order to be able to make off with Cora without interference?
Which...might not be far from the truth. After all, Fitz (and I assume Simmons and Enoch back when they could weigh in on things) doesn't seem very concerned about the state they're leaving the new timeline in; it takes Coulsoid's intervention to say that no they have to help these people and not leave them to the danger the team is fleeing. And...as a final step to the way the series has eroded FitzSimmons innocence, that could have been brilliant...if I thought that's what they were doing. FitzSimmons have not always remained good people, that's been shown before (even if it usually gets ignored as soon as it's on display), and is evidenced by the fact that I absolutely can see them selling out their own team in order to have the right pieces to finish this mission. But much like so many things about how things end up, if that was true we'd need a lot more time to explore the effects of going there.
(Look, I let the time travel logic slide until the season ended and I knew what they were going for with it. It turns out, it's just as bad as I thought, just in different ways since we're not expected to think it's the same world in the end.)
I'm really confused about how this season was produced. In a normal season (not just of this show, but most shows) I'd say they were making it up as they went along and that was why some things don't hang together very well in the final analysis. But because I know they produced this season so far in advance I know they weren't exactly rushing up against deadlines. I've known shows that are literally rushing final prints of episodes out the day-of because by the end of a 22 episode season you are working right up the wire especially on an effects heavy show. But they finished filming on this season a year ago, and I have to wonder why do it that way. They took a year off of airing between season 5&6, then likely filmed 6&7 back to back (because I still maintain they function as a single season, plus having filmed it a while back), but since they knew they had these two seasons, that would imply that s7 should have had more story prep time than s6. Unless they did something stupid like not laying out the stories ahead of time when they were working so far ahead of the usual deadlines and not leaving themselves any time on the new schedule to revise the story so it actually hangs together. So in spite of having more than two years between the end of s5 and the beginning of s7, s7 feels like it was rushed out in a couple months and none of that time was put into early drafts of the season arc just making it up as they went along, not even able to give the actors clues as to their ultimate motivations.
In my first reaction I didn't mention the Davis return, because I hadn't yet decided what to make of it; it also took some time to actually understand what had happened. I was asking if he had been a robot all along and that was how he survived s4; or had they time traveled again, or if this was what they were doing with the Chronicoms, implanting them with human personalities. But I think this was what Piper wanted from Simmons, was to make an android version of Davis. Which...I'm not exactly okay with that either. What do his wife and son think of this development? Have Coulsoid and LMDavis been helping each other come to terms with being robots? When was his brain-scan taken for them to load into him? Why rebuild him with the scar instead of his s4 look?
Also, I can't help but notice in the look back to the end of s6 they seem to have forgotten Piper's jacked-up hand and Flint's broken leg.
Also, part of why I figured early on in last season's finale that time was going to get reworked was the massacre at SHIELD by the Chronicoms, but that didn't get undone. All those guys are still dead and no one seems to care. Plus, we never did find out what happened to Snowflake (given my track record, this means nothing; but my theory has for a while been that Sarge's crew were never actually real anyway and all projections by his creation power similar to Izel's. It's why he never really cared when they died – aside from just being a dick – he knew they'd respawn eventually, and he never had to actually deal with loss, something the Coulson in him would have been okay with; also possibly why they all spoke and wrote in English if the Coulson part had enough input on that). Also, what about Deke's people, did they get slaughtered too?
I've also thought that, while I don't know how it could have worked with the plot, I wish Coulsoid had been with the team that went to the temple. May's dying wish (and I see no reason to revise my opinion that May did die in that Temple and this now is someone else) was for some part of Coulson to have survived and come back to them. For Coulsoid to have filled that wish, been by her side even if she was too far gone to consciously know it, maybe even have heard part of what she said when she was dying, that could have been beautiful and heartbreaking. Since I don't think it could have worked with other things, I won't quite say this is another instance of them not putting any care into writing their relationship this season, but it does continue to show it was pretty far from a priority.
I mostly covered in the first reaction that I hope Deke can help out the alternate versions of the characters, and it has since occurred to me that he will definitely get May and Coulson together in that universe, and Deke will somehow find a way to get them to name their kid Daisy (or it will just happen and Deke will get a smile and chuckle out of it because that does make a lot of sense). It may not be my thing, but it totally fits the show for that to be the conclusion. That in another universe, she is their kid.
And as for Daisy/Daniel, if they had skipped from about 7x06 to where they are in the epilog, it might actually be more believable without the super rushed 'buildup.' Yeah I'd be complaining about the lack of buildup, but if they had put that same time into developing them actually caring about each other instead of rushing into shipping material it would be better than this (though I wouldn't know what it was better than). In the mid part of the season I was willing to believe the show could go there; I wasn't happy, because Daniel belongs with Peggy and I cannot stress enough how much I insist on that on order to spite fuck you Steve Rogers (it's just his name now) if nothing else. But if they had built a story about Daniel coming to terms with having lost his world and time (and the woman he loved) and having to adjust, then saying in the end that he and Daisy were progressing now that he was more at peace and surviving being better than dying; it could have worked (and been a reflection of Philinda's issues, which would have been no more oedipal than what we got with her continuing to compare Daniel and Coulson/oid).
Which is kind of what I keep coming back to with this season; they sacrificed any time for character and relationship development (especially the ones we already cared about) in favor of the plot; and the plot was too fast, on rails, and sucked. And seeing with something like Arrow, I can let go of a bad plot if I get enough good character work out of it (and it's not like Arrow's finale was amazing at that); but I can't make that trade here because there's nothing at all to hold on to.
Believe it or not, I do have a few spare thoughts I realize fit better here than moving to the season analysis. They're much more tied in with factors of this episode than the failures of the season overall. Although it almost would work there, because I have another big picture question:
How does the explanation for FitzSimmons plan explain all the stuff they had on the plane? Even if they had a good stock pile of food and water and medical supplies, they would have had to get the materials for building all this from somewhere, and we know the Zephyr doesn't have unlimited supplies of fuel for them to have gone out and regularly bartered (they're also pretty bad at it as we saw in s6).
Basically, I can accept that they had made counterfeit money to use on the mission, even fakes so good it could pass in most if not all historical times; but I don't believe they had all the chemicals needed to pull it off on the plane. To say nothing of building a time drive, and android version of Coulson, a practically magic healing bed, all the guns and what transports they had; oh and by the way, the Zephyr was pretty bad off from the Shrike zombie attack at the end of last season (how did they get flying in the first place?). And then be able to just whip up a new leg for Daniel because the show seems to want to erase all the physically disabled characters' problems (and I say that as someone who regularly tries to regrow Coulson's hand in fic attempts because I don't think people loosing limbs was ever well handled either; except Agent Carter did handle it fairly well with Daniel).
I've always had a notion that they had cannibalized Enoch for parts when it came to building Coulsoid; or I did think that until they magically regrew his body a few episodes back (I really wish they hadn't been able to do that so easily, now it raises the question that even if he does decide to opt out they could just make a new body). Sure, if they did crack Darkhold energy then my questions about how they could build all the other stuff (including their physical books that I'm sure weren't on the plane when Izel stole it) go away a bit, but they never actually acknowledged that they were using Darkhold tech (and certainly didn't deal with the consequences of that choice).
While we're on the subject, Alya spent her entire childhood on the Zephyr. And while there is something a bit poetic about that, as in the other other timeline she would have grown up in the Lighthouse after the destruction of Earth, we probably could have used some acknowledging how weird it was for her to be on Earth. That thought actually gave the FitzSimmons ending more meaning for me than it had otherwise. I'd always kind of expected them (and maybe others) to retire after this mission, they'd done enough. But thinking about the ways their daughter might have lived, but now can grow up running around the garden is a nice thought. But I don't think the show knows that that's what makes it work; not just because they don't say it, but considering Coulsoid's ending it's easy for me to think the writers can miss the point. The focus is on FitzSimmons finally getting to live their lives together (specifically on Simmons in their final scene), not on Simmons getting to see the life that all their hardship had earned. It's a subtle distinction that I definitely didn't feel in the episode and wish I had.
Plus I can tell that we're supposed to develop a very quick affection for Alya and FitzSimmons as parents, but I don't feel it (as perhaps evidenced by the fact that I got the most reaction out of comparing her fate in Deke's old timeline to life she'll have here; than I did any scene actually involving her in the episode). It just further highlights what I've been saying about these not being the characters we knew; we don't see these developments for them, we're told they happened and that we should care, but not given any point of connection to the way things developed.
Also, does Alya miss Enoch? He must have been around her entire life (the only person besides her parents she knew) even though we don't see him in the flashbacks; hell, he probably delivered her since I don't think Fitz would have handled that well. Justice for Enoch.
Oh, and Justice for Talbot. I wanted Daisy to bump into him when she was floating in space. I've never fully believed he was dead for good, he's full of gravitonium and floating out in space, he could come back.
And I think that's finally as good a time as any to move on to discussing things in more season long terms.
Or it was until I went to post my immediate thoughts and realized there were a couple things from that I still wanted to address again.
-I still feel like what they did with Lola (if that's even Lola) was a desecration; and I still feel that it's a reflection of how terrible the ending is in terms of missing the fucking point. But I keep coming back to this again; it could have been better if May was there. If Coulsoid got in the car, maybe even had pressed the update appearance button, but then we panned around and saw May had gotten into the passenger seat. One of them makes a comment about that being quite a change, and then they remind themselves that they're all about embracing change now. That sends the message I'd like to think they were going for. That this version of happily ever after may not look quite the way it would in a fairer world, but it can still be good. But having him alone in a car that doesn't even reflect the character I actually cared about undermines any acceptability it might have had.
-In the reaction (and somewhat here) I brought up how the reveal of FitzSimmons' timeline doesn't actually explain how they knew a lot of what they did going into this mission. They lost communication with what was going on in the Temple long before the situation with Izel had been resolved, and it's not like Piper and Flint could have told them about it. How would they know to show up with the stasis pod for May when they didn't even know she was back?
Now one argument would be that Fitz could see it with the Time Stream; could look and see that the team had in fact beaten Izel, so Simmons didn't need to show up with people to fight Sarge and Izel before they even got the Chronicom adventure, and in so doing knew that May was with them but needed immediate medical care. That would debatably be allowed. But what else could Fitz see as to what happened back on Earth? Did he see the 'original timeline' where there was no extraction plan and the team couldn't go back to the Zephyr because FitzSimmons had stolen it? Did he see the Chronicoms win? There were years FitzSimmons had this in the works, at any point could they see what was going on back on Earth; did they see their friends die? Was it all at once or was it gradual as they tried to resist but couldn't succeed against the alien robots?
There could have been a powerful story in that, shame we'll never hear about it. Also continues to make them kind of dicks to have sat around watching it happen saying 'we'll fix it eventually.' It's also the problem with multiverse logic, because the same logic that says the Chronicoms didn't rewrite history for the characters' timeline; FitzSimmons wouldn't actually be rewriting the timeline that happened while they were floating around in space.
Unless it's more of a time loop and maybe they could always see a future where they succeeded and their work was to get all the pieces so that it would happen? Or is it Bill & Ted logic where they say 'once we get back to this time we'll need to send some people to help our prior selves do things' and then they're just there? But B&T logic is actually time loop logic that isn't that hard to understand so I don't think that lets anyone off the hook for allowing certain things to happen and not actually having a plan for how to create the result they intended. FitzSimmons are far too smart to not to be able to use that kind of logic better than Bill and Ted.
(Maybe I also need to do a piece on why I always assume time travel needs someone someone pulling strings, but I probably won't.)
Agents of SHIELD 7x12-13 reaction
As I said last time, I didn't want to lose my initial, unfiltered disappointment in the finale, but having slept on it, I want to try reviewing it again. I stand by what I said as a first reaction, this finale was not good, but I want to at least try and approach it more calmly (but there may be some repetition).
However, in the need to come back to it, I have something to say. In the prior post, I loosely compared this with the Arrow finale and said this came up wanting. I didn't really explain that much, but it turns out to have been an apt comparison. Because the Arrow finale wasn't good, I said that at the time, it was a bad episode and what plot it had was weak and pointless; and yet I came out of it feeling like it had done its job and left me feeling...sad but alright with it.
Because the Arrow finale succeeded at something this episode failed at: catharsis. The last 5-10 minutes were clearly going for something like that, giving us an epilog of sorts with knowledge of where each of the characters ended up and that they were doing okay; it just didn't work for me in the slightest. I'll take some of the blame for that, the writers don't have to cater to my specific desires and expectations; and I'm sure this ending worked for some people, but it really didn't for me.
And after spewing my fresh disappointment in the first reaction post, I still felt out of sorts, and it took me a while to identify by name the lack of catharsis I got from the ending. I had expected to cry over the finale; considering the season I didn't expect to like it that much or think the writing was very good, but I expected saying goodbye to these characters to still be sad enough to make me cry. Only I didn't, and so I had all this pent up emotion that hadn't gotten released in reaction to the show itself.
In some ways that did spill out in the previous post; I actually almost made myself cry a couple times thinking about bittersweet moments we didn't get, but that still wasn't the show itself giving me a chance to work through my emotions about it ending. And I still don't really know what to do with the feelings I have about it being over because I'm so annoyed at it ending so badly and that I find almost nothing satisfying about where we left it, but not even in a way where I want to write fanfic about how to fix it (editing note: I had one idea, but it's not a fix for a happy end, but it would be cathartic if my crying over the first few pages is any indication).
Because this isn't a problem with a few dangling plot threads that I'm just 'not quite satisfied' in how they ended. This whole season was flawed to its core and I don't know how to fix it from the ending. If I was feeling ambitious and wanted to rewrite the whole season to get to even a similar ending but built on a foundation that could stand the slightest bit of scrutiny, I might be able to do it; but the writers should have and I don't really want to do their job for them this time out.
And yes, as I alluded to in the other post, I do think there were mandates and restrictions on what they could do with the finale and how they had to leave the characters and the world. Some of that is understandable, they do at least in theory want this to possibly fit into the MCU so they couldn't exactly do a whole universe rewrite and leave it to fic writers to decide how they wanted it to work after we said goodbye. But some of it is really contrived; almost specifically contrived to make it so nothing matters or to let them not give answers.
I'm going to leave a lot of that for when I delve into why none of this season's character arcs work; plus what I've already said about it stinking of contrivance around Coulsoid.
Another thing I sort of glossed over in the middle of a bigger rant was how this plot and resolution don't work. They don't even give the paper thin excuse that Fitz knew everything that had to be done though the Time Stream, I'm just creating that because it's the closest I have to an explanation for how this could have ever worked.
To start with, no really, where did the Time Stream come from? Was this tech the Chronicoms always had? If so, why hadn't they used it before? How would Enoch have it? Why wouldn't it have come into play in s5? Or in the aftermath when they thought humans messing with the timeline had been a bad move? I thought about saying there was a possible read that claiming the hunt for Fitz was because he should have died was always just a cover and the Chronicoms were always looking to get their hands on time travel, but I don't think that works either...
My questions about how and when the Chronicoms developed time travel remain; we never hear about them having access to the monolith the way the Zephyr needs to have it, so that implies they always could have figured it out and they just hadn't before for...reasons. And I will never understand the thought process once they had time travel. 'So we wanted to kidnap some humans to show us how to time travel so we could go back and save Chronica 2; now we have time travel but instead of saving Chronica 2 we're going to make it easier to conquer Earth to be Chronica 3; and also getting petty vengeance on the humans who said they couldn't help us invent time travel in the first place (which was true and we now know that).' Maybe, and this is me doing the writing for them which I said I wasn't going to do too much of, they had already invented time travel and the Time Stream before they came to Earth (in the week and a half since FitzSimmons had escaped) and the Hunters who had taken command by then really were just petty enough for this course of action to make sense.
But back to why FitzSimmons' plan doesn't work. Because Simmons didn't know what the plan was. The team makes no effort to save Cora, because they don't know that they should. They stumble into the Inhuman plot by accident but at just the right time for it to have made a difference if only they knew they should; but they didn't so they don't. It was Daisy's idea for them to go to Afterlife, not Simmons (as if Simmons had at least a subconscious knowledge that they needed to go there) or Enoch (who should have known the plan anyway); then they sent May and Yoyo, arguably the two team members most likely to help take Cora out once they saw how dangerous she was (you know what might have made May more inclined to help Cora, if anyone had tried to help her regain her emotions which would have included her guilt over Bahrain, but no one cared).
It sure seems in the end that FitzSimmons (+Enoch) did have time travel under control, so they weren't just riding in the Chronicoms' wake. I guess earlier on Simmons talked about how much more energy it took to make their own jumps as opposed to surfing in the Chronicoms' wake; but why couldn't they just have Flint make them more monolith pieces? There was also a lot of monolith left in the Temple when they left. And even making some allowance (though I'm not sure I should) that they couldn't just jump back in their own timeline and pick up Cora, but instead did have to make multiple stops in another timeline to try and keep Cora alive so they could rescue her; the only reason it ended up happening was because of Nathaniel actually doing what apparently was supposed to be FitzSimmons' goal.
This is how I end up with conclusions that turn characters into fourth dimensional chess players and by extension assholes. It made sense when I was reviewing TSCC, partly because I was putting that onus on future-John, and because future-John could well be such a game player and had been twisted and broken by being tied to the wheel of fate his whole life; plus in that theory he was working to play out the timeline as it was, not set things up for a different future. But here we'd have to assume it of Fitz certainly, and while Simmons may have forgotten she did sign off on this plan initially. Saying that FitzSimmons could have created the conditions by which a trip to Afterlife would have been necessary (either because of Yoyo's lost powers or May struggling with her own feelings/powers) only works if someone who knew the plan was actually steering things in that direction. Alternately, and even more of an asshole move, this way of thinking could say there was some kind of contingency plan in case the team failed to do what they had no idea they were supposed to do; that Fitz knew that the Chronicoms would also be interested in Cora/her powers...except they're not, Nate is. So that pushes the contingency plan back to saving Nate who they somehow know would be the one Sybil turned to and they'd go kill off people at Afterlife but save Cora...yeah I think this alternate plan is even worse than the first.
Also, why is Enoch so surprised and annoyed when he's left behind, if he had to be in order to build the quantum portal machine? If we hadn't seen some of his other stuff in that episode, I'd have been willing to say he got himself left behind to accomplish that; he didn't need to hang out with Koenig as long as he did when the time was counting down on them. He wasn't that far away from the plane especially at the buzzer, but he could have been faking missing his ride if he was in on the plan. But when it's just him and Koenig he still acts like he's making the best of a bad situation. And also, when did he finish building the thing? If he had finished by 1955 (and could be considering he seems to have dispersed the parts after WW2) I guess that could explain his readiness to leave. But I also have to wonder how Hydra (or SHIELD) never smashed into that side room if it was left unattended all this time and the bars been redone a few times.
But all of this hypothetical ability to have planned what needed to be done flies in the face of needing Coulsoid to put the final pieces together and find a way to save them. It would be one thing if the problem was that the intended plan just didn't work, or if things had gotten too far out of wack for the original plan to work and Coulson/oid's ability to take disparate parts and put them together was a backup plan. But that's not what we get either.
Besides, if anyone is going to reference Coulson being necessary for putting the pieces together it should be May; sure as hell shouldn't be this Fitz who definitely never heard that argument.
And have I mentioned the fact that Fitz doesn't react to Enoch's death at all and how that's a total travesty and that I'm glad Enoch isn't here to see how his 'best friend' doesn't care a damn about him. Although, to be fair, there are a few points this episode where I swear characters were meant to have reactions to things, but it never actually happened.
Then we get to the question of, if it was always intended that they'd create and alternate time line from which they could rescue Cora, then why bother trying to preserve it as they knew it? Especially after the 50s. There's a case to be made that if they let things go down a different path earlier, then Cora wouldn't be born for them to...you know, I don't want to say 'use her,' but they really are; but at some point, if the need was for Cora and her power then why not go to Afterlife? Did FitzSimmons decide it was okay to wipe out the Inhumans of this universe in order to be able to make off with Cora without interference?
Which...might not be far from the truth. After all, Fitz (and I assume Simmons and Enoch back when they could weigh in on things) doesn't seem very concerned about the state they're leaving the new timeline in; it takes Coulsoid's intervention to say that no they have to help these people and not leave them to the danger the team is fleeing. And...as a final step to the way the series has eroded FitzSimmons innocence, that could have been brilliant...if I thought that's what they were doing. FitzSimmons have not always remained good people, that's been shown before (even if it usually gets ignored as soon as it's on display), and is evidenced by the fact that I absolutely can see them selling out their own team in order to have the right pieces to finish this mission. But much like so many things about how things end up, if that was true we'd need a lot more time to explore the effects of going there.
(Look, I let the time travel logic slide until the season ended and I knew what they were going for with it. It turns out, it's just as bad as I thought, just in different ways since we're not expected to think it's the same world in the end.)
I'm really confused about how this season was produced. In a normal season (not just of this show, but most shows) I'd say they were making it up as they went along and that was why some things don't hang together very well in the final analysis. But because I know they produced this season so far in advance I know they weren't exactly rushing up against deadlines. I've known shows that are literally rushing final prints of episodes out the day-of because by the end of a 22 episode season you are working right up the wire especially on an effects heavy show. But they finished filming on this season a year ago, and I have to wonder why do it that way. They took a year off of airing between season 5&6, then likely filmed 6&7 back to back (because I still maintain they function as a single season, plus having filmed it a while back), but since they knew they had these two seasons, that would imply that s7 should have had more story prep time than s6. Unless they did something stupid like not laying out the stories ahead of time when they were working so far ahead of the usual deadlines and not leaving themselves any time on the new schedule to revise the story so it actually hangs together. So in spite of having more than two years between the end of s5 and the beginning of s7, s7 feels like it was rushed out in a couple months and none of that time was put into early drafts of the season arc just making it up as they went along, not even able to give the actors clues as to their ultimate motivations.
In my first reaction I didn't mention the Davis return, because I hadn't yet decided what to make of it; it also took some time to actually understand what had happened. I was asking if he had been a robot all along and that was how he survived s4; or had they time traveled again, or if this was what they were doing with the Chronicoms, implanting them with human personalities. But I think this was what Piper wanted from Simmons, was to make an android version of Davis. Which...I'm not exactly okay with that either. What do his wife and son think of this development? Have Coulsoid and LMDavis been helping each other come to terms with being robots? When was his brain-scan taken for them to load into him? Why rebuild him with the scar instead of his s4 look?
Also, I can't help but notice in the look back to the end of s6 they seem to have forgotten Piper's jacked-up hand and Flint's broken leg.
Also, part of why I figured early on in last season's finale that time was going to get reworked was the massacre at SHIELD by the Chronicoms, but that didn't get undone. All those guys are still dead and no one seems to care. Plus, we never did find out what happened to Snowflake (given my track record, this means nothing; but my theory has for a while been that Sarge's crew were never actually real anyway and all projections by his creation power similar to Izel's. It's why he never really cared when they died – aside from just being a dick – he knew they'd respawn eventually, and he never had to actually deal with loss, something the Coulson in him would have been okay with; also possibly why they all spoke and wrote in English if the Coulson part had enough input on that). Also, what about Deke's people, did they get slaughtered too?
I've also thought that, while I don't know how it could have worked with the plot, I wish Coulsoid had been with the team that went to the temple. May's dying wish (and I see no reason to revise my opinion that May did die in that Temple and this now is someone else) was for some part of Coulson to have survived and come back to them. For Coulsoid to have filled that wish, been by her side even if she was too far gone to consciously know it, maybe even have heard part of what she said when she was dying, that could have been beautiful and heartbreaking. Since I don't think it could have worked with other things, I won't quite say this is another instance of them not putting any care into writing their relationship this season, but it does continue to show it was pretty far from a priority.
I mostly covered in the first reaction that I hope Deke can help out the alternate versions of the characters, and it has since occurred to me that he will definitely get May and Coulson together in that universe, and Deke will somehow find a way to get them to name their kid Daisy (or it will just happen and Deke will get a smile and chuckle out of it because that does make a lot of sense). It may not be my thing, but it totally fits the show for that to be the conclusion. That in another universe, she is their kid.
And as for Daisy/Daniel, if they had skipped from about 7x06 to where they are in the epilog, it might actually be more believable without the super rushed 'buildup.' Yeah I'd be complaining about the lack of buildup, but if they had put that same time into developing them actually caring about each other instead of rushing into shipping material it would be better than this (though I wouldn't know what it was better than). In the mid part of the season I was willing to believe the show could go there; I wasn't happy, because Daniel belongs with Peggy and I cannot stress enough how much I insist on that on order to spite fuck you Steve Rogers (it's just his name now) if nothing else. But if they had built a story about Daniel coming to terms with having lost his world and time (and the woman he loved) and having to adjust, then saying in the end that he and Daisy were progressing now that he was more at peace and surviving being better than dying; it could have worked (and been a reflection of Philinda's issues, which would have been no more oedipal than what we got with her continuing to compare Daniel and Coulson/oid).
Which is kind of what I keep coming back to with this season; they sacrificed any time for character and relationship development (especially the ones we already cared about) in favor of the plot; and the plot was too fast, on rails, and sucked. And seeing with something like Arrow, I can let go of a bad plot if I get enough good character work out of it (and it's not like Arrow's finale was amazing at that); but I can't make that trade here because there's nothing at all to hold on to.
Believe it or not, I do have a few spare thoughts I realize fit better here than moving to the season analysis. They're much more tied in with factors of this episode than the failures of the season overall. Although it almost would work there, because I have another big picture question:
How does the explanation for FitzSimmons plan explain all the stuff they had on the plane? Even if they had a good stock pile of food and water and medical supplies, they would have had to get the materials for building all this from somewhere, and we know the Zephyr doesn't have unlimited supplies of fuel for them to have gone out and regularly bartered (they're also pretty bad at it as we saw in s6).
Basically, I can accept that they had made counterfeit money to use on the mission, even fakes so good it could pass in most if not all historical times; but I don't believe they had all the chemicals needed to pull it off on the plane. To say nothing of building a time drive, and android version of Coulson, a practically magic healing bed, all the guns and what transports they had; oh and by the way, the Zephyr was pretty bad off from the Shrike zombie attack at the end of last season (how did they get flying in the first place?). And then be able to just whip up a new leg for Daniel because the show seems to want to erase all the physically disabled characters' problems (and I say that as someone who regularly tries to regrow Coulson's hand in fic attempts because I don't think people loosing limbs was ever well handled either; except Agent Carter did handle it fairly well with Daniel).
I've always had a notion that they had cannibalized Enoch for parts when it came to building Coulsoid; or I did think that until they magically regrew his body a few episodes back (I really wish they hadn't been able to do that so easily, now it raises the question that even if he does decide to opt out they could just make a new body). Sure, if they did crack Darkhold energy then my questions about how they could build all the other stuff (including their physical books that I'm sure weren't on the plane when Izel stole it) go away a bit, but they never actually acknowledged that they were using Darkhold tech (and certainly didn't deal with the consequences of that choice).
While we're on the subject, Alya spent her entire childhood on the Zephyr. And while there is something a bit poetic about that, as in the other other timeline she would have grown up in the Lighthouse after the destruction of Earth, we probably could have used some acknowledging how weird it was for her to be on Earth. That thought actually gave the FitzSimmons ending more meaning for me than it had otherwise. I'd always kind of expected them (and maybe others) to retire after this mission, they'd done enough. But thinking about the ways their daughter might have lived, but now can grow up running around the garden is a nice thought. But I don't think the show knows that that's what makes it work; not just because they don't say it, but considering Coulsoid's ending it's easy for me to think the writers can miss the point. The focus is on FitzSimmons finally getting to live their lives together (specifically on Simmons in their final scene), not on Simmons getting to see the life that all their hardship had earned. It's a subtle distinction that I definitely didn't feel in the episode and wish I had.
Plus I can tell that we're supposed to develop a very quick affection for Alya and FitzSimmons as parents, but I don't feel it (as perhaps evidenced by the fact that I got the most reaction out of comparing her fate in Deke's old timeline to life she'll have here; than I did any scene actually involving her in the episode). It just further highlights what I've been saying about these not being the characters we knew; we don't see these developments for them, we're told they happened and that we should care, but not given any point of connection to the way things developed.
Also, does Alya miss Enoch? He must have been around her entire life (the only person besides her parents she knew) even though we don't see him in the flashbacks; hell, he probably delivered her since I don't think Fitz would have handled that well. Justice for Enoch.
Oh, and Justice for Talbot. I wanted Daisy to bump into him when she was floating in space. I've never fully believed he was dead for good, he's full of gravitonium and floating out in space, he could come back.
And I think that's finally as good a time as any to move on to discussing things in more season long terms.
Or it was until I went to post my immediate thoughts and realized there were a couple things from that I still wanted to address again.
-I still feel like what they did with Lola (if that's even Lola) was a desecration; and I still feel that it's a reflection of how terrible the ending is in terms of missing the fucking point. But I keep coming back to this again; it could have been better if May was there. If Coulsoid got in the car, maybe even had pressed the update appearance button, but then we panned around and saw May had gotten into the passenger seat. One of them makes a comment about that being quite a change, and then they remind themselves that they're all about embracing change now. That sends the message I'd like to think they were going for. That this version of happily ever after may not look quite the way it would in a fairer world, but it can still be good. But having him alone in a car that doesn't even reflect the character I actually cared about undermines any acceptability it might have had.
-In the reaction (and somewhat here) I brought up how the reveal of FitzSimmons' timeline doesn't actually explain how they knew a lot of what they did going into this mission. They lost communication with what was going on in the Temple long before the situation with Izel had been resolved, and it's not like Piper and Flint could have told them about it. How would they know to show up with the stasis pod for May when they didn't even know she was back?
Now one argument would be that Fitz could see it with the Time Stream; could look and see that the team had in fact beaten Izel, so Simmons didn't need to show up with people to fight Sarge and Izel before they even got the Chronicom adventure, and in so doing knew that May was with them but needed immediate medical care. That would debatably be allowed. But what else could Fitz see as to what happened back on Earth? Did he see the 'original timeline' where there was no extraction plan and the team couldn't go back to the Zephyr because FitzSimmons had stolen it? Did he see the Chronicoms win? There were years FitzSimmons had this in the works, at any point could they see what was going on back on Earth; did they see their friends die? Was it all at once or was it gradual as they tried to resist but couldn't succeed against the alien robots?
There could have been a powerful story in that, shame we'll never hear about it. Also continues to make them kind of dicks to have sat around watching it happen saying 'we'll fix it eventually.' It's also the problem with multiverse logic, because the same logic that says the Chronicoms didn't rewrite history for the characters' timeline; FitzSimmons wouldn't actually be rewriting the timeline that happened while they were floating around in space.
Unless it's more of a time loop and maybe they could always see a future where they succeeded and their work was to get all the pieces so that it would happen? Or is it Bill & Ted logic where they say 'once we get back to this time we'll need to send some people to help our prior selves do things' and then they're just there? But B&T logic is actually time loop logic that isn't that hard to understand so I don't think that lets anyone off the hook for allowing certain things to happen and not actually having a plan for how to create the result they intended. FitzSimmons are far too smart to not to be able to use that kind of logic better than Bill and Ted.
(Maybe I also need to do a piece on why I always assume time travel needs someone someone pulling strings, but I probably won't.)
