Fone Bone
Matt Zimmer
My guess? She is predestined to return to the past and the timestream factored that in. The real trick is beating the predestined future once SHIELD gets back. First part of the season is getting home. Second part is preventing the horrible future in the first place. And since she was always supposed to go home, that will be the real challenge.How was Quake able to destroy the world if she was sent into the future before it happened?
UPDATE:
Earlier in the season, Deacon speculated that going by the Multiverse Theory, Quake may have destroyed an alternate timeline in the past, and that's the future they are in. I don't like that explanation though, because it makes it seem as if this entire thing is unimportant to the show's canon and characters, and is just a one-off mess instead of a real problem. I think my guess is definitely more plausible than Deacon's, simply because my guess would make the show more interesting, and his wouldn't.
Marvel's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. "A Life Earned"
Okay, I'm not going to say this episode made up for the neverending suck of the previous three episodes. What I will say is that THIS episode didn't suck. At all.
It made several interesting story choices and I'm on-board most of them. And that usually isn't true for ANY TV show I watch. I am just as big a fanboy as anyone, but I tend to think hour long dramatic series are uniformly awful, no matter the genre, because they have to make poor story choices to supposedly keep things interesting. That the drawback of the 22 episode season. And that is totally Mutant Enemy and this show in a nutshell. Except, it didn't happen this episode, which is good, because this the worst season by far. This episode wasn't good enough to change my opinion about THAT, but I was close to giving up the show after last week, and this episode made me backtrack that decision pretty easily.
Let's start with the interesting stuff.
The first interesting thing is cool, but honestly, I would not have needed to it accept it. Apparently the psychic guy was feeding Daisy's answers to Gemma. The ironic thing is that even if he hadn't done that, and Gemma had told the exact same story off the top of her head, I would totally accepted it. Yeah, it's random and coincidental. But it's close to the truth, so it's easy to remember, and is the most plausible reason both Gemma and Daisy would have been in the diner. If that was Gemma's wild guess, I would accepted that completely, and thought the show was ballsy for doing that. I like the scientific explanation too, but I totally would have let this slide on the coincidence. They didn't actually need the scientific explanation for that. Because coincidence is EXACTLY like science in that it exists whether you believe in it or not.
Second interesting thing: Deacon busted and then instantly wanting to change sides for a legit reason. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! If all dramatic series did stuff like this every single time there was a betrayal I would never complain. Usually this is the type of plot turn the show would drag on for weeks on end, making you hate Deacon more than you probably should, and actually (rightly as a matter of fact) thinking Coulson and May stupid for not seeing it all along. I want all my betrayals on TV shows handled like this from now on.
Third: Do I ever need that SAY Fitz? The best thing the episode did is bring back the best cast member on the show. The show has suffered for Iain De Castecker being gone for three episodes. I am not as worried about the ending as perhaps the episode thinks I should be, because the "Next Week" preview hints there might be something else going on besides "Fitz has turned evil". And it's the fact that it can be played either way which is why I approve of the "twist".
Fourth interesting thing: The battle between May and the Ball Lady. I groaned at the act break, because I thought the show wrote itself into a corner, and an unnecessary one at that. When the show comes back from commercials, I thought one of two things would happen. Either May would kill the Ball Lady, and the show would get rid of the only other interesting villain besides Cassius, or May defeats her, but Ball Lady survives and is all that much less impressive for getting punked by May at this early stage of the game. I was wrong. That was no corner. Here they chose option three: May may have lost and may be dead since the only one of the two of them we see in a later scene is the Ball Lady. And I like the fact that they ended an episode on a worthy cliffhanger to what I thought was going to be one of the biggest let-down act breaks of all time.
Fifth thing: I think the babies as currency thing is a bit much, as is torturing Mack over not realizing what the "package" actually was before threatening to destroy it. But I like the show having Mack question his actual parenting skills for caring more about Hope the fake simulation, than he did about Hope the actual baby. I like that, because despite Yoyo's protests that his love is the real thing, and what actually matters, I kind of agree with his first instinct that it makes him a bad person and bad father. And I like that the show let me think that. Yoyo is soothing for the audience members who don't want to think too hard on that, and wind up hating Mack. But for those of us who watch Superhero shows for the character drama instead of the action scenes? That premise is money in the bank drama, and I will give him no benefit of the doubt for thinking like that. And I like that I was able to do that this week.
Anyone else think Mack got unpleasant racial flashbacks to being thought of as big and scary? To be fair, in this scenario, he is. He is super cut and fit, and the other people who work in the mines are all skinny and helpless. By Kree design. Strong people tend to fight back. Like Mack does. Mack is so disturbed not just because he is fitting into ugly racial stereotypes, but that perhaps that in this instance, they may be true. Which is another thing I love that the show doesn't explicitly say, but rather shows through Henry Simmons' disgusted and creeped out performance.
So, great episode? I wouldn't go that far. But it was interesting, for the first time ever this season. ****.
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