Something something something
classified
(This review contains
spoilers!)
Uh,
did I see the same episode as everyone else? Because everywhere I’m looking,
people are saying that this was fantastic and they loved it. I…er…didn’t.
We pick up exactly where Season 3 left
off, with Coulson and Mack chasing after a rogue Daisy (Quake? Skye? Jeez, she has
too many names). Meanwhile, now with Hydra supposedly gone and buried,
S.H.I.E.L.D has been re-established with a new director. The old team’s been
shifted around to new positions, and everyone’s a real grumpy gus about it.
While all this is happening, a serial killer that goes by the name of Ghost
Rider is popping up and killing people, and Daisy’s made it her mission to
track him down.
So let’s start by addressing the
elephant in the room: Ghost Rider himself. He’s easily the best part of the
episode. Just by the cold open you can tell that he’s a legitimately
threatening presence, but he’s also likeable enough that you want to see more. I’m
also happy to say that the flaming skull effect looks excellent. If you
remember what Hive/SquidWard looked like last season, it’s about on the same
level as that. My only complaint was that there wasn’t enough of him, but I
suppose we’ll be seeing a lot more in the coming weeks.
Instead of more Ghost Rider, we got clichés.
Lots and lots of clichés. Where do I even start?
Well for one thing, the entire subplot
of Radcliffe creating a life-model decoy takes a nosedive in seconds. Just from
the first few minutes spent with the robot you can tell she’s going to turn on
everyone in the end. Radcliffe maintains that she’s there to protect people,
but as someone who’s seen more robots in movies than I can count, I know where
this is going. Remind me of what happened the last time someone in this very
same universe created a robot with the intention of protecting humanity? Oh
yeah, that small incident that they bring up in literally the next scene.
Secondly, the new director. Everyone’s
maintaining that this guy’s horrible and making everyone suffer and it’s super
bad. Well, where is he? I know that scheduling actors is a thing and it can be
difficult for a show, but the crucial rule of storytelling is show, don’t tell.
I don’t want to hear about how awful this new director is. I want to see it. If you can’t get him in the
first episode, that’s fine. Just introduce the character later instead of doing
a time skip.
And then there’s my biggest pet peeve:
we’ve got a liar revealed story brewing. Fitz is now keeping the secret of the
life model decoy from Simmons, meaning that at one point she’s going to learn
the truth, and she’s going to get mad at him, and they’re going to end the relationship,
only to reconcile later on. Words cannot describe how much I hate this overused,
overdone plot device, and to see this show doing it is beyond frustrating.
I could go on about how joyless this
episode was and about how there’s a ghost running around possessing people
(speaking of that, how did the ghost get back inside the box? It was opened
earlier to kill those other two guys, so why did it go back in to get rid of
the rest of them?), but I don’t want to. I’m hoping that this was just a bad
episode and not a sign of things to come. If you enjoyed it, more power to you,
but I expected a little more.
FINAL SCORE
3/10
Bad
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