Simmons and the Terrible, Horrible,
No Good, Very Bad Day
(This review contains
spoilers!)
Five weeks ago S.H.I.E.L.D left us one mother of a cliffhanger: basically all the
main cast was trapped inside of Radcliffe’s Framework, and Daisy and Simmons
were venturing in to save them. Inside, things are…different, to say the least.
HYDRA is dominant over everything, Coulson is a propaganda-spouting teacher, Simmons
is dead, and Daisy is dating the still-alive Grant Ward among other things. For
this episode to succeed, it had to live up to the lofty expectations left by
that ending.
While this week definitely felt like
more of a starting point for the forthcoming arc than anything, it featured
plenty of fantastic character moments and some of S.H.I.E.L.D’s famous twists to get people invested right off the
bat.
We pick up right where we left off
last time, with Daisy waking up to find her bed occupied by Ward, who’s…not
exactly a face you want to see. The two of them are dating in this universe,
although not without their disagreements. The two of them are top agents for
HYDRA, which is now all about hunting down Inhumans and capturing them. There’s
also a Resistance out there somewhere, but we haven’t seen them yet.
Meanwhile, Simmons does her best
zombie impression and pulls herself out of her own grave, trying to find a way
back to civilization and Daisy. HYDRA murdered her for knowing too much, and
her S.H.I.E.L.D ID is a quick and easy way to get arrested, so she needs to lie
low while on her way back home.
Much of the fun of the episode is
seeing the rest of the crew acting differently depending on what happened to
them in this reality. It turns out May is the one that caused the
HYDRApocalypse, as saving the girl in Bahrain and bringing her back to American
society had disastrous consequences. Afterwards HYDRA rose to power with their
anti-Inhuman propaganda, leaving us with the world we see here. Fitz is known
as “the Doctor”, a high-ranking HYDRA scientist with the clearance to
experiment on Inhumans. He answers to the Director of HYDRA, who’s none other
than Aida. Figures she’d give herself the top spot. Last but not least, Coulson
is an extremely anti-Inhuman teacher that’s not even above handing his own
students over to HYDRA officers if there’s even the slightest chance that they
are Inhuman. I’ve gotta say, it’s incredibly unnerving to see this character
you’ve known as an all-around nice guy since Iron Man back in 2008 acting like this. Clark Gregg did a fantastic
job in creating dark Coulson this week.
Mack, Mace and Radcliffe (if he’s
still alive) weren’t around this week, allowing more of the focus to be on our
two leads. While Simmons was trying to find her way to Daisy, Daisy (who’s
still Skye in this universe) is given the task of interrogating an Inhuman. It
turns out its Senator Nadeer’s brother, who is not at the bottom of the ocean in this universe and instead an
agent for the Resistance. Meanwhile, Simmons manages to find Coulson, and tries
to remind him who he is by bringing up TAHITI. Turns out that teacher Coulson
remembers TAHITI, and just like the good old days he’s writing “It’s a magical
place” in his journal over and over and over again.
Ward also has a pretty big role. True
to form, he’s a double agent in the Framework as well…only this time, he’s part
of the Resistance working as an undercover HYDRA agent. This is so rewarding on
so many levels. After two and a half seasons seeing Ward as the ultimate big
bad, having him as a true good guy again is hilarious to see. I really hope
they build out his character more as to why he didn’t join HYDRA this time
around in the future, because it’s incredibly compelling.
The episode ends with Daisy and
Simmons discovering that Aida has patched out their escape route, trapping them
all inside the Framework. Out of options, they go back to Coulson, and just
before we cut to black he recognizes Daisy. It looks like Coulson will be the
first to remember who he is, so having him back on the good side but pretending
to be bad will be fun.
This was an entertaining episode, even
if it did feel like it was more or less putting the pieces into place for what’s
coming later. Seeing the characters placed into unusual roles was a lot of fun,
especially Evil Fitz and Good Ward. I wish we’d seen more of what the
Resistance was, but I expect that to come into play next week. For what it was,
this was a great way to start off the final arc of Season 4.
FINAL SCORE
8/10
Great
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