Flight to nowhere
(This review contains
spoilers!)
Time travel is a tricky and dangerous
subject to tackle in any form of media. There are so many pitfalls, traps and
continuity errors you can create via a time travel story, but perhaps worst you
could possibly do is leave your audience scratching their heads in confusion.
This week’s S.H.I.E.L.D continued the trend started last week of episodes where
the writers know where Point A and Point B are, but aren’t too sure about
exactly how to get the characters there. This results in an episode that is
spent watching the majority of the characters sitting around and talking until
one of them figures out a plot point. It’s sterile, boring, doesn’t really move
the overarching story too much, and ultimately it isn’t fun to watch.
The team has made it to the surface
(except Mack and Yo-Yo, but we’ll get to them in a second), and discovered the Zephyr is still there albeit unable to
fly. There’s also a few surviving humans onboard, including Robin, the
future-predicting kid Fitz met up with earlier in the season. Most of this
episode is spent trying and failing to get information out of her about how to
save the world, which (surprise!) we don’t get until the end of the episode.
The rest of the time is spent trying
and failing to get her to say something of importance, only for her to get cold
feet at the last moment. There’s even a scene where she goes “Daisy…you have to…you
have to…” and then stops talking. That doesn’t add tension or intrigue, it’s
just frustrating. The character is saying “I have something important to the
story I need to tell you, but I’m not going to yet because we need to fill 44
minutes.”
Meanwhile Mack and Yo-Yo are still on
the Lighthouse with Flint because…they needed something to do I guess. And here
lies the current biggest problem with the season: Flint sucks. I mean, he
really sucks. He’s easily the most useless and annoying character S.H.I.E.L.D has ever had, and that’s
including Lincoln during his particularly pissy moments in Season 3. He just
goes and does stuff without any real reason for why he’s doing them, and Mack
follows because…again, he needs something to do, I guess. His personality is as
bland as a piece of stale toast, he’s always complaining about something or
other, and doesn’t contribute anything to the ongoing story despite the writers
clearly wanting him to be a major player this season.
Really makes you appreciate the Stranger Things kids, doesn’t it?
That being said, this episode does
have a lot of good stuff going for it. While it was pretty confusing from a
timeline perspective, I did think the flashback sequences of May and Fitz first
building the Lighthouse and trying to figure out a way to fix everything were
pretty good. I really liked how they showed other sides of the characters
personalities, like May’s more gentle and caring side and Fitz acting more akin
to his Framework self when confronted with the idea of Simmons dying. The last
scene with May and Robin ties everything together really well overall, and is
actually pretty heartfelt.
There wasn’t too much in terms of
action this week, but I did think that Yo-Yo using her superspeed to kill the
roaches was a fun little bit, even if the roaches did look like CGI straight
out of the early 2000’s. Seriously, those things looked awful. What happened to
how great Ghost Rider looked last season?
This episode is…not great. It just
feels like playing the waiting game as the episode inches closer and closer to the
point where Robin just cuts the crap and tells them what they need to do. Mack
and Yo-Yo’s story has no real point since we know they’re gonna have to meet up
with the rest of the team eventually (especially since the episode ends with
May telling them that Flint is an important part of the mission), most of what
the rest of the team does this week is sit around waiting for something to
happen, and Flint is still really, really unlikable. While I did love this
storyline at the start, I’ll admit I’m ready to get back to something a little
more recognizable soon.
FINAL SCORE
4/10
Mediocre
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