The blue brothers
(This review contains
spoilers!)
S.H.I.E.L.D
has enjoyed back-to-back awesome episodes, with Fitz’s amazing solo
adventure and the Clark Gregg-directed gladiatorial arena episode last week. But
the thing about two great episodes tied together is that the first episode
following them that is just plain average will end up feeling way inferior
because of it. This was one of those episodes.
I feel like this was an episode that
was only made because the showrunners needed to meet the 22-episode contract.
Everything that happened this week probably could’ve filled half an episode’s
worth of content, but instead it was stretched out into a full episode for some
reason.
The team needs to meet up with each
other again. That’s the big story for this week. Everyone’s running in circles
everywhere for a long time, and then they find each other. It doesn’t exactly
make for invigorating TV.
Meanwhile, Kasius’s brother is taking
control of the station. Kasius and Sinara are having none of that, and kill him
and his entire army. And…yeah, that’s pretty much it. There’s also some stuff
with May on the surface running into Enoch and then being captured by a
mysterious force, as well as Mack trying to help out Flint (the new inhuman
kid) deal with losing Tess, but it all just seems like setup, and if we are
doing the pod format again setup this late in a storyline isn’t exactly good
writing.
Fitz, Simmons and Daisy’s storyline in
the first half is especially bizarre and hilarious. For some reason one of them
has to be hurt for the whole time. When the episode starts, Daisy is the one
hurt. But then Simmons gets hurt and Daisy’s injury is never mentioned again.
But then Fitz gets hurt and Simmons’ injury is never mentioned again. And then
they all meet up with Coulson and make miraculous recoveries. What!? Why would
you hurt all three of the characters randomly if it wasn’t gonna go anywhere?
One of the only really interesting
things in this episode was the reintroduction of Gravitonium, last glimpsed in
the very early days of Season 1. If you don’t remember, Gravitonium was this
massive goop ball being used by this one scientist guy to try to control
gravity, but then he fell into it at the end of the episode. The post credits
tease saw him reaching out of it before being pulled back in, so they were definitely
setting it up for something. Maybe they were gonna turn him into the super-powered
Graviton from the comics but things just didn’t work out?
Well, it’s finally back, and it’s
being used to power the entire Lighthouse’s artificial gravity. No sign of the
scientist guy though. We only had a brief glimpse of it before the characters
had to move on, but it was enough to tease that it might play a bigger role
this season.
Overall, this was a really weak
episode. Nothing was accomplished here that could’ve been covered in the first
half of an episode, leaving everything feeling drawn out and unnecessary. The
whole episode was just this: “Run! Run! Wait, let’s stop and talk for a few
minutes. Oh shoot, bad guys! Run!” rinsed and repeated for 45 minutes. Maybe it’s
just because the last few episodes were so good that this one pales in
comparison, but that’s still no excuse. After getting two really good episodes,
viewers should expect that quality to continue, not abruptly stop and give us
nothing.
FINAL SCORE
4/10
Mediocre
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