Friday, 2 February 2018

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D Review: “Past Life”

Unarmed
(This review contains spoilers!)

          Now that we’ve (hopefully) finished our adventures on the U.S.S. Kasius, I have a question. Why did the writers think that out of all the cool stuff they could explore in the Marvel Cosmic Universe they decided to go with this weird and uninteresting time-travel plot instead? Seriously, this storyline quickly ran out of steam in the second half as entire episodes were dedicated to getting characters from Point A to Point B with very little of narrative substance in between. How cool would it have been to have Team S.H.I.E.L.D exploring an alien planet like Sakaar or Knowhere or something like we’ve seen in an MCU movie instead of running down drab gray hallways for 10 episodes?

          By the looks of things this is the last episode we’re getting until March 2 to make room for the Olympics, and I think I’m ready for a break. It’s my love of the last four seasons that’s keeping me watching, because that and the unintentional hilarity of some of the stuff we’ve seen over the course of the last few episodes is all that’s keeping me from dropping this show like it’s hot.

          The whole crew has finally met up again…except when Yo-Yo runs off to fill some time. While Coulson has Flint rebuild the monolith, Yo-Yo goes looking for other Inhumans. Instead she finds…herself.

          Apparently this is a past version of herself that’s trapped in a time loop…or something. Also she has no arms, and the reveal of that is so unintentionally hilarious complete with ridiculously overdramatic sound effects that my stomach literally hurt from laughing too much after seeing it. It’s so ridiculous and over-the-top and goes absolutely nowhere. It’s supposed to be why Present Yo-Yo can’t take Future Yo-Yo with her, but…wouldn’t it make more sense if she didn’t have any legs instead? What’s a lack of arms stopping her from running away with her past self? Am I reading too much into an insignificant detail in an overall bad episode?

          Yeah, probably.

          This culminates in the final battle against Kasius, who apparently has magical grape jelly that gives you super-strength now because of course he does. The actor playing Kasius went full-on silly this episode, reaching levels of overdramatic I didn’t think was possible outside of a Tommy Wiseau performance. It’s a lot of yelling and kicking around, lacking a lot of the more subtle nuances that made his character a cool villain to begin with. Here in his grand finale he’s reduced to a screaming lunatic, and frankly that’s real disappointing.

          He does get an awesome death though, I’ll give this episode that.

          We do get a bit of an interesting set-up for what’s coming next. According to future Yo-Yo both Coulson and Mack are doomed, Coulson is dying by some unknown disease (maybe that wire that hit him for no apparent reason last episode gave him swine flu or something), and the time loop is going to repeat itself infinitely, with the Earth destined to be destroyed. I’m interested to see how this plays out, and I’m really looking forward to a return of the S.H.I.E.L.D I know and love: globetrotting adventures, awesome surprises, and a much more lighthearted and fun tone.

          That’s the biggest problem with Season 5 for me so far: S.H.I.E.L.D has forgotten to have fun. Even when the show gets to be its most dramatic they always find room to crack a joke or make a fun comic book reference or do something to lighten the mood. This whole season with a few exceptions has been nothing but run down the gray hallway, talk about the plan for a bit, run down the next gray hallway, “let’s split up, gang!”, and then all run down separate gray hallways. What fun! There hasn’t been any real wild surprises and memorable moments have been few and far between.

          I miss the S.H.I.E.L.D that made Tuesday nights exciting. Can we have it back now, please?

FINAL SCORE
2/10

Awful

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