S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Rise and Shine' - March 31

This week’s episode was called ‘Rise and Shine’. And?

And it was a tense, dramatic episode, focusing on several issues.

One is general Hale’s back history. Apparently though, she was still not given a first name, so let us just call her Catherine, okay? The audience saw her interactions – in a flashback – with Jasper Sitwell, baron von Strucker, Dr. Whitehall and more, which also serves to reintegrate AoS with the rest of MCU. That is important, because a ‘Captain Marvel’ movie is in the works, and it is supposed to feature such already-depicted characters as Ronan the Accuser, and – agent Coulson. In canon, the rest of MCU considers Coulson to be dead, which is fine, since the ‘Captain Marvel’ movie is supposed to be set in the past, before the events set in motion by the ‘Iron Man’ movie series…or some other point in time; we will just have to wait and see how this film fits into MCU-verse.

Back in AoS proper, we had general Glenn Talbot, and it was his time to shine. AoS treats Talbot the same way it treats the rest of its’ characters – without any particular respect, which just muddies the issue. Half the time, Talbot is comic relief and the other half, he is a friend and an ally of Coulson and his S.H.I.E.L.D., and AoS cannot determine which aspect of Talbot is more important to it. The result…for example, in this episode, Talbot acted both heroic and goofy, and the result…he was not convincing as either. Can AoS please pick a theme for him and stick to it?

With Coulson, there is no such issue; he is a hero all the way. Ditto his friends/team, though they got about ten to fifteen minutes out of the entire episode, and Deke Shaw was not even in it. Instead, we had Mack helping Jemma with Yo-Yo, and while this isn’t a problem per se, Mack is still an engineer, not a sturgeon, so can he really help Jemma? Or is Henry Simmons, (who plays Mack), and NCB (Yo-Yo) are obliged by their contracts to be in every ep? That would be interesting to know…

Anything else? AoS is dividing its’ cast into good and bad guys, no more shades of grey here. Coulson and his people are good, everyone else is bad, forget the redemption. Mind you, maybe Creel will reconsider, since he and General Talbot used to be friendly, but one should not count on it. After the failed redemptions of Grant and Kara back in S2, (Grant had had something in S4, but it is uncertain if a framework redemption counts), AoS is done with them. Well, bully – now S.H.I.E.L.D. has to stop Hydra, its’ alien allies, (who are probably Kree, rather than Skrulls or Asgardians or anyone else), and everyone else. Except for Thanos, because the Avengers and their allies will stop Thanos instead. Or not, and half of MCU will die, we will just have to wait until the movie itself is released.

…Well, this is it for now; see you all next time!

MLP, S8 - March 27

To be brief and to the point. In seasons past, MLP: FiM has taken on Starlight Glimmer and her godless communism; this time, this season, it seems to be chancellor Neighsayer, and his racial segregation shtick.

No, really, this is how this season of MLP works – Twilight Sparkle has opened a school for friendship, and the focus on this season’s premiere episodes was on six students who were a pony, a yak, a changeling, a dragon, a griffon and a hippogriff, symbolizing or standing in for racial variability and integration. The evil chancellor is against this sort of thing, so yes, he is a segregationist and is liable to get into trouble with the rest of Celestia’s (and Luna’s) government before this season is done. Yay for MLP and its’ way of dealing with the thorny real life issues, superior to the one done by AoS. Anything else?

Not in particular, since real life sucks, especially in Russia – there was a major fire with many causalities in a shopping center, in another city there was a mass poisoning due to a mismanaged garbage disposal ground and the MeToo movement has surfaced in that country at last, so it’s been a very exciting post-elections time there after all.

Back to MLP? Ever since the storm king movie…the canon there is that the seaponies and the hippogriffs can transform into one another…by magic. How high was the mind that came with that idea, as an off topic? In real life myths, hippogriffs are born from griffons and horses, an impossibility because griffons hate horses and would rather kill or eat them instead of mating. And yes, both griffons and hippogriffs are mythical beasts that never existed outside of one’s imagination, yet even in Middle Ages people accepted that the hippogriffs were twice as mythical as, say, dragons or unicorns, because griffons would never mate with horses, both because they were imaginary and hated horses, so if a hippogriff came into existence, it was very lucky…but also associated with a griffon, and – its’ relative. So where did the seaponies fit/came in? Some great wit in the MLP creative team stretched their creative muscle and came with the instance sea-to-sky conversion in the storm king movie? Who knows…

So. The new season of MLP has shown that it continues to be one crazy world, connecting components of reality, and imagination, and myths, and its’ own content. Good luck to it. And – see you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Devil Complex' - March 24

This week had been weird…for ‘Blindspot’, as the script writers not only have tangled up Patterson, Zapata and Reede, but also have tangled this episode, and the 100^th episode from two weeks ago, when Patterson fell into a coma…and had a groundhog day like syndrome. Somehow, this carried onto this week, when Borden, the former double agent for the former Sandstorm, is back. Why?

…Well, in part ‘Blindspot’ is weird in S3 – Crawford is a clear substitute for Sandstorm for the first two seasons, (complete with a new megalomaniacal plot to take over the world, with Roman as the Pinky to his Brain, it seems), while Rich Dot Com became a semi-regular character on the show…even though this wasn’t necessary. He is a wonderful foil and comic relief, but this doesn’t make him a necessity for the show; are the scriptwriters trying to make the cast an even half-dozen or something? Is someone from the crew/cast of ‘Blindspot’ have a real life numerical fetish? Who knows…?

And then, on the other hand, we had AoS’ ‘The Devil Complex’ episode, which shows that…Anton Ivanov is back, of all people. Seriously? At the S4 finale, Coulson made a big point about how Quake and the Ghost Rider teamed up, how badass it was, and…what? Ivanov still survived. Yes, he is an LMD/robot/cyborg/android/etc. now, but still. Quake and the Ghost Rider are supposed to be ‘heavy hitters’, and he…took them on and won, by default, maybe, but still. Ouch. And he works with General Hale, her family and team, and they all work for Hydra, and-

And the AoS team decided to bring in some real life elements of their own. May accused Ivanov of being yet another Russian who meddled in their democracy; General Hale’s mysterious superior mentioned a Confederacy a couple of times. Let us rant.

Firstly, yes, Mueller did establish that the Russians meddled in the last presidential election…to discredit Hillary, not to elect the current president. That is it. If the Americans had gotten their shite together within the previous year (2017) and impeached the current president, this would have been the end of that…but this means that Mike Pence would take over, and people like him even less, so instead…it became a long, drawn-out, bloody fight between the Republicans, the Democrats, and everyone else. The Russians are there, out there, but they are doing their own thing, (whatever it is), and using the American internal fighting to their own benefit, rather than to meddle in the U.S. proper, because they do not have to. Go U.S.

Pre-WWI, there was a comic, in which Uncle Sam gets high in an opium den, and imagines himself being the king of the world – and then he sobers up, (or whatever the proper term for the experience after the high ends is called), and realized that he’s a mocking-stock of everyone. The comic was not Russian, (Russia at that time did not really have comics, period), but rather it was Canadian, cough. But then again, whenever U.S. and Canada went to war, Canada would defeat its’ southern neighbor soundly, so there is that. The comic is apparently coming true, and the U.S., is going crazy while being caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy. It happens, they say – just ask Voldemort.

(Yes, there is a new Newt Scamander movie coming forth to the cinema screens in the future; the first one was very good, so let us wait and see what the second one brings).

And as for the Confederacy reference, John Oliver once did an episode on his about the Confederacy, and made a big deal about how it really was about slavery, not separatist tendencies. Here is the truth – it was both. Slavery was one of the worst inventions of humanity; even those apologists of the Confederate way of life admit that slavery destroyed the humanity of both slaves and slave-owners; the social problems that plague U.S. even in modern times have their roots in slavery too. But! For every ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ (Harriet Beecher-Stowe), there is a ‘Native Son’ (Richard Wright), which makes something of a diptych. UTC is about the fate of Afro-American slaves in the pre-Civil War south; NS is about their descendants in the American north; UTC is rural, NS is urban…plus some of its’ characters are genuine communists, and not exported from the USSR – homegrown in the U.S., so not surprisingly, NS isn’t as popular among the lay people as UTC is…so what’s the point?

AoS is not succeeding in real life; last week’s episode, ‘Principia’, was not the lowest episode yet, (this goes to ‘Life Earned’ episode), but it was certainly in the top five. Almost from the beginning, AoS did its’ best to appeal to critics, not to the audience, and it shows. So now AoS is trying to be edgy and have some sort of a connotation with real life…never mind, that in real life not everyone agrees with the statements that the Russians have meddled in the last elections, (they had, but the Americans themselves made it much worse for themselves, and they are becoming of aware of this…slowly), or that the Confederacy was bad, (it was. Slavery’s bad, period, but the U.S. Civil War was about prevention of separatism as well), and so it is unknown if they will continue to watch AoS after such politically approved bon mots. Regardless, good luck to AoS – by comparison, ‘Blindspot’ is succeeding without such blatant statements, but then again, it actually respects its’ characters.

Well, this is it for this time, see you all soon.

Cloak & Dagger - March 20

…To continue the theme of real life sucking, today we learned that one of the last northern white rhinoceroses has died. It leaves the white rhinoceros subspecies in question being represented by only two specimens, and both are very likely to follow the deceased animal – Sudan – before too long. This sucks, because the rhinoceroses as a whole are in trouble – the so-called western black rhinoceros subspecies has died out already, and the Sumatran rhinoceros – also known as the two-horned Asian rhinoceros – may not be far behind either. Considering that the latter is the last living relative of the already-extinct woolly rhinoceros, losing it would be a double-whammy to animal conservation beyond the obvious. Anything else?

Well, Marvel™ has released the first official trailer for ‘Cloak & Dagger’ TV series. So far, it only further develops what we have seen in the preliminary material: the titular characters, college students rather than high school, (as they were in ‘Runaways’), dealing with many issues, from being an Afro-American man and an Anglo-American woman, (the name ‘Tandy’ does not really sound European, you know, and neither does ‘Tyrone’), to being some sort of supernatural entities, maybe even superheroes, but this we’ll have to wait until summer 2018 to see. What next?

Nothing else; we do not even know just whom they will be going up against, unlike the ‘Runaways’, where they had to deal with their parents, the Pride. Cloak & Dagger do not usually come pre-supplied with archnemeses, Freeform™, who will be airing this version of ‘Cloak & Dagger’, (as opposed to, say, the cartoon version of 2010s, Earth-12041), may have to come up with their own villains, and since in their S1 Cloak & Dagger will probably be just figuring as to how they work – as individuals, heroes/villains, Americans, as a couple, etc. – some sort of a generic low-key villain is probably what they need: at the end of their S1, the Runaways were completely overwhelmed by their adult counterparts and had to run-away and to rethink their strategy. But…

But the Runaways, again, are the more defined and better-known superhero team out of the two, so they had it easier, while Cloak & Dagger will have it easier in getting away with original content – in ‘Runaways’, it was noticeable, while in ‘Cloak & Dagger’ it will be not so much. Anything else?

No, not at the moment, when we have a single trailer and a brief two-minute clip (aired in 2017) to go on – and on the other hand, we got the rhinoceroses, which appear to be going the path of the terror birds into extinction and oblivion: not much to go on either, so…

…So this is it for now, see you all soon!

A: IW - March 19

The new ‘Infinity War’ trailer came out. And?

And, first of all, let me be frank: real life sucks. SH has died earlier this month, and it sucks. It sucks even worse than the toad story, the end. I was never the biggest fan of SH, so I cannot really sing accolades about his genius and character, I leave it for the others, and just acknowledge this fact. It sucks, and the science community has lost one of its’ pillars, the end. Back to MCU?

Well, why not? The A: IW trailers so far show a very impressive movie, save the question of what is going on with the Black Widow? ScarJo is showing her character in some sort of a forest green getup, with distinctly blonde hair. Considering that the Black Widow is one of MCU’s iconic characters, this sort of liberty just…does not make sense. Maybe being a blonde is some sort of a disguise? We will have to wait and see.

On the topic of movies, the new ‘Tomb Raider’ (TR) film came out. Frankly, it looks like an inferior hybrid of the TR movies and the first Angelina Jolie TR film – and the movie in question was better, even though it was not the best movie that AJ has starred in, but she did make a convincing LC…while AV, the star actress of the new TR movie made a semi-convincing depiction of AJ playing LC. Yay. Anything else?

Not really. Some people have pointed out to me that since gravitonium is making a comeback, and then it may be only a matter of time, until Dr. Hall, who was swallowed by the mineral in question, comes back as well. Maybe. I admit, I am giving AoS a chance – it seems to be fixing itself…again, so I will not criticize it too much too often. Let us wait until this Friday to see as to what will happen on it next, (outside of Fitz confronting his evil twin, that is).

…Well, I guess that this is it for now. See you all soon.

S.H.I.E.L.D., Prudentia - March 17

This week, S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to be getting back on track, and – back in the past. CyberTek is back, as is gravitonium – this time for real. General Hale seems to have it, though, and Coulson and his team were lucky to get a single piece that the woman left behind – but Mack was able to capture one of her LMDs/battle-bots/etc. in one piece, so Yo-Yo is getting her some new arms, and we’ll probably see her have a more active role in the upcoming AoS episodes again.

…That isn’t any surprise, AoS did try to substitute her, but so far, neither agent Piper nor agent Davis are playing an active role in the show, (their third friend, agent Prince, seems to have been killed by AIDA during the last episodes of S4 after all). They were to fix the plotholes, just as the new secondary character, who appeared in this episode: an old friend of Mack, who had never been mentioned before, and will probably never appear again in the future…but.

But, AoS is trying to fix itself up – again. The semi-sealed rift to the ‘fear dimension’ or whatever continues to manifest the agents’ worst fears; this episode, it was Deke’s turn, as the man saw his mother killed again by a Kree warrior with his glaive/naginata/etc., and it shocked him – but it seems to make him realize that maybe the FitzSimmons are related to him…only general Hale’s current aide has already discovered Deke’s potential parents, so – now what? We will have to wait and see how it develops.

Werner von Strucker is back too, and he has teamed up with Ruby Hale (and the Absorbing Man?) to take down her mother, and – beyond. He is apparently insane now, so – why not? Ruby is setting herself up to be an anti-Daisy of some sort, so a retinue of some sort is in order for her, and as for her resentment towards her mother…yes, it was sensed since she was introduced, so it is not exactly surprising either.

…Ruby’s character is further undercut by the fact that Daisy/Skye has a new boyfriend every season or so – Ward, Hunter, (in the first half of S2), Campbell, (especially in S3), Reyes/the Ghost Rider in S4, and now, maybe, Deke, since he seems to be becoming more of a team member of AoS. Guess Daisy has to have someone to be her potential special someone…and Robbie is not coming back, while Deathlok is also gone – his actor did his obligatory appearance in this season, and is done with AoS, at least for now. And?

And nothing. AoS continues to emanate strong S2 vibes, (especially the first half, pre-Puerto Rico), save that Blood and Palicki are not appearing, they are done, it seems. Is this a good thing? Not everyone liked them, especially after the S2 finale, but enough people did, and their disappearance post mid-S3 did cause some of AoS numbers to drop, to be sure. Since then, AoS tried to make do with temporary characters that usually appear in one episode and then vanish, as the new guy did this episode. Who did fail to appear, though, is Dr. Hall, MCU’s version of Graviton, but maybe we will see him in the future episodes, since AoS is returning to its’ roots and all? The show still seems to be disrespecting its’ characters, i.e. Noah is gone, saving May, Fitz, and the rest of the agents from the beacon-bomb, and was he mentioned ever since? Nope. Just as Victoria Hand never was mentioned, (until the Framework S4), since Grant Ward has killed her in S1…

Anything else? No, not really. True, AoS seems to be cleaning up its’ act, at least in regards to the ‘fear dimension’, (really?), but otherwise, there is no great breakthrough - it is solid, reliable, predictable. Now we must wait and see if it will work.

That is it for this time, see you all soon!

AFO - Elephant vs. Rhinoceros

And now that most of the non-AoS Marvel™-related events are behind us at the moment, let us go back to AFO. True, we have gone over most of them through the years, but we have saved the best for last, really. Let us talk about the ‘Elephant vs. Rhinoceros’ episode.

What sets it apart? Firstly, the quality of CGI. It was always very good in the AFO episodes (for its time), but somehow in ‘Elephant vs. Rhinoceros’, the CGI was especially well done. Good!

Secondly, (technical aspects are important, but for us, they are not that important) is the fact that both combatants in this episode were herbivores and unlike some other episodes, (such as the ‘Jaguar vs. anaconda’), this scenario – an elephant fighting a rhino – is rooted in real life.

Now let us be rational – the ‘Elephant vs. Rhinoceros’ episode is atypical, but it is not unique; AFO did feature two other unusual contestants: the walrus in the ‘Polar Bear vs. Walrus’ episode and the hippopotamus in the ‘Hippopotamus vs. Bull Shark’ episode, and both times the oddballs won. Why?

…Because as it had been discussed in the past, carnivores tend to be built along similar lines; a bear, (either brown or polar, it does not matter) is only distantly related to a tiger, but their skeletal structures are similar. The stoat (ermine, long-tailed weasel, etc.), the bear and the sea lion are related, but they live different lifestyles, and yet their skulls are similar, because they evolved towards the same goal: to feed on other animals. There are plenty of differences – the sea lion specializes in slippery fish, the bear is more of an omnivore, etc. – but the similarities are present as well – and this brings us to the elephant and the rhinoceros.

…Actually, no. This brings us to all of the ‘pachyderms’ – the elephant, the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus. When they were first discovered by the Europeans, the latter had never seen anything like that in Europe, and so, when they began to scientifically classify them, (as opposed to, say, kill them in gladiatorial battles), they put them together as ‘the pachyderms’, the ‘thick-skinned animals’. At the modern times, this term is not so much incorrect, as it is outdated – the ‘pachyderms’ aren’t really related to each other at all, they are much more distant from each other than a tiger and a bear are, comparatively speaking – the rhinoceros is a perissodactyl, an odd-toed hoofed mammal, a cousin to the horse, zebra, wild donkey (and the tapir, which looks kind of like a caricature elephant, and is something of a pachyderm by itself), the hippopotamus is an artiodactyl, an even-toed hoofed mammal, but a peculiar one – it is the most reminiscent of the shared ancestor of both even-toed hoofed mammals and the cetaceans, and the elephant is a proboscidean, a paenungulate, whose closest relatives are the sea cows, the dugong and the manatees, (which physically resembles whales and dolphins instead), and the hyrax, a strange little mammal that looks more like a rodent, (and is the size of one). I.e., the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus and the elephant are the results of three different lineages that led to the same goal: a large, even mega-large, herbivore that towers over the competition…literally. The hippopotamus went sideways by becoming ‘the water horse’, a semi-aquatic animal that lives mostly at the river’s edge, getting the best of the both worlds…while its’ only living cousin, the pygmy hippopotamus, is a much smaller animal that is active mostly at night, and while the two species do share the biological family, they aren’t very close relatives either.

The rhinoceros’ situation is similar – the five surviving rhinoceros species belong to four different families, (though the Sumatran rhinoceros might have died out by now, sad), and…

And they behave differently, the African species are much more terrestrial than the Asian ones are, because there are no hippopotamus species in Asia, and its’ niche there is vacant.

…Okay, there is the Malaysian tapir species, but it is not a widespread species, (though neither are the Sumatran and the Javan rhinoceroses), so it doesn’t come into conflict with its’ rhinoceros cousins, so let’s put it aside. Basically, all of the ‘pachyderms’ tend to lean towards an aquatic lifestyle, both the prehistoric elephants and rhinoceroses have hippopotamus-like species in their family tree; the modern African elephants (two species) and rhinoceroses (also two species) are the most terrestrial of them all, and the ones that had evolved in more extreme conditions, food-wise: there is proportionally less food in the African savanna than it is in the Asian jungle.

…Yes, one of the African elephant species lives in the African jungle, and it is smaller than its’ bush cousin is – and that was the elephant featured on AFO. The rhinoceros featured there was also the biggest modern rhinoceros – the white rhinoceros, as opposed to the black rhinoceros, which lives not in the savanna, but in scrubland, and feeds on leaves, rather than grasses. It is slightly smaller than the white rhinoceros is, but is about 45% lighter instead, and that is important, because in the elephant-rhinoceros-hippopotamus world, size, weight and strength are intertwined: the bigger an animal is, the heavier and stronger it is; the fights of the ‘pachyderms’ have no finesse, just massive damage inflicted on the combatants…literally and directly. The elephant, the rhinoceros and hippopotamus represent three different linages occupying the same niche, and so they function along the same lines, with some different details. The hippopotamus is aquatic, while the elephant towers over its competition, proportionally, it is more gracile than the rhinoceros or the hippopotamus are. And?

And the elephant is proportionally stronger than either the rhinoceros or the hippopotamus are. In a world where brute strength is one of the key factors, this makes the elephant the top herbivore in Africa (and Asia), and as such, it dominates its’ nearest rivals, the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus by a wide margin, and thus its’ victory on AFO was justified.

…That is it for this installment, see you all next time!

Jessica Jones, S2 - March 12

…While AoS is going the same way that it always went, let us mention ‘Jessica Jones’ (JJ) for a change. This show released its’ second season last week. And?

And some things have become obvious about JJ, so let us talk about them. Firstly, as far as superheroes go, (especially Marvel™ ones), the titular heroine is… a Vampire Slayer, more precisely – Faith the Vampire Slayer, who appeared in the 3^rd season of BtVS onwards. (She appears on AtS too). Both Faith and Jessica tend to be crude, abrupt, have issues with booze and drugs, and are morally shady – Faith moreso than Jessica, because Jessica was forced into darkness by Killgrave, (who’s a different villain from Black Panther’s Killmonger, BTW), but both Faith and Jessica have to struggle with their inner darkness, while trying to be heroes (heroines), however reluctantly… why?

Because being villains (villainesses) is worse for them. Neither Faith nor Jessica asked to be heroine, but they became…someone special all the same; Faith because Kendra (the previous Vampire Slayer) died (at the BtVS S2 finale), Jessica because of an accident in her childhood, but get them they did, and the powers…are basically the same – super-human strength, speed, dexterity, etc. Jessica is a Vampire Slayer in a world without any vampires (or other supernatural monsters)-

Yes, fine, MCU does have vampires, starting with Count Dracula; back in February, when the discussion about Black Panther and his movie was at its’ peak, it was mentioned that some of the first Marvel movies were about Blade, a vampire hunter (and half-vampire himself), a movie series that concluded with Blade killing Dracula himself – and what is worth noting is both the titular character played by an Afro-American actor, Wesley Snipes and that the movies’ format was similar to the modern MCU movies, which included the feature of all the villains dying in every movie, so that new ones would appear in the next – and this brings us back to JJ. And MCU’s villains.

For a while, a lot of noise was made about Black Panther’s Killmonger, how he was different from the earlier MCU villains. That is debatable, but what matters to us now is that regardless of these differences, Killmonger still died at the end of the movie, just as the other MCU villains tend to, (except for Loki), so the movie formula is still the same, regardless of Killmonger’s own differences from the rest of MCU’s villains, (whatever they are) – and then we got JJ the series.

In JJ S1 Killgrave was a different sort of evildoer from Killmonger, or Wilson Fisk, or Madame Gao, etc., but just like the rest of them, he was defeated (and killed) all the same, following a formula that is not very different from MCU movies, or AoS, or even BtVS. In S2 JJ did something different – there was no concrete villain, what we had instead was something that some people call a dark mirror – an evil (well, eviller) counterpart to the titular heroine, and it was her mother.  

Folks on IGN and similar sites/YouTube channels have already discussed about how the ‘villains’ of JJ S2 weren’t really evil, more like morally shady, just as Jessica was. AoS too has played with this concept, especially in the first seasons, but they handled it very badly, and the show has never regained its’ initial highs. JJ did it better, both in regards to the villains themselves and how the titular character – the heroine of the show – dealt with them. Spoiler alert: when it came to her mother, JJ needed help from her girl Friday at the end, she just needed help period. What is next for her?

She is going to try to live a more normal life…and we know that it is not going to work simply because she is one-fourth of the Defenders™, without her, there is no team. (Plus on ‘Defenders’ S1 she had some chemistry with Daredevil, so yeah). Since Disney & Netflix showed no sign of changing the Defenders™ formula, JJ’s foray into a more normal life will not succeed, and she’ll be back to being a hero or a villain, (the dead Killgrave isn’t helping things any, and remember the First Evil from BtVS S7? This is so its’ M.O. that it is not funny), or she will succeed…and lose her super-powers instead, because this is how this sort of narrative works.

So, this is it for JJ for now; see you all soon!

S.H.I.E.L.D., Real Deal - March 11

AoS have reached their 100^th episode this week, ‘The Real Deal’. Throughout the week, they were releasing all sorts of ‘Top Ten’ clips; between that and the cameo images of the various monsters faced by the agents in the previous seasons, one could expect that ‘The Real Deal’ will be some sort of a flashback episode, where the agents would relive their worst experiences and console each other, and emerge from this impromptu group therapy session as a better team. Instead, ‘The Real Deal’ got to be mostly about Phil. Let us elaborate?

By accident or design, ‘Blindspot’ has also released a special episode that evening, where agent Patterson got trapped in her own mind via some sort of a groundhog day effect and was still able to solve the tattoo mystery of the week – but the main focus of that ‘Blindspot’ episode had been character development, primarily Patterson’s, but the same went for the rest of the cast too. In ‘The Real Deal’…

In ‘The Real Deal’ most of the episode had been about Coulson and how he dealt with the fact that he was dying – again – as he did in the very first ‘Avengers’ movie and with the fear monster, embodied in the more human form of Deathlok – (apparently this was his obligatory visit for this season. Go him)! The only question there is why Coulson did not shoot him from the start – it was evident that this wasn’t the real Deathlok – and just went on to seal the rift, probably caused by the exploded beacon from the previous episode. Noah – another chromaton or whatever – did die saving the agents, (especially Fitz and May) from the explosion, but this was not addressed even once, was he that perfunctory? It is anyone’s guess, but-

But instead of some jubilee episode that AoS was setting it up, ‘The Real Deal’ felt more like a mess: there was the rift with the fear monster that just wanted to kill everyone, there was the FitzSimmons wedding, which, while lovely, came completely unexpectedly and felt decisively tagged-on, and then there was the Deke Shaw storyline. Seriously, what is his place on the show? Is he the new rookie and potentially Daisy’s love interest (at least for the season)?  Sometimes he acts rather how Lance Hunter did in S2 and Lincoln did in S3, other times he is more of just the comic relief, a man displaced in time and surprisingly immature. Coulson gave him his trademark dark shades, but only because he had to, not because Deke asked him to: in the first story arc of S5, Deke’s strength came from the fact that he wasn’t a part of S.H.I.E.L.D., he helped because he wanted to, and was his own person. Now, he is mostly a clown; he may beсome more important in the future episodes, but not in this one. AoS may be integrating Deke into the S.H.I.E.L.D. for real, but it is not doing a very good job of that plotline all the same. We will just have to wait and see what will happen to Deke and S.H.I.E.L.D. in the next episodes, now that General Hale and her team are on their tracks.

Back to Coulson? More like back to the flashbacks. The fear monster was precisely that – a monster that just walked around and did its best to kill people, no real motivation, no humanity, no nothing. Fitz – or Simmons – spouted some sort of a sci-fi sounding explanation behind it, but it did not matter: the monsters – Lash, Hive, the LMDs, the xenomorphs – they didn’t do anything, they just…were scary, physically scary, and whenever they got shot, they just collapsed into dust. They were fakes, illusions, and here the AoS clearly decided to invest into visual effects rather than substance: the framework version of Fitz, for example, was not physically scary, but he was still terrifyingly evil in the dark side. But did we see him in ‘The Real Deal’? No.

…Of course, ‘Blindspot’ had its’ own issues in this week’s episode; for some reason, the run-of-the-mill villain of the week – general Patrick Mulroney – became Patterson’s nemesis in her mind and the two actually had fighting face-down. Possibly, Patterson’s actress wanted to show off her skills and develop her character further – but it worked. Dr. Borden, one of Sandstorm’s villains, is also returning to the show; ‘Blindspot’s’ S3 has its own issues, mostly about where it wants to go and how it wants to change, but it is still a very good show, much better and coherent than AoS is – even without the sci-fi trappings, and as Patterson’s groundhog day scenario showed, they can do more than just realism, and without any flashy special effects, and yes, this brings us back to AoS.

When it came to their 100^th episode, AoS did something not unlike what it did in S3 with ‘The Fallen Agent’ story arc – it overwhelmed the audience with its promos and ads to the point that it failed to deliver the expectations, plus there was the potential bait-and-switch. The result? ‘The Real Deal’ did better than the AoS episode before it, but still less well than the episode before that. We will just have to wait and see what will AoS – and ‘Blindspot’, and so on – do next.

That is it for this week; see you all soon!

Blindspot - March 6

…Sometimes, real life outright sucks, and then there people like that American toad that got featured on NG and similar sites: it literally lost its’ head!

…No, really, sometime during the last winter hibernation this toad lost most of its face, and head, and skull. I am not sure if it been euthanized or not, but if it did, it would be a good thing, really. After all, could you survive without most of your head, face, skull, brain, etc.? A toad did, so these days, whenever I think that real life sucks, (and it does), I also remember the toad, and realize that it can always be worse, on top of everything else, you could become a sideshow attraction – the amazing live headless toad/etc. – due to some infection, most likely.

And in other news, I would like to talk briefly about last week’s ‘Blindspot’ episode, which was centered about some device, code-named ‘Nergal’. The name does belong to a god, though he is better known not as a god of pestilence, but of war and of death, but he does has pestilence in his portfolio, so here ‘Blindspot’ did go true, (though why is it trying to imitate AoS in S3 is anyone’s guess, and is another thing altogether), whereas the device’s device/logo of the sphinx…

Well, firstly, it shows the lack (or fatigue?) of imagination that begins to manifest in ‘Blindspot’ S3. The last time anything got designated as ‘a device’ was on a Pathfinder™ RPG session, when the GM was too lazy to give the McGuffin (that everyone was going for as the game’s ultimate conclusion) a proper name. Here, in last week’s ‘Blindspot’ episode, I got the same feeling.

Moreover, as for the sphinx,…it was not a ‘proper’ sphinx, but some sort of a sphinx-shedu bastard. The shedu was a creature similar to the Greco-Egyptian sphinx, but from the Mesopotamian mythology and it was a humanoid-bull, rather than a humanoid-lion hybrid. The humanoid-lion hybrid of the Mesopotamians was called a lamassu instead… So?

So it is weird as to why did team ‘Blindspot’ got the three confused. Couldn’t they just been satisfied with the traditional Greek or Egyptian sphinx? If not, there are other cultures that used sphinxes, including India and Southeast Asia countries. Instead, we got some sort of a sphinx-shedu hybrid, and who knows why?

…This is it for the moment; we will talk later this week…hopefully. (Though yeah, the poor toad had it worse).

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Comfort' - March 3

And so, S.H.I.E.L.D. is back. Real life being what it is, I cannot make guarantees that I will be able to follow in the upcoming weeks because of real life reasons, but I got to see this one, ‘…comforts of home’, so let me warn you – spoilers ahead. Got it? Now we continue.

…Yo-Yo loses both of her hands. Yes, this is a variation of the past episodes – the S2 finale, when Coulson lost one of his hands because of the bastardized Terrigenesis mist, and the S3 finale, when she got shot repeatedly and had to sit the actual final showdown with Hive and his Primitives, (when Lincoln got blown up alongside Hive by a nuke, and Luke Mitchell left AoS for ‘Blindspot’)… Basically, this is another rehash of the former AoS episodes…and seasons: somehow, after all of the adventures, the intrepid septet has arrived pretty much at the S2 beginning, save that this time instead of Grant or Tripp they have had Mack – and Yo-Yo, until Ruby, Dove Cameron’s character, cut off both of her arms with a chakram. Why? Because she is a psychotic assassin for her mother, General Hale, who plans to bring down S.H.I.E.L.D. with a team of her own, and for that reason, she has recruited Carl Creel, who is a villain once more. Go team Hydra!

…Oh wait, General Hale does not seem to have any Hydra symbolism associated with her; maybe she is just evil. That said, Carl Creel has entered the MCU as a minion of Whitehall and Bakshi, in the S2 premiere special, so it probably is not too surprising that he will become another one once more. Hydra or no Hydra – and there were signs that it was returning to AoS’ corner of MCU even outside of the framework back in S4 – he and S.H.I.E.L.D. are in for another rerun, and with Daisy’s powers still on the fritz, the Department is on the defensive, again.

Let us pause and recount for a second. Yo-Yo is down – until the FitzSimmons build her new hands or something, she will not be of any use in a field. Daisy’s powers are still blocked by a device of Kasius, and the FitzSimmons had not had yet a chance to try and extract it, so she is back to the S1-S2 seasons’ version of Skye, as she has shown, when she got Deke out of the brig.

This is worthwhile mentioning because, on one hand, Deke has come to the present alongside the ‘last’ agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. …so this means that we probably will not see the Ghost Rider/Robbie Reyes any time soon, (played by Gabriel Luna), and – the character of Yo-Yo, (played by NCB) is also down for the count. Hm. Piper Vasquez from S4 is back though, playing some sort of an ambiguous character, caught between S.H.I.E.L.D. and General Hale’s forces. Yeah, we have been there before, so we will have to wait and see just what AoS will do with her…unless it is a simple substitution switch: Piper for Yo-Yo. AoS before, (in S2 – Mack for Tripp), did this sort of character change, so it is not off the table either.

As for Deke…it’s anyone’s guess as to why AoS decided against bringing the Ghost Rider back, but, frankly, for a while Daisy went through various boyfriends/love interests every season, and maybe she still is, so let us hope first that Deke doesn’t die for real at S5 finale, (or before that), but…Coulson is dying, apparently, so does that mean that Clark Gregg has had enough of AoS and MCU and is leaving? If so, then maybe Jeff Ward, (who plays Deke Shaw), will stay on AoS as a part of a regular cast, but this has happened to Palicki & Blood (Morse & Hunter), and now there’s no sign of them.

No, seriously – there is no sign of Lance and Bobbi, of young Robin and her mother, even though the agents are back at the Lighthouse. Guess Palicki & Blood had enough of MCU after their show, ‘Marvel’s Most Wanted’ failed to launch and instead got assimilated into AoS. Just what is going at AoS behind the scenes?

…Finally, Coulson’s prosthetic arm has also taken a downgrade with all the space travel and is apparently back down to doing only what a regular flesh-and-blood limb can do. Why? It’s anyone’s guess, though it’s very likely that this is because of real life budget issues – all the space and aliens and their actors’ make-up and what-not cost AoS/MCU enough so that Gregg’s character, as well as Bennett’s, are down to being depicted as regular humans, (albeit trained agent ones), and NCB’s character – Yo-Yo – is also down for the count in a very intense way, and instead we got agent Piper, (played by someone else), who’s a regular human as well. (At least she was back in S4, since then yes, things could have changed). Now what?

Now we will get to see the jubilee 100^th episode next week – if real life permits. AoS has done some clear structural, well, restructure, rearrangement, if you will, and is now ready to deliver. We will just have to wait and see what the next episode will bring us.

Until then – see you soon, (hopefully).