AoS have reached their 100th 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 100th 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!
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