Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Which is why this
week’s AoS episode, ‘Planet Kitson’, tried to do something about it.
More precisely, ‘Planet Kitson’ was largely a comic episode,
where almost every scene was done in a humorous manner one way or another. Very
clever, and for those people who like American humor – namely the majority of
Americans and maybe just as many Canadians too – very funny. For the humorless
minority this was more of a filler episode where Elisabeth and Chloe (namely
Daisy and Jemma) got to act drunk slash wasted, and Ian and Joel Stoffer (Fitz
and Enoch) also showed to be a very good comedic team. Put it thusly, why did
they need to bring Jeff Ward’s character into the second half of AoS S5 and
beyond? It’s anyone’s guess, and it is little messes like this one that keep
AoS from being truly great, but-
But the fact of the matter is that ‘Planet Kitson’ does not
have much in plot advancement, save that some Boba-Fett-like character
kidnapped Fitz at the end of the episode and prevented it from being this a
happy ending. By now even fans of Fitz and Simmons are tired of their beloved
characters being constantly apart save for brief periods of togetherness – it’s
time for them to get it going on, especially since they will have at least one
child, a daughter, the mother of Deke Shaw, so maybe this forced separation is
enough? We will have to wait and see, again.
On the more immediate level – since otherwise this would be
a blog entry that is too short even by my standards – we can also pay attention
to C&D; in the previous C&D entry we talked about AoS, so let’s do an
about-face and acknowledge that the good father Delgado isn’t doing so hot in
the MCU: his role is constantly downplayed and minimized. A very possible
reason as to why Adina Johnson – Ty’s mother – is acting OOC by S1 standards is
that she’s doing someone else’s lines – either Mayhem’s or Delgado’s. In the
first half of S2, we had some sparkage between those two, but since then
Delgado’s character was increasingly pushed to the sidelines, while Mayhem had
issues of her own, both within the Marvel Cinematic Universe and without. Yet
again C&D handled whatever real life issues it had behind the scenes better
than AoS does, so again, it is coming ahead. AC, cancelled or not, is and was
still the best MCU show so far; ‘Runaways’ are very different, the Netflix were
a mixed bag, and as for the ‘Gifted’ and ‘Legion’, they actually aren’t a part
of MCU, but have their own universes.
…Marvel (& Disney) have merged with Fox, so now mutants
may be a part of MCU – we will have to wait until the end of June for the ‘Dark
Phoenix’ X-men movie to see what is going on there, but for now there don’t
appear to be any mutants in AoS, (or C&D, and ‘Runaways’ are something else
entirely). Anything else?
Firstly, the scriptwriters for GoT appear to have read the source material – Martin’s
ASOIAF novels and reached the readily available conclusion that Westeros should
throw out the entire hereditary autocratic monarchy out of the window and try
something new. Sadly, since HBO is American, it ended with Westeros being a
proto-democracy – supposedly. In reality, immigrants from Great Britain,
Europe’s first, and best, constitutional monarchy, heavily influenced the U.S.
democracy – and unlike it, Westeros got zilch in this department, so many
critics of the GoT finale expect that it will collapse and things will fall
apart into several kingdoms slash countries.
Again, it is a tendency that was implied even in the
original novels and related materials: only the Iron Throne and
whoever-was-sitting-on-it, write-in the name of the king/queen of the month
kept the seven kingdoms together; the memory of the Targaryen glory days helped
to make the Iron Throne desirable, and now that it is all gone and done and the
North is independent, say hello to separatism, civil strife and further
warfare. Pause. Yes, ethnic Westerosi probably call it the daily routine, but
those of us who live in the real world find this turn of events rather sad
instead.
A special mention goes to the separate North of GoT. In
ASOIAF series, the North and South had a strong Scotland and England feel, with
Dorne having a special mention as quasi-Wales, something that carried to the
first five or six seasons of GoT so with North seceding from the Union…I mean
Westeros, um. The Scots in real life are upset with the whole Brexit situation
and while they are not fully interested in seceding from the U.K. in favor of
the EU, that possibility is on the table too. Apparently, HBO is trying to make
a comment about real life politics literally, and are also being all-American
in regards to a largely European issue. Um. Can’t we try this again?
Mr. Martin seems to have made his peace with GoT and HBO,
and besides, GoT is over; there are spinoffs in the work already, but the main,
basic plotline, one that depended the most on ASOIAF, is done and finished, so
that’s that.
MLP, as we’ve mentioned, is in its’ final season as well,
and like GoT, it is beginning to play loosey-goosey with the script; the season’s
premiere – Mane 6 vs. Sombra – had the cheesiest, the over-the-top, the blatant
dialogue, not to mention that it completely disregarded the MLP comics, Hasbro’s
own – so it seems as if Hasbro had settled its’ own affairs by now too. MLP is
coming to the end, and though Grogar’s little cabal is coming together, they
are still evil and thus will turn on Grogar, (made obvious by ‘Frenemies’
finale) and on each other, unless Grogar does so first, giving them (and the
script) an opportunity to join the Mane 6 and allies and begin redeeming
themselves for real now. Or not, and they go back to Tartarus, or get exiled
from Equestria for real or whatever. You cannot really force redemption; both AoS
and ‘Blindspot’ showed that, though only ‘Blindspot’ – intentionally. Anything
else?
Well, there’s ‘Aladdin 2019’, and surprisingly, it is not a
failure, so yay! However, that is also a topic for another time, and as such,
we will talk about it at another date.
For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!
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