Friday, 17 May 2019

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Window of Opportunity' - May 17


Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and then there is Ali Smith. Her novel ‘Autumn’ was kind of pessimistic but still well-written and normal; ‘Winter’ was more, um, derived, (and no, this isn’t a compliment), and her latest novel, ‘Spring’ feels like a flow of consciousness, reminiscent of James Joyce at his most…semiotic. It is anyone’s opinion if this approach works; personally, it feels more like a breakdown of the author (Ali Smith) as a person due to personal issues with it reflecting in her works, not unlike as to what is going on with J.-Ro, whose professional life post the HP books isn’t going so smoothly either.

On the other hand, there is also ‘Dynasties’, both the book and a TV series. It works in both incarnations in an intriguing and thought-provoking manner. There are flaws – we have discussed ‘Dynasties’ last year – but it still works, regardless of the flaws. Go team Attenborough and co.! Raise the natural awareness! Fight the good fight! Yeah! …Real life sucks, but not always, and now let us try to talk about AoS S6.

The adventures of the titular AoS characters continue to delight; this week’s episode – ‘Window of Opportunity’ – stared the new, (and further?), adventures of Fitz and Enoch. Enoch was the non-human alien, whom is not quite android and not quite alive…interesting. The point being, however, is that the team FE killed off ‘the Controller’, who was really a minor villain and a jerk, and are off to the planet of Kitson for further adventures, with team Jemma being close behind them. The odds of them constantly missing each other until the S6 end are astronomical, AoS almost constantly kept the FitzSimmons apart ever since the second half of S1, so they probably are not going to change this dynamic in S6. Anything else is up in the air, free for grabs.

Trivia time: not only this week’s episode took place on a backdrop of a planet that looks suspiciously like real-life planet of Jupiter, but also AoS had no idea as to what to do with languages: the Controller spoke perfect English, while at least some of his crew – the engineers – talked some sort of an authentic alien language, cough. Seriously, who do the script writers think they are? Tolkien? Then let us have Fitz drop into, or onto, Middle-Earth and help Aragorn, Gandalf, and the hobbits fight Sauron and his orc hordes, shall we? The S6 of AoS – the space part of it – has some clear and obvious influences of SW, so why not LotR as well?

…Yeah, that annoying copyright issue and everything, but regardless, an AoS/LotR crossover could be cool. Does anyone want to write it? Really, I will read it and all! Back to trivia?

…Baron Samedi’s wife in real-life voodoo mythology is called Mama Brigid. Cough, but doesn’t our detective O’Reilly have something atypical in her ancestry? Just asking… oh wait, we are discussing AoS now.

Coulson/Sarge and his people continue to be a motley crew of chaotic, unpredictable, and possibly amoral antiheroes…but there does not appear to be an outright evil vibe coming from them. Maybe there is more to them than just destroyers of worlds, as they appear to be set-up in the eyes of S.H.I.E.L.D., (Mack’s version). Moreover, the scriptwriters did their best to make Yo-Yo be, well, important in this episode, NCB got to show-off her character’s new prosthetic arms, (from the second half of S5, when Ruby Hale had cut them off with her chakram – hello Xena, agent Heartly and Lucy Lawless) and ran around a bank. Yay Yo-Yo! …Of course, the fates of Bobbi and Lance come to mind: they were made regular characters on AoS in the first half of S3, and in the second half, they got dropped completely, and now their actors are done with MCU, at least for now. (Cough, the Orville, cough). Yo-Yo and her actress have lasted proportionally much longer than they have, but still…

Speaking of new agents? The one shot by Sarge last week was an agent Fox. (Really?) And now we got agent Keller and it does not look as if he is going away in a hurry, so apparently this side of the AoS script equation got a lot of its own drama now too. Yay! Not, but AoS is doing its best to be exciting – Melinda’s fight with Sarge’s crew was certainly interesting and well-choreographed – so let’s throw them a bone and worry about anything else later.

…This is it for now. See you all soon!

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