#but then I also have to watch the LMD takeover episode

[howtotrainyouragents]

So tonight I was like, let's rewatch AOS's "Inescapable" ep, which was a bad (read: hilarious) idea bc it's LITERALLY a speed-run of all the most absolute batshit insanity that's happened on this show

[agl03]

Hello! I’m a new aos watcher, so I apologise if this is a repeated rant, I just wanted to vent a little and found your blog :) I just finished through season 3 and 4 and those were really… rough on fitzsimmons, more so than the first 2, and I think it’s because the writers were so inconsistent? 3A was just a mess to jemma. she was so hot and cold, but not in the way you’d expect from being on a planet. it was like watching a different character almost every other episode [1/6]

[2/6] she has ptsd, then she doesn’t, she’s professing love for fitz, then professing it for will. I was getting whiplash! It felt like the writers put her through hell and then didn’t know how to come back from it, but gathered their bearings in 3B (although if I’m honest, that felt a little cheap, because it was a redo for her relationship with fitz but she still never got to react to being on a freaking alien planet!)

[3/6] and then season 4 was so hard to watch how they tore fitz down. I just find it so hard to believe that, without jemma, fitz would be such a monster, because he had to be a good person too, right? otherwise its like he had 0 personality before jemma and she carved him into who he was, but that doesn’t make sense. I guess I’m still shocked that he never woke up from it, even though everyone else did. it felt like the writers pushed him far (too far) and didn’t know what to do with him.

[4/6] I haven’t seen season 5 so I hope they mention it a little bit, but it was a real struggle to see how extreme they went with him, and Im honestly struggling with whether or not i should go on because the writers seem to love to push them to extremes and then backpedal and not in any way that resolves anything, it really makes me cringe sometimes!

[5/6] I also thought it was strange that fitz got a chance to say, very clearly, that he would always choose jemma over anyone, but that jemma never said anything about that for will? I get that jemma is more reserved than fitz, but I’m still a little sore about that, it doesn’t help with fitz looking like besotted second choice, is all I’m saying. I guess I’ll have to see in the later seasons…

[6/6] anyway, i'm sorry for this, i had about 4 seasons of angst built up in me and i didn't know who to turn to! i really like the show, but i am starting to try and watch with less and less expectations because i keep getting my hopes up for a real resolution and it hasn't happened after almost 100 episodes... thank you for listening and for being so friendly from what i see! i hope i haven't poked old wounds or anything !

Hi Anon!

Welcome to the Fandom, and you have no idea how much these kinds of asks are right up my ally over the years.  I’d say go digging through my blog for more of the metas but that is spoiler central in there so I hope this will suffice until you are done.

First and foremost I don’t want to spoil anything for you but I’ll say to you what I said to the fandom at the end of Season 4....just hang in there we have to trust that the writers have a plan.   I”m REALLY gonna stress this one cause I have a feeling you’ll be back.

Season 3 does indeed hold many old wounds and a pile of story lines that started and then went no where or flat out didn’t make sense.  The whole Space Rando thing was upsetting to say the least but I will tell you the writers said in the Season 3 Declassified that he was nothing more than a roadblock in getting Fitzsimmons together, 12 episodes, but that is what is was.  Were there other ways they could have worked with a more father figure Space Rando and Jemma’s PTSD for that delay, yes, but to be very honest they did not have the real estate to do that kind of story the justice it needed with everything else going on.  It is also worth noting they had to fire the actor that played Will and in that had to change a few things, IE Hive was Ward.   Real estate wise the cast had gotten pretty large at that point and there just wasn’t enough time to properly deal with all that was going on.

Season 4 they did much better, had things mapped out better, but that still didn’t change the fact that I suspect there were a few lane changes story wise .  Again thanks to the declassified books.   And over the years I’ve done A LOT of metas on the Framework and I think something that gets lost a lot is what Radcliffe said he wanted and what AIDA actually did when it came to fixing a regret.

Radcliffe told AIDA, in order to keep the team quiet and not trying to bust out like May did, was to take away a regret.   And for May that was Bahrain.  That change was what set up the hell scape we came into with Hydra in charge.  Radcliffe was blissfully off on his happy Island with no clue what she was really up too until it was too late.  

After 4.14 when AIDA got her hands on the rest of the team she didn’t do like she did with May, Change her biggest regret, rather she changed A regret and for everyone but Fitz stuck them somewhere where they wouldn’t get in her way.  Mack got his daughter back and was ready to die in there with her.  Mace got to be the Hero Inhuman Leader he always wanted to be.  Coulson was a teacher.  May was where her regret left her.  Daisy (had she been replaced) would have just been another foot soldier in Ophelia’s army.  And Jemma was where she could never ever have a chance of getting to Fitz because she feared their love and that Jemma would take him from her.  And I have proof those were not the regrets that they would have had fixed and I’ll circle back to that in a second.

Fitz was her target all along.  She knew from the Darkhold she needed him for what she wanted.  Looking Glass and Love.  However, she didn’t realize that his heart always was Jemma’s and when he wasn’t brainwashed and controlled within an inch of his life that he’d leave her in a second.  She mistook his previous acts of caring and empathy as love and had no understanding of the depths of human emotions. IE you can love people different ways.  Sure he cared about AIDA but he loves Jemma with his heart and soul and vise versa.

As Fitz was her target she fixed things so that she could insert herself in his life in Jemma’s place and that he would have grown up with his awful father who taught him that cruelty and power was the way to go.  This also kept out any positive and caring influences like his Mother, Jemma, and the team.  

I said I had proof that some of those regrets weren’t necessarily what the team would have picked.  That came via Self Control from Robo Coulson and Robo Fitz bearing in mind these LMD’s all had scans of who’d they replaced.  Their memories and their desires.  

Robo Coulson told Robo May to let this whole hostile takeover happen because in the Framework they were happy and together.  That was decidedly not the case there though their connection ended up proving crucial to getting everyone out.  

Robo Fitz told Jemma he was doing this for her so they could get married, grow old together.  Had he known he would be sending Jemma literally into the grave Robo Fitz would not have gone along with the plan.  He thought he was getting Jemma and they were going to go live their own Happily Ever After in there.  Yeah, not the case either.  

With the not waking up, no one but Coulson woke up and that was only thanks to Tahiti.  And yes, it was brutal.  Every week my poor ask box got more and more upset and as a fandom we were more than ready to get the hell out of there.  I mistakingly died on the hill that Jemma would snap him out of it (though I did accurately predict the second Fitznapping....yay).  She didn’t because this isn’t Once Upon a Time, True Love’s kiss doesn’t break the curse of having your mind completely wiped by an evil LMD and the Magic Demon Book.  Now looking back it does make the fact that the second he had free will again, despite that other manipulated life where he was dedicated to Ophelia, it was still Jemma.   

Oh and Jemma did choose Fitz over Will, when the sandstorm hit.  She continued to go to Fitz and left Will....she would have never left Fitz in a sandstorm with the evil monster lurking about.  

That all being said sometimes crap just has to happen to move the story ahead and there is always a price to pay for the good.   I do think the Framework went too far but at the same time the writers were making a bit of a political statement there and they saw how good Iain was with evil bad guy.  

Shippping Fitzsimmons is a lot like a Marathon and you are about to the “What on earth have I done to myself,” point of the race.  But I promise the feeling of crossing that finish line at the end can’t be beat.

[aion-rsa]

Agents of SHIELD Season 7 Episode 9 Review: As I Have Always Been

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This review contains spoilers for Agents of SHIELD.

Agents of SHIELD Season 7 Episode 9

Groundhog Day episodes are a dangerous prospect. They can be whimsical, with mistakes erased and deaths undone, or they can be meaningless, completely removing the stakes that make conflict interesting. They can allow characters to learn from each time loop, or they can become irritatingly repetitive for the viewer. Fortunately, this week’s Agents of SHIELD does everything right, from varying the camera angles to break up the duplicate scenes to pausing for reflection with both comedic and tragic results.

Time loop episodes always have one or two characters who are aware of what’s happening, and Agents of SHIELD should be applauded for not spending too much time on the reason behind that phenomenon. Daisy and Coulson were in regenerative pods when the loop began — that’s all we need to know! The fact that iterations which include a death for Daisy caused her memory to reset was a nice touch that lent a uniqueness to what could easily have been a derivative sci-fi formula, as did the fact that the distance to the destructive vortex reduced each time they went back to the start.

It was also nice not to have to worry about explaining the loop to the other characters over and over. Agents of SHIELD skillfully navigated the dilemma of Deke knowing about Simmons’ secret implant, for example, and then treated it as a foregone conclusion in successive loops to avoid drilling the conflict too hard. Even once Enoch’s deadly programming was revealed, we were treated to an almost comical rotation of failed attempts to circumvent his protection. And who’d have thought Deke dying would provide such humor? Daisy answers the questions “Do we need to be sad about that?” with a simple, “No, you do not,” and when Daisy herself dies, Coulson reacts with a matter-of-fact, “What a pain in the ass!” Perfect!

The same experimentation provides the perfect setup for the powerfully simple kiss between Sousa and Daisy. It wasn’t simply a matter of Daisy asking why he cared, to which he at first cryptically answered, “Because you don’t.” Nor was it enough for Daisy to take a loop to figure out what that meant, allowing Sousa to explain that he knows people like her — notably Peggy Carter — who need someone to pick them up when they run full-tilt at their problems. It’s the fact that we saw his sacrifice in action when he picked up the implant extractor and died to prevent Daisy’s memory from resetting again.

Read more

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Agents of SHIELD Season 7: Elizabeth Henstridge Directs Time Loop Episode

By Michael Ahr

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Agents of SHIELD Season 7: The Legacy of Daniel Sousa

By Michael Ahr

Granted, that death as well as the sudden gas leak seemed oddly disconnected from any direct action from Enoch, but the narrative intent was clear. Fitz’s location must never be known, yes, but more importantly, Daisy and Coulson have to watch their friends die. This is a particular sticking point for Coulson, who has been undergoing an existential crisis in the last few episodes, and Agents of SHIELD is finally able to address one of his biggest problems head on: how will he deal with watching his friends die, even after this crisis, while he continues to live on in his new practically immortal LMD form?

In fact, Coulson’s philosophical dilemma and his multiple experiences with his own death make him uniquely suited to ramping up the poignancy of the death of Enoch. Joel Stoffer’s performance will go down in sci-fi history as one of the best android portrayals since Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Enoch’s willingness to sacrifice himself so immediately after being the story’s temporary antagonist made his departure that much more bittersweet. Although Enoch’s death to save the team in season five was no less noble, we’ve had a chance to get to know him better over time, and his similar self-sacrifice here at the end provides a certain amount of symmetry to the fate and nature of the character.

Enoch’s fateful prediction to Daisy that her friends will survive but the team will not was actually a more apt epilogue than the one we got. Whereas seeing Nathaniel Malick training Kora in the use of her flame power reminds us that dangers to the timeline are still in play, it’s Enoch’s prophecy that says more about how Agents of SHIELD might end: with a mass “spy’s goodbye” that left not a dry eye in the house when Bobbi Morse and Lance Hunter left the team. Perhaps it says a lot about the audience’s view of these last few episodes (come back, Fitz!) that we care more about how it ends than about how SHIELD foils the Chronicom takeover, which has lost focus in Malick. May the answers come with enticing slowness and sweetness… and perhaps a time loop so we can do it all over again.

The post Agents of SHIELD Season 7 Episode 9 Review: As I Have Always Been appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[howtotrainyouragents]

Agent H’s AOS Rewatch

Season 3 Pro’s and Con’s 

We’re done with the season 4 rewatch, and I’m over here still trying to process season 3. First time watching, it was my least favorite season and I nearly stopped watching the show because of it. Second time watching…it’s still probably my least favorite just by comparison, but I have infinite more respect for it. Anyway, I needed to sort out my thoughts on this, so it’s all under “keep reading” and don’t get mad at me.

Cons (because let’s get the bad stuff out of the way)

-I really dislike revenge stories, so all the revenge stuff with Hunter and Coulson and Ward and all did not sit well with me and felt even OOC. 

-Speaking of, from the S2 finale through most of this season, there’s this theme of the men protecting and revenging their wounded or fridged girlfriends. It’s not super fun because this is a show where the women are clearly just as, if not more, competent than the men, but they’re not given the same opportunity to protect/revenge the men, much less given the same importance even in their own stories. I’m blanking on what MCU movies were going on around the time of this season, but I remember seeing this even in the movies. If I remember correctly there was a head of MCU who was later removed, but was apparently responsible. 

-The use of Ward is muddled. I’m cool with his takeover of HYDRA, that seemed natural. But you expect it to lead to a huge standoff with SHIELD because he, their worst enemy, is now head of their worst enemy organization. Instead, he gets converted to the HYDRA religion and literally becomes a vessel. Which is fine, but the transition was really hurriedly and poorly done. This is a man who has complex views of loyalty (Garrett not HYDRA. Skye and Coulson but not SHIELD), so I’m gonna need a lot more convincing that he’d believe Gideon’s HYDRA.

-This will be on both lists: I’m disappointed about how after three seasons HYDRA is taken out so quietly and quickly.

-I don’t know where to put this, but: I didn’t actually hate the space boyfriend arc as much the second time around, but the potential overall got squandered and I dislike that. 

-Rosalind’s death and possibly her whole arc was pointless. She was literally created and killed to serve Coulson’s character. Gross. And it’s a shame because it would have been really cool to use her as an actual foe-turned-friend for SHIELD throughout the season; she could have easily taken Mace’s place in S4 and that way at least would have been important for two seasons

-Okay, this is ABC’s fault not AOS’s. But like I remember how hard they advertised for Secret Warriors. Like that was the name of the arc. And. Then. They were a team FOR AN EPISODE.  Imagine my disappointment. Also, there really weren’t enough Inhumans this season to suit me.

-Bobbi and Hunter leave for a failed spinoff and I will never forgive Marvel for doing that.

-I mean…I appreciate that they give Andrew a noble death, but like…was it really necessary to have him turn and later die? Really? It gives Ming Na Wen and Blair Underwood opportunities to do extraordinary acting and they nail it, but like maybe don’t kill a guy to solve your inevitable ship? Don’t kill off your second black actor?

-The time jump in the season finale is too sudden. Like we barely get to grieve over Lincoln and they hit us with a time jump and Daisy on the run and new director in charge. Uncool. 

-This was the season I started to dislike Fitzsimmons. Don’t hate me. To me there’s an undercurrent in the writing that seems to favor Fitz over Simmons. FS’s subject to the same sexism that I mentioned in the first bullet. Like the story post-Simmons’ return focuses a lot more on Fitz’s feelings than on hers. He’s the one who has to stop her from getting tortured. He’s the one who saves Will, when it makes way more sense for her to go. He’s the one they all turn to for answers, when it should be both of them combined. And Simmons just gets a little pushed aside in her own story arc, but she just goes along with it anyway. 

-I had to write this last because this is the thing that hurts the season the most for me: Lincoln’s treatment. Okay, first, he’s a great character who got a major personality change between seasons. I don’t like the personality change, but I’d be okay with it if they didn’t do worse. For starters, we barely know him. His life and backstory are so vague, the guy he visits in 3x03 is just “a friend”, and like we get zero information on how they know each other. They spend the entire season having everyone in SHIELD (except Daisy) be against him, dislike him, belittle him, and mistrust him WHEN HE DESERVED NONE OF IT. Like they make it really obvious that Coulson dislikes him father-style because of his relationship with Daisy. They make him petulant and act out to prove that Mack and May are right to mistrust him when really given the fact that he was an Inhuman guide and a medical doctor and a recovered addict, he’d be a lot more under control. They make Fitzsimmons talk down to him just because no one can be smart except Fitzsimmons, when clearly he would know more about Inhuman biology and medicine in general THAN THE BIOCHEM PHD (sorry that one will always bug me). Like they make some work on him with Coulson and May, and that’s good, but overall he is not allowed to have a solid relationship with anyone but Daisy. I think the writers 1) knew he was gonna die and decided not to invest in him or his relationships. 2) were trying to get a moody bad boy in the cast, and decided to cast him as it when it didn’t really make sense. Also, while talking about Lincoln, I really wish they did some more interesting things with his powers than lightning blasts. He has electric powers!! There’s so much you can do!!

-Okay, this one is just real personal. LINCOLN IS A MEDICAL DOCTOR. Or at least a medical student or resident or fellow (I mean, he’s in the hospital doing rounds). TREAT HIM AS SUCH. HE WANTED TO HELP PEOPLE, LET HIM HELP PEOPLE. LET HIM DO THE SURGERIES AND KNOW THE STUFF ABOUT BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE. LET HIM RETURN TO HIS OLD LIFE AS A DOCTOR. You had such a good character who turned himself around from addiction, dedicated his life to saving lives, got thrown multiple curve balls, and now has to decide how will he continue to serve others. Yes, he’s a hero in the end. But all that in between time, he could have been saving lives too.

Pros (because there is good stuff, I promise) 

-Someone mentioned that this is the first season to have a unified storyline throughout, and that’s so true and it’s so well done! 

-There’s a good natural continuation of the HYDRA and Inhuman storylines from S1 and S2. I think we can look at AOS as two large arcs: S1-S3 is about powered people and HYDRA. S4-S7 is about bending the limits of reality with Ghost Rider, LMDs, Framework, Space, and Time Travel,. S1 was about introducing us to powered people and HYDRA, S2 was about developing the history and politics of them respectively and how they relate to SHIELD. S3 is when Inhumans get involved with SHIELD and with the world directly and the fallout from that. For HYDRA it’s when we get the history and reasoning of the group, and even if it’s a retcon, I appreciate that it introduces the background of HYDRA as a way to end this arc

-Overall, I really do appreciate how this season fills out a lot of worldbuilding. We get a complete history on HYDRA, and we get way more info on Inhumans, but we also get to see how the human world is reacting to and divided on Inhumans, which carries over into the net season

-On both lists: It’s good that they take HYDRA out so quickly and quietly. That plotline had run its course, and it was so bittersweet because they finally had defeated their biggest enemy, but now they had even bigger problems to deal with it. That scene of Coulson and May watching HYDRA fall is one of my favorites because it mirrors that S1 scene of watching HYDRA takeover, but it’s so quiet and not celebratory like it should be.

-Like I said, I hate revenge arcs, but I do appreciate how it came full circle at the end with Coulson admitting his mistake and regret in seeking revenge. That’s much more on brand with Coulson and MCU even I had to sit through a painful arc just to get to that point. 

-Episode 1, Daisy’s entrance and, for that matter, Fitz’s entrance. HOT DAMN.

-One of my favorite things about AOS is the way that they mix up pairings and everyone feels like friends and family. This season did a fantastic job on that with like Fitz/Bobbi, Mack/Daisy, Hunter/May, and way more.

-I complain that there wasn’t enough Inhumans to suit me, but also I really enjoyed the ones we got. I expected them to do Inhumans with basic powers like water, fire, plants, shrinking. But AoS writers were like nah, how about a guy who melts metal?? How about Medusa eyes?? How about a guy who can predict deaths? Like they just went straight to the extremes and I respect that. And yes, we have our typical speedster and fire guy, but the sheer joy that comes from those characters makes up for the predictability of their powers.

-We get Joey and Yoyo who are the effin’ best and deserve the world. And with Lincoln and Daisy we got SECRET WARRIORS!!!!

-First time, we get introduced to Charles and Robin and manipulating time, which obviously becomes important later, so I like that they introduce it so early in the show.

-I also love the way things come full circle with Lash. I wish he didn’t die, but the reveal of his true purpose was amazing 

-THE FITZSIMMONS KISS. THE FITZSIMMONS SEX SCENE. Do I really need to say more?

-THAT FITZ vs MONOLITH SCENE. That is top like five moments of the show for me, and I’m gonna need the Emmys to give Iain de Castecker his belated Best Actor award any day now.

-4722 Hours was a work of art, and Elizabeth Henstridge, I will be getting you that Best Actress Emmy one way or another. 

-Brett Dalton’s acting. This rewatch served to highlight how brilliantly he developed Ward’s evilness over the course of the three seasons and then the way he flipped the switch and played a completely different character as Hydra. You can feel it in his voice and mannerisms, it’s a totally different person even if it’s still technically Ward’s body. And to top it off, that finale where he pulls of a brilliant two-minute psychotic breakdown and a kickass fight scene. Standing ovation, good sir. I miss you.

-After S2 fridged three women of color, I do appreciate how this season chooses to take out four of its white characters even if I’m sad that they had to go.

-The Star Wars references were so effin’ funny

-Spy’s Goodbye. I will never be okay about this.