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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Adapt or Die

"We are good under pressure."

Well, they really went there with this one.

ChoniCoulson is gone and that wasn't even the hardest punch this episode delivered. In fact, that didn't have the oomph one would expect for a Coulson demise, and with May saying he would be back, I'm sure we haven't seen the last of him. But it says a lot of Coulson's character that he never felt tempted by Sybil's speech about immortality (not that she was tempting him, but you get my point). His body might be Chronicom hardware, but his mind and morals are of a very decent human being. He didn't even flinch at the sight of death and sacrificed himself to give his team and humanity a win.

May showed some emotions of her own when confronted by Coulson earlier in the episode: a bit of anger, a bit of annoyance. She can't deal with the idea of mourning him yet again. And she won't. When she gave the news that he was gone, her demeanor carried solace. Now, the new found ability of May is very handy, isn't it? She can sense people's emotions and predict their behavior based on it and, most importantly, she can tell if someone is a Chronicom just by touching them. This episode used that ability very well, three times with General Stoner, the final one being hilarious. And it also used May's empathic powers to greater effect, to deliver a dramatic twist I didn't see coming: that Mack's parents were dead and those wearing their faces were Chronicoms.

Mack spent the entire episode protecting two beings he thought were his parents. Yo-Yo bonded with them, she heard from whom she believed was Mack's mom how Mack was as a child. It was all so adorable and wholesome. Mack and Yo-Yo had completed the mission and saved his parents. They would take them back to their young kids... but those weren't them, they were long gone. This was really well done, story-wise, and it hurt. Henry Simmons did a great job going from disbelief when May told him, to understated anger when "John" refused to show the cut in his arm, and finally to heartbreak when he had to push his "mom" out of the quinjet. Poor, poor Mack. He has always hated robots, and now robots killed his parents.

In the Zephyr, Simmons' brain malfunction finally got an explanation and we learned what the chip in her neck does: it makes her forget where Fitz is (she can't know) and lets her know all this time-tech stuff that Fitz masters. I loved that Deke thought that Enoch was doing something evil to Simmons and immediately knocked him out. Poor Enoch, he is so pure and is not trusted nearly enough. I wonder if Deke can keep Jemma's secret. I also wonder if she told the whole story about the chip. It could also be a device making her look younger. I'll stick with that theory until proven wrong. (:

Elsewhere, poor Daisy can't catch a break and got tortured, just like her mom, to have her powers harvested by Nathaniel Malick. I'm glad they didn't show us the event itself, but it was still awful to see her all hurt, post-operation. And, oh my God, the glass inside her hand to give herself and Sousa a fighting chance? Ouch. It was heartwarming, though, the way he was concerned about her, how he took care of her and kept trying to keep her awake. He might have been angry from being taken out of his time, but it looks like he found a reason to stay with the team.

Intel and Assets

- No new title card this week.

- Sybil is easily the most interesting of the Chonicoms, apart from Enoch, of course. Thankfully, Luke appears to be gone. The fact that now the Chronis can mimic human emotion gives me hope that they will be more charismatic villains. Fingers crossed.

- I completely forgot to mention in my previous review that Deke killed Wilfred Malick. To be honest, I don't have anything to say about it.

- Mack pushing the Chonicom wearing his mother's face out of the quinjet was very reminiscent of a scene in The 100's sixth season finale, though I think Agents did it better.

- Simmons named the chip inside her head "Diana."

- Okay, so, is it that easy to harvest Inhuman powers? Get some fluids out of an Inhuman and, BAM, you have their powers yourself. That was too quick and easy, in my opinion.

- The visual effects on this show, man... I have no words.



Quotes

May: "I'm not an HR Liaison."
Coulson: "I think he got that from the bag of explosives."

Enoch: "Prepare yourselves for extreme G's."

Coulson: "I don't appreciate this attitude from you."
May: "I don't have attitude."
Coulson: "That's my point."
May: "Not having attitude is my attitude?"
Coulson: "Yes."


Three and a half out of four brain-chips.
--
Lamounier

3 comments:

  1. Loving these reviews, don't want to comment much though since I'm several episodes ahead now and don't want to accidentally mention spoilers!

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  2. I don't think the Mack and his Chronicom parents really hit as much as they wanted it to. Maybe it's because we've done the replacement by robots thing before, maybe it's cause it's unclear how permanent any of these changes are gonna be. I feel bad for Mack being put in this situation but just kind of generally.

    Sousa and Daisy continue to be the unexpected dream team to come from this season. It's nice that it was a group effort to get out of there with Daisy putting the glass in her hand and then Sousa carrying out the escape. And it's worth noting that despite only knowing her for like a week he managed to show more compassion for her being tortured than pretty much the entire team did in Season 5.

    And yeah it does seem a little too easy to get Daisy's' powers this way. Like Whitehall needed to get so many more organs before he got his youth restored (and even then I don't know if he got that life-sucking power Jiaying had).

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  3. What an upsetting episode. I'm hoping there will be some sort of time fix for Mack's parents, but what if there isn't? Coulson sacrificing himself ("Dying is my superpower") definitely got to me, although of course we know he'll be back somehow.

    And I also really loved Daniel saving poor Daisy. I wish they'd retrieved Daniel from the past a couple of years before and added him to the cast.

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