Week 73: Failed Experiments

Failed Experiments: Seeing Hive's original human form was interesting, but also undermining to his cause, because it's yet another reminder that he's human too, for all of his talk of being a new species or a higher life form. Is it me or should he be more passionate for someone who's plotting global extermination? He seems like he's on Ambien in most of his scenes. And then there's the disastrous scene where he makes Holden Radcliffe experiment on the Hydra leaders (so much for Hydra's destruction last episode), in which they conduct an untried experiment on their entire set of test subjects at once instead of just one, and then in which Hive blames Radcliffe for the failure as though he could have foreseen it.

S.H.I.E.L.D.'s infiltration of Union City works better, by giving Melinda May the role of seductress yet again (Ming-Na Wen really seems to enjoy herself in those scenes), and by cross-cutting to build tension, culminating in the great face-to-face showdown between Daisy Johnson and Alphonso Mackenzie. For a series that prizes loyalty so highly, seeing Johnson so coldly reject her friend's entreaties to return to the fold makes for good drama. (7/10)

WHIH Newsfront Season 2: The point of these promotional videos is to make me MORE excited to see the upcoming movie, right? Because these are very dull, less so than real-life news covering non-superhero events, and they get worse as they go on. Apparently they can suck the excitement out of anything. They're so stiff. I don't know who was in creative control here, but the person who decided not to greenlight a third season made the right call. Leslie Bibb and Al Madrigal are both better than this.

"AVENGERS IMPACT: A WHIH Newsfront Special Report": 4/10
"WHIH Newsfront: The Cost of Saving the World": 3/10
"WHIH Newsfront: The Avengers and the White House": 2/10
"WHIH Newsfront Exclusive: President Ellis Discusses the Avengers": 3/10
"WHIH Breaking News: Attack in Lagos": 2/10
season rating: 3/10 (It sucked.)

overall series rating: 4/10
best episode: "WHIH EXCLUSIVE: Scott Lang Interview"
worst episode: "WHIH Breaking News: Attack in Lagos"

WHIH Newsfront was a snooze. Poor writing. Poor acting. Everyone sounded like they were reading the script for the first time as they were recording.

Failed Experiments
Seeing Hive in his original human form gave me flashbacks to X-Men: Apocalypse when we saw Apocalypse transferring his consciousness in order to stay alive.

This is the second X-Men reference I've made regarding this series recently.