Week 88: Broken Promises, The Patriot

Broken Promises: I'm having trouble getting over the wretched Slingshot from last week, which was like a concentrated dose of all of this show's problems at once, so I should acknowledge some bias. But at this point, I'm really struggling not to hate this show and everyone on it. The few little things that the show does right (good lines like "he brought this onto himself" about Terminator: Salvation, or redesigning the title card each time it transitions into a new storyline) barely improve what is basically just a series of nonsensical reversals of allegiance and other empty plot twists, reliably coming every few minutes because that's all that this show knows how to do. I'm reminded of a video that counts The Last Jedi's plot twists in memorable fashion (thanks, Matthew Preston), and it would be easy to produce a similar list of the bullshit served up by any random episode of this half-assed series. And by half-assed, I mean come on, it doesn't even bother to give its characters plausible names.

And then there's the problem of Alfonso Mackenzie. He used to be the one kind-of likable character on the series because he wasn't a morally vacant prick like the rest of them, but just as the writers forced Jerk-Ass Coulson on us last season, apparently it's Mack's turn. I do not understand his rage and hostility towards artificial life forms, nor his insistence that they must be exterminated at all costs, which just seems unfounded. As the second most tech-friendly character on the series (remember the old days when most of his scenes involved helping Leo Fitz in the lab?), you'd think he'd have at least some nuance in his opinion. Years ago when we binge-watched the series Lost, Kelly and I took to calling it "Asshole Island" because all of the characters on it were just so mean to each other all of the time, and they'd take turns being King of Asshole Island by out-jerking one another depending on the needs of the plot in each episode. Right now, Mack is this show's King of Asshole Island, and he's making what would merely be a boring series actively repellent. (2/10)

The Patriot: There we go, that's better. This episode dealt with questions of honesty, responsibility, and fitness for a public role. It drew connections between several men making the mistake of not listening to women. Without time yet to explore further, it delivered a nice moment of body horror for Melinda May at the end. It served up some fairly satisfying action when the time felt right. And hello there, Judas bullet! People say that the MCU movies and the shows on different platforms didn't have any points of connection between them, but they had plenty; here's a neat video drawing a line across five different titles to get us to this very moment. That sort of thing is why this whole viewing project even happened.

I didn't care for Coulson declaring himself S.H.I.E.L.D.'s boss again at the end, because it undermined the depiction of sexism in General Talbot falsely declaring himself Jemma Simmons's boss earlier in the hour, and also undermined Coulson's own character-repairing statements about how he deserved his demotion for his transgressions and abuses of power. I also bristled at Fitz claiming he's only been working on Aida to "protect" Simmons (who doesn't exactly face much risk of public assassination), because it recalled one of Fitz's worst episodes, when he said he'd end the world to save her, after ignoring her wise warnings to take a threat seriously; this little weasel really hasn't learned a damn thing and he continues to be garbage romantic material. Speaking of Simmons, didn't she already deduce a few episodes ago that Mace was a fraud with skeletons in his closet? Her newfound access to Talbot's classified file couldn't have had that much potential for revelation. Also, how is Senator Nadeer not under arrest for collaborating with terrorists?! But still, beyond those problems, I enjoyed much of this episode. Its willingness to be about something for once other than "robots bad" was much appreciated. (6/10)

I've been reluctant to bring this up for discussion because I wanted to know where the show was going with it, but now I have to ask: What do you make of Simmons being so anti-Aida, and anti-Fitz-spending-time-working-on-Aida? This show tends to use shortcuts to communicate things to the audience, which includes characters having allegiances that instruct us how to feel (ie. Mackenzie's unjustified anti-robot stance fast-tracks Aida as an antagonist), so I see the narrative purpose of Simmons being wary of Aida and of Fitz spending time with her. But this is also a deeply sexist TV series, and so it cannot help but cast Simmons's concerns in a misogynist light, as mere jealousy over Fitz spending time with an attractive woman. She's very cold towards Aida even before she knows that Aida is artificial. Now that time has passed and it's clear that this characterization of Simmons was deliberate foreshadowing, I have to say, Simmons feels like the wrong vehicle for this, because of the way that it comes across as "women be jealous." Does anyone else see it that way?

Also, how did this scheme to get the briefcase work, anyway? I buy the assassination attempt as a way to get it on the plane, but how did the Watchdogs (or Hydra or whoever they are) manage to plant a bomb on the side of the plane? Wouldn't S.H.I.E.L.D. have guards protecting it? Wouldn't it be invisible while parked? Shouldn't they worry about an insider collaborating with the enemy since that's the likeliest way to pull this off? That fact that no character mentioned this huge mystery has me baffled. Did I miss something?