Week 15: T.R.A.C.K.S., T.A.H.I.T.I.

Are we just having fun with titles now? T.R.A.C.K.S. AND T.A.H.I.T.I... I'm assuming they mean something. T.A.H.I.T.I., in particular has to have some meaning, considering it was stenciled on the wall at the super secret underground lair which has a ... what was that thing? Are Marvel fans supposed to know, or is this a new thing?

Deathlock I've heard of, so I know that's a thing.

I feel like I'm just complaining about this series more than anything. It's not a bad show. It's not great, though. Honestly, Coulson being dead for several days and having his brain rewired by some machine feels like we're coming dangerously close to shark jumping, and it's only season 1.

And speaking of Coulson, he's the star of this show, yet he still just feels like the minor Marvel character that shows up alongside Fury. But we're missing Fury, so he just looks lost most of the time.

I have to remember that this was 2014, so I don't know how many times the "rewind to show each person's perspective of the story" trope had been used prior, but I feel like it's been used a lot since, which makes it feel old and worn out now.

T.R.A.C.K.S.: Not bad. The show is growing a little repetitive at this point, so it makes sense that it would go half-Rashomon to try to shake things up a little. I thought the "disappearing train" and the suspended-animation grenades were a clever idea, and I liked the way that each segment revealed more info while raising even more questions; it's a well-written episode. Plus, a Stan Lee cameo is always welcome, even if he seemed to be playing Hugh Hefner again with those ladies by his side. I don't know what S.H.I.E.L.D. plans to accomplish against an enemy who sees everything that they're going to do, but sneaking into a compound under his watch definitely seems pointless; Skye should have known that she could not accomplish anything in there that the enemy didn't want her to do. (7/10)

T.A.H.I.T.I.: Now that's more like it. This was a satisfying hour of TV, with a tense excursion into the Guest House that resulted in interesting new questions and a smart shuffling of overall story elements (plus some good music, and some Emmy-nominated visual effects, and Bill freakin' Paxton). I really appreciated the twists here, and the moral challenges faced by the team, particularly once they realized why the Clairvoyant ordered Skye's shooting. I don't know whether it was the right call on their part: If you're up against an enemy who knows almost everything, and you know almost nothing about him, but one thing that you do know is that there's some piece of information he doesn't know and wants badly to know (to the point of killing his own operatives to get to it faster), maybe you shouldn't be so quick to give up your sole advantage against him. But the fact that the Guest House facility appears to be destroyed at the end maybe changes the calculus of that equation, and obviously Skye's life hanged in the balance and they couldn't not save her, because this is still a comic-book show despite all of its talk of regulations and bureaucracy. Speaking of which, one of the few things that I didn't like about this episode was the officers repeatedly assaulting Ian Quinn, material that plays very differently post-2020 than was intended. Anyway, as much as I still don't like the team having an omniscient enemy, it does almost feel meta, as if the Clairvoyant can see what we in the audience can see but not anything beyond our purview, and that would be a neat concept worth exploring in a different show. (8/10)

I've been saving up these little reviews to post all at once so that I don't read spoilers on each discussion page until I've watched the whole week. Erik, now that I see your comments, I can answer a few of your questions, but let me put it behind a spoiler warning...