Week 18: Turn Turn Turn, Providence

Turn, Turn, Turn: It should be no surprise that this episode is so good, since the series was largely built around Winter Soldier's big twist. The paranoia, double crosses, and revelations here are really entertaining. Sadly for me, I knew about most of them in advance, but it was still neat to see them unfold. (For the record: I knew that Garrett was the Clairvoyant. I knew that Ward was disloyal and would betray the team, but not that he was conflicted about it. I knew that Hand would die, but not that she was loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D.; I assumed just last week that she was Hydra.)

I liked Hand's suspicion that Coulson was Hydra based on his mucking up so many missions and acting so strangely. Too often in shows like this, the hero fails many times (with or without good reason) and there's never any reassignment or punishment, so it's nice to see Coulson's superiors recognize in-world that, hey, this guy may not be the best at his job. And judging from Coulson's coldness toward May at the end, it's nice to see that there will be, for at least one more week, consequences to the doubts raised about her allegiances; that sort of blow to the team's trust shouldn't just be a red herring, easily forgotten once its usefulness to the plot is gone. All of the May material was really great, actually; I liked the revelation that she put the team together herself, and, by her not mentioning Skye, the implication that Coulson's addition of Skye eventually changed everything. Also, I really appreciated the music, both the classic needle drop (which might never be topped by its use in Stephen King's The Stand 30 years ago) and the tense original music.

I know some more spoilers, but not many. Considering that the series was built around an organization that is in the process of ceasing to exist in-world, I'm very curious what plans the showrunners had for it beyond the first season, but the fact that it went on for so long is proof that it found its footing. I really look forward to seeing where it goes next. (8/10)

I discussed the S.H.I.E.L.D.-is-Hydra idea with Kelly, and she identified the crux of the matter quickly, which is that there is no significant difference between them. One is coded as "good guys" and the other as "bad guys," but considering that the good guys have already carried out extrajudicial arrests & assassinations worldwide and attempted to nuke Manhattan and operated with virtually no accountability or transparency, how are they the good guys really? Consider the late scene in "Turn, Turn, Turn" in which Hand encourages Ward to shoot Garrett dead. That doesn't seem like something the good guys would do, right? And even if she didn't ask for that, they're still taking Garrett away to a small prison cell for the rest of his life, with no trial whatsoever, with almost no living person even knowing that he's there (beyond, I would hope, a team feeding him and keeping him alive). That's insane. That's not at all the way that "good guys" are supposed to operate. And it's easy for us to say that in 2022, on the other end of the Trump presidency and the January 6 insurrection and rising wave of fascism in America, but people in 2014 still should have had some clue that S.H.I.E.L.D. really aren't good people, and that there's functionally little difference between them and Hydra. Either the show is missing a golden opportunity to explore this subject further (which it might yet in upcoming episodes I suppose), or it's too close to its own subject matter to recognize that there's a massive problem here.