Week 84: Uprising, Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire

Uprising: Man, it's weird jumping back into this show after Luke Cage. The tonal shift is like hopping into a cool swimming pool after leaving a sauna. Kelly has given up watching this series with me going forward, since she has grown tired of the show's convoluted plot machinations in the service of dumb twists. (She frequently refers to this show as "Agents of Bullshit.") I don't entirely blame her, since there are some lame turns of the plot in this episode, from Elena Rodriguez's friends siding with the gun-toting terrorists over their longtime friend when her "Inhumanity" is revealed, to the revelation that someone with deep pockets is sponsoring the Watchdogs. (Duh. Coordinated global high-tech attacks? Were we supposed to think they were still just some ragtag paramilitary-wannabe clowns plotting on social media?) The pitch-black fight scenes were a noble if misguided attempt to do something different with the look of the show, but they just came across like a parody of the pitch-black fight scenes in too many of the Defenders shows.

I liked Phil Coulson's high-tech prosthetic being knocked out by the EMP, but if there was one twist that I really liked here, it was the power going out just as Jemma Simmons was about to shock Melinda May back to life. Given the 30-second window to restart her heart that was carefully established prior to that scene, that was a clever connection of the different plot threads of the episode, so clever that it made me laugh out loud. There's no way that Simmons and Holden Radcliffe got May's heart beating again within 30 seconds, nor that whatever poison Radcliffe injected into May would be effectively counteracted by a single jolt from a defibrillator, but that's ok; I didn't expect the show to kill May. Or to put it another way, I don't mind sloppiness with the details when it's in service of a good story; the ongoing problem with this show is that it's too often not. (6/10)

Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire: Daisy Johnson has two broken hands and is bleeding so badly from her back that she leaves a blood streak on the apartment door. How did she get from Los Angeles to Washington?! Simmons seems to apply one small bandage to her back and then I guess that's it, she's as good as new? That was surely worth the cost of a plane ticket. Are there no urgent care clinics in this world's version of California? If we're supposed to interpret the dialogue to mean that she's bleeding because she got into a battle with the Watchdogs after arriving in Washington, then why did she travel to Washington in the first place, and how convenient is this enemy if they can just pop up anywhere to create exactly as much danger or damage as the plot needs and then slink away defeated? The Watchdogs are to this show what the Hand are to Daredevil.

Meanwhile, Coulson and Alphonso Mackenzie pursue Robbie Reyes when he drives away from his uncle's penitentiary, following him across Los Angeles, until Reyes crashes his car into the invisible Quinjet. How did they know to park it exactly where he was going to drive later? I guess we're supposed to assume that Coulson guided Reyes there, but it sure looked like a coincidence to me, one that happens way too often on this show, and it has never not been dumb.

Also, the show's dialogue lampshades that job placement of arsonist J.T. James at a fireworks store, which, fine, whatever, but why is he getting job placement at all instead of prison, given that he supported Hive's plot to kill all humans on Earth?! And don't get me started on his collaboration with the Watchdogs! I don't buy for a second that they wouldn't just kill him at the first opportunity, nor that he would be so self-loathing as to do a complete 180 on his allegiances and commit suicide by bigots; nothing in his previous appearances indicates that he's the type. Clearly, the writers just wanted a twist again because it had been too many minutes since the last one. This is such idiotic nonsense. "Agents of Bullshit" indeed. (2/10)

Uprising: Yeah, after Luke Cage, this is a jolting shift. I watched this episode once a while back, but forgot to write about it, and then I forgot what the plot was, so I just watched it again. I know I've made reference to X-Men several times throughout the past few reviews of this show, but here we are again -- I get flashbacks to Senator Kelly wanting to register mutants. I know it's not related, but it just gives me those vibes every time they mention "registration."

I think I like Ghost Rider, and I'm looking forward to (hopefully) getting some more of his back story. Where I'm torn, though, is the mythology of the show that allows for folks with abilities to also not be Inhumans. It's a minor nitpick, and probably not really worth the time thinking about it, but this show has really built up the idea of Inhumans being a specific thing, and then we throw in Ghost Rider.

But then, maybe I'm misremembering other examples that completely negate my thought process. I know Luke Cage is the result of an experiment, but that's a different show... and since now we don't know what is and isn't canonical anymore, maybe I should just let it go.

I'm not sure why S.H.I.E.L.D. coming back is a big deal that needs a massive press conference. Also, who was that at the end?

Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire: We're going to find the Dark Hold, aren't we? It's always an annoyance to me when an item that has been lost for centuries despite being actively hunted by some of the smartest and resourceful people on the planet is somehow discovered with apparent ease. I guaranteed you it's going to be in some obvious place that Nick Fury definitely would have looked, or would have been able to deduce the location of.

The ghost people... are we getting back into dark matter/zero matter from Agent Carter? Are these people just out of phase with reality in the same way that Wilkes was, or the Russian guy from a couple seasons ago?

I'm a little confused about how the car works. I get it's indestructible, or whatever, but just the exterior? Because there's clearly smoke rising from the hood after it hits the jet. Also, he tells his uncle he had to replace a fan belt because "it runs hot" (HAR HAR HAR).

Erik, it's interesting that you mention the Inhumans sounding like the X-Men, because the connection is definitely intentional. I briefly mentioned this already, but here's more detail: 20th Century Fox signed a deal with cash-strapped Marvel back in the 1990s that gave them the film rights indefinitely to all of the Fantastic Four and X-Men, including related characters like Deadpool and the New Mutants. Under Disney's ownership, Marvel came to resent this deal and couldn't persuade Fox to sell them back the film rights, so they tried to sabotage the characters' value: They canceled all Fantastic Four comics, banned writers from introducing any new X-Men characters, and started heavily promoting the Inhumans with the intention of supplanting the X-Men. Inhuman stories assumed a prominent place in the comics, while Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. began laying a ton of groundwork for an Inhumans movie (code-named "Project Next" because it was so central to Marvel's future plans). This movie was intended to reach the X-Men's levels of popularity and convince everybody to forget the mutants in favor of the alien-blooded Inhumans. As anyone outside the company could have predicted, the beloved fun characters continued to outshine the boring ones that nobody wanted, the movie was downgraded to a TV series that only lasted eight episodes, and Fox continued to make bank on the X-Men until Disney eventually bought the whole film studio. So yes, every line of dialogue in AOS about the Inhumans facing racism just for being who they are is intended to sound like the X-Men, and every line about them being forced to register is as much about the X-Men as it is a follow-up to Captain America: Civil War.

AOS has included a few super-humans who aren't Inhumans, including super-strong Jeffrey Mace and Calvin Zabo (who had super-powered minions), Carl Creel who becomes whatever material he touches, Marcus Daniels who controlled darkness, "Scorch" who controlled fire, Donnie Gill who controlled ice, Deathlok the undead cyborg, and if you're inclined to count Asgardians, then Lady Sif and Lorelei. But most of these examples came from season 1, so yeah, clearly the Inhumans have taken over the show since then. At this point, almost anyone with superpowers who turns up is just explained as being Inhuman.

I don't know the lore well enough to remember whether the Darkhold "wants" to be found in a manner like Sauron's lord of the rings, but it seems likely, right? You're correct that it not being found yet despite probably lying around in an obvious place is exactly the kind of bullshit that this show would try to sell us.

After re-reading my comments above, I just want to be crystal clear that I don't think that J.T. James should have been immediately tossed in prison for working with Hive. I think he should have been arrested, and then tried by the Hague on charges of genocide, and then been sentenced accordingly. Extrajudicial imprisonment is a problem in this series, as I've said too many times.