Week 85: Lockup, The Good Samaritan

Lockup: Aaaaand there it is, the moral compromise of Jeffrey Mace and the revelation of skeletons in his closet. It only took what, four episodes? It frustrates me that this show is so cynical that it cannot imagine someone being truly good and decent. The MCU is a place where morally pure beings like Steve Rogers and Vision exist, and where self-centered men like Tony Stark and Peter Quill are ultimately moved by their circumstances to serve the common good, and people like Jessica Jones and Scott Lang who have every reason to avoid heroism are compelled by their consciences to act… but not from AOS's perspective! This show's concept of the MCU is a place where no one is truly moral, or who acts without ulterior motives, or who holds the line on their values when it matters most. Principles are just for pretend, seemingly possessed only by those who haven't been forced to reveal their true selves yet. One of my favorite film-criticism YouTube channels, CinemaStix, produced an interesting video about the characterization of Tony Stark and how the tension between Tony's outward nature and true inner nature is the engine that drives his 11-year story arc all the way through Avengers: Endgame and keeps the audience interested in him and rooting for him. AOS has its characterization backwards: Daisy Johnson and Phil Coulson, and to varying degrees everyone else on their side, are outwardly portrayed as selfless heroes risking their lives to protect the world, but time and time again, when push comes to shove, their true natures are revealed: Shooting, killing, and imprisoning people classified as "enemies," tolerating all sorts of reprehensible violence and bad behavior if it means defeating the "enemy," disobeying orders and laws left and right while refusing to accept any consequences for it. There's a rot at the core of this show that has been stinking for some time now. (I would be remiss not to mention Lincoln Campbell, the closest thing to a hero the show has so far had among its primary cast of characters: Initially self-centered and seemingly unwilling to do the right thing, he reluctantly works with the team and challenges them on their compromises, and eventually gives his life to save the world. That said, knowing that the AOS writers are capable of giving a character that kind of arc just raises the question of why they don't do so more often.)

Anyway, the centerpiece of this episode is the jailhouse sequence, which provides some entertaining if physically questionable action. Could kitchen exhaust vents be large enough for Coulson and Melinda May to crawl through? Wouldn't they emerge as filthy as chimney sweepers? It's disappointing that Robbie Reyes chooses to kill an unarmed prisoner for his connection to men believed to have committed violence, but it's not at all surprising, given both my previous paragraph and that vengeance is kind of Ghost Rider's whole deal. I never get tired of watching Ghosty light up; it's a neat visual effect. Speaking of effects, the Darkhold drawing its content upon being read, and apparently customizing it for each user, is a neat trick too.

I don't know what to think about the lie-detector sub-plot. In real life, polygraph machines are a fraud, yet another wishful-thinking shortcut by law enforcement officers who are under pressure to solve crimes with little genuine evidence. (See also: Blood spatter analysis, handwriting analysis, 911 call analysis, bite mark analysis, psychic consultants, and sadly many more.) But in the world of the MCU, especially given the unreal level of high technology already used many times by S.H.I.E.L.D., perhaps it's legitimate? I don't understand why the existence of Aida is such an important secret to keep, given that she seems benign compared to much of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own technology—we all remember when they tried to nuke Manhattan over the orders of their own director, right?—but the show is determined to generate tension out of her existence and so I guess we'll just roll with it. (4/10)

The Good Samaritan: This episode hangs its story on three heel turns. Let's talk about the better ones first: I did not anticipate the twist that Eli Morrow was behind all of the violence at Momentum Labs, and the hints were there along the way (plus this show is made of nonstop plot twists), so my hat's off to the writing team for pulling off an effective and satisfying surprise for me. I don't know what it means for the series going forward other than "new bad guy who makes rocks" because this show doesn't usually dig much deeper than that, but it does mean that the vengeance acquired by Robbie Reyes against the gang leader in prison was unjustified even by his own standards. That leads me to the second well-done heel turn, when Reyes transforms himself into Ghost Rider in order to escape from the plane. Reyes is still coded as "good guy" in this show, but in his origin story, we see him accept evil into his body and soul in order to achieve a violent balancing of the karmic scales, and in the plane sequence, we see him once again willingly turn over "control" of himself to Ghost Rider to get what he wants. Reyes doesn't just want Ghosty's strength to break out of the containment pod; he wants Ghost Rider's plausible deniability for his actions. He wants to be able to say "the devil within me insisted on breaking out, and if he attacked Jeffrey Mace afterwards, that's not my fault," but we see Reyes choose to give up control, and that makes him culpable. (When I heard a long time ago that Ghost Rider would eventually feature in an occult story arc on this series, I thought that he sounded like a strange choice for a spy show, but his ends-justify-the-means moral code is absolutely a perfect fit for AOS's cynical worldview.) Anyway, if the show has punished Johnson with few consequences for her many, many terrible acts over four seasons, then I doubt that it will treat Reyes as anything but a "good guy" going forward, but it's still nice to see his choices exposed briefly for what they are, and for his brother Gabe to reject him after witnessing it. (What is it with little brothers being moral backbones on this show? Gabe Reyes is in the tradition of Thomas Ward and Nathaniel Malick. Is co-showrunner Jed Whedon trying to work out some issues with his big bad brother?)

It's not a heel turn exactly, but Mace turning into a hard-ass boss who raids Coulson's plane with military force and outright lies to Jemma Simmons about the source of his secret mission for her is disappointingly repetitive for AOS. He might not have turned out to be a great character, but at least he was different, a breath of fresh air in this world of untrustworthy spies who constantly betray and lie to each other. That he turns out to be more of the same just feels like a big waste of potential. I do not understand why he didn't arrest Coulson on the spot, which was surely justified. His calling Reyes a "terrorist" isn't precisely the right word, but he's essentially correct that Reyes is no good and that Coulson continuing to work with him is an indictment of Coulson. But his words would mean more if he wasn't apparently just as dirty as everyone else. (6/10)