Week 99: No Regrets, All the Madame's Men

No Regrets: Here's another strong episode set in the Framework. The verbal abuse of Leo Fitz's father turns out to be the thing that made him "Nazi Fitz," and while I don't believe that the two characters would have such a private conversation in the Triskelion lobby, I do appreciate the writers' wise decision to root Fitz's problems in toxic masculinity. That has always been the basis of his entitlement towards Jemma Simmons and his refusal to accept that she won't submit to him, as well as his self-loathing as a weak-willed nerd who envied the bravado of men like Grant Ward. "Nazi Fitz" just turns up the volume on this aspect of the character, making it text instead of subtext, and it's terrific writing to embody that part of Fitz as a person who can have a real conversation with him as the devil on his shoulder. The writing is really firing on all cylinders here.

Also really good is the characterization of Jeffrey Mace. Here at last is the heroic Mace that I wanted from the beginning and didn't get, as soon as the mere existence of skeletons in his closet (before we even knew what they were) sullied him as a character. I can be disappointed about the show's cynical implication that a good and decent man can only exist in virtual form, or I can be pleased just to have finally seen a different kind of S.H.I.E.L.D. portrayed, and I choose the latter. They're too often the closed fist instead of the open hand that they pretend to be, and here we see them focused on healing and rehoming Inhumans rather than just attacking the people who would do Inhumans harm, which is still a bit arbitrary but a lot easier to justify.

Bringing back Antoine Triplett is such a great idea. I was not expecting that at all. I'm really digging the deep-cut references to the show's backstory, like "compliance will be rewarded" and Daniel Whitehall portrayed as a hero of history. I also like how Simmons is the audience surrogate in this story, saying out loud what we're thinking and preserving our connection back to the normal world of the show. Framework Ward apologizing for the actions of Normal Ward is a welcome moment of redemption for him. I'm also digging the choice to photograph the Framework differently; I can't put my finger on what they're doing to alter the colors but it's a welcome subtle reminder of the circumstances. (9/10)

All the Madame's Men: I'm loving the callbacks here! I forgot that Sunil Bakshi existed and certainly did not expect to see him return as a VR Sean Hannity. Watching Phil Coulson take over his show for a public statement, all I could think was how this scene could not happen in the "normal world," because having a living Coulson on national TV would disrupt the MCU's oh-so-precious insistence that the Avengers never know that Coulson survived, lest they have a fleeting moment of doubt or something. Before the statement was even over, people started showing up outside the studio to help the Resistance? I don't get how that's possible, because it couldn't have been ten minutes yet and Coulson was still talking, and because people trapped under violent totalitarian regimes do not so quickly throw caution to the wind and turn up publicly for the opposition, so that moment felt like the series rushing to get its narrative pieces in order.

So Aida's big endgame plan is to make herself a human body? Who cares?! Let her have one! Hell, make a deal to build her one yourself if she'll free everyone from the Framework for good. Other than the use of the Darkhold to make it happen, I fail to understand how her having a flesh-and-blood body could be a bad thing; if anything, it would make her weaker. When the show earlier indicated that she was using Eli Morrow's method to defy physics and form matter out of nothing, I thought that she was planning an invasion of the normal world from inside the Framework, as in, she was going to have Framework Hydra soldiers step through a portal and be manifested as carbon atoms in the normal world with some kind of mental link back to the Framework, and they were going to fight a war against actual S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, which seems like the most straightforward way to tie up the story with a big expensive action finale. If instead her endgame is just to make herself a real girl like Pinocchio… this seems like way, way too much trouble for all parties involved.

I could do without the show's use of real-world political phrases ("alternative facts," "nevertheless she persisted," "let's make our society great again"), both because it's way too on-the-nose for a show that's currently being very on-the-nose with its themes already, and because it pretends to align the show with the political left. Look, the people who make the show can vote however they want, but they cannot convince me that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is liberal in any sense, except possibly as a satire of the extremes of the USA-as-world-police mentality in the post-WWII era (think Team America but less obscene). This is a TV show that is fundamentally conservative in its worldview and philosophy -- and speaking as a liberal myself, that's fine with me, because superhero stories are inherently conservative. I can enjoy the show as entertainment, I can engage with its ideas, I can agree with some of it, but I cannot believe that I'm watching a show that would don a pussyhat and drive a Prius and stick a "Bernie 2020" sign in its front yard. That's just impossible. What do you think?

If Anton Ivanov and Aida want the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. dead but cannot harm them directly, isn't the solution obvious after Melinda May's airstrike killed Mace? Just turn them against each other until they kill all but the last one, and/or lure them into lethal traps within the Framework that they cannot resist. This whole "I cannot kill them unless they threaten the Framework" rule did not apply to Mace when he died, right?

The Matrix-referencing fight in the Hydra office was neat; hey, if you're going to do an action story set in a VR world, you may as well reference one of the greats of the genre. I expected a more satisfying one-liner from Daisy Johnson before killing Aida in the elevator scene, but it was still a thrill to see the villain taken down so forcefully and quickly. I don't know how Ivanov got the intel at the end that Johnson and Simmons were "jacking in" from a constantly-moving plane; did I miss something? (8/10)

Discussion questions: If you were trapped in the Framework by Aida and had the biggest regret of your life undone in order to make you happy, what would it be, and what effect would it have on your life? I don't know if anyone's willing to get candid and specific enough to answer the first question in detail; I am not, but I will say that I once did something wrong and caused a lot of hurt, and without hesitation that would be the one act in my life that I'd undo if I could. It would change nothing about my present life, and it wouldn't affect anyone now because the other parties either forgot it or passed away a long time ago, but nevertheless, it was wrong, and I would be wrong today not to undo it if I had a way.

That makes me think about how all of the biggest regrets of the S.H.I.E.L.D. characters are very convenient for the plot, which doesn't bother me so much as it amuses me. I should also mention that, while I accept the necessity of the writers basing Hydra's takeover on May not killing that Inhuman girl and the subsequent "terrorist incident" at Cambridge, I do find it hard to believe that Hydra would have achieved a takeover of an agency employing tens of thousands of people if these six specific people were different because their biggest regrets were undone. Fitz's sympathy, Coulson's devotion to the cause, May's absence of self-doubt, these were the sole things preventing Hydra from succeeding? Uh huh, sure.

This is about the Punisher comic books and doesn't spoil the TV series, so I'm not going to hide it behind any spoiler protection, but here's a warning if you want to be exceedingly cautious.

To me, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. trying to position itself to the political left rings just as false as Disney-era Marvel (and their fans) trying to position the Punisher to the political left. After right-wing vigilante groups adopted the classic Punisher skull logo for themselves, the company opted to alter his logo for good in a story in which he temporarily joined the Hand, and also had Frank Castle disassociate himself from cops because they're authoritarian by nature, leading liberal fans to insist that he's liberal. I understand the company wanting to avoid controversy, but the idea that Castle is a bleeding-heart leftie is complete bullshit.

The Punisher originated in the 1970s as a disgruntled Vietnam veteran who was seething at the country's lack of support for its troops. He evolved from a minor Spider-Man villain into an anti-hero with his own comics in the 1980s, developing into a fiercely anti-crime crusader in the ultra-anti-crime New York of that time period. The Punisher was a cross between Bernie Goetz and Paul Kersey, with the tactical overkill of the Rambo sequels. (For example, see the cover of his first issue.) By the time I started reading his comics in the early 1990s, he was riding a wave of popularity with other violent, dark anti-heroes like Venom and Wolverine (and non-Marvel characters like Spawn and the Crow), reflecting the mindset that made Columbine possible. I lost track of his comics after that, but in other media, he continued to be the shoot-first-ask-questions-never type, a gun-slinging "lone wolf" vigilante who employed extreme violence to eliminate perceived societal threats without regard to context or culture. You can trace his archetype back through John Wayne and Wyatt Earp, through lynching and whitecapping. With a few exceptions, generally men of this archetype are very pro-law, pro-order, pro-justice; their only major objection to law enforcement is that it doesn't go far enough!

So whenever I come upon another Internet post mocking conservatives for not "getting" the Punisher, which I feel like I've encountered dozens of times, I can't help but wonder who it is that truly does not "get" the character. You can be liberal (I am) and enjoy Punisher stories (I do) without trying to claim him as one of your own. In a fictional comic-book world that skews conservative, he's among the most hard-right of characters.