REVIEW: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "Parting Shot"
And here we are with an episode I honestly wasn’t looking forward to this week. With the Inhuman situation becoming more important despite the movies’ ignorance of the events, every episode should have raised stakes. Nothing ruins that drive like focusing on the characters who have nothing to do with the major issue. Even though Bobbi and Hunter may be good characters (after a while), they can’t save wasting an episode.
SHIELD seems to be a fan of flash forwards now, beginning with Bobbi being arrested by the Russian police for the murder of three Russian officers only to jump back 34 hours. Honestly, it’s hard to keep track of how much time normally passes on this show, so the addition of back and forth moments in time is not helping. It’s fun to watch Marvel go to other locations around the world, but even this plot is going to be dragged down if we learn absolutely nothing.
Seriously, we go back to Hunter, and we still know nothing about the assassination. When flashbacks or flashforwards mean nothing, they just add wasted time. Anyway, Bobbi and Hunter find the facility in Russia for the Inhuman captivity. Since Hunter can’t murder a former member of the World Security Council without repercussions, all they can do now is surveillance. They then proceed to waste a minute of our lives talking about things that have nothing to do with any of the forty plots this season, so again waste. Finally, Hunter spots the Russians moving a man with iron helmet surrounding his head, and the two are captured by Russian soldiers.
Hunter and Bobbi fight off the soldiers, and the rest of the team, including a greatly-missed Mack, arrive to the scene. With Bobbi being the only one who can speak Russian, she’s placed with Daisy and Mack to infiltrate the area with the lovely team of May and Hunter to be more discrete. But hey, we really want to go back to watch Bobbi and Hunter being interrogated, right? Though I will admit the soldiers dragging Hunter away based on Bobbi’s false confession would have been sad on another day. When Bobbi steals an officer uniform in present day, she sneaks to find Petrov and Malick while Hunter finds a dead Prime Minister assistant and Daisy has a crash course in Russian. So, now they choose to be interesting? And if you notice, those things actually do relate to the plot.
In a more interesting twist, Petrov reveals that the bounded individual is actually an Inhuman former general for Russia. Malick, in attempt to take control of the facility, tries to convince Petrov to let the general loose. Of course, then we have to go back to Bobbi being interrogated and Hunter keeping an eye out for the guards. Hunter may be talking to May here, but that’s saved purely by May, not the story. Still, the general’s set loose, and with an ability to kill men without leaving a fingerprint, things will get ugly with the Prime Minister’s life in the balance. I actually do like times when I can say they have to save the Prime Minister of Russia.
May and Hunter are forced to abandon tailing Malick to protect the Prime Minister. Fortunately, Simmons may have figured out the general’s abilities. The plan starts out well with May and Daisy hitting people, but the general’s abilities take out Mack using a dark force shadow (so they can use the term dark force). When it takes out Daisy, Bobbi has no choice but to take out the general in cold blood, in front of other Russian officials. Hunter, after shooting Petrov and kidnapping the Prime Minister, also gets caught. I guess we’re pretty much caught up now.
In the flashforward, which is now the present I guess, Bobbi and Hunter are reunited prior to being sent to the firing wall. The Prime Minister confronts President Ellis for sending SHIELD agents to his facility, but Ellis actually argues for the SHIELD agents protecting his life. For further arguments, Coulson arrives to advise to the two on another option. With the government’s eyes off-screen for a minute, Coulson offers them an extraction plan, but Bobbi and Hunter refuse, choosing to abdicate their roles as agents of SHIELD. Coulson ultimately returns without the two. While the team mourns the loss, Bobbi and Hunter go out for a drink, marked by a subtle toast by the rest of the team, and darn it, if it didn’t make me feel something. They should never allow Mack to tear up.
Meanwhile, a few thousand miles away, Malick shoots ducks with his daughter, and yes, that’s a real sentence considering she seems just as crazy as he does regarding the Inhuman Hive. Something’s off when I actually miss Ward in a scene, but this meant nothing. I didn’t learn anything. This didn’t push the story forward. All I learned is that the Malicks like duck-hunting. I doubt that has universal implications.
I’m a little harsh on this episode. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the plot, especially as far as plot extension goes, but I despise episodes just existing to promote something. It’s one thing to do that for Age of Ultron, but that’s for something I actually want to see. It is a shame to lose Bobbi and Hunter, but when my first instinct is to breathe that we now only have to worry about eight characters instead of ten, I guess it’s for the greater good. Because of that, this episode essentially means nothing, but I will raise a glass to the loss of Bobbi and Hunter. I will miss him more than I did Lincoln in this episode (which wasn’t hard), but I’m not in a hurry to watch Marvel’s Most Wanted.
